The List is Life: #75

75.

The Dame;

Rachel McAdams.

Taking up acting at the age of 12, at a summer theatre camp, Rachel McAdams went on to earn a BFA degree in Theatre from Toronto’s York University. Following graduation, a few bit parts on TV lead to a role in 2002’s  The Hot Chick, yet it would be another 2 years before the London, Ontario native found fame, first as superbitch Regina George in Lindsay Lohan vehicle, Mean Girls, a show she all but stole from a very talented cast, and then as one of the leads in epic, decade spanning romance, The Notebook, alongside real life boyfriend Ryan Gosling, the two shared a sizzling chemistry that lit up the screen and displayed the great potential of McAdams as a leading lady. The next year brought further success, first as Owen Wilson’s love interest in box office hit  Wedding Crashers, playing a pretty underwritten role, but instilling it with her effortless screen charm, as part of a large ensemble in  The Family Stone, she managed to stand out from the pack, and alongside Cillian Murphy in Wes Craven’s  Red Eye she took another lead role and knocked it out of the park, the two leads working brilliantly off one another, McAdams filled her character up with a sweet naturalism that had you falling for her in an instant. Though the last few years haven’t brought much in a way of major roles, she’s clearly displayed enough talent and range to make her a major name of interest in the future of cinema’s leading ladies.

The Dude;

Michael C. Hall.

Michael C. Hall’s career began Off-Broadway, he spent his time working in productions of  Macbeth, Cymbeline, Timon of Athens and  Henry V, in addition to his Shakespearean work he appeared in controversial, modernizing and homosexualizing Jesus tale, Corpus Christi and displayed his musical abilities in an early incarnation of what later become Stephen Sondheim’s  Bounce, and then in his first Broadway role, as the Emcee in Sam Mendes’ Broadway revival of  Cabaret. It was this role that lead Mendes to suggest Hall to his  American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball when he was casting for his new HBO series, Six Feet Under. Over the next 5 years his Emmy nominated work as David Fisher brought great internal anguish searing onto the screen, the viewer feeling his pain, his conflicts all the way. Since that shows conclusion in 2005, Hall has spent the past few years finding widespread fame as a righteous serial killer, in Showtime’s hit Emmy winning and Golden Globe nominated, Dexter. His drier than dry wit, and seamless transition from loving brother and boyfriend to vicious killer all working easily and effortlessly in his hands.

The Director;

Jean-Luc Godard.

Godard first rose to prominence alongside contemporaries, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette writing film criticism for Andre Bazin’s Cahiers du Cinema in 1951, across the next decade he tried his hand at documentary making and produced a number of short films, before in 1960 he directed his first feature, A Bout de Souffle, the film came to encapsulate the Nouvelle-Vague movement, with its frenetic jump cutting, and character asides, it also saturated itself with numerous references to popular culture, most notably the American movies Godard was influenced by. The prime of his career lasted for about 7 more years, turning out films like  Le Mepris, Bande a Part, Alphaville, and Pierrot le Fou, films that generally worked to conventions and with reference to cinematic history, and very often featuring his wife and muse, Anna Karina.  Following the couples divorce in 1967, Godard’s career took a great swerve, suddenly, as if in line with the youth of the nation, his work became almost revolutionary, certainly anti-establishment, he was tagged as everything from a militant, a radical, even a Maoist, he began to delve far deeper into political and social issues that had been there before, but that now sat at the forefront of his work. Along with this change came a denouncement of much of cinema’s history as bourgeois, and thus without merit. He continues to work to this day, turning out usually at least a film a year, aged 78, he shows no signs of slowing down, and no signs of softening his edges.

The Picture;

Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991)

The story, Beauty and the Beast, can be traced as far back as 1740, written by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, a variety of different versions of the story evolved out of this one over the next few decades, abridged, and transformed into stage plays and opera form. The first major cinematic version was Jean Cocteau’s 1946, La Belle et la Bette, starring Jean Marais. However it was in 1991 when it came into the hands of the mighty Disney that it was forever immortalized for global audiences, and remains to this day, the only animated film to ever be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The production lends the story an epic grandeur rarely seen in animated movies up till this point, giving it a real feel of prestige, usually reserved for live action pictures, it maintains the tales classical feel perfectly for adult audiences, perfectly portrays the greatly conflicted central relationship that turns from hatred slowly to love for a younger more romantic generation, and fills itself out with a host of wondrously entertaining supporting characters to enthrall children everywhere. The songs are gorgeously written, and brilliantly vibrantly visually realized, as is the entire movie, whether playing out in grand ballrooms, dark forests, or drunk taverns, you can feel the atmosphere shining through the screen. It is a beautiful film to behold, turning a story two and a half centuries old into something both modern and old fashioned, for the young and the old, for lovers of  story or of visuals, it is truly universal, and a real classic for all time.

The List is Life: #96

96.

The Dame;

Sissy Spacek.

Ever since her major film breakthrough in 1973 as the naive teenager Holly in Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Sissy Spacek has been an interesting actress to watch. Equally comfortable playing quiet, restrained young girls as she did in the Malick picture and in her most famous role to date in Brain DePalma’s Carrie, as she is at the ever popular art of cinema biopic-ing as she displayed in her Oscar winning turn as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter, and as the quietly furious grieving mother in her final nominated turn to date in Todd Field’s In the Bedroom. She’s an actress capable of perfectly subtle and quiet, restrained turns.

The Dude;

Tom Hanks.

Many a term has been attached to Tom Hanks over his long and storied career. Whether we refer to him as the ultimate everyman, the new Jimmy Stewart, what cannot be denied is that over the two decades since his first Oscar nomination he has proven himself to be one of the most talented and capable actors of his generation. From his pure, unadulterated childhood innocence in Big, to the weary fighting spirit of Philadelphia, American simplicity in Forrest Gump, the quiet, humble masculinity of Saving Private Ryan, or the large stretches of wordlessness that populated Castaway, in which he held the screen with his physicality and nothing but a volleyball for company, Tom Hanks has proven a versatility not found among many of his era. Truly one of the good guys.

The Director;

Nicholas Ray.

Nicholas Ray left the University of Chicago after a year to study architecture on a scholarship under Frank Lloyd Wright where he learnt the importance of space and scope that would come in great use for a filmmaker with as beautiful an eye for visuals as he did. His socialist/communist leanings soon came between student and mentor and Ray departed for New York where he became involved in the theater until his good friend Elia Kazan hired him to work as assistant on feature debut, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. From there Ray’s star grew and grew till the mid 50s when he was doing some of the most iconic work in Hollywood, a western centred around a woman in the magnificent Johnny Guitar and the iconic Rebel Without a Cause, a title worthy of the rebel who guided it to immortality.

The Picture;

El Laberinto del Fauno (Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)

Guillermo Del Toro started making movies in 1993 and he has always had a taste for the fantastic, from the gothic horror of his first, Cronos, to the sci-fi thrills of his English language debut, Mimic, through the comic book rides of Blade II and Hellboy, Del Toro has always wandered in strange realms. That wandering finally came to a beautiful crescendo in 2006 as the Spaniard turned in the most acclaimed film of the year, a tale of startling fantasy and harsh reality, balancing both worlds with perfect precision and taking the audience into the imagination of a young girl, along the harsh road she travels and the difficult lessons she learns. It is a beautifully crafted dark fantasy, written, directed, performed, shot and scored with the greatest love and passion. Growing up and facing the world has never been so painful or so beautiful.