Word: actorly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this, as in all Soviet post-revolution cinemas, propaganda is paramount, though more subtle. It is a one-actor show as opposed to the mass-action of Potemkin, Ten Days that Shook the World, Old and New with the people's awakening centred in the phlegmatic, stupid, finally violent figure of the Mongol hunter. Valery Inkizhinov, a Mongol by blood, is a capable tool of Director Vsevolod Pudovkin in showing forth the brutal elementalism of his race through the medium of the duped Asiatic. Typical shots: Inkizhinov wrecking the general's headquarters; the drooling baby Lama at the Festival...
...program time. Producers became wary. His Wedding March, acclaimed by critics, was too expensive to yield profits. After he had spent many hundred thousand dollars directing Gloria Swanson in Queen Kelly he was ousted, the picture never released. A brilliant director, an arrogant, independent personality, he has become an actor again by necessity...
...meant to be if subordinate persons did not constantly (almost too often) call him Abe. At all times however, his acting proves that he has thought out the part and made every gesture and intonation consistent with his conception of it. Ian Keith, as the half-mad, half-drunk actor-assassin, John Wilkes Booth, is as macabre and satanic as a character by Edgar Allan Poe; General Grant (E. Alyn Warren) is good too. Disappointments are the too-pious Robert E. Lee and too-coy Una Merkel as Ann Rutledge...
Dialog and action of Torch Song, refreshingly real, are reminiscent of the more serious works of Ring Lardner. The remarks of Actor Guy Kibbee, in the character of the dyspeptic undertaker supply salesman, should be long remembered. Sample: "All I've sold this week is two gallons of fluid and a grave lining. They bury them in their shirts around here...
...perpetrated a shady transaction to insure the prosperity of his illegitimate family and who died after an eight-course dinner accompanied by a bottle of champagne, three glasses of port, some vintage brandy. The fact that critics could question the obvious reality of a living man and a skilful actor as against an imagined character proves the vitality of the portrait; certainly no one who goes to the picture without some preconceived ideas about Heythorp could find any fault with Arliss' old-masterly performance. A competent cast gives him all the support he needs, which is not much. Best...