Word: mckellen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...season of 1998-99, it's hard not to feel some chagrin. That was the year Roberto Benigni did his clown's leap to the stage to pick up his Best Actor Oscar, but in retrospect, the issue isn't that Benigni beat out Nick Nolte, Edward Norton, Ian McKellen and Tom Hanks for the award; it's that Jeff Bridges wasn't even nominated. His deft, hilarious, thrillingly perfect performance as Jeffrey Lebowski, a.k.a. the Dude, in the Coen brothers' genius film The Big Lebowski should have been showered with prizes. Instead, the only official honor Bridges...
...Caviezel) is an analyst for Summakor, a company that collects surveillance data. After quitting his job, he wakes in a strange desert, lost and with scant memories of his past. Finding his way to the Village, he meets its superficially happy--but deeply anxious--citizens and Two (Ian McKellen), the drolly creepy leader, who is inordinately interested in Six's memories. Six suspects that the Village powers want to steal his mind. "We might," Two purrs. "But we will always give it back...
...McKellen almost redeems the miniseries as Two. The leader has a story of his own, including an ailing wife and a rebellious son. Two has less control over his family and their love than he does over the Village, and McKellen's wonderfully calibrated performance combines arrogance and secret pain. Whatever the Village's purpose, it has not solved Two's problems...
...Marvel, you see, is working on another Origins take, Magneto, about the early lives of Eric Lensherr (who in the trilogy was played as a middle-aged man by Ian McKellen) and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, who makes a guest appearance here). It's not surprising, then, that the movie has the harried feel of a personnel officer with too many people to manage, too many plates to keep spinning. Wolverine lacks the simple narrative drive and character pizzazz of Iron Man, the Marvel movie that launched last year's summer blockbuster season...
Fame, fortune and Hollywood should have followed. But little changed for McKellen. "I am an RSC sort of actor," he says of his decision to stay in Stratford. "There is nothing more sinister or enlightening than that." Besides, the RSC was in its golden age. The concentration of talent intensified with the arrival at Stratford of a new generation of actors including Kenneth Branagh, Jeremy Irons, Charles Dance and Sean Bean. By then, the veterans had developed an informal set of rules for themselves: Take the craft seriously (Dench: "deadly"). Don't take yourself seriously (Stewart: "That's death...