Word: mckellen
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...Primal Fear) to dancingpreppie (Everyone Says I Love You) to thesemi-reformed white supremacist of the year'sAmerican History X. Though the performancewas intense and thrilling, the Academy probablystill feels that Norton is a bit too green for anOscar. Not to worry. He'll be back before you knowit.Ian McKellen, Gods and Monsters: Sir Iancomes from a prestigious tradition of Londontheater and film, and has firmly establishedhimself Stateside as one of the top Shakespeareanactors--a master of his craft. His performance inGods and Monsters, as the aging, gayfilmmaker James Whale, was superb. But like Nolte,he may suffer...
...SHOULD WIN: More ambiguity here.Okay, not Hanks--he's done better. NotBenigni--too one-note. Probably not Norton,because his role did not require the subtlety andsophistication of Nolte's and McKellen's. Butbetween these two? It's a tossup. The performancesare so different and so good that it's almostimpossible to say, but if pressed, I'll nameNolte. He's been working too long and hard withoutample recognition; at least McKellen's a knight
GODS AND MONSTERS Lions Gate Films Directed Bill Condon Starring Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave...
...gets the sense that James Whale may have given Gods and Monsters an unfavorable review. Granted, the acting is stellar: Ian McKellen turns yet another masterful performance as the aging filmmaker, Brendan Fraser gives a surprisingly adept take on Clayton Boone, the naive young love interest of the homosexual Whale. Lynn Redgrave, heir to her family's tradition of great acting, takes on the role of Hanna, the staid housekeeper who mediates between Whale and Boone with notable sensitivity, making sympathetic a character who could have been made merely boring in less talented hands. The screenplay too, authored by director...
...conclusion of the film, the audience mourns for Whale because McKellen and this film have made out of the man--aging, bitter, out of favor with Hollywood--an endearing figure. Stepping outside of the theater, though, one cannot help but mourn for the real James Whale, for the days when a director could make a movie out of a Mary Shelley novel--not for the prestige granted to recent film adaptations of Henry James, but for the quality of a swift story, of one that engages intellectually, emotionally and viscerally. And for the spectacle of a monster given life...