Gary Oldman..

[rogerballard]

One of the greatest actors in my lifetime..

[OnDoutside]

1. I had never heard of him before his latest movie.

His performance as Churchill was superb though.

[rogerballard]

2. Google Gary Oldman....

True Romance... Dracula...

[susanna]

13. Sid & Nancy...

I have said recently and will say forever...

Any actor who can play both Sid Vicious and Winston Churchill deserves at least a brief moment of consideration for their range.

[FSogol]

15. He also played Beethoven in "Immortal Beloved." N/t

[susanna]

31. ...yes he did! :) n/t

[question everything]

56. And he was great. This, really is the movie that I associate with him

That Ninth Symphony, when he was floating looking at a sky full of stars..

[susanna]

62. I associate that moment with me...

when I get really messed up with what's going on in our world...

I go outside and look up at the stars.

It keeps me sane.

[LisaM]

26. "Sid & Nancy" was a searing movie.

I saw it once, and it's forever imprinted on my brain. He was amazing.

[susanna]

32. "Searing" is the perfect description for it! n/t

[OnDoutside]

20. There aren't many of those movies I've watched, so that probably explains it.

I'm not into those types of darker movies, there's enough of that in real life to be watching it in movies.

[pink-o]

64. He was Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films

Maybe you've seen him there...?

[OnDoutside]

65. Ah ok, I've seen those, thanks. My basic problem over the last decade

is having an 11 year old child, so my spare movie time has been taken up with watching less serious movies ! Actually the Darkest hour was the first grown up movie I brought him to, and he was impressed.

[sarge43]

23. Adding James Gordon to the list

First time the character was portrayed as a man Batman would trust instead of comic relief.

[LisaM]

27. He was in an episode of "Friends"!

He played the actor in the World War I movie who spit all over Joey and then got too drunk to shoot the final scenes.

[Upthevibe]

40. As a "Friends" fanatic, that particular episode was fantastic...n/t

[lunatica]

30. He and Denzel Washington were very good in The Book of Eli

It's a distopia movie about a man who guards the last bible in existence and a man who wants it to control the masses and be a dictator. It also has Mila Kunis in it. It's not a story about religion. It's about power.

[OriginalGeek]

55. I can't even

Comprehend that.

[rogerballard]

3. Dracula...

[Ilsa]

50. So sexy, and that line he gave to Mina,

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you."

He was the best, most complex Dracula. You could even be on his side throughout most of the movie, which says a lot about us.

[lunasun]

4. Also writer and director . Nil by Mouth check it out

Plus he was director for one of my favorite musicians- Jack White 's Unstaged
"I feel, in a way, I lucked out," said Oldman, sporting a jaunty scarf and a Swinging London-style '60s blue jacket with white stripes (!), when asked how the collaboration came together. The courting process was simple: White was asked who he'd like to work with and Oldman was his first choice, albeit not an obvious one. Oldman is known primarily as an actor for his work in films like The Dark Knight, the Harry Potter franchise, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and many others, and less for his occasional directing of music videos for Guns 'N Roses ("Since I Don't Have You&quot and the 1997 feature "Nil by Mouth." "I'd never met Jack before but I like his music, so I felt very fortunate."
Check out how they first meet below
https://vimeo.com/151672912

[rogerballard]

6. Thank you

[Canoe52]

5. He was great in The Fifth Element

[trc]

28. He was overthetop...and brilliant, in this campy movie. nt

[lunatica]

33. I love that movie!

They were all outstanding in it! Who knew all those drama actors could be funny!?

[Sedona]

7. Lee Harvey Oswald

In Oliver Stone's JFK.

[Sedona]

42. Look what found

I'm going to see the Darkest Hour pretty much right now.

I'll check back in later tonight.

[Zorro]

44. His #1 role in this clip is from True Romance

and his performance in that movie is remarkable and very memorable. He is a very scary guy.

It's also the only Tarantino film I ever thought praiseworthy.

[padah513]

8. I agree 100%

I love the way he can take any character he portrays and mold himself into that role. The Gary Oldman you see in Dracula is not the Gary Oldman you see in The Fifth Element or the one who portrays Churchill. By contrast, look at Bruce Willis. He is the same no matter what he does with the exception of maybe Day of the Jacka.l

[lunasun]

9. The first movie I saw him in

[rogerballard]

11. I forgot about Sid and Nancy...

[susanna]

14. THANK you.

He didn't appear out of the ether.

GenX unite lol

[Skittles]

10. he will win the Oscar for Best Actor

yup

[rogerballard]

12. He better...

Well deserved !!!

[A HERETIC I AM]

16. Bring me everyone

[MFM008]

34. Loved the Professional

Despite the underlying pedophile theme.
Done well.

[A HERETIC I AM]

39. I think you might be misinterpreting that

The young girl was crushing on Leon, not the other way around. Leon became a father figure to the young girl and if you recall saw to it that she went to a private school at the end of the movie

[Soxfan58]

17. Air force one

He plays a great villian.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

18. He was very good in that movie

"Bring me everyone."

[Phentex]

19. Sirius Black! I would never had known he was Churchill...

and I saw the movie last week. The transformation was unreal.

[ehrnst]

21. I got to audition with him once.

For JFK.

Amazing experience. He was a professional, and a gentleman, and the scene we read was one where we were fighting and arguing.

[Paladin]

22. I never thought ANYBODY could top Alec Guiness, depicting George Smiley.

Last edited Fri Jan 19, 2018, 01:47 PM - Edit history (1)

Gary Oldman proved me wrong in the brilliant movie version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." I'm in awe of him.

[Ilsa]

51. Agreed. He was perfect as GS. nt

[Tikki]

24. Prick Up Your Ears...(1987)

His best....


Tikki

[Floyd R. Turbo]

25. Mason Verger! I wont post a pic!

[MFM008]

35. Well..

When you rip your own face off to feed to dogs...

[Floyd R. Turbo]

36. It seemed like a good idea at the time!

[Glorfindel]

53. Hey, anything to score some poppers, right?

[bettyellen]

29. Brilliant as Joe Orton in Prick up Your Ears....

[susanna]

46. Yes, he was! n/t

[Yavin4]

47. A brilliant but forgotten performance.

Great movie.

[bettyellen]

48. Really thoughtful and well done! Molina was great too. Theres a screen adaption of some Orton play

Can’t think of the name. I think Michael Caine was in it? I need to see it again, was also good... and too long ago.
He was a brilliant writer!

[Aristus]

38. ***'Darkest Hour' spoiler.***

"Tell the Lord Privy Seal that I am sealed in the privy, and can only deal with one shit at a time!"

[Upthevibe]

41. His performance in Darkest Hour is without question one of the best

performances I've ever seen....And, I go to movies every chance I can since that is one of my passions. It's hard to believe he's never won an Oscar. I'd bet his chances are 99.99% this year.

[NNadir]

45. I saw it last week. I agree the performance was outstanding but the script frankly...

...could have been better.

As history goes, it's a little...how shall I say this...a little bit an idiosyncratic interpretation. I'm not sure that Churchill was ever actually that weak. He had led a life as an eccentric always with the courage to swim against incredible tides, both for good and for bad. Perhaps we err in viewing him in retrospect as an inevitably indomitable spirit, but I don't actually believe he actually ever believed, however delusional it might have been at the time, that Britain could lose the war.

I don't think he quivered before Halifax and cowered before Chamberlain. Chamberlain was finished by then, and Churchill generous in his funerary oration in Parliament (not shown in the movie), but he was speaking then of a fully discredited man.

The film would have been considerably better without the subway scene, hokey and contrived as it was, I think, and the the scene where the King, who definitely began in real life as an appeaser, hat in hand shows up at 10 Downing Street, suddenly developing that stiff upper lip to cheer Winston on and toughen up his resolve is also not really believable.

But the makeup was outstanding, doing a great job of rendering the actors into something really like the historical figures, especially Oldman, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine.

I grew up listening to recordings of the actual speeches, and actually recited one in what we called "Declamation contests" back in the day, and I was particularly impressed at how Oldman brought some of the actual dramatic inflections to them, particularly the rhythm and dramatic tonal changes at the end of sentences and the Anglican mass cadence in resolved iambic heptameter.

In that sense the movie was good drama, and it did show how very long the odds against the British actually were. That said, I believe the historical Churchill ever conceded spiritually to them. This was a man who escaped the Boers, participated in desperate calvary charges in the Sudan , fought in the trenches of World War I, and was infused with an Imperial faith that could be, well, criminally insane, but was useful when confronting a person like Hitler.

I went with my sons, and I joked that I expected my oldest, who has that radicalism of youth to jump up somewhere in the middle of the movie and yell "What about India and the Bengal you fucker!"

The historical Churchill was a great, but clearly flawed man, and Oldman brought something of those flaws to the screen quite well, perhaps in an eccentric way, but certainly in an interestingly interpreted way.

[NewJeffCT]

58. We went on a tour of London a few years back

and we took a tour one day of the city and our tour guide was very good with a lot of knowledge of history - however, he had very mixed things to say about Churchill - basically that he was a failure as a politician until World War 2 - I think he mentioned a few things brought up in the movie (Gallipolli as well the gold standard). I didn't know that much at the time, so was surprised by that.

[NNadir]

59. Churchill recalls the line in Hamlet, when Hamlet recalls his father.

"He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."

Take him for all in all.

Churchill stood alone - representing his country - against Hitler at the precise moment Hitler seemed invincible, within and outside of his own country. To have done this, and to have persevered, is to demonstrate unparalleled courage that the world has not yet forgotten.

This is why, I think, the British public, polled on the subject of the "Greatest Briton of All Time" selected him for the role.

Gallipolli was a failure, to be sure, and Churchill devised it and pushed for it, but there's good evidence that the failure was much connected with divided command, which Churchill could not control, as he was Lord of the Admiralty and did not command the army.

As a scientist, to me the greatest tragedy of Gallipolli, among all those who died there for no good result, was the death of Henry Moseley, the scientist who discovered the ordering of the elements in the periodic table by atomic number, who was shot in the head while operating a radio.

There are never any winners in a war. Everybody loses. But because of Churchill the biggest loser in the Second World War was Germany, devastated and smashed as frankly - with due respect to modern Germans - it deserved to be.

But in pushing for Gallipolli in the earlier war, the young Churchill was at least being creative - albeit in a terrible situation. As Theodore Roosevelt put it shortly before the First World War at the Sorbonne in his famous speech:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

This applies to Churchill in spades. He knew the great devotions.

Blood, Sweat...

Because he knew failure, and survived it, he learned what it takes to be great, and he led his country through its last great triumph.

This one last great triumph I think outweighs all his failures, and his failures were many, as well he himself knew. And that great thing is what justly defines him in history.

[Upthevibe]

60. Awesome input NNadir!......I know so little about him....I kind of thought

there were probably some scenes that were fabricated for dramatic effect. I wonder if he really drank that much....In any case, I thought Gary Oldman gave an incredible performance...

[NNadir]

61. Thank you. The drinking was an accurate portrayal and is often evoked when discussing...

...two very famous witticisms associated with Churchill.

The first involves his contentious relationship, because of Churchill's willingness to switch parties - which he did twice - with Lady Astor, the first female member of Parliament.

(When young, Lady Nancy Astor was considered one of the great beauties of her age, like Churchill's mother, and also like her was born American. Churchill's relationship with both his parents was remote, and most historians agree, very painful. He was effectively raised by his Nanny, but was desperately trying all the time to get his parents attention.)

During a social event where a great deal of drinking was going on, Lady Astor said to him, "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your drink," to which he replied, "Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it!"

The other involved another woman who yelled at him at another event, "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk!" To which he replied, "Yes Madam, I am, but in the morning I will be sober, and you will still be ugly!"

Churchill was a prodigious drinker, but seems to have developed an enormous tolerance for it. The role of tolerance for alcohol and its relationship to physiological alcoholism and its psychological effects is not entirely clear. Ulysses S. Grant is another huge historical figure who is often described in terms of his relationship to alcohol. As an admirer or Grant who's read a number of biographies of him I do not actually believe he was an alcoholic in terms of dependency, but I do believe he did have an extremely low tolerance for the drug, so that whenever he did drink, he got drunk

However much alcohol effected these two great men, the fact is that they both were essential to the outcome of historical events in favor of their respective countries. It's why we care about them, and continuously study who they were and what they were like as human beings. There is no evidence for either man that their alcohol habits, whatever they were, affected the performance of their duties.

It is now known that alcohol tolerance is related to certain liver enzymes, the properties of which are determined largely by genetics. (This is why certain ethnic groups - particularly those that are genetically homogeneous - have higher rates of alcoholism than others.) I would expect that Grant had a lower concentration or possibly a less effective homology of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase and Churchill a highly effective version and/or higher concentrations of the same enzyme. I'm not sure that there are surviving tissue samples of either man, or that if there were, that they would be made available for analysis, but it would be interesting to say the least, but must be left to speculation.

[Archae]

43. The red dragon, Ignitus...

To Elijah Wood's "Spyro" in the "Legend of Spyro" videogames.

[rogerballard]

49. Dreads...

[Ilsa]

52. He is a wonderful musician, said once that

He would rather be a musician than actor. Piano is his first instrument.

[Akoto]

54. Jean-Baptiste. Emanuel. Zorg.

[NewJeffCT]

57. The man is a chameleon

I had a running joke for my daughter for years after we saw Oldman as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies.. we'd see something else and I'd say, "Do you recognize that guy?" and I would say, "that's the guy that played Sirius Black..." Finally, after 2 or 3 times, every time I asked if she recognized an actor, she would automatically say "Sirius Black"

[susanna]

63. He is!

I doubt your daughter would like Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy, but hey - it might give her something to think about....vis a vis really amazing character actors

[geardaddy]

66. Agree 100%

He was also great as the warden in Murder in the First. He plays villains particularly well.