Friday, February 19, 2010
he's at it again: Leonardo DiCaprio's scrunched-up face acting
I don't talk a lot of smack on this blog. But Leo's a big boy. He can take it.
Leo's perpetually scrunched up forehead is supposed to register concern, consternation, irritation, something. But sadly, it doesn't. It's just a tic, and not one that anyone should be getting the kind of attention and kudos that he gets for it. I can't say that I am surprised that he's at it again in Shutter Island. It's probably become a permanent feature of his physiognomy. It's hard to think of Leo without thinking of his scrunched up forehead.
But people do scrunch up their foreheads in real life, so why shouldn't an actor? It's true, they do. The thing is that for Leo, it is an affectation, a crutch. An actor's face is a delicate thing. We want the face to be expressive, but don't want it to be used consciously to indicate inner states. I like to liken the actor's face to the surface of a pond: generally placid, but when someone throws a rock through that surface ripples are created, which eventually subside. As impulses are sent and received with the actor's partners, the face will respond accordingly, as part of the response of the whole organism, and then return to some type of neutral. But habitual facial tension is a very bad thing, for it actually makes that surface-of-the-pond rigid and inflexible, unresponsive to happenings without and within. If the pond freezes, you'll have to find something very heavy to throw at it to make any sort of impression at all.
At this point, I feel compelled to recall the great Samuel Beckett's words about habit:
Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence. Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.
By the way, Martin Scorsese disagrees with me.
Says Scorsese in the article, "There’s no doubt that working with Leo—he’s been an inspiration for me."
Things are tough all over, even in Hollywood, I guess.
BTW I do wanna see the movie, I think it will be good, Leo notwithstanding. Also? Mark Ruffalo is DREAMMMMY.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
something every beginning actor or artist should hear
(If you only se HTML below, click the headline above to go to the blog and watch the video.)
Monday, February 15, 2010
ira glass of This American Life on storytelling
(If you just see a bunch of HTML below, click the headline above to go to the blo and watch there)
I just watched this first part, but there are apparently three more clips of Glass talking about what he does
Pt 2
Pt 3
Pt 4
ouch
The one constant in all of your failed relationships is you.
I guess that's true. But the one constant in all of my successful relationships is me too.
I think it's time for a little bit of Chekhov:
"Are you a success? Am I? Was Napoleon? Is your servant Vassily? One must be a god to tell the successes from the failures without making a mistake."
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