Sunday, January 30, 2011
SOME PEOPLE CAN READ WAR AND PEACE AND COME AWAY THINKING IT'S A SIMPLE ADVENTURE STORY. OTHERS CAN READ THE INGREDIENTS ON A CHEWING GUM WRAPPER AND UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE: Gene Hackman turns 81 today, which is a good enough reason to link to this PopWatch item asking whether he, Robert Redford (74) or Warren Beatty (73) will ever act again.
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Sorry, Robert, but I've seen The Natural. No, I don't particularly want you back on screen.
ReplyDelete(However, having seen Red in the past few days, it was damn nice to have Richard Dreyfuss back on the screen again; I know he was in W. and Piranha fairly recently, but he's been far too missing.)
I love Redford, but most of his best performances (in my opinion anyway) are long behind him: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Candidate (1972), The Sting (1973), and All the President's Men (1976). That being said, Sneakers (1992) was awesome, and even though neither of them got much attention, I did enjoy his performances in Spy Game (2001) and The Last Castle (2001) but even those were a decade ago.
ReplyDeleteBeatty and Redford will, I expect, each have one last hurrah in them. (Wouldn't shock me to see Redford and Dustin Hoffman team up again.) Hackman, on the other hand, I take at his word that he's done (other than the Lowes commercials)--even if his last film was a mess, "Tenenbaums" was a nice career-capper.
ReplyDeleteSneakers is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI am fine with Redford being done. It would be great to see Beatty again (even more, in the director's chair). But Hackman, yes I trust his word, but that just makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteAnother vote for Sneakers being awesome.
"Hackman? He's good in anything!"
ReplyDeleteMy AP English teacher had a thing for Redford- we watched at least The Natural, Great Gatsby, and I think als Out of Africa, and Butch Cassidy... it would be nice for Redford to do something new, to give Maniotis new material.
ReplyDeleteIt is NOT possible that 2001 was a decade ago!
ReplyDeleteHackman needs to do one more, just to add another layer to the Caine-Hackman Theory.
ReplyDeleteSneakers is awesome, so it's been...19 years since Redford's been in a good movie. I'd argue also that Beatty hasnt been in a good movie since Reds, but I know Bulworth has fans.
ReplyDeleteRedford said that he wanted to make a film that addresses older love and/or remake "The Way We Were." I'm a Redford fan- I'll take either.
ReplyDelete"...<span>but I know Bulworth has fans."</span>
ReplyDeleteSerious fans? Or is it kind of an MST3K thing?
It's the Magicalest Negro Movie of all. Except for the golf movie. And the one where Tom Hanks can't pee.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see Bugsy again, FWIW.
Realizing that Beatty was involved in two of the most famous flops in history (Ishtar and Town & Country), I looked up his stats and calculated that over the last 30 years, the films in which he's starred are about $80 million in the red.
ReplyDeleteThe ones that made money: Reds ($8M), Dick Tracy ($61M), Bugsy ($19M)
The ones that lost money: Ishtar ($41M), Love Affair ($42M), Bulworth ($1M), Town & Country ($84M)
I'm not knocking Beatty here -- some of these movies obviously had horrible production problems that were not his fault -- but that is not a good record. At a minimum, he has not chosen his projects well.
Serious. I don't get it either.
ReplyDeleteThere's a very droll campus comedy called PCU (for "Politically Correct University"), inspired by Wesleyan, in which a graduate student is writing his dissertation on the topic, "Why is it that whenever you turn on the TV you can always find a Gene Hackman or Michael Caine movie?" It crushes me that in the On-Demand universe, no one will get that joke in the future. I love Hackman, am very fond of Redford and Beatty. Don't count any of them out, although Hackman's age makes him expensive to get an insurance bond.
ReplyDeleteYou're missing Heaven Can Wait. I don't know how much money it made, but when I was a child, I loved that movie. Perhaps more accurately, I loved the Mad Magazine parody, Heaving Can Wait.
ReplyDeleteI'd insure Hackman before I'd insure Charlie Sheen.
ReplyDeleteI made the cutoff 30 years because budget information appears to be unavailable for Heaven Can Wait, but I admit it probably made decent money.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't get it either, but some people love Bulworth, even though it makes NO SENSE AT ALL. And Dick Tracy has its problems, but there's a lot of good stuff in it--the visual style and the Sondheim songs in particular.
ReplyDelete