Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:02 pm
That's a big one, he was doing some of his best work within the last decade. This is a great reason for anyone who hasn't seen Beginners yet to correct that mistake.
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Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:10 pm
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:16 pm
Great as Mike Wallace in The Insider. At turns cantankerous, introspective, and explosive. A lot of what Wallace himself brought in that grandfatherly presence he had over 60 Minutes.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:30 pm
Yeah that's a great one, and I definitely meant to say the last several decades. However, his early perf in Inside Daisy Clover is terrific, and a pretty challenging role to sell as he does, for he is essentially serving as the perspective we must distance ourselves from in Wood's narrative, yet also the one that embodies the position of the public and what we want from stars.flyonthewall2983 wrote: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:16 pm Great as Mike Wallace in The Insider. At turns cantankerous, introspective, and explosive. A lot of what Wallace himself brought in that grandfatherly presence he had over 60 Minutes.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:32 pm
Yes. A win that looks like a lifetime achievement Oscar (and may have been for many voters) but one wholly earned by the perf/film. Then he of course managed to pull off another nod a few years back for rapidly replacing Kevin Spacey in a mere matter of days. Clearly he was still in his "prime" to the end.therewillbeblus wrote: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:10 pmThat's a big one, he was doing some of his best work within the last decade. This is a great reason for anyone who hasn't seen Beginners yet to correct that mistake.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:53 pm
I didn't see The Sound of Music until college (though I took one middle school trip to see a local stage revival), so for years, Plummer was someone I had known from his later character roles. He could be deadpan hilarious, but The Insider was kind of a revelation - even as the film itself feels a bit inflated to me now, I still absolutely love his performance as Wallace.
About ten years ago, PBS did a special on Eugene O'Neill, and he was one of the interviewees - I wish I could have seen him in Long Day's Journey into Night because he did perform a few bits of his role as James Tyrone Sr., and he was marvelous. The more I think about it, I can count on one hand how many performances I've seen him do before 1990 (i.e. before he was 60 years old), and yet the number of performances I've seen after seem endless.
About ten years ago, PBS did a special on Eugene O'Neill, and he was one of the interviewees - I wish I could have seen him in Long Day's Journey into Night because he did perform a few bits of his role as James Tyrone Sr., and he was marvelous. The more I think about it, I can count on one hand how many performances I've seen him do before 1990 (i.e. before he was 60 years old), and yet the number of performances I've seen after seem endless.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:02 pm
Dragnet.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:21 pm
I watch The Silent Partner every holiday season. He's so unbelievably good in it.
Love his work in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as well. He enhanced every single film he appeared in.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:23 pm
Didn't Plummer essentially say "fuck off" to Seth McFarlane during the Oscars telecast a few years ago? He seemed like a great guy.
Re: Passages
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:42 pm
We must protect Seth McFarlane at all costs
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:49 pm
From The Insider, which Wallace did actually see. Obviously he wasn't pleased, though he was much more vocal about other things beyond Plummer's depiction of him.
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 8:08 pm
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 8:55 pm
NY Times obituary. Very sad to read the cause of death. One wonders if he could have continued acting to 100.
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 9:27 pm
I was just watching an old episode of Film 88 this evening whilst cooking and started thinking of Christopher Plummer after it did a preview of the rather obscure 1989 film Souvenir. It was rather unnerving to find this news waiting when I came back to the computer!
I particularly want to put in a word for Plummer's beautiful performance in the Canadian TV movie adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. It does a lot to humanise the 'big bad guy' character into actually having coherent motivations, just tragically not the most emotionally satisfying ones.
Plummer certainly did a lot of interesting things in his career: the scatalogical My Dog Tulip, along with the historical roles going in the opposite direction into lots of sci-fi, and particularly narrating the documentary about people with physical differences, Being Different:
I particularly want to put in a word for Plummer's beautiful performance in the Canadian TV movie adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. It does a lot to humanise the 'big bad guy' character into actually having coherent motivations, just tragically not the most emotionally satisfying ones.
Plummer certainly did a lot of interesting things in his career: the scatalogical My Dog Tulip, along with the historical roles going in the opposite direction into lots of sci-fi, and particularly narrating the documentary about people with physical differences, Being Different:
"Suppose that this image, in the mirror, will never pop back. Consider a dream from which there is no awakening. That is forever and ever in this lifetime. Think of Alice, held hostage on the other side of the Looking Glass, not able to step back into what we call reality. Or Gulliver on his travels unable to return, diminished or enlarged forever, in eternity. Well, our leading players already know that state. The state that challenges our sense of what we think of as normal. They are like pictures in the exhibition of our dreams. But they are real. They were children as you were. Born in the normal way, loved, and loving. Yet altered by forces hard to understand into something mythic, mysterious, sometimes most brave, sometimes even beautiful. But always profoundly human. They must live in our world, and we must live in theirs..."
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 10:57 pm
Two of my favourite roles were as Jane Seymour's possessive manager in Jeannot Swarc's 'Somewhere in Time' and in Egoyan's more recent ' Remember'.
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 12:18 am
Kind of weird him and Hal Holbrook going in the same week. They have a similar presence, with slight differences (Holbrook much easier at the southern, folksy type). Plummer as Deep Throat or the guy in Magnum Force or The Star Chamber wouldn't have been too far a stretch.
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 1:04 am
Saw him do Macbeth live on Broadway with Glenda Jackson some decades ago. His Hamlet remains my favorite on film.
Hamlet At Elsinore
R.I.P.
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:26 pm
My introduction to Plummer and still one of my favorites is his vindictive detective in Dolores Claiborne. He's relentlessly vicious, but he brings a pathetic nature to a role that could easily have been a cartoon with another actor.
Re: Christopher Plummer (1929-2021)
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 1:48 pm
William Holden's death also the result of a fall and at a much younger age is a horror read.hearthesilence wrote: Fri Feb 05, 2021 8:55 pm NY Times obituary. Very sad to read the cause of death. One wonders if he could have continued acting to 100.
My elderly mother fell out of bed a few weeks ago but thankfully no harm was done. I've been trying to get her to get rid of her coffee table which she adores but she simply won't. I have warned her that they are the most common piece of furniture for causing falls but she won't listen ](*,)
My favourite Christopher Plummer performances are The Silent Partner, The Insider and The Sound of Music - the first film I ever remember seeing.
Re: Passages
Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:29 am
Caught up with this and while there's a lot to like about the film, I thought the tonal mismatch of Plummer's character was just too much. The two scenes of unnecessarily gristly violence he enacts against women are at such stark odds with the rest of the breezy film that the film struggles to regain its footing twice. Much better and more fitting with the rest of the film are things like Plummer popping open Gould's mailbox slot to taunt him. A rare movie that would probably play better on TV or an airplane with the R rated stuff cut out!beamish14 wrote: Fri Feb 05, 2021 7:21 pmI watch The Silent Partner every holiday season. He's so unbelievably good in it.