4. The Rock in “Be Cool”.

I can do... This!

When you see an actor that’s known for his strong muscles and his action movies playing a gay bodyguard looking for his place in Hollywood by singin western songs and playing “monologues” from cheerleader movies, then you know you are watching something really different. The Rock could have just gone the easy way, and play a completely ridicoulous “queen”, like one of those stereotypical gays from the eighties’ movies. But the actor from Samoa went the other way and gave us a very funny character that easily becomes the star in every scene in which he appears (way above Travolta or Uma Thurman). His “thing” with his eyebrow, his excitement when he’s trying some new red boots, and above all his “monologue” from “Bring it on” are some of the best moments in this movie. No doubt, the scenes you’ll remember the most when you think of “Be Cool” will be the ones with The Rock’s character on the screen.

3. Bruce Willis in “Dead becomes her”.

In this scene Goldie Hawn doesn't look like herself either.

If you think of all the times an actor decided to change his looks to get deeper into his character, this is without any doubt one of the best acomplished in the world of comedy. The heroe of the Nakatomi Plaza is almost imposible to recognize in this movie in which he plays a week and faint-hearted doctor who gets dragged into the fight between the competitive characters played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. If we didn’t know it was Bruce we could easily think it was a completely different actor. However, his playing in this movie is just perfect, and “Dead becomes her” is one of the funniest fantastic comedies ever made.

2. Sylvester Stallone in “Oscar”.

-Stop calling me boss! -Sorry boss.

Another actor well-known for his action movies who wasn’t afraid to make a major change and play a gangster in this bedroom farse set in the early thirties. Of course, Stallone ain’t De Niro, but he manages to play a very personal “boss” with a few unique tics (including the “snaps” that give him his nickname) and some reactions to the family intrigues he gets mixed in that will make you laugh without stopping. A very good work, from the actor that played Rocky, now in a kind of classic comedy that, unfortunately, we don’t see much in the movies nowadays.

1. Clint Eastwood in “The Bridges of Madison County”.

Tough guys also fall in love.

If you thought this post was only about comedies, you were wrong. We are finishing with a drama. Clint Eastwood does a remarkable work in this love story completely out of the ordinary, in which all the power of the story relies on his acting and Meryl Streep’s. A very hard duel against one of the best actresses in movie history, in which Clint manages to be quite succesful. “Dirty Harry” shows his most sensitive side in this movie, but without letting his photographer turn into a cheesy, unrealistic character. The movie turned out to be not only a very original love story, but also one of the few ones you could actually believe.

And you? Do you know any movie in which an actor or an actress played a role completely different to what they are used to do, and did a good job?

I watched it in the Prince Charles Cinema, a London movie-theatre where classic films are screened every week. They also organize events to encourage the assistance of the cinefiles in this city. For example, since I watched the movie on a Sunday midday, they gave me free tea (or coffee) and donuts, and very cheap sandwiches as well. Sometimes they do “sing-a-long” sessions for well-known musicals (I haven’t been to any of these ones yet, but I will), and other events such as balls of parties (there will be a “Labyrinth” ball by the end of this month, to which I plan to assist). The entrance for the movies is cheaper for the members (even for the new ones), and the annual membership is also quite cheap.

What I wanted to say today is that I find quite surprising that there are no other movie-theaters like this one. Don’t people in other cities think that there might be cinefiles who want to enjoy classic movies in the big screen? There are many fans of cinema out there, and watching a movie at home, in a TV or a computer screen, is not the same as enjoying it from your seat at the movie-theatre, completely isolated from everything else. The audience at Prince Charles, as expected, is formed by people who really like films, so no one talks or annoys you when you are watching the movie.

River Phoenix in "Stand by me". His acting in this movie was perfect. It's a shame he died so young.

To me, watching “Stand by me” at the cinema was a very nice experience. They used the same film as in the eighties, with no digital improvements, which resulted in a quality not so good (especially when it came to the sound) but also in a very “vintage” feeling. It made you get much deeper into the old time that the story wants to talk about. It’s no wonder so many movie makers nowadays use digital post-production to make their images look older. And the story… Well, there’s probably nothing that I can say about it that you don’t already know. A good story about youth and friendship, with deep characters which are really dificult to find in modern movies (although there was some of that in “Super 8″), and with a unique feeling that makes it very easy for us to empathize with the characters. And of course, when the kids cross the bridge (if you watched the movie, you know which scene I’m talking about) I got as nervous as the first time.

And what about you. What classic movie would you like to watch in the big screen?

Oscar Wilde, great literary talent, terrible taste for coats (source: wikimedia commons)

In 1890 Oscar Wilde published his famous novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. In that novel the character Henry Wotton says the memorable quote “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing“. Two years later “Lady Windermere’s Fan” was released, a theatre play in which another Wilde’s charcter, Lord Darlington, states that “a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing“.

I was always intrigued about the subtle difference between those two quotes. What happened during those two years? Did Oscar Wilde get soft? Did he begin to think that the attitude he had once put down to “the people” was actually only typical of “a cynic”? Or maybe the hard sentence that fitted perfectly in a dark novel such as “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was too pessimistic for a light comedy such as “Lady Windermere’s Fan”. Or maybe he thought that the theatre audience wouldn’t like to think that he was talking about them in that line, and it would look like he was talking about someone else if he said that only “a cynic” would show that attitude.

Or maybe it’s just that Oscar Wilde realized that the quote was valid either way. Maybe it’s just that “people” and “a cynic” are in fact very similar subjects for this predicate. Maybe we all are a bit cynic, because little by little we are getting deeper into a world in which, as sad as it may seem, knowing the price of everything is much easier than learning the value of anything.

However, launching this website isn’t the only reason why I’m starting this new blog. Many time through these last years I came up with ideas for posts that wouldn’t fit in a comedy blog. In those cases I either wrote for other people (as a “guest blogger”) or I wrote them for my previous blog beginning with a note to explain that it was a serious post. I had the same issue with my flash fiction stories, sometimes I wrote some dramatic ones, and I had to finish with an apology because the post wasn’t funny. Now I have a place to write this kind of posts.

So, what is this blog about? Well, this blog will be about literature (and there will be flash fiction stories as well), movies, tv series, theatre… About entertainment industry, about why some works are succesful and some others aren’t… So it will deal with many subjects, but all of them related to entertainment and creativity. And, although it won’t be a comedy blog (I already have Humor por Horas for that), there will be some irony and sarcasm, because I just write the way I feel like, in a natural way.

I hope you like this new blog, and I’ll see you in my next post.