What I've Caught Up With, September 2024 Part 1

I spent more than a week sitting on my daughter's couch, grading papers and watching her dog while she and her fiancé were at a destination wedding. That being the case, despite it being finals week for me, I actually watched a few more movies than normal for that part of the month. There was a lot of good in September, and while there were a couple that I ended up not being too fond of, there were several that I enjoyed quite a bit, and may well end up in the regular rotation. More tomorrow.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1956

The Contenders:

James Dean: Giant
Rock Hudson: Giant
Yul Brynner: The King and I (winner)
Kirk Douglas: Lust for Life
Laurence Olivier: Richard III

My Kingdom for a Horse

Film: Richard III
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on The Nook.

Is it that Laurence Olivier is a pimp or is it just that he picks big pimpin’ roles? For me, his pimptastic performance in Wuthering Heights was the best part of that film. I figured it was just the character. Now I see Richard III, the adaptation of Shakespeare’s play of the same name and I’ll be damned if he’s not a stone cold pimp in this, too. Again, I’m sure it’s the role, but a lot of it is the way that Olivier plays it.

The role of Richard III is one of the great male roles in the history of the theater, let alone in the works of Shakespeare. If you’re going to do Richard III as accurately as possible in the mid-1950s, who better to do it than Laurence Olivier, the greatest actor and Shakespearean of his generation? It could be argued without much trouble that this is Olivier’s best film performance, again, exactly what you want from the greatest actor of his age.