Ooooooooooh:

Monty Python star John Cleese is writing the next feature film for Aardman Animations, the makers of Wallace and Gromit have announced.

Aardman co-founder Peter Lord said the Fawlty Towers actor was currently writing the "pre-historic comedy".

Voting yup on the Thewlis BBoC thing. I've been back-stalking his career, through Prime Suspect, Dragonheart (sheesh), Total Eclipse, Restoration, Dinotopia (sheesh again), Seven Years in Tibet, etc. The man's mesmeric onscreen.

Up this weekend from Netflix: Bridges of Madison County (by request--not my request), Mystic River, which we missed in the theatre, and Bad Boys II, ditto. We're hip-deep in house stuff, so we won't have time to make a theatre-showing of Kingdom of Heaven this weekend. Maybe next.

Ah, Lehane. Such a master of Feel-Good entertainment. But you'll like MR, in a tormented sort of way.

I have embarrassing love for Thewlis's performance in "Besieged". I don't know if it's objectively a "good" film--when I dwell on it, the way it deals with political, racial & gender issues makes me deeply uncomfortable, and God knows it has the usual Bertolucci ticks that drive me batty. But when I'm watching it, I don't really care about all that. I soak in the visual and the music, the way camera caresses Thandie Newton's face, and most of all, in Thewlis' raw performance, all that awkward desperation and longing, and I just swoooooon. Like a 15 year-old girl. Is he a misguided creepy stalker? Probably. But I still cry when I see the piano being lifted out of the apartment.

I watched "Besieged" almost immediately after "Naked" (where Thewlis plays a charismatic, profane and amoral misanthrope), and my GOD, the dude has range.

the dude has range.

Yes. Yes, he does.

. . .

Oh, sorry. Mmmm, Thewlis.

Hey, you say it like "range" is a dirty word or something. *g*

Have you noticed? He has these great hands; I dunno if part of that was whoever was stunt-playing the piano for him in Besieged, but I noticed it in the juggling scene, too. They're large, long, but tapered, and elegant as hell.

Also, I hereby declare that I had dibs on him long before he starred in Harry Potter.

Then we'll have to agree to share, since I've been drooling since Black Beauty and Restoration, early 90s.

Hands, did you say?

FINALLY got to see the trailer for HP3:GoF.

t passes out

Saw Crash this afternoon. Wasn't blown away. The writing and performances are all good, but the characters were all very two-dimensional (everyone was 100% defined by their race/sex/job, and that was all you needed to know about them), and the plot was predictable in a way that made the last half-hour feel very long. You could see the checklist of coincidences being crossed off one by one as they happened.

I've seen it said elsewhere that this is Ryan Phillipe's best performance. I'll admit that I can't, offhand, think of anything better he's done, but mostly I'm just amazed anyone is keeping track.

Hee. I thought Ryan was brilliant in Igby Goes Down. Perhaps not much of an acting job t /snark but that character worked very well for me.