Thor... With Branagh? Verily?

[Johnny Unusual]

That's not Filmation,  It's a product of Grantray-Lawrence Animation.  Filmation did DC stuff.

[Folly]

Really, the whole animation industry was in a huge slump at the time. Lets not forget all the really bad Hanna Barbera stuff that was made.

[RoninFox]

But if not for that slump, Adult Swim wouldn't have a lot of it's material.     I don't want to envision the last couple years without my Harvey Birdman dvds.

[Folly]

True!  Talk about making lemonade from lemons.

[Doc Steve]

Branagh to do Thor?

How far has the rightful heir of Olivier and Welles fallen?  (Actually, please don't answer that.  I'm still reeling from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.)


Another random thought:  Thor?  Thor?  What's next?  Power Man and Iron Fist: The Movie?  How about, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos?   Good grief, but they're scraping bottom. 

[Tripe]

Branagh to do Thor?

How far has the rightful heir of Olivier and Welles fallen?  (Actually, please don't answer that.  I'm still reeling from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.)

Did you by chance miss The Wild Wild West?

[Doc Steve]

Branagh to do Thor?

How far has the rightful heir of Olivier and Welles fallen?  (Actually, please don't answer that.  I'm still reeling from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.)

Did you by chance miss The Wild Wild West?

Wild Wild West doesn't count.  I like to pretend that it and The Avengers movie never happened.  Otherwise, my enjoyment of my two favorite shows from my youth would be completely ruined. 

In all seriousness, I had forgotten about it.  I'm sure that performance made his turn in Chamber of Secrets seem dignified and artful. 

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Branagh to do Thor?

How far has the rightful heir of Olivier and Welles fallen?

Maybe Branagh is learning from one of Welles' mistakes (when he was younger) - sometimes you just have to do it for the paycheck and the mass audience.  And then you can ask for an "art" picture.

Like George Clooney says in that American Masters Warner Brothers special of his "Oceans" movies as opposed to the serious stuff - "One for them, one for me".

As I said in another thread, I was watching the Criterion version of The Third Man with the commentaries.  Welles couldn't get financing to make movies so he gets this small (albeit important) part in this film and then he keeps them waiting as he shows up days late for filming.....

Welles was his own worse enemy.  Glad that - with the exception of Wild, Wild West - Branagh isn't going the same way.

[Junkyard]

Well, that's the thing people don't ever seem to consider with guys like Patrick Stewart and Kenneth Branagh: maybe they don't feel the need to act at a certain "level." Maybe they act because they enjoy acting, and enjoy getting paid for it.

"Play Hamlet? Sounds great! Play a steampunk supervillain? Fun! Play a Harry Potter character? Fun! And lucrative!"

So yeah; Thor? Fun!

[Tripe]

See I agree with you there.

Acting should first and foremost be fun, most of the really good actors will admit they enjoy doing it. The ones who bang on about how heavy a responsibility it is to create such art as is in evidence upon the stage and don't mention that's there at least a little truth to the song An Actor's Life for Me, tend to suck.

I was just saying somebody horrified at the Harry Potter role would probably have had an aneurysm seeing WWW

Oh and for the record, Olivier is terribly overrated, Gielgud now there's an actor for you.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Well, that's the thing people don't ever seem to consider with guys like Patrick Stewart and Kenneth Branagh: maybe they don't feel the need to act at a certain "level." Maybe they act because they enjoy acting, and enjoy getting paid for it.

"Play Hamlet? Sounds great! Play a steampunk supervillain? Fun! Play a Harry Potter character? Fun! And lucrative!"

So yeah; Thor? Fun!

This argument is exactly what they've always said about the difference between the US and the UK when it comes to drama.

In the UK actors can go back and forth from the stage to movies and to TV and no one thinks a thing of it.  But in the US any sort of change is looked on as "being reduced to" or "trying to be above one's self" or whatever.  Just look at all the great TV and comedy we wouldn't have if people like Helen Mirren, Judi Dench or Stephen Fry thought that way.

(no, this doesn't mean that I've changed my mind and think David Duchovny is good for anything other than television - there are exceptions)

[Junkyard]

Oh and for the record, Olivier is terribly overrated, Gielgud now there's an actor for you.

There's one MST3K riff that covers Oliver, frankly:
"ACTING!"
In general, his acting seemed to say, "I'm doing Shakespeare!" too obviously.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Oh and for the record, Olivier is terribly overrated, Gielgud now there's an actor for you.

There's one MST3K riff that covers Oliver, frankly:
"ACTING!"
In general, his acting seemed to say, "I'm doing Shakespeare!" too obviously.

But is that because he's a bad actor or because that was the school of thought on acting at the time.

It's like when you look at the early silent films - they got all of those people off the stage and they'd been used to playing to the back row on stage.  So there's all this mugging and over gesturing....because they were so used to that being the acting method that they didn't think what that would look like on a screen.

Luckily, Chaney and Chaplin came along....

[Tripe]

Olivier is really easy to impersonate.

You start nice and quiet, slowly building in intensity until you are declaiming so loudly THAT SOME MIGHT THINK YOU ARE HAVING A PSYCHOTIC BREAK!!!!!!!!.


But yes he is entirely an animal of his times, he's a descendant of that acting school you see parodies in Blackadder the Third

[Junkyard]

No, I don't hold Oliver's approch against him, but I do think his preformances didn't age well, in general.