Miscasting in films has always been a problem. A producer hires an actor thinking that he or she is perfect for a movie role only to find the opposite is true. Other times a star is hired for his box office draw but ruins an otherwise good movie because he looks completely out of place.
There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.
In rare cases,...
There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.
In rare cases,...
- 1/24/2014
- Shadowlocked
What with all the television shows, film retrospectives and books, it almost as if Charles Dickens has come back to life
1812 will be much in evidence this year in celebration of Charles Dickens's birth. The BFI is putting on a Dickens-on-screen retrospective. There have been BBC adaptations of Great Expectations and Edwin Drood. And later in the year Claire Tomalin's blockbuster biography, will be out in paperback. In the dreary winter months of an ongoing recession, what better refuge than among Dickens's bone-familiar archetypes.
Everyone has been made to watch David Lean's Great Expectations at least once, but there are lesser known gems in the BFI line-up. The 1922 silent version of Oliver Twist; George Cukor's 1935 David Copperfield, with Wc Fields as Mr Micawber; and Alastair Sim, in what look like the teeth worn by Alec Guinness four years later in The Ladykillers, played Scrooge in 1951. Every...
1812 will be much in evidence this year in celebration of Charles Dickens's birth. The BFI is putting on a Dickens-on-screen retrospective. There have been BBC adaptations of Great Expectations and Edwin Drood. And later in the year Claire Tomalin's blockbuster biography, will be out in paperback. In the dreary winter months of an ongoing recession, what better refuge than among Dickens's bone-familiar archetypes.
Everyone has been made to watch David Lean's Great Expectations at least once, but there are lesser known gems in the BFI line-up. The 1922 silent version of Oliver Twist; George Cukor's 1935 David Copperfield, with Wc Fields as Mr Micawber; and Alastair Sim, in what look like the teeth worn by Alec Guinness four years later in The Ladykillers, played Scrooge in 1951. Every...
- 1/21/2012
- by Emma Brockes
- The Guardian - Film News
Charles Dickens won't officially turn 200 until February 7, but the Dickens 2012 extravaganza — festivals, theater, exhibitions, readings and so on — is well underway. And today, the BFI series Dickens on Screen opens at BFI Southbank in London for a run that'll last through February.
"No other novelist has been adapted for the screen so often or to such popular acclaim. Around 400 films and TV series have been made so far," writes Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in the Guardian. "In a famous essay published in 1944, the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein argued that 'only very thoughtless and presumptuous people' believed in 'some incredible virgin birth' of cinema, and that the film pioneer Dw Griffith found many of his storytelling tricks, including close-ups, dissolves and cutting between parallel narratives, in novels such as Oliver Twist. Griffith admitted as much himself. One of his first films was a 14-minute version of Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth (1909) that...
"No other novelist has been adapted for the screen so often or to such popular acclaim. Around 400 films and TV series have been made so far," writes Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in the Guardian. "In a famous essay published in 1944, the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein argued that 'only very thoughtless and presumptuous people' believed in 'some incredible virgin birth' of cinema, and that the film pioneer Dw Griffith found many of his storytelling tricks, including close-ups, dissolves and cutting between parallel narratives, in novels such as Oliver Twist. Griffith admitted as much himself. One of his first films was a 14-minute version of Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth (1909) that...
- 1/8/2012
- MUBI
Sylvester McCoy is best-known to science fiction fans as the seventh Doctor in the BBC's Doctor Who series, taking over the role from Colin Baker from 1987 to the cancellation of the original series in 1989. But there's a very good chance that the Scottish-born theatre, film and TV actor may gain a whole new surge of popularity in the years ahead as he sets off to New Zealand to join director Peter Jackson and theatrical colleague and friend Ian McKellen to make two movies of Tolkien's The Hobbit, wherein he'll play the part of the wizard Radagast, a character from Middle Earth who was omitted from the original trilogy.
Even after the cancellation of Doctor Who, McCoy was never allowed to leave the Time Lord behind, and has participated in numerous audio and multimedia projects playing the Seventh Doctor over the last 21 years. The latest of these reprises a Doctor Who...
Even after the cancellation of Doctor Who, McCoy was never allowed to leave the Time Lord behind, and has participated in numerous audio and multimedia projects playing the Seventh Doctor over the last 21 years. The latest of these reprises a Doctor Who...
- 3/11/2011
- Shadowlocked
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