Axis Mundi X discussion

Now then pop-pickers, what about your favourite performances in movies? Sometimes one particular performance jumps off the screen and resonates in your memory for years. Here's a few of my favourites -

- Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves – she will break your heart too
- Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter – he has come to creep you out
-Bill Murray in Groundhog Day – genius
- Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion – she has come to go completely mad
- Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland – sometimes, very occasionally, the Oscars get it right
- Dora Bryan in A Taste of Honey - she's so annoying and pathetic and she's so very very annoying
- Ray Winstone in Nil by Mouth, the most frightening portrayal of domestic violence ever
- Jean-Pierre Leaud in Le Quatre Cent Coups - well of course eventually I became him

Okay - hand out your own Oscars.

I always feel that comedy is overlooked at the Oscars. Bill Murray IS genius, and so is Groundhog Day.

Steve Martin in All of Me, specifically for the scene where he is having a tug of war for control of his own body with the spirit of Lily Tomlin's character. The physical humor has me laughing so hard I'm in tears!

Ellen DeGeneres, for her voice acting as Dory, the memory-impaired fish, in Finding Nemo. She was dauntless, funny, and touching, AND she spoke several dialects of whale.


Horror, also, gets overlooked.

Boris Karloff, for his portrayal monster so affecting and powerful no one remembers that Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, not the creature.

Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet, for the sickest, scariest pervert I've ever seen on screen.

James Stewart, for Vertigo. Heck, for everything he's ever done. His mind-broken and obsessed Scotty Ferguson is so sympathetic, we forgive him for coercing Kim Novak into recreating the woman he loved.

Anthony Perkins, for Psycho. He is perfectly naive and awkward, and insanely creepy, at the same time.

And Alfred Hitchcock, for best Director, the master director who never won an Oscar. Yes, Rebecca won Best Picture, but that award goes to the producer, Selznick, not the director. They gave him an honorary Oscar, but it was too little, too late.

Woo Hoo! Toni Collette

I agree with Donald. He is a super-genius and should be worshiped.