Sunday, April 06, 2008

RIP Charlton Heston

America has lost one of its finest actors. His many great films will be enjoyed by future generations.
Who can forget such classics as Ben Hur, The Ten Comandments, Planet of the Apes and many others.

When Hollywood produces more Heston types and less Sean Penn types maybe I will go to the movies again.

10 comments:

The Merry Widow said...

They can't go back, Beaker. WWII produced people of character...and you can clean a snake and dress it up, but if it's a snake, it won't change.
And unless the spoiled brats of Hollywood face a tragedy of great proportions, they will not be able to grow up!
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!

tmw

Ducky's here said...

Sorry, Beak but he wasn't much of an actor. Very stiff and wooden.

Bert Lancaster had been tapped for The 10 Commandments and it would have been a much better film with the always solid Lancaster.

Ben Hur was a needed Jewish perspective on themes normally shown only from a Christian point of view.
However Ben Hur suffered from its unwillingness to admit Judah is homosexual.
Let’s summarize: Heston won an Oscar for playing a gay man without, apparently, even realizing that the character is gay. Knowing full well the pleasure that director William Wyler (who was not gay) derived from deriding him on this score, Heston sank behind a wall of denials, as though, mercy! his very manhood was besmirched by his having even played a homosexual.

At any rate, Heston had one strong role, in Orson Welle's noir classic "Touch of Evil".

beakerkin said...

Wrong again Ducky

Heston played the roles as they were meant to be played. He did not have the luxury of being retarded and playing one like Sean Penn.

Filmheads of the left tend not to understand action films and under estimate the skills of the actors who play them. The Americanism of a Wayne or a Heston is lost on the mindless internationalists of the left.

A gay Ben Hur would rank up there with the gay themed Alexander as a Hollywood bomb. However Hollywood commies do not care about the bottom line and churn out bomb after bomb so long as the cocktail
commies of California are pleased.

Bollywood will over take Hollywood
in my lifetime.

Ducky's here said...

What's to understand in an action film? Action is simply the resolution of narrative and drama. The more action, the less content.

Most of that junk these days runs an ASL of under 3 seconds. It is a stylistic (and probably physiological) impossibility to develop content with that short a period.

And please don't lump the untalented Heston with The Duke.

beakerkin said...

Thank you Ducky for your honest expression of your ignorance. Heston was an excellent actor and you would have been great in Beneath the Planet
of the Apes. You could have fit right in with the Chomskyite mutants worshiping the atomic bomb. I could just see Noam and Finky in their robes praising Marx and Mao and anti history as the apes (symbolic of race) let the world pass them by.

Americanism is a quality you do not understand. You need to get away from Marxist Gulags/Madrassas in MA.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Beak-

Ducky's right, Heston was not a great actor. He was a great model and elocutionist, and speech maker of sorts, and reciter, and he played his roles well, but there is no real acting being done.

These are just facts, nothing against Heston as a person. In fact, I admire and appreciate the man's contributions, both on and off camera.

I didn't know until a day ago that he actually stood with Martin Luther King Jr. on Washington Mall during the March on Washington in 1963. He was an avid proponent of Civil Rights, as much as he was later just as avid a proponent of Second Amendment rights. I appreciate all his contributions.

However, I am not going to try to pretend he was one of the all time great actors. He was a great STAR, yes-ACTOR, no! There is a big difference.

There are actually, when you get right down to it, relatively few great actors. I don't even see Jack Nicholson as a great actor. To me, anytime you see Nicholson, you are pretty much seeing the same character under a different name, with few exceptions.

Brando was great. Dustin Hoffman is great. Tom Hanks is great. These men and a few others are or were great actors. Most of the others are just great stars (or wannabes) who have the skill of memorizing and reciting their lines while walking or whatever. Yeah, technically, they are actors by definition, but you don't think of them as great actors.

I have only seen Sean Penn in one film, something about Snowman was in the title. I'll take everybody's word that he is now a great actor, which doesn't necessarily mean anything good or bad beyond that assessment.

The Merry Widow said...

ducky-Have you ever READ "Ben-Hur"? The character of Judah Ben-Hur is not homosexual...in fact, the author was a born again Christian who wanted to make the time of Christ come alive.
So whoever said or made the character homosexual was NOT true to the book!
PT-Mr. Heston did project a strong presence, which worked well for Moses, and his other characters.
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!

tmw

Ducky's here said...

Back to "action films" and "commies" not understanding them.

Now Ben Hur was hardly an "action film" but the chariot race was probably the greatest action sequence ever filmed. You may enjoy researching the neglected figure most responsible for it, stunt genius Yakima Canutt. Started out in the old western serials and as time went on he became the brains behind much of film's greatest stunt work.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Omega Man is my favorite Charlton Heston movie.

elmers brother said...

I always enjoyed 'The Private War of Major Benson'