27.11.08

People: Marcia Gay Harden

I saw this actress here and there but she really left biggest impression on me recently in the movie "The Mist" where she played Stephen King's villainess. Boy was she good.
Stephen King's novels are usualy hard to properly turn into movies as they are mostly about what's going on in character's heads - not this time. "The Mist" is not so much about monsters that wait outside but how people react when faced with fear and what they do to each other in panic. Her character starts as unimportant one,she is just a local spinster that nobody takes seriously but as the story progress,she really starts brainwashing everyone's heads with fear,religion and manipulation (King's favourite theme) - Marcia Gay Harden gives one of the best performances that I saw recenty and is easily one of my favourite baddies.
I don't remember when I hated some movie character so passionately the last time around,could easily throw her out in the mist myself if only I was there.
Excellent actress.

Movie: "El Orfanato" (2007)


Here am I again,with impressions about the movie I saw in the cinema last night.
I honestly didn't know anything about this movie,it was just pure intuition and little voice told me it sounds interesting - it was good ,althought nothing earth-shaking as I already saw similar movie back in 2001 ("The Others") - its a curse of seeing too many movies so everything is borrowed or inspired by something else.
Just like in "The Others" here we have lonely house,creepy atmosphere,things that go boom in the night,invisible friends and so on.And mysterious lady who arrives at the doorstep with no other purpose than to creeps everybody out - on my way home I mulled it over in my head and couldn't really see her reasons to arrive at the house in the first place. Went on the net to see what other people thought but everybody had their own version so I better stuck with mine - she was just a pointless "red herring".
Still,interesting movie and was pleasure to see Geraldine Chaplin after long time. It seems like a lifetime since I saw her in "Dr.Zhivago".