He speaks in hushed dope-drenched tones and transfixes you with his piercing blue eyes beckoning you closer as if he's about to
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He speaks in hushed, dope-drenched tones, and transfixes you with his piercing blue eyes, beckoning you closer, as if he's about to tell you the secret of alchemy. Whether it is talking John Lennon down from a bad trip, or getting Nicholson ripped on the set of Easy Rider, Fonda can spin a yarn with the same warmth with which he once played practical jokes on his daughter Bridget (a little before she carried on the family tradition by toking for Tarantino in Jackie Brown). "Jack called me up and said [adopting a fine Nicholson voice] `Fonda, I'm real happy for you.' I said, `Jack, we gotta ride on stage together on a chopper, no matter who wins.'"With the skill of a master storyteller, Fonda, who is as candid as he is likeable, has a habit of telling you what you want to hear. The ceremony was like an old boys' reunion, with Fonda "up with" (not "against", he chides) Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall - an actor at whose feet, almost 40 years ago, Fonda would literally sit, while learning his craft in New York. "It's weird, it's far out," he says.
When Peter Fonda lost Best Actor at last month's Oscars for his role in Ulee's Gold to his "old bike pal" Jack Nicholson, he had a smile on his face. He'd probably just got out of the biggest stretch limo he could find - sons, nephew, wife, daughter in tow - and told a reporter that these were Bruce Willis's bodyguards At least, that's what he promised me he'd do He was back in the glare, after years in the wilderness. I have decided to be Robert Mitchum for the rest of the year.Ryan Gilbey's top 51 Out of the Past2 Jackie Brown3 Mother and Son 4 Mousehunt 5 Gattaca. Hired by Kirk Douglas to track down the treacherous femme fatale Jane Greer, he falls in love with her, but manages not to alter his facial expression even as she is turning his heart inside out "She can't be all bad - no one is", someone remarks "She comes the closest," he grunts.
I do hope he's available for birthday parties.Robert Mitchum is the epitome of unflappable cool in Jacques Tourneur's moving and masterful 1947 thriller Out of the Past. Keenen Ivory Wayans (who wrote the chirpy script) plays a decorated war hero hired as a political assassin and then framed by the dastardly colonel Jon Voight, official ambassador of trashy B-movies, who snarls, sneers, and plays his final scene with cotton wool crammed up one nostril. This is sweet and contemplative - two qualities you wouldn't immediately associate with its writer, Joe Eszterhas, best known for his worst films, Basic Instinct and Showgirls. And while it's hardly original, you may get a kick from the faintly subversive ending, which endorses perjury as part of the American way of life.If you're in the mood for a trashy, birdbrained B-movie, you could do worse than Most Wanted. Couldn't fault the bees, though.Telling Lies in America stars Brad Renfro as a young Hungarian immigrant who idolises a corrupt DJ (Kevin Bacon) and learns the hard way that heroes always let you down. The picture looks gritty, but is governed by a deeply conservative perspective that sacrifices honesty and credibility in its worship of the family unit.
He is stinging as the curmudgeonly old bee-keeper Ulee, who rescues his junkie daughter-in-law from two crooks, inheriting his jailbird son's problems into the bargain. But it has its virtues, such as the terrifying scene in which a woman is attacked by malevolent jellyfish.Peter Fonda was rightly nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Ulee's Gold But the film scarcely deserves him. The movie is at least 40 minutes too long, and frequently gets bogged down in scientific exposition. Inside is a glimmering sphere that has catastrophic side-effects upon those who enter it, transforming their fears into physical matter. You may need to be physically restrained from shouting "Is that it?"In the admirably serious thriller Sphere, Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L Jackson are scientists called in to explore a UFO imbedded in the ocean floor.
