Showing posts with label Jessica Chastain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jessica Chastain. Show all posts

Monday, January 21, 2013

Feedback for opinionating on Jessica Chastain on ZERO DARK THIRTY.

Yesterday, I reposted comments I posted to the HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE site about ZERO DARK THIRTY and Jessica Chastain's lead performance as Maya.  Chastain's been a good actress elsewhere, but not in ZDT, where her performance has been overrated.

HE commenter Thunder Redux wrote:
TVMCCA is right on the money regarding Chastain. I think she was grossly miscast in this film. No idea how she got a best actress nom for this performance.

Commenter bobbyperu took strong exception:

Congratulations to TVM and Thunder for the Seriously Out of My Fucking Head But Let Me Just Be Contrarian award of the day. You guys are total fucking douches -- Chastain, as everyone knows by now (at least those with taste, frame of reference and knowledge of technique/sense of actresses currently working in America), is about the only versatile American thirty-something actress working right now. Without cataloging her dozen, diametrically opposed performances in the last year (different voices, bodies and masquerades, all of them) suffice to say that you two are clueless dicks.
But good to know that virtually no one agrees with you, based in her tally of awards this season from both press and industry.


Sunday, January 20, 2013

ZERO DARK THIRTY is a low point in Kathryn Bigelow's career.

Reposting a comment I just left on the HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE site:
Have finally seen ZDT. Another film glorifying whatever-it-takes vigilantism--and it's stretching far too much to attach moral complexity to the job-fatigue burnout exhibited by Clarke and Chastain's characters. Earlier Bigelow films like BLUE STEEL and K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER surpass ZDT in character depth and examining the limits of bordering-on-fascist absolutism.
And Jennifer Ehle blows Jessica Chastain off the screen in ZDT. The limits of Chastain's talent and overhype have been decisively exposed.


Adding to the above: ZDT built up a lot of manufactured controversy from comments about whether torture brought about the eventual discovery and execution of bin Laden (the old Dick Cheney "torture works" argument) instead of the "why are we sinking to this level of depravity" moral inquiry sparked by the Abu Ghraib naked detainee photos.