The 100 most memorable characters of the decade - part 5

The list was narrowed down from over 600 to 100 characters and I tried to incorporate as much criteria as I possibly could - box office, critical acclaim, some of the characters readers voted for, and my own personal tastes. I'll be posting the rest of this list over the course of several weeks. Here's part 5 for you:

60 - Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) Hairspray - Tracy Turnblad is one of those characters you genuinely root for. She's a kid with passion - she's completely dance obsessed; she's sunny and optimistic, but not annoyingly so. Like so many teenagers she is an idealist, and unlike most of the adults around her completely ahead of her time ("People who are different, their time is coming!").


On the character of Tracy:

Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), the heroine of Hairspray, is a sweetly perky high school girl with a pasty coif that flips up on each side, a grin as bright as an electric billboard, and a mood so bubblicious she's like the teenybopper Shirley Temple of 1962 Baltimore. When Tracy, who can barely focus in class, goes to audition for The Corny Collins Show, the local afternoon TV bandstand around which her life revolves, she swings, twitches, and rocks her body with jubilant abandon. This makes for a rather startling image, given Tracy's undeniably bounteous physique. Yet when she does the twist, the frug, or the mashed potato, flinging her arms back and forth, her butt twitching furiously in a tight plaid skirt, she's not just a great hoofer — she's dirty-dancing on air. In her very heftiness, she makes you feel the mad, cool acrobatic joy of each unhinged gyration.

59 - Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde - How do you get the audience on your side if you play a character who literally has it all? It probably helps if you're a charming, lovable actress, like Reese Witherspoon. Elle Woods is the gorgeous, popular, blond president of a sorority, who decides, after being dumped by her boyfriend, to enroll into Harvard Law School to win him back.

At first glance, it's supposed to sound insultingly hilarious - a sexy blonde with a fashion merchandising major goes to Harvard. While Elle's attempt to win acceptance at law school is hilarious, she doesn't turn into a stereotype. Yes, she likes pink, but Elle is smarter and more determined than she initially lets on, which is the beauty of the character - she plays on everybody's prejudices. We go through all this again in the sequel, which really wasn't necessary because we learned the lesson the first time around.



Reese Witherspoon on overcoming stereotypes with her role:

I wanted there to be some kind of positive message for women. Too much of our focus in society is devoted to superficial impressions about people. Appearances come first, and we don't often go beyond that in judging people which is a terrible thing.

Look at Elle. At the beginning, she works hard to get into Harvard Law School so she can impress her boyfriend and win him back. Then she becomes much more conscious of her own identity and begins asserting herself under very competitive conditions with her fellow law students. She fights for the respect of her peers and her teachers. At the beginning of the film, she has no goals other than to get married and lead a pampered, privileged life. But she evolves into a determined young woman eager to pursue her ambitions. She overcomes the stereotypes associated with being an attractive blonde.

I think that's a pretty good message that the film sends out. That you can be the way you are, look the way you want, and still achieve your goals if you work at them.

58 - Legolas (Orlando Bloom) The Lord of the Rings trilogy - Legolas is a lot cooler in the film trilogy than he is in the books. He arguably gets the best fight scenes and the best stunts. He does however, retain some of the ancient wisdom in the film adaptation. You can see it in Orlando Bloom's knowing smile and in his eyes. Legolas is older than the trees.

The truth is, I only noticed all this a few years after I first watched The Fellowship of the Ring mostly because like a lot of girls and boys at the time I had a huge crush on Orlando Bloom. Or was it Legolas we all had a crush on? Yes the reaction to him like most other heartthrobs was manic, and admittedly a little sad, but I think it's a testament to how good Bloom was in the role. Most of us had never heard of him before and through a mix of the good fortune of not being a celebrity (and therefore totally unrecognizable), and being so great at balancing the role's physical demands with a nuanced performance, most people just bought him in the role. We just believed he was Legolas; we would have laughed at the blond wig otherwise.


Orlando Bloom explains what it took to create his famous elephant scene in The Return of the King:

They built like... a mound of sand bags that was shaped like the back end of that elephant, and they had... the arrows in it. So I actually climbed up the arrows, did that sequence and then they had wires and ropes to swing along the side of it. And then, you know, I slashed the thing, so I did the slash, and then there was like... a winch with a rope to pull me up, up and then I fall on top of the sand bags with all the guys. So they put in the elephant afterwards basically.

57 - Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) The Queen & Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - There was one reason why I just couldn't separate the two characters. Both have to deal with queens - Blair having to feign deference to a powerless figurehead, while Tumnus is at the mercy of a wicked and powerful queen.


Tony Blair - Blair is just beginning his time as prime minister and he faces his first crisis of sorts. Princess Diana has just died, and while Queen Elizabeth remains adamantly and publicly silent on the tragedy, Blair speaks to the nation's grief. Elizabeth responds the way only those from her era can respond. She does her best to stay out of the matter - Diana is divorced and no longer royalty. There is no official statement. No acknowledgment. But Blair knows the era he lives in. He understands the people who have just elected him. It is an era where grief will not and shall not be private. The public needs someone recognizable to grieve with and tell them that someday it will be better.

Mr. Tumnus - At once sweet and friendly, it doesn't take much to understand why Lucy Pevensie would be so willing to trust someone she's just met in an uncharted new world. Being a faun probably doesn't hurt either. He invites her to tea, but he because at heart, he is genuinely good, he cannot go through with his sinister plan of handing Lucy over to the White Witch.

56 - William Costigan Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) The Departed - Billy Costigan is a trapped man. He's a cop who goes undercover as a gangster, but for most of the film you get the feeling that he's in over his head. There's nobody he can trust, and only a few people on the outside know what he's really up to. If the people who know are killed, nobody will be able to reveal that Billy isn't really a criminal, but an undercover cop.


On DiCaprio's performance:

This is a good role for DiCaprio: Since he's playing a wily punk on the right side of the law, it's fitting that his boyishness hasn't yet quite jelled into manhood. And as he's forced to wade deeper and deeper into his secret life, we can see how much it takes out of him: His heart is so heavy it seems to weigh down even his narrow, wiry body.

More on DiCaprio:

...DiCaprio is outstanding as the audience's main point of emotional contact, a man gravely at risk every moment of his life (one minor issue is an uncertainty over how much time the main action encompasses). In his third collaboration with Scorsese, DiCaprio has rarely been this vital, energized or passionate.

55 - Jamal Malik (Dev Patel, Tanay Chheda, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) Slumdog Millionaire - Jamal is such an unlikely character, it's hard to see his story as anything other than Dickensonian fantasy. He's transformed from street kid into a contestant one question away from winning 20 million rupees on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. Amazingly, it isn't money he's after, but a chance to be with Latika - the girl of his dreams.



Dev Patel on his audition:

It's really nerve wracking, for one. Because obviously Danny Boyle's in the room, and things like that. I really wanted it. It was the first time in my life I had wanted something so bad. I remember doing one audition, and at the end of it Danny gave me this kind of talk, it was one of those talks like he was letting you down. Then after that I went with my mom to have a pizza, and it was the most sour-tasting pizza in the world. I felt like crying. Then I got a call two weeks later like something like, and it was Gail Stevens, the casting director, going 'They want you to go to India for a week, to join everyone on locations.'

54 - Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) The Queen - She's a bit of a ridiculous character both in real life and in film. She's a celebrity who makes all the money she has because of her bloodline. She's a monarch, but a head of state with no real power. She's the Paris Hilton of royalty. She's handled with satire in the first two acts ("Will someone please save these people from themselves!") but underneath that crown there is a human being. Helen Mirren is scarily good as Queen Elizabeth II and she is unexpectedly very moving in the film.


On Helen Mirren and Queen Elizabeth:

All hail Helen Mirren, who delivers a master class in acting in The Queen. Having just won an Emmy for playing Elizabeth I, who ruled England from 1558 to 1603, Mirren is in line for a curtsy from Oscar for digging deep into the role of Elizabeth II, the queen since 1952.

...the real triumph of the film is the dignity it finally allows the queen. Bred to serve since girlhood, she has dedicated herself to a life Diana rejected. And yet as the queen walks past the mountain of flowers the people have left at the palace and reads the notes of love to Diana - and the insults to Her Majesty - Mirren lets us see the confusion and hurt in Elizabeth's eyes. It's Blair who has forced her back to London to mourn Diana publicly, much against her private nature. In a tart reference to Blair's current career reversals, the script has the queen tell him that "one day, quite suddenly, the same thing will happen to you."

53 - Ray Charles (Jamie Foxx) Ray - There are hundreds of articles praising Jamie Foxx's performance as Ray Charles. There are so many, it's easy to think of all the praise as being hyperbolic. But I don't think it is. Most people, even the casual Oscar watcher, knew Foxx was destined to win the Oscar just from watching him in the teaser trailer months before the Oscar campaign even started. Foxx's performance really is that good and it's a fitting tribute to a supremely talented artist.



On Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles:

Ray Charles' music didn't depend on dope, and in an odd way Jamie Foxx's performance reminds us that we knew that all along. Those strange bodily movements of Charles', the way his right leg dusted the floor by the side of his piano bench as if looking for purchase, the way he embraced himself in response to applause as if he were hugging the audience to him, the way he held his head back and moved his torso from side to side as if he were about to levitate, are less drug-induced than the body language of a man to whom sound was the most concrete thing: Foxx's Ray undulates to caress the currents of sound rising around him, like musical notes in a cartoon.

"Ray" is the movie that finally allows Foxx the full flower of his talent. His Ray Charles is such a fully lived-in performance that any questions of imitation vanish. You don't watch him thinking, "I can't believe how close he is to Ray Charles." You watch him as if you're watching Ray Charles. It's Charles' own recordings we hear in the musical numbers, but Foxx's imitation of Charles' speaking voice is uncanny. It begins as a sort of stutter, then words start to come out in little husks, almost without breath. The words gather speed and bubble out -- higher than you'd expect but gently, as if he were half speaking to himself -- before slowing to the insinuating honey drip with which he draws sentences to a close.

52 - Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) American Psycho - I felt guilty for laughing at Patrick Bateman's antics when I first saw American Psycho. I was 13. I had no idea it was satire. The opposite happened with my mother after I raved about it and got her to watch. I told her Bateman was hilarious, but she sat in stone faced silent disgust the entire time. Apparently only sick people find a greedy, Huey Lewis obsessed, psychotic serial killer, funny. A few years later, and my mother is Dexter obsessed - if only Bateman killed people who deserved it.



On the duality of Patrick Bateman:

Mr. Bale's portrayal of 27-year-old Patrick Bateman, a budding master of the universe by day (he works in mergers and acquisitions, which he facetiously refers to as "murders and executions") and homicidal maniac by night, is alternately funny, blood-curdling and pathetic.

As this character metamorphoses from preening, wolfish yuppie to chain-saw wielding maniac to whimpering crybaby, Mr. Bale makes us feel the underlying connections between these multiple personalities. One minute Mr. Bale's Patrick is a cowering corporate geek and self-described empty shell, the next an arrogant, name-dropping smoothie, the next a hysterical wimp unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.

Some of the funniest speeches are Patrick's pompous lectures -- each a prelude to homicide -- on the 80's pop stalwarts Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News.

51 - Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) The Devil Wears Prada - Miranda Priestly is the most respected magazine editor in the fashion industry - and the most feared. She is shockingly cruel, but that's to be expected in such a cruel industry. She coldly makes impossible demands of her staff (including getting an unpublished Harry Potter novel for her children) and forces her employees to work, even during their time off. She's a character that's been done before in film and on television, but many actresses are tempted to go over the top. Not Streep. She lets the icy stares and frosty one-liners do it all.



Here's an explanation on why Miranda Priestly is so damn scary:

Thanks to Meryl Streep, whose performance as the editor in chief of the world's most influential fashion magazine is eerie perfection, "The Devil Wears Prada" is often quite funny.

The stage is set for Streep's entrance as the dreaded boss, Miranda. Word gets out that she has arrived in the building early, which creates pandemonium in the office as desks are cleared, hair and clothing are primped and comfortable shoes are replaced with high heels. We're led to expect a screaming harpy, but Streep is too smart an actress for that. She's the boss, and the boss doesn't have to raise her voice. Instead, she speaks in a quiet monotone, complaining and giving orders with an air of mildly pained bewilderment. Her most vicious comments begin in seemingly innocuous ways, with "Why is it impossible that ..." or "I really don't understand why ..." Miranda is much scarier than a demanding, screaming boss. She takes pleasure in slipping inside her employees' minds and torturing them.

Beneath Streep's coldness, there's more coldness, and beneath that coldness is something worse. She makes you feel that the devil really does wear Prada.

Well, the first half is now complete. There will be 50 more characters over the coming weeks so if you haven't seen your choices yet, maybe they'll be listed higher. Who would you like to see on the list?

Todd McFarlane talks The Twisted Land Of Oz

Slow news day people, but I figured I'd post about this movie because it has frustrated and intrigued me since I first heard about it. Todd McFarlane revealed some new details on story elements to MTV about the screen adaptation of his The Twisted Land of Oz toy line. This film is set to be darker and scarier than The Wizard of Oz.

McFarlane's chief concern is delivering an Oz that is darker than what people know. As he told execs during pitch meetings, "Number one: you have to turn off the switch to the [1939] MGM movie. If you don't turn off that switch, almost everything I'm about to say will not make sense to you."

"Basically," McFarlane reasoned, "what do I have to do to sell a 22 year old kid going to college [to come] see something called 'Oz'?"

"In mine, [Dorothy is] up in the Antarctic, and there's bad weather," McFarlane said. "The point is that when you're in bad weather in a s--tty place up north, it is completely gray. That would be our 'black & white [sequence].' Then she falls into her Shangri-La, called Oz, where suddenly everything's in color."

"There's still a thing called Toto, except its the biggest thing in the movie and not the smallest thing. [The beast called Toto] basically ate the first dog, and it's this big thing that [the inhabitants of Oz] ride. They've given this generic word... so instead of horses, [people] ride Totos."

"My understanding is that [the studio] thought we went a little too conservative, so somebody else is taking a crack at [the script] now. We're never going to get as crazy as I wanted, so I have to accept that. My pitch is fairly radical, if you will. If you're 22 years old, it's not radical. If you're an executive, it's radical."

"I think the first script was just a little soft for them," McFarlane explained. "I've always been a believer that the reason remakes don't work is that they stay too true to the source material. Hopefully we'll have a new script in the next month or two, and then we'll be a lot closer to seeing whether it will grab some true momentum or whether we're heading into development hell here."

Antarctica? People riding Totos? Do the 22 year olds have to be high off their asses to understand this? Oh right. We have to pretend The Wizard of Oz never happened, which is evidently easier said than done. Though now that I think of it, maybe you'd have to be pretty high to accept singing tin men and a melting witch. I'm so used to The Wizard of Oz I'd forgotten my original WTF reaction to it. I'm thinking if this adaptation is a disaster, at least it will be an inventive one.

Five new Where the Wild Things Are images

We've heard every bit of bad news about Spike Jonze's upcoming Where the Wild Things Are: the skepticism about making a story made up of no more than 10 sentences into a feature film, delays, terrified children in test audiences, etc. Still, most of us are excited. Maybe it's the gorgeous photos or the footage. It's probably Jonze himself.

There will reportedly be advance screenings of Where the Wild Things Are open to the public in New York and Los Angeles. Most of us will have to wait until October 16 to catch it, but enjoy the five new photos from the NY Times.

If you missed the TV spots that made their way online a few days ago, here they are:

Behind the scenes footage from Clash of the Titans

There's some video from the set of the Clash of the Titans remake. Star Sam Worthington discusses his role in the film:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Video from MTV

The 100 most memorable characters of the decade - part 3

Okay, we're one-fifth of the way through the list. It's been tough to narrow things down, and as usual, there weren't really any rules, and I tried to balance the characters as much as I could. Here's the next batch for you:

80 - Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) Crash - To be honest I didn't really love Crash, but John Ryan was the one character who stood out from all the others. On one hand Ryan is loathsome and awful - he's a racist and he molests a woman, Christine (Thandie Newton), right in front of her husband. He's an easy character to hate. In a film with no real villain, he's the closest thing to one initially. As the film unfolds we watch Ryan care for his ailing father and save Christine from a burning car. He's detestable and admirable all at once.

Actor Matt Dillon spoke about the two sides of Officer Ryan in 2005:

"Well, I wanted to be very truthful to play this character. I recognized things that I felt to be true, totally, in this script, about human nature and I wanted to be honest about it. I mean, I wouldn't have gone into this project with any other agenda. I've never been one that's been that concerned with my character looking good… What I liked about the film was that it went deeper, explored the more personal nature of this cop, this racist cop, so we got to see the other side, the loving son who's frustrated with his life [and] the fact that his father's sick, terminally ill. And it doesn't make his actions acceptable, but it puts a human face on the character, which as an actor we always look for characters that are balanced in that way."

Roger Ebert explains why Dillon is one of Crash's strengths:

For me, the strongest performance is by Matt Dillon, as the racist cop in anguish over his father. He makes an unnecessary traffic stop when he thinks he sees the black TV director and his light-skinned wife doing something they really shouldn't be doing at the same time they're driving. True enough, but he wouldn't have stopped a black couple or a white couple. He humiliates the woman with an invasive body search, while her husband is forced to stand by powerless, because the cops have the guns...

I always felt that Crash was a manipulative film with contrived characters, and I think Officer Ryan was written that way on the page. But the Officer Ryan that Matt Dillon brings to the screen isn't contrived. He feels real, like any of the characters we encounter in our own lives.

79 - Leopold Mountbatten (Hugh Jackman) Kate & Leopold - Like Christian before him, Leopold is one of the decade's few purely romantic leading male characters. He is a courteous English gentleman who time travels from 1876 New York to the present day, and it isn't at all surprising when Kate McKay (Meg Ryan) falls in love with the gallant third Duke of Albany. Leopold is in many ways the perfect man: he's uncommonly handsome, well-bred, brilliant (he is the inventor of the elevator), and he can ride a horse.

A less capable actor would probably have made the near-perfect Leopold irritating and insufferable, but Hugh Jackman gives Leopold a lot of passion. Where he could come off as lecturing, Jackman makes him honorable. Where he could seem tactless, Jackman makes him honest. He isn't being pretentious in this film - Leopold really believes what he says, and in an era where most of the romantic comedy heroes are either hiding something or downright lying, Leopold Mountbatten is pretty damn interesting.

78 - John & Jane Smith (Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie) Mr. & Mrs. Smith - While Mr. & Mrs. Smith isn't a particularly memorable film, it's the characters that I remember the most. There's a lot of chemistry between the two characters, and upon seeing the film it was very difficult for me to tell if I was watching Pitt and Jolie or Smith and Smith. I'm still not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Whatever it is, it's certainly a memorable thing. Both characters are cunning, and there's an amusing coolness to their cavalier way of dealing with potentially assassinating each other. The brilliance is in their paradoxes - are we dealing with characters in an old-school romantic comedy or a 21st century action movie? It's obviously both, and even though the film itself doesn't quite pull it off, Pitt and Jolie do it flawlessly: it's almost impossible to take your eyes off the pair of them.

77 - Arwen (Liv Tyler) The Lord of the Rings trilogy - While Arwen is a very minor character in the original book series, she is given far more importance in the film trilogy.

She, like her grandmother Galadriel, is wise and strong. She is a great warrior who saves Frodo's life ("If you want him, come and claim him!"), and at the same time chooses to live as a mortal because of her love for Aragorn. Instead of leaving Middle-earth and sailing to the Grey Havens like her father Elrond wants, she stays in Middle-earth, refusing to leave the man she loves, even if he may not return. These are extraordinary sacrifices. Arwen is also the reason Aragorn chooses to fight on and not despair - during hard times he thinks of her.

More on Arwen:

Of Arwen, Tolkien said she was the Evenstar (the Evening Star) of her people, the embodiment of the mystery and brilliance of the night with a star spangled sky above. Arwen is dark...and seems younger, although she equals Galadriel in wisdom. She is also half human, with the ability to be mortal or immortal, as she chooses.

As Tolkien writes, `the braids of her dark hair were touched by no frost, her white arms and clear face were flawless and smooth, and the light of stars was in her bright eyes, yet queenly she looked, and thought and knowledge were in her glance, as one who has known many things that the years bring.'

A luminous being, then, who combined innocence and wisdom, who shone like the stars in the sky. Liv Tyler embodied all this, and also brought some vitality and athleticism to the role, when Jackson chose to give Arwen a more active part to play in the quest.

But it was not the dazzling physical beauty that was the most arresting thing...although they were of course beautiful in Tolkien's description. These elf women were older in elf years than the brotherhood of the ring - Arwen, indeed, far older than Aragorn, her beloved. But they did not age physically. The beauty that shines from them is the beauty of accumulated wisdom and compassion, something it is hard to render for a modern audience.

76 - Nemo (Alexander Gould) Finding Nemo - Even though Nemo is just a fish, he is, in many ways surprisingly very human: he has huge expressive fish eyes that are all too human, and he has a bad fin which his father calls his "lucky fin". Nemo, like many children would be, is self-conscious about his fin.

Despite the close relationship between Nemo and his father Marlin, in an instance of childhood defiance directed at his overprotective father, Nemo is taken far away from his home on the Great Barrier Reef.

Andrew Stanton on Nemo:

Nemo's short fin — a deformity that does not slow him down one bit — became, says Stanton, "a metaphor for anything you worry is insufficient or hasn't formed yet in your child. Parents think their child's handicap is a reflection of the parent. They become obsessive and anxious over that, whether it is the child's ability to read or the way they walk. This movie says there is no perfect kid; there is no perfect father."

75 - Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) Star Wars Episode: I, II, & III - Very few things about the Star Wars prequels lived up to the original trilogy. The little I did like included Qui-Gon Jin, Queen Padmé Amidala in The Phantom Menace, and above all, Obi-Wan Kenobi. As Owen Gleiberman says: "The one figure in Revenge of the Sith who taps the true spirit of Star Wars is Ewan McGregor: With his beautiful light K, clipped delivery, he plays Alec Guinness' playfulness, making Obi-Wan a marvel of benevolent moxie."

For me, Obi-Wan is interesting because of his character's growth. Sure, other characters have an arc as well, but Obi-Wan is the only character where you can see genuine maturing. While Anakin Skywalker is a perpetual child, and Amidala is loyal until the end, Obi-Wan is the only one among them who feels like a real human being.

In The Phantom Menance Obi-Wan starts off as a Padawan who is fiercely loyal to his Master. But there is self-confidence in Obi-Wan that he will grow into later. He disagrees with his Master, Qui-Gon, who is convinced that Anakin can bring balance to the force and defeat the Sith. Obi-Wan is confident enough to voice his disagreement, but respectful enough to realize that his Master ought to have the final say. Despite Obi-Wan's doubts about Anakin he takes on the responsibility of training him.

By Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan's doubts about Anakin are proven correct. While characters around him like Padmé refuse to see Anakin for what he truly is until is too late, Obi-Wan has the wisdom to see his true nature from the beginning. The difference between a young Obi-Wan and older Obi-Wan is that the older man has the courage to attempt the unspeakable - kill his closest friend.

74 - Charlie's Angels (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu) Charlie's Angels and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle- When I was 14 years old, Dylan Sanders, Natalie Cook, and Alex Munday were the coolest chicks the girls my age had ever seen. Sure, a character like Trinity from The Matrix was kick ass, but she's was too cold, distant, and self-serious for girls in their early teens. Sanders, Cook, and Munday were different from many previous tough girls. They had cute non-threatening boyfriends, drove fast cars, wore trendy outfits, and of course, could kick the crap out of people. They were campy and fun, and for once there was a movie with young women who could really be friends without hating each other.

By the time the inevitable Charlie's Angels sequel came around, I was nearly an adult and had moved on to other things. But now, nine years on from the first film, I will occasionally stop to watch the three Angels whenever I catch them.

On Barrymore:

The actress [Drew Barrymore] is meltingly cute, has crack comic timing, and can execute those Jackie Chan moves (she does some stunts herself) with startling fluency. But she also has a slight speech impediment and a trace of nerdy self-consciousness, and when she leaps into a battle you can see in her eyes that she's amazed—and thrilled!—to be playing a kung-fu superhero.

On Diaz:

And Diaz, clearly the most vivacious performer of the trio, continues that goosing around with some energetic booty wiggling that'll have the audience hooting or cheering – depending on the, uh, viewer sophistication levels involved.

On Liu:

Lui...she has an icy glamour-girl veneer-- but she does throw off a measure of sadistic good cheer disguised as a leather-clad efficiency expert who threatens a group of nerdy software engineers with a collective spanking

73 - Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada - Melquiades is one of those characters who will stay with me for the rest of my life. And though he is dead for much of the film it is his loyalty and his loneliness that hovers over everything.

One of the best descriptions of Melquiades Estrada:

The friendship happens between West Texas rancher Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Mexican ranch hand named Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) who just shows up one day looking for work. The two men don’t ask many questions of each other — they’re not really the question-asking kind — yet over time they come to see that they are but two cowboys riding the remnants of a dissipating range, mirror images reflected across the unforgiving border that divides their two countries. “If I die over here,” Melquiades tells Pete in a moment of uncanny prescience, “I don’t want to be buried on this side, with all the fucking billboards.”

72 - Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) Good Night, and Good Luck. - The beauty of the film was that instead of it mimicking the traditional biopics Hollywood often cranks out, the audience simply gets a snapshot of Murrow's career and a piece of American history. What makes Edward R. Murrow so fascinating in the film is his professionalism and his commitment to the truth, even if it may destroy him and CBS, the network he's work so hard for. David Straithairn, though he has little resemblance to Murrow, moves exactly like him. It's very eerie, watching him sit in stone silence, cigarette in hand, as he gives an interview.

Men like him don't exist anymore in modern American journalism, so watching Strathairn's performance is really watching an era that will probably never exist again.

Actor David Strathairn explains why Edward R. Murrow is relevant today:

(Good Night, and Good Luck) could have been made in 1941. It could have been in the 1800’s, or 1941 with the Japanese-American internment camps … the fear of Indians, so we'd better take away their civil liberties and put them on a reservation. It could be Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, any place that is where fear has been used … and confusion and the oppression of news has been used. The light has shined on it by this film. I don't think it's any coincidence that it's coming out now. I think that it's just a wonderful confluence of timing, that George (Clooney) got it together to make this film. I imagine if (George W.) Bush hadn't gotten a second term, it wouldn't be quite as potent an illumination, but there's always going to be something going on apropos of this, on this issue. Especially today, where we are fearful, but I think we are more confused; we're more paralyzed by our confusion as to who's telling us what, and what do we believe, and where's the truth?

I mean, it's sort of relative now. One news network is really only speaking to those people who need to be re-affirmed of their particular ideology and another one is (supporting another) – so these tribal factions in our society are feeding off these wildly opposing founts of information. Murrow was not about that. Murrow was about information for all, for the good of all. It's not a film to polarize or proselytize or indict, it's just to examine and to maybe build a platform for debate about these issues, and the responsibility of the journalist to find what's most important. Sure, we need to find out what's going on as a result of (recent hurricanes), but to what extent? To the extent that it puts a smokescreen over the (Alito) confirmation hearing or Gonzalez vs. Oregon, a physicians right’s (case)? There are so many issues out there that Murrow would have targeted, because they were so important to our daily lives.

71 - Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Gael García Bernal) The Motorcycle Diaries - Guevara isn't presented as the revolutionary in this film. In The Motorcycle Diaries Guevara is an easy going middle class kid in med school who decides to journey across South America. Over the course of the film as Guevara encounters poverty there is a glimpse of what he will someday become.


On Bernal's performance:

...Mr. Bernal, with his smoldering eyes and equine features, is the movie's heartthrob. Though the film does, by the end, view Ernesto as a quasi-holy figure, turning away from the corruptions of the world toward a higher purpose, he is also portrayed as a mischievous, eager boy. Early in the film, the travelers stop in the seaside town of Miramar to visit Ernesto's girlfriend, Chichina (Mía Maestro), whose wealthy parents clearly disapprove of him.... The scenes between Ernesto and Chichina have the delicious ache of late-adolescent longing, a feeling that suffuses the film even as it turns its attention to graver matters.

There are more characters on the list, so if you haven't seen your favorite characters yet, there's still a chance they might make it.

Be sure to check out the other parts if you missed them: Part 1, Part 2