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?

The 100 most memorable characters of the decade - part 4

We're nearly halfway 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:

70 - Paikea Apirana (Keisha Castle-Hughes) Whale Rider - I said earlier that there won't be many teenagers on this list, and there will be even fewer pre-teens. Pai will end up being one of a handful of memorable children. Fueled by the strength of Castle-Hughes, Pai is the poster child for female empowerment - the ultimate personification of girl power. Sometimes it's hard to believe she's just a child.

Pai is the only available heir to her grandfather, the chief of her tribe, though customs demands that the chief be male. But she stands up to her grandfather, who would rather Pai had been born a boy, or perhaps, not even born at all (''There was no gladness when I was born.'')


Keisha Castle-Hughes on her role in Whale Rider:

''It's about a girl who's trying to find who she is in a male-dominated society,'' explains Keisha Castle-Hughes, the 13-year-old star of Niki Caro's inspiring coming-of-age film, ''Whale Rider"... The tale of the Maori in New Zealand has been embraced around the world, proving that it's more than a chick flick. ''One man said he saw his grandfather in Koro, the patriarch,'' Castle-Hughes says, happily surprised. ''He could relate, even though he was an Italian from New Jersey.''...The movie's message is a universal one: ''If you want something, you've got to go out and grab it with both hands..."

More on Whale Rider:

Keisha admits there are certain parallels between the young actress and this remarkable character she has played so effortlessly. "I think we're both strong willed and independent, and Pai has a great unique quality about her. She's an 11-year-old girl who's confident about who she is and knows exactly who she is. Not many 11-year-old girls are like that. She's a great role model for young girls. I think I'm like that too."

69 - Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) I'm Not There - I don't remember much about the film - messy plot and all. But I do remember Blanchett as Jude Quinn, an incarnation of Bob Dylan, circa the mid 1960s and his electric uprising. I don't know what's scarier - a movie made up of six different Bob Dylans that I have to keep up with, or the fact that Cate Blanchett might make a better Dylan than Dylan.


Stephanie Zacharek from Salon explains why Blanchett as Dylan is so good:

...Cate Blanchett, as the Royal Albert Hall-era Dylan (there we go again with the pushpins), is the most hypnotic, capturing the spirit of Dylan -- or, more accurately, one of his many spirits -- in her willowy frame. This could be the performance of the year, in one of the most inventive and joyous movies of the year.

And more from Jeff Beresford-Howe at Film Threat:

Cate Blanchett gets all the attention and awards talk for her cross-dressing portrayal of Dylan at his most scathing and magnetic, and she deserves it. You can’t take your eyes off her as she staggers through Dylan’s best-dressed, most confrontational and most fucked up time in his life, what was essentially a long-playing nervous breakdown. It’s an over-the-top performance rooted firmly in the truth.

68 - Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) Frida - Sometimes the media goes crazy for good looking actresses who get ugly for their roles. But in Hayek's case all the attention was deserved. While Frida reads like a standard biopic, on the screen it isn't. And that is largely due to the directing, and Hayek's ability to make a legendary artist into a flesh and blood person.



Frida's like a human hurricane; tempestuous one moment, and suddenly calm, and then tempestuous all over again. Hayek's performance is so brave, I think that she isn't afraid to show the Hayek beneath the Kahlo. It's not just Kahlo you're seeing there. You're seeing Hayek's years-long obsession with Frida and the guts she had to be able to bring Frida to the big screen (in the early 1990s 'when Hayek was told she was too young for the part, she replied "Then you are going to have to wait until I'm old enough"'). You can see it all somewhere in the eyes, beneath those striking eyebrows.



On the challenge of playing Frida:

...it's apparent that the role of Frida may easily be the most challenging role Hayek has ever undertaken. The part shows that Hayek is much more than just a pretty face. She mesmerizingly portrays Frida throughout all stages of her life – young girl, budding woman, old and dying. Not to mention that she has to convey the horrible physical pain Kahlo endured as a result of a crippling childhood accident. Additionally, prosthetics ranging from aging make-up, numerous scenes in full body casts, and of course Frida's omnipresent unibrow were heaped upon Hayek. "Honestly, it is definitely by far the most complex character I have ever played and maybe the most complex character I will ever play," exclaims Hayek. "But it was not the most challenging one. When you are so passionate about something and when you love someone so much, it's easy to feel their pain."

67 - Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) Capote - I've always found the character memorable mainly because I find him unbearable. I've been trying to figure out if there is anything more than the fact that he gets on my nerves that has made me remember him all these years. Maybe it boils down to the obvious. The character annoys me, but Philip Seymour Hoffman does not. In fact I really like Philip Seymour Hoffman, so I suppose it's a testament to just how brilliant he is in the role.


Maybe Ebert's review helps give me an explanation:

...As he talks to the killers, to law officers and to the neighbors of the murdered Clutter family, Capote's project takes on depth and shape as the story of conflicting fates. But at the heart of his reporting is an irredeemable conflict: He wins the trust of the two convicted killers and essentially falls in love with Perry Smith, while needing them to die to supply an ending for his book. "If they win this appeal," he tells his friend Harper Lee, "I may have a complete nervous breakdown." After they are hanged on April 14, 1965, he tells Harper, "There wasn't anything I could have done to save them." She says: "Maybe, but the fact is you didn't want to."

66 - Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol) The Notorious Bettie Page - This is arguable one of the best examples of perfect casting in a biopic. Gretchen Mol, with her huge eyes, big black bangs, and dazzling smile plays the sweet, innocent pin-up girl of the 1950s with so much charm and vulnerability. She's just as comfortable dressed in high heels and leather as a dominatrix as she is being bound and gagged - or even completely nude.


The perfect description of Bettie Page:

It has often been said that Bettie Page, the legendary '50s pinup with the pert features framed by those famously severe black bangs, was the rare American sex goddess who was equally at home projecting the image of a good girl or a bad girl. Frolicking, naked, in the ocean foam, her leg extended with playful pleasure, she was all dazzle and sunshine: the girl next door who said yes yes yes. In her scandalous underground bondage photos, where she posed as a dominatrix with a whip held high, or as a masochist with a ball in her mouth, she vamped like a pussycat from hell, her eyes narrowing with mean delight — or widening in mock terror. Yet the mysterious alchemy of Bettie Page isn't just that she could turn on a dime from light to dark, saint to sinner, virgin to vixen. It's that she was somehow able to project both qualities at once. In the bondage photos, so shocking for their time, her warm, spirited, peekaboo vibrance doesn't disappear; it's there just beneath the surface aggression of her poses. As for her all-American cheesecake shots, they have a quality of delirious, laughing abandon, as though she were winking at the she-devil inside. What Bettie Page conjured — always — was the promise of pleasure without limits. She was a one-woman orgy in centerfold form.

65 - Alice (Natalie Portman) Closer - Alice is an intelligent, sexy, 20 year old, who deals in deception ("Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off...but it's better if you do.") It's easy to be fooled by her innocent face, but even when Alice tells the truth it is to hurt her partner, not to unburden herself of guilt. She talks a good game about love, but one wonders at the end of it all if she's ever really felt it.



Why Portman's performance is so good:

Portman, who digs so deep into the bruised core of her character that they seem to wear the same skin. It's a blazing, breakthrough performance.

And:

As for the elfin Portman, it's far and away the best performance of the adult portion of her career. Gone is that kid-genius preciousness; she seems like someone abused by men and self almost to the breaking point.

64 - Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) Donnie Darko - The title character in the film is a puzzle. He goes to a nice school and he's walking around with Jake Gyllenhaal's angelic face. But on the inside, he is gloomy, tormented, lost. He is a paranoid schizophrenic dealing with the mundane aspects of teenage life. He's more than just an angst-ridden teenager. He hears voices in his head, hallucinates, has visions of the future - he's often visited by a giant rabbit with an injured eye. He's an oddball with the guts to ask out the new girl.

Jake Gyllenhaal on his experiences working on the film:

I remember that when [Richard] was in the bunny suit that we shot that at night and that there was pizza behind the camera, because we were going over, and all I wanted was a piece of pizza, that was my main motivation for that... I couldn't agree more with Steven. When I read it, I just immediately responded to it, even though I didn't read it all the way through when I met [Richard]. I had ten pages to go and I had five minutes before the meeting and I knew I already wanted to do it. Good to know that I didn't know what happens in the end because I still don't know what happens in the end. But it was an amazing experience for me and a familiar one too because this was hopefully not the last time that I work with my sister, but everyone sort of became family from that experience and I'm so proud of it.

63 - Latika (Freida Pinto, Rubina Ali, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar) Slumdog Millionaire - Latika isn't like other love interests, though, like most of them, she's beautiful. Even as a child she is street smart and tough. Latika knows how to survive. She starts off as Jamal's friend - the unnamed third musketeer. But as time moves forward, she's snatched away, and she comes in and out of our hero's life - she's more of a vision than anything real.


Freida Pinto discusses the character:

Two younger actors play Latika at earlier ages, so she drew from that work. However, most of the adult Latika was intuitive from the script. "I read the script first and I read little Latika's part. I was like, 'That's the character. That's the Latika that I can relate to because she's a spicy, stubborn girl. She's got this zest for life and she's playful.' She's a fighter and the moment you come to the girl in the middle, she automatically gets submissive and she's kind of grown before her time. She's 14 but she looks like she could be 18, 20. So it was really important to watch the kids to see how they had grown so I could grow beyond that as well. So Danny had already shot scenes with the two characters and I watched it and it was such an immense amount of pressure because they were so good. They just seemed so effortless. It just makes it kind of simpler to have watched it, so the growth seems not disconnected. It just seems fluid."

62 - Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) Transformers & Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Sam starts off as an awkward high school kid hell bent on trying to impress Mikaela, the hottest girl in school. He is the unconventional hero. He isn't that strong, has no useful skills, and he's more of a smart aleck, than actually smart. He's kind of cool though, in a dorky sort of way. There is also courage deep down, even though at times, one wonders if the kid is just stupid. But he has that quality every film hero ought to have - he is sympathetic. He's the everyman.



On Shia LaBeouf as Sam:

...things get infinitely better when Shia LaBeouf appears as Sam, a smart-mouthed teen who discovers the Transformers with his would-be girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox).

LaBeouf is a good choice to act out the lively script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who never forget that they're writing a movie about robots from outer space that can turn into helicopters and boom boxes. The rising young actor, who will play Indiana Jones' sidekick in next summer's big movie, has a geeky charm that recalls a young John Cusack or Patrick Dempsey.

61 - Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) Forgetting Sarah Marshall - We spend most of Forgetting Sarah Marshall feeling sorry for the hero. It's bad enough that his girlfriend dumps him, but having to deal with her self-centered, cool, rock star boyfriend while on vacation sucks even more.

Russell Brand does, sort of steal the show:

Brand, a Brit stand-up, radiates star quality and ace comic timing as the sexually insatiable lead singer of Infant Sorrow, a rocker so self-involved that he doesn't see why Sarah wouldn't want to join his groupies, the Sorrow Suckers, on tour. Brand is priceless when a pushy waiter (Hill is perfecto) asks if Aldous has listened to his audition CD. "I was going to," says Brand in an accent that blends Keith Richards with Monty Python, "but then I just carried on livin' my life."

But, Aldous Snow doesn't end up being the stereotypical vapid rocker though he does screw around. He's funny, charming (mostly because Brand is playing himself) and he eventually becomes friends with his rival. Aldous isn't really a villain ("Fuck you're cool! It's so hard to say, because, like, I hate you in so many ways.") It's not that surprising that Aldous will be getting his own spin-off movie.

There are still a lot more characters left, and hopefully I'll have the next part up next week.

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