Summa This, Summa That
2. Best Ghost in the Digital Shell
This one’s all to Andy. Serkis, that is. I realize that he’s been aggressively campaigning for digital performances to be recognized for a couple of years now, including campaigning somewhat at the expense of the digital artists behind his recently-praised Ape roles. But let’s set that aside for the time being and focus on his work for Peter Jackson.
The running battle between Gollum and …himself is pretty much my favorite thing about the middle chapter of PJ’s LOTR saga. It (and some brilliant work by Howard Shore) are the only things that kept it from succumbing entirely to the Lagging Middle Film curse. (It still succumbed somewhat. Just not entirely.)
Runner-Up? Still Andy. For his Kong, easily the most realistic (and most human) part of PJ’s earnest-but-much-too-long-and-entirely-too-cartoonish re-re-make. I briefly considered Hugo Weaving’s V which I thought was an amazingly lively performance given that you couldn’t see his face. But at the same time, that’s not quite the same thing, in no small part because it’s not digital. And because he was actually there. And because I couldn’t really figure out a way to say nice things about him without having it paint the accompanying film in a far better light than it should ever receive. So I disqualified myself.
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