Charles Durning Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I was already taken with the idea that Burt Reynolds was going to star in an upcoming theater film called A Bunch of Amateurs, which I told you about earlier this month. The film focuses on aging action star from Hollywood (Burt) who joins a Shakespearian theater company thinking that its the Royal Shakespeare Company. Instead, he's surprised to discover that it's a group of amateurs in Stratford St. John. Due to marketing and charity, he has to stick with it and be King Lear on the amateur stage.

Now the film has just gotten 100% irresistible. Variety reports that Charles Durning (who got a hugely-deserved lifetime achievement award from SAG recently) has joined the cast as "a sleazy Hollywood agent" who tricks Burt's character into the theatrical company. I wish he was going to be one of the players, so we'd get more screen time and Charles doing Shakespeare, but I'll take what I can get.

The character actor is a total scene stealer, as Jette Kernion blogged about back in 2006. He has been in a slew of great films, but to me, he'll always be the angelic Charlie from Two of a Kind. Yes, I realize I have weird tastes sometimes. So... What's your favorite Durning role?

Finally Josh Brolin received an award for his excellent performance in No Country for Old Men. He and the rest of the film's actors won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble cast Sunday night, giving No Country its second big win of the weekend (Joel and Ethan Coen received the top Directors Guild of America award Saturday). Along with Brolin, trophies went to cast-mates Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Garret Dilahunt, Tess Harper and Javier Bardem, who also won the SAG award for best supporting actor. While I'm not sure how many of No Country's performers actually received their own trophy, I'm hoping that both Kelly Macdonald and Barry Corbin were also included. No Country is one of those movies that wouldn't be the same without all of its main and supporting actors, and it is certainly fitting for it to have picked up this honor.

Other film winners from Sunday night include Daniel Day-Lewis, who surprised no one by being honored with the leading actor trophy. Even I'm getting a little bored with all of his awards, despite my agreement that his is the best performance of the year. I didn't even notice if any of the other nominees (George, Emile, Viggo and Ryan) showed up to the ceremony, which was one of the first red carpet awards events of the season. Picking up the award for leading actress was Julie Christie, further cementing the fact that I really need to see Away From Her already. The supporting actress honor went to Ruby Dee, who deserves it just for being the cutest old lady on screen last year, let alone for going up strong against both Denzel and Brolin in American Gangster. Finally, The Bourne Ultimatum won the new SAG award for best stunt ensemble and Charles Durning -- one of Cinematical's favorite character actors ever -- received a lifetime achievement award. Be sure to check out Moviefone's coverage of the awards for plenty of red carpet and ceremony photos.

The 1990s had no shortage of dysfunctional family movies, but Jodie Foster's second (and still most recent) directorial effort Home for the Holidays (1995) sends them all packing by bringing the family together for Thanksgiving dinner. Most movies in this genre handle the wide tapestry of characters by assigning them one-dimensional, easily defined personality types, but Foster and her screenwriter, the great W.D. "Rick" Richter, fit in dozens of remarkable little moments that bring everyone into three-dimensional relief. It begins with Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter, at her pluckiest) happily at work, restoring old paintings. (The opening credit sequence is rich with information, such as using egg yolks as a base.) Unfortunately, she gets laid off, tries to make out with her boss and comes down with a cold. Her teenage daughter (Claire Danes) announces that she's spending the holiday with her boyfriend and will be having sex for the first time.

With failure and humiliation hung around her neck, she returns home for turkey day. To rub it in, Claudia loses her fancy, big city coat at the airport and must settle for wearing her mother's puffy, hideously out-of-date coat for the rest of the visit. On the plane, she calls her closest companion, her brother Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.) and begs him to come too. It's an awkward, babbling message, but touchingly honest. Tommy, a cackling, gay nutcase full of mischievous energy, does turn up and brings the sexy Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott). Claudia is single, and in a lesser movie -- Dan in Real Life, for example -- everyone in the family would pester her to find a man, as if they had no concerns of their own. And certainly the subject comes up, most heartbreakingly in a scene with the sad-sack David Strathairn as an old classmate -- a meeting arranged by Claudia's mom (Anne Bancroft).

Charactor actor Charles Durning has stolen scenes in countless movies since the early 1970s (not to mention various TV shows and Broadway plays). Many of us grew up watching him as Doc Hopper, the evil fried-frog-legs magnate in The Muppet Movie. I always envision him in Hopper's stereotypically Southern white suit. I've pictured him wearing that suit even in movies where, after I did a little research, it turns out he didn't wear it at all, such as The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (where he played the governor of Texas) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (where he played the governor of Mississippi). The man was born to wear seersucker and string ties.

Durning can steal a movie away from Muppets, for heaven's sake. He can even steal scenes from Robert Downey Jr. in Home for the Holidays, and Downey is arguably one of the top scene-stealers of the past 20 years. One reason is that Durning can sing and dance -- he danced professionally in his younger days. Suddenly, in the middle of a movie like Home for the Holidays, he'll start waltzing around the room with surprising grace. Or he'll just start singing, as in Tootsie or The Hudsucker Proxy, and all attention turns to him.