There have been dozens of adaptations of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol over the years – as early as 1916 and as recent as 2004. It’s been modernized, Muppetized, and even Fred Flinstoned, but it’s such a timeless story, I suspect that adaptations will continue to be made until the end of time.
While another adaptation isn’t something I’m going to get particularly giddy about, even if it’s going to be a motion-capture venture directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge, my interest can be piqued when I hear Gary Oldman has signed on. Which has happened. Which is why my interest in now piqued.
There is no word yet on who Gary Oldman will be playing, but I’m crossing my fingers that it’s Bob Cratchit. Oldman would be fantastic as the despondent, down on his luck employee of Scrooge (plus, if he doesn’t play Cratchit, it probably means he has a very small part, which wouldn’t be cool). Moviehole claims that Oldman will be playing multiple characters though – much like Carrey, who is also playing the three Ghosts of Christmas. So, who knows?
As great as Oldman is in literally everything he does, this leaves me wishing he’d take on more leading roles, but lately, he seems happier taking on the roles of supporting characters, adding layers of depth to them that few other actors could. Granted, throughout his whole career he’s taken on smaller character-driven parts that he’s made more than memorable (Leon, comes to mind), but he also balanced his choices out. The closest he’s come to an actual leading role in the past few years was Backwoods, a movie co-starring Paddy Considine. Oldman brought so much to a character that was more than likely so flat on paper and it really made me yearn for Oldman to once again carry a whole film on his back, because the man is incomparable. If you watch the man act, if you watch the way he masters each and every accent, and literally transforms himself in each film, yet not in a limelight consuming way, it’s hard to deny that he’s one of the finest actors working, one of the finest ever even, and I’d place him right alongside the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis. He had a few down on his luck years (as recent as 2003 and 2004) where he had made a couple of straight-to-DVD action movies, so maybe his confidence as a leading man is a little low, but I don’t think that’s the case. I’m not sure what it is, but hopefully within the next few years we get to see him back taking on projects like Immortal Beloved, Prick Up Your Ears, and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, where we can see him shine in every scene. I’m just throwing this out there, but Gary, if Guy Pearce drops out of negotiations for the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, you should make a few phone calls. I’m just saying.
Generally, I wouldn’t post another person’s “Best of” list, but this one I find so interesting because a) it’s so much after the fact and b) it comes from a respected critic such as Roger Ebert (who, despite how much you agree with him, is just a walking encyclopedia of cinema). He’s a little slow to the draw due to a long period of hospitalization and some serious life-threatening surgeries over the last half of 2006, so it goes without saying that he didn’t get to catch a lot of the movies that he usually would have under normal circumstances. So, in a time when people are already polishing up their “Best of 2007″ lists, here is Roger Ebert’s list from 2006. I’m really happy to see Perfume: The Story of a Murderer on there, as it seems there are far too few of us that felt that strongly about the film. It also looks like it’s about time I check out Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble, eh?
