Your personal Best and worst casting ever

[wildfellhall]

I think Billy Crudup and Kate Hudson are fantastic casting in Almost Famous - as is the casting of the whole film.

Daniel Day Lewis in everything is brilliant. And Julianne Moore is great in everything.

I have never recovered from the wrongness of Cameron Diaz in Gangs Of New York or Anna Hathaway in Interstellar.

Timothee Chalamet as Laurie in Little Women - 🤢

Christian Bale as Laurie in Little Women - 🤩

My husband liked the 1958 version, I liked the 1967 version. The first BBC version I can find is a 1924 radio adaptation, I wasn't around then so can't comment.

Don't forget the adaptation by Fay Weldon from 1980. That's my personal favourite. Maybe it's because it's the first one I saw.

I think the Keira criticism is unfair. She was excellent in The Duchess and Atonement. I thought she was fine on Woman’s Hour what was she supposed to say? Just sounded like a normal young mum.

(Am not Keira or her mum)

Michelle Keegan was miscast in that programme set in the 1950s - totally the wrong face on top of an extraordinarily wooden and limited acting range. I couldn’t even get to the end of the first episode.

I think she is a decent actor, but keeps getting miscast in period roles for which I think she's not physically suited. She's so 21st-century-looking, for me. I think she's at her best playing gobby, awkward contemporary characters. She was excellent in a very early role in a deeply silly semi-horror called The Hole, playing a private school kid alongside Thora Birch and Laurence Fox, spiky and vulnerable and credible.

The problem for me isn't that he can't play a priest well - it's that he's just not credible as the love interest of someone like Fleabag. A combination of being average looking, not particularly charismatic and a priest doesn't make for a romantic lead for someone that's not a church-goer.

I think my issue wasn't with Andrew Scott, more that Phoebe W-B as writer clearly knows nothing about Catholic priests or Catholicism, down to the complete impossibility of a Catholic priest conducting a wedding in someone's garden. All weddings need to take place in a church, unless in a real emergency where it might happen at a hospital bedside. Which means the character unravels because he keeps doing non-credible things. Catholic priests are mad busy covering groups of parishes, so aren't going to be able to knock off work for a day to hang out with their sexy new friend, or hang around being drunk in their vestry at night. I think PW-B just decided there needed to be a reason the priest couldn't be in a relationship with Fleabag and just thought 'I'll make him a priest who's taken vows of celibacy.'

Well that's in the eye of the beholder. I thought he was magnetic in that role. As PP said he carried the conflict and intricacies of the plot so well

Best casting...

Brokeback Mountain
Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher in the original Star Wars
Toby Maguire as Spiderman
Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator
Bruce Willis in Die Hard
Michael J Fox in Back to the Future

Best: Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter
Worst: Kate Winslet totally miscast in Titanic. She looked like Leo’s mum

Cameron Diaz in anything I’ve seen her in (not much to be honest). I just hate that slapstick humour and facial expressions.

Olivia Coleman is great in Hot Fuzz!

I think that is it isn't it, we see the first one we see as the original and probably the best. My DH was shocked when he was moaning about the new Ben Hur not being as good as the original with Charlton Heston, I had to tell him the original was a silent movie from I think the 1920s. As far as he is concerned the Charlton Heston version is THE original.

I've wondered about seeing Conclave for the same reason. If they get it all wrong I won't be able to enjoy it however good it is in every other way. My husband, ex police officer, can't stand police dramas for the same reason and his only exception was Hill St Blues.

I wonder if doctors and nurses feel like that about medical dramas.

Sorry off topic.

Most legal dramas are laughable except the Good Wife we reckoned that had been written with actual lawyers input

Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe was a revelation! Amazing that he could carry it off. Also playing the villain in Paddington 2.
But he was not so impressive as a mockney villain in one of his mate Guy Ritchie's films. (Probably the material was a bit of a dud, though.)

Loved him in Paddington 2. The dancing prison scene is my favourite. He has a great yet subtle sense of humour.

Ruth Wilson in everything! Loved her in Luther and Jane Eyre.

All of the actors on cloud atlas were fantastic. They each play 7 different characters of various age, sex and race. First time I’d seen Hugh Grant in something that wasn’t Notting Hill/FWAF style. He was brilliant.

Worst - Emily Blunt in Girl on The Train.

I have to say I’m not convinced by her.

I also saw an interview where someone oozed about how cute one of the child actors in Mary Poppins was and she looked like she’d been slapped by a cold fish ( she’d been lit up when talking about herself!) then proceeded to tell stories about what a brat she found him to be. It did not come across well … unprofessional, but also who has to jostle with a kid for attention?

Fleabag? If so, yes, he was creepy.

Ggmores!
Hot Fuzz! Yes the cast is amazing but no one, for me, can beats the comedic timing of the two Andys and Coleman 🙌🙌.
The supermarket show down.
The swan.
I love the cast in that so much - all those cameos from those great actors.

Fleabag
I think the priest works somehow. It is totally unrealistic in many respects but from the POV of the countless women who do have affairs with 'celibate' (!) priests - there is nothing as potentially sexually explosive than forbidden sex

Also Olivia Coleman as the wicked stepmother - just completely wonderful with the penises

I love Olivia Coleman. She’s my new favourite as I mourn Maggie the Great.