Skip to main content

Reds by Warren Beatty and The Geniuses of Actors-cum-Directors of Hollywood

This appreciation post is dedicated to all the actors-cum-directors of Hollywood and in particular, shall single out Warren Beatty's REDS for being its catalyst. Warren Beatty, Woodie Allen, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Sean Penn, Robert Redford and Tim Robbins are very renowned and established directors in Hollywood though we recognize them as actors more. Warren Beatty has always been a maverick and very outlandish in both his acting and directing, Kevin very sedate, Clint like 'ain't no sunshine kid when you are at the wrong side of a loaded barrel', Tim and Robert very conventional, Woody, very unconventional and moody and Sean, mysterious and dark. They are prolific as both actors and directors......Clint is now aged 80+ and still making Oscar-worthy cinema, watch this year's The American Sniper for reference. This post is a tribute to their craft and undeniable passion and zest for quality cinema.

Now returning to the enigmatic Warren Beatty, one of the famed bad boys of Hollywood with companions such as Jack Nicholson, THE Marlon Brando, and Sean Penn. The playboy and known to be having affairs with at least 23 actresses (yes, I counted them on TCM database) in his heydays, Beatty was very particular with his Projects and loved making motion pictures. His marvelous streak starts with Shampoo, Bonnie and Clyde, Reds, Bugsy, Heavens can Wait and ends at Bulworth (1998). Nominated 14 times for Oscars and winning it only one time for REDS as the best director immortalizes his reputation as 'once-in-a-generation' talent. He was both the very best and very worst of Hollywood in his prime and only Brando can match that reputation neck-to-neck.......that's a no mean feat for Warren for sure.

I assume you won't need my telling how much USA has abhorred the idea of Socialism and hated 'communism' and 'Russia' for that even when both were allies during first and second world war. REDS chronicles the history of socialism in America and one must now safely assume how difficult it would have been for Beatty to pursue this dream project of his in 1970s. He directs the film and portrays the character of Jack Reed in the movie who was the FACE of communist party in America. He was an iconic journalist, a playboy and maverick just like BEATTY who covered the Bolshevik movement in Russia in 1917. Needless to say, Beatty plays this role convincingly and utmost confidence. What we have as a result is an EPIC movie and it is an EPIC in literal sense.....running over 3 hours and almost in a style of docu-drama. Diane Keaton as her love interest, Louise Bryant is just terrific and so is evergreen (and my favorite) Jack Nicholson in the character of Nobel Laureate Playwriter Eugene O'Neill. This movie is a Beatty's masterpiece and shall always be categorized among the very best of Hollywood..........‪#‎NakedEmotions‬

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Love and Friendship

Friendship is an aspect of life that’s not controlled by its beholders. Ideal friendships, well they are the things of past now. Many a times we have seen our parents or their parents talking about their old great friends and how amusingly they tell us about their bonding, the moments they spent together and we see a ‘priceless’ twinkle in their eyes…..that’s something which is missing from modern friendships. There are terms & phrases like ‘yaar tu to apna bhai hai’, ‘yaar tu to ghar ka aadmi hai’ which even today invoke something very beautiful inside our hearts but we all know that the feelings underneath them are ‘hollow’, they are just mere words, ‘emotionless’ and ‘impassive’. Well who am I to comment on such an indefinable ‘qualitative’ perspective? I’m one of you, those wretched creatures that are still in need of true, great friendships. Well I certainly can’t say that I haven’t got friends. I’ve got friends, plenty of them in fact, and some of them are real great. I s...

Racing Extinction (2015) : A Commentary

It's really hard to switch on to a different language from the one you have constantly been tinkering with. I grew so accustomed to writing in Hindi in last few days that it started dawning on me that I might never be good again with my English. So this is a tester, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, one of my movie group friends, an American by nationality, questioned my fondness of documentaries. I specifically wrote in one of my columns that documentaries demand your unwavering attention and once you gave 'that' to them, you are rewarded much more handsomely than a proper, narrative, fictitious film. My reasoning for believing so is that a documentary is an experience of a creative process. It doesn't get made to 'entertain' you. They are there to reveal something to you. They teach you something. You get overwhelmed by them. 'Racing Extinction (2015)' was one such documentary. I watched it in last couple of days. I couldn't complete it in one ...

What Virat Kohli Could Learn from Sourav Ganguly's Career

This IPL season might be dubbed as 'Kohli's IPL' in years to come. He is unarguably the best exponent of white-ball batsmanship going around. However, for someone like me who places a great emphasis on longest form of Cricket i.e. Test Cricket, until and unless he proves himself in seeming and swinging conditions of England and New Zealand (I believe in him and thus shall wish him luck), I shall still rank him behind Kane Williamson and Joe Root. Just to make sure I'm impartial to this debate, I put my favorite cricketer of all time i.e. Sourav Ganguly behind Sachin, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid when it comes to rank him in FAB FIVE of Indian Batsmanship because he simply wasn't as good as them in test cricket. Many call him a very good test cricketer and maintaining an average of 40 in test cricket from the very beginning till the very end signifies their reasoning but still, he fell short of 45/50 that makes a batsman statistical behemoth in purest form of Cricket. ...