29 October 2010

Remember that guy who was in that movie?




So I'm a little out of practice with the blogging, but I want to get back into the swing. Future topics may include a retrospective on the "answers" that came out of the final season of Lost, fictional press releases for a fictional band, and and exploration of the modern "Girl Friday," who is best embodied by Jack Bauer's trusty techno-hag, Chloe O'Brian.

For now, though, I'm gonna just ease back into it, and here's how: You know when you see a movie or episode of your favorite show, and one of the actors looks familiar? Happens to me all the time. Usually what I do is get on IMBD and look him/her up. What I want to do here is give those guys a little free publicity. They are not the stars, at least not now, but, really, where would Schwarzenegger be right now if he didn't have "Thug #2" to kick around?

For instance, Michael Emerson wasn't always Benjamin Linus, or even Henry Gale. He played villains in two separate episodes of two different Law and Order series, the first of which was an habitual liar and manipulator who cared for nothing more than keeping his precious house of cards from falling down. Sound like someone we know? In the first installment of the Saw series, he played an orderly in the hospital where John Kramer was getting his cancer treatments, and served as the red herring for most of the climax of the film.


Speaking of John Kramer, aka Jigsaw, the actor who played him did a lot of bit parts before becoming a genre idol in those much-maligned Saw films. Tobin Bell played bit parts in The X-Files, Stargate SG-1, Nash Bridges, ER, Alias, The West Wing, and had quite a memorable role in the Sopranos as an admissions counselor at a military academy. "2100, lights out. What's missing? Give Up? Television."

He first came to my attention in season 2 of 24, as the season-ending villain Peter Kingsley, a cold, calculating man who had been hired by unnamed business interests to blow up a nuke in LA. The success Bell is enjoying now is long-earned and well-deserved.

So that's it; watch this space for more...

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