Monday, January 08, 2007

Pity the Pitt

David Thomson in The Guardian: ...all Brad Pitt has offered in 2006 has been Babel, a singularly monotonous and pretentious picture [...] in which Pitt spends most of his screen time bending over Cate Blanchett, waiting for her to recover consciousness or die. [...] The way he's fading at 43, he could be an actress. (Jan. 5)

Caryn James in The New York Times: In Babel Mr. Pitt delivers the most mature, complex performance of his career as a distraught husband whose wife has been shot on a tour bus near an isolated Moroccan village. With little more than half an hour on screen he restores seriousness to a career that started off like a dream combination of stardom and artistry, only to veer into the realm of the truly silly. (Jan. 7)

With whom do you agree? I'm more with Thomson. Of late, Pitt's been in the shitter (Mr. and Mrs. Smith was his last release). But his participation in Babel was well-intentioned, which is a step in the right direction, and he's one of the credited producers on The Departed. So even though he'll miss out on an acting Oscar nomination for Babel, I'd say he has a 90 percent chance to win a statuette for The Departed. What Academy voter wouldn't go for the chance to put both Pitt and Scorsese (for the second time in one night) up on the stage? Next post: Inland Empire. I swear.

2 comments:

Alanna said...

Brad Pitt's career path has been a disappointment to both me and my mother. We worshipped his hotness and his versatility via repeat viewings of Legends of the Fall and 12 Monkeys for many years, only to be crushed by his turns in dreck like The Mexican and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. He's good in Babel, I think, but there's no sign of his earlier leading man in quirky / epic / vampire movie potential.

Middento said...

Oddly enough, I think I agree with Alanna here. Although I would place his hotness back to A River Runs Through It, when we all thought he would be the other Golden Boy to go on to direct Ordinary People 2: Therapeutic Boogaloo.