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Best CastThe Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Individual performances can often make a movie. However, what's far more common is that a talented ensemble comes together to make a film into more than just a collection of performances and merge them into something more than the sum of the whole. Movies with large casts tend to do well here, though smaller ensembles with standout performances also make their impact. In that spirit, we bring you the Calvin Award for Best Cast, this year awarded to fine actors of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Repeating its win of last year for The Two Towers, King won here by a sizeable margin, coming close to doubling its nearest competitor. Easily the largest of the ensembles this year, King had about two dozen major parts that all blended into something majestic. There's not a false note in the bunch. Not just obtaining the most first place votes, it was named on more ballots than any other film here. Mystic River placed four of its cast members in our top fives in their respective categories, so it should be no surprise that it rates highly with us here, placing second. It's tough to overlook a movie that has some of the finest actors of our generation giving some of their best performances, particularly Sean Penn, who is having a fantastic year. Whale Rider was just a hair away from placing actors in all four performance categories, which easily explains its placement of third here. Chief (Ha! I pun) among these excellent performances was the amazingly talented Keisha Castle-Hughes, who impressed many for being so talented while so young. It would be a mistake to overlook the contributions of Rawiri Paratine, Vicky Haughton and Grant Roa, though, as they all made this film the quiet charmer that it was. In contrast to the previous three films, the fourth place finisher City of God didn't place a single performance in a top ten, and in fact received only two votes total for its actors. That it sits this high in the Ensemble category is a testament to how well all the (generally untrained) actors in this story of the streets created something real. Closely behind is the group of actors in Love Actually, which was made up of several interlocking stories about love; finding it, losing it, wanting it. The cast of mostly British actors was highlighted by Emma Thompson (tenth in our Supporting Actress category) along with fine performances by Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson. Just outside the top five is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, filled with a number of delightfully over-the-top performances, which beside the obvious highlights of Depp and Rush, also included one of Keira Knightley's three breakout roles of the year and inspired work from numerous actors in small roles. Similarly, Kill Bill Vol. 1 was dominated by a couple of strong performances (namely Uma and Lucy), but also contributed to by actors who made impressions in very short periods of time, like Chiyaki Kuriyama and Sonny Chiba. It's not easy to make yourself seem real in an over the top film, but this cast did so extremely well. We're fans of talented voice work here (we're all just a little bit biased to cartoons; blame Peter Pan syndrome) so it's no surprise that we'd recognize the great work done by the cast of Finding Nemo, including Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Willem Dafoe and Stephen Root, among many, many others. The suburban gangster film Better Luck Tomorrow also came into play, with a cast of almost complete unknowns knocking our socks off with brilliant and funny performances. Side note: Parry Shen is 31? I can't get over this. He barely looks old enough to drive. Rounding out the top ten is In America, which not only had great child performances from the Bolger sisters, but also featured the always terrific Samantha Morton, the distinguished Djimon Hounsou and an intense performance from Paddy Considine. Other ensembles that just missed out on inclusion are the group of actors from A Mighty Wind, The Station Agent and Lost in Translation.
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Friday, December 27, 2024
© 2006 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.
