Interesting article about acting...

Here's a piece worth reading about acting. Interestingly, I noted at the end it was written by David Thompson, whose self-indulgent, digressive, frequently nasty, and in all but one instance subpar work I am otherwise familiar with from 'The New Republic' (his latest contribution there asserted that because Michelle Pfeiffer appears, to him, to no longer have fun on the screen--and was no longer sparklingly attractive--she could no longer honestly be called 'Michelle,' but should have to opt instead for something muddier like 'Maud'--like I say, don't read his work, elsewhere):

But this one is worth reading, notwithstanding some serious deficiencies in the research (Damon was thoroughly 'method' in his performance in '...Ripley,' and his pretenses within the role were never something the audience couldn't see through in a moment, and so are quite unremarkable--the Damon section of the article is a weak link, really) and the writer's understanding of his subject (i.e. the various schools of Stanislavski-based acting, and what they advocated, and what 'the Method' is/was). With all that in mind, it's a very useful article anyway--legitimately points up a few excesses and deficiencies of method actors in comparison to, say, Olivier.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574571821619515590.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle

Re: Olivier, it occurs to me to respond, here, to one of the commenters on the WSJ site, who claimed, possibly at least partly correctly, that actors of the Jimmy Stewart / Cary Grant era (i.e. not Stanislavski-influenced) could not effectively communicate using your full 'instrument,' (i.e. the body--and my words, not theirs) the same way a modern method performer can.To that, it's easy to respond: go back and watch some Lawrence Olivier movies. I suggest just the opening scene or two of his version of Hamlet.

Plato on poetry's relationship to truth...and that of philosophy. Aristotle adds a few neoclassical (as it were) assertions about art

 Plato apparently says, in his Ion, that poetic works come from a divine madness (or at least an inspiration of such nature, depending on how literally/seriously you take him on this), and that 'Because the poet is subject to this divine madness, it is not his/her function to convey the truth.^{[wikipedia-'mimesis']} Thus, Plato says, truth is the concern only (or, like, mostly--at least in terms of....okay, there's clearly a massive gap in this formulation, because he's putting together a dichotomy of humanities that doesn't include, say, history. Anyway) or primarily of philosophy. Interesting.

Wikipedia goes on about Aristotle's contribution, the beginning of which is:' Aristotle also defined mimesis as the perfection and imitation of nature. Art is not only imitation but also the use of mathematical ideas and symmetry in the search for the perfect, the timeless....'

The article goes on:
'...and contrasting being with becoming. Nature is full of change, decay, and cycles, but art can also search for what is everlasting and the first causes of natural phenomena. Aristotle wrote about the idea of four causes in nature. The first formal cause is like a blueprint, or an immortal idea. The second cause is the material, or what a thing is made out of. The third cause is the process and the agent, in which the artist or creator makes the thing. The fourth cause is the good, or the purpose and end of a thing, known as telos.'

There's plenty more, but that's for you to look into, if you choose. This is plenty to chew on.

Wallace Shawn reads his work

A favorite actor of mine (also a playwright whose work I'm not familiar with) reads from his book of nonfiction essays, 'Essays.'

I feel a bit strange about this weird, since it seems to come from a place that's rather elitist and upper crust, a background and worldview (which he claims to be 'recovering from' in my view) I do not share, nothing about his seeming way of speaking from a stereotypical New York City centrism or, in some cases, generic left-wingery, is anything I identify with. But it's Wallace Shawn, so here he is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wmnSVEkSsoQ

*God, I think I like him less after hearing him read his work, here. All the hypocrisies and feelings of superiority he's pointing out to criticize here are abominable ways of thinking and being I have never shared in the first place. To me, they do not paint modern northeastern-upper-class-social-moderate-liberal-elites (the people who used to be Rockefeller Republicans and now vote Democratic because the modern GOP opposes gay marriage and is just too gauche for the dinner table, don't you think, Mr. Twiddlefingers) in a favorable light to me.