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smokeybrand · 3 years

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Ding Dong

Amy Dunne is one of my all-time favorite characters in cinema. She is effortlessly terrifying in a tragically beautiful sense. An overwhelming force of nature, focused on a singular purpose; The Utter destruction of the man who betrayed her. Until she changes her mind. Gone Girl was an amazing, amazing, film and the backbone of it’s Amazing Amy is the absolutely villain performance by Rosamund Pike. This chick is incredible at her job but this role really made me pay attention to her craft and, to this day, i believe she was robbed of her Oscar for that role. Look, i love Julianne Moore but f*ck all of that. Pike was robbed. Now, lately, there’s been buzz of another, Amy Dunne, level performance from Rose in this Netflix flick, I Care A Lot. Obviously, i had to see for my self if this sh*t stand’s up to the hype.

The Great

This film feels a lot like Promising Young Woman. I love that kind of energy. Everything is so kinetic, so organic. It’s weird to describe but there is an undercurrent of raw, near-visceral, force about this flick. It’s that flirty intensity that grips you and keeps you invested from scene to scene.

This film is beautifully. The way it’s shot is so pleasing to the eye. It’s borderline Wes Anderson-esuqe with all of the color and symmetry but still it’s own thing. Like, the shot composition is all very meticulous and i kind of love it. Absolutely outstanding scene composition. Brilliantly complimentary music. impeccable shot choice. Jonathan Blakeson directed his ass off. He put together one hell of a technical masterpiece.

Dude also wrote one hell of a film. That’s right, Blakeson pulls double duty on this thing by being both director and writer. No way to f*ck up the vision if you have complete control over it like that. Cats sh*t on the auteur director but, it’s like, why? How? Films are art and the director, the creator, is the artist. Of course they should be able to bring their vision to life. It’s dope seeing Blakeson finally getting the shine he deserves. Dude is the writer/director of The Disappearance of Alice Creed, another excellent film that went under the radar. That was the flick which turned me on to Gemma Arterton and I’ll thank him for that fr the rest of my life

Seriously, this f*cking music kills. It’s kind of an aggressive, New Wave, Eighties Synthfunk, tenor to it and i f*cking love all of it. I’m a sucker for that sound, always have been, and can’t get enough of it’s current revival. Bless the kids and their Retrowave movement and bless Marc Canham for adding it to this film. Like, this is some Tangerine Dream/The Keep levels of dope.

This cast is very small, very tight, so there’s no room for your performance to hide. Everyone is excellent in their respective roles, even the smaller parts. Dianne Wiest as Jennifer Peterson, the catalyst for this film’s conflict. Nicholas Logan as Alexi Ignatyev, a cowardly good and taxi driver for the film’s antagonist who I'll get to in a second. Damian Young as a crooked doc and silent accomplice to ALL of Marla’s shenanigans. Chris Messina, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Macon Blair, and Alicia Witt; All in smaller roles but still powerful and relevant to this plot. There is no dead-weight in these performances at all. That said, the three principals are absolutely amazing.

Of tops, this is a f*cking clinic put on by Rosamund Pike. Her Marla Grayson is every bit the straight up, stone cold killer, that her Amy Dunne was. I cannot stress that enough. Pike has a way of exuding this quiet malice in these types of roles and it rings through in this particular performance something fierce. Marla is the WORST kind of person and Rosamund just f*cking effortlessly, nonchalantly, b ring that cold, cruel, energy to life. Marla isn’t Amy but she’s kind of a saccharine sweet, pastel pastiche, version of her and if Pike doesn’t get a proper Oscar for this performance, this go around, there is absolutely no justice in the world.

Eiza Gonzalez is getting dumb work lately and I'm here for all of that. She’s been gaining momentum in Hollywoodland since her scene stealing turn as Darling in Baby Driver. She’s found her way into Alita: Battle Angel, Hobbs and Shaw, and just recently, Godzilla vs. Kong. Her role as Fran in this film, is definitely a departure from those other roles, and it allows Eiza to really show her skills. This is the best i have ever seen Gonzalez and it makes me yearn for more of her, in tighter roles, like this one.

Peter Dinklage is always excellent in anything he decides to attempt, outside of Destiny, so, obviously, his Roman Lunyov was spot on. I bought into his weirdly uber-gangster persona without pause. No need to suspend my disbelief, it just felt real. Dude sells this character without even trying. That level of ability is rare, especially taking into account his versatility overall. It’s been a while since I've seen Peter in something as good as this and I'm glad he as able to shake that disgusting Thrones finale aftertaste. It’s great to see him back in his fine form.

The level of diversity in this is very interesting. Female lead, in a lesbian relationship with a Latina women, whose principal antagonist is a dwarf? Black Judge, Female doctor, and an elderly plot catalyst. That’s all the identity boxes checked. Knowing what i know about Hollywood, you have to check those boxes in order for studios to even look at your script nowadays. OscarsSoWhite really f*cked up those egocentric, performative liberals, in the movies. The thing is, though, while this movie definitely exudes “GHURRRL POWER”, a lot like the previously referenced Promising Young Woman, it doesn’t thump you over the head with it. This sh*t is nuanced, organic, and never intrusive. This is how yow represent. This is how you instill identity politics into your films without being so goddamn hostile about it.

The Verdict

This movie is f*cking amazing, man. It’s so well written, it needs to be, because these performances are the best I've seen all year. So far. Seriously, these characters are all the worst but, at the same time, so goddamn real. They feel legitimate, so much so, i forgot i was watching a film. I was that deep into this narrative, it’s really that immersive. Rosamund Pike comes through and just destroys this screenplay, embodying Marla, while Eiza Gonzales and Peter Dinklage deliver just a strong supporting duties. Jonathan Blakeson really put together one hell of a film and considering he wrote the damn thing, too, a lot of the credit has to go to him for that. I mean, aside from the laughably strong performances, this flick is gorgeous, has brilliant dialogue, an organic score, and some of the best cinematography I've seen all year. I Care A Lot definitely lives up to all this hype and then some. If you have Netlfix, this thing is worth the watch. If you don’t definitely fly that Jolly Roger for this one. I can’t sing it’s praises enough.

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lazaroschamberger20 · 4 years

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The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life Audiobook

[Book] The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life Audiobook by Benjamin Zander

Presenting twelve breakthrough practices for bringing creativity into all human endeavors, The Art of Possibility is the dynamic product of an extraordinary partnership. The Art of Possibility combines Benjamin Zander's experience as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and his talent as a teacher and communicator with psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander's genius for designing innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment.

The authors' harmoniously interwoven perspectives provide a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of life. Through uplifting stories, parables, and personal anecdotes, the Zanders invite us to become passionate communicators, leaders, and performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world.

Download The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life Audiobook by (Benjamin Zander)

Duration: 6 hours, 40 minutes

Writer: Benjamin Zander

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Narrators: Rosamund Stone Zander, Benjamin Zander

Genres: Rosamund Stone Zander, Benjamin Zander

Rating: 3.83

Narrator Rating: 5

Publication: Saturday, 01 January 2011

The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life Audiobook Reviews

Charles Henderson

Enriching. Provocative. Essential. This book is a gift. Cherish it.

Rating: 5

Kevin Heffernan

I cannot say enough good things about this book. It came to me at exactly the right time in my life and it's incredible. The authors are the coolest couple ever to walk the face of the earth

Rating: 5

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#Health & Wellness #Self Development

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garnetrena · 7 years

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Masterpost du fandom Kaamelott

Navrée d’avance du retard avec lequel je te réponds, @wolfinberlin , mon accès à Internet est très houleux en ce moment... Tu m’avais demandé les ships, headcanons et OCs les plus courants dans le fandom Kaamelott, populaire série TV française qui parodie et déconstruit la légende arthurienne.

Et je réponds avec joie ! Les P’tits Croustis, sentez-vous libres d’ajouter ce que vous voulez !

Top 5 des ships les plus courants (sur Tumblr et AO3)

Slash (de loin le plus répandu)

1. Arthur /+ Perceval (en BrOTP ou en OTP, cela reste la relation la plus aimée)

2. Arthur /+ Lancelot (pareil, mais en seconde position)

3. Arthur/Manilius, mais je ne t’en dis pas trop car ce perso vient du livre VI

4. Arthur/Venec, pour des raisons diverses mais surtout le livre V + fin du livre VI

5. Gauvain /+ Yvain car ce tandem est inséparable. Parfois, on y ajoute Démétra en OT3

+ Merlin/Élias, Gauvain/Galessin, Arthur/Le Dace et quelques autres qui m’échappent

Het (presque toujours canon, bien que plus rare)

1. Arthur/Guenièvre, évidemment, avec des divergences

2. Guenièvre/Lancelot, là aussi évident et canon

3. Séli/Léodagan, moins shippé mais bien aimé en général

4. Loth/Anna de Tintagel pour les weirdos comme moi xD

5. Le rare Uther Pendragon/Ygerne because ?? why the f*ck not

Femslash (en général shippé et écrit par genre trois personnes xDD )

1. Guenièvre/Démétra, pour des raisons compréhensibles

2. Guenièvre/Aconia(/Arthur) - Aconia est un personnage du livre VI

3. Démétra/Aélis et le fandom a émis plein d’headcanons chous sur elles

4. Séli la Picte/Cryda de Tintagel - I’ve started this fire

5. Rosamund/Mehben : Rosamund est une OC et Mehben, la fille de Karadoc

+ Guenièvre/Angharad et quelques autres

(beaucoup de ships du fandom sont vus de manière platonique ou romantique selon les gens, sans qu’on ait jamais eu de guerre là-dessus ! hella rad)

Top 5 des OCs ou personnages secondaires très aimés

1. Rosamund (OC), bâtarde du roi Arthur, à la glorieuse et sapphique destinée

2. Machin le Dragon (OC), un bébé dragon adopté par Yvain et Gauvain

3. Le Dace de l’épisode de “La Morsure du Dace”

4. Narsès le Perse de l’épisode “Eunuques et Chauds Lapins”

5. Edern, le chevalier femme de l’épisode pilote éponyme

+ Des enfants divers (OCs), inventés par le fandom

Headcanons courants sur Tumblr et AO3

- Arthur, Bohort et Venec sont bisexuels

- Le Maître d’Armes est homosexuel (refoulé ou pas)

- Perceval est autiste et asexuel, mais romantique ; et c’est un alien

- Les dieux celtes, greco-romains etc aussi sont plus ou moins des aliens, et ils coexistent avec le Dieu Unique

- Karadoc est asexuel aromantique, son frère Kadoc est autiste

- Anna de Tintagel est bipolaire

- La tante Cryda est lesbienne

- Arthur souffre de stress post-traumatique

- Calogrenant adore les animaux

- Mordred sera le fils d’Anna et d’Arthur et arrivera dans les films

Sentez-vous tous libres d’ajouter des éléments ! \o/

#petitscroustillants #kaamelott #alexandre astier #whatthefrance #upthebaguette #masterpost

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girlweepinginstairwell · 2 years

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WATCH IT rosamund pikes character f*cks women!

WHAT... OH MY GOD. literally a dream come true

#i guess i’ll have 2 like. idk. feign ignorance and disgust when watching this show with my mom then 😭😭#asks

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ravenreadsrapidly · 5 years

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~BOOK TAG~

50 Bookish Questions

Gonna start off the blog with this because... Why not?

1. What is your favourite book and/or book series of all time?

Ummmm..... Honestly? As much as I’d love to answer the first f*cking question I really just can’t because hi, I love way too many books to have a favorite m’kay?

2. What is the longest book you have ever read? How many pages?

Okay, probably... High 500′s-Low 600′s? I mainly read YA novels so I mean... Yeah, nothing too long or too profound I guess.

3. What is the oldest book you have ever read? (Based on its written date)

Honestly- Ummmm... Probably some school mandated book that I had to spend way too long analyzing because ya know gotta love the curriculum man but yeah, probably, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston.

4. What is a book series that everyone else loves but you do not?

Okay, getting into some shade now. Um... I remember when like, the matched series was so hyped up and I just... Didn’t like it too much? The selection series wasn’t too amazing or anything either but I mean that’s just my opinion. Props to you if you loved that book.

5. What book or book series would you like to see turned into a film/ TV series?

Okay, House of Night as a TV series would be so good, just... Yes.

6. What is your favourite stand-alone book?

Probably... Ooo this is a good one. My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick is pretty good, it’s also the first one to come to mind so we’ll go with that for right now.

7. What is a book that you feel glad for not reading?

Honestly? Fifty Shades of Gray can stay FAR away from my ever growing TBR pile

8. What is a book that you feel guilty for not not reading?

... The 50 books that are on my TBR pile that I just haven’t gotten to yet.

9. What is a book you have read that is set in your country of birth?

Ummm... A majority of the books I read are set in the United States so heck yeah man. For an example... I guess I could say the majority of the Mortal Instruments series?

10. What is a book that you own more than one copy of?

I feel attacked... The Mortal Instruments series. How many copies I have is nOne Of YoUr coNcerN

11. What horror book made you really scared?

Hm... I don’t read horror all too often but The murder Complex by Lindsey Cummings was pretty unsettling?

12. What book do you passionately hate?

OkAy. There’s one book I just... I couldn’t get through without feeling... entirely disgusted. It was... I believe it was... Yeah! All the Rage by Courtney Summers. It was just... So graphic and I suppose the things depicted in the book were too inaccurate and played off for me. It upset me in ways I don’t really like discussing, so I’d just... Yeah I’d say that’s probably the book I hate the most.

13. What is the biggest book series you have read? How many books are in it?

Okay. Here’s the tea. I suck at reading series. I’m currently reading House of Night and Throne of Glass but I mean.... They’re both on my TBR right now since I’m rereading the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout so I mean... I guess the longest series that I’ve finished is The Mortal Instruments Series WhOoPs.

14. What book gives you happy memories?

Okay, this is an amazing question. It’d have to be... Hm... Okay, Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn. I don’t have the slightest clue why, I guess it’s a book I read during a hard time in my life and it was just so sweet and pure and wholesome and just thinking about it and reminicing gives me warm, fuzzy feelings.

15. What book made you cry?

WhAt bOoK hAsn’T?!?! Um... I guess in all seriousness though... Okay, avoding the basic answer of, “ALLIGENT” I’m gonna go with... Okay Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge. That book is definitely one of my favorites 10/10 would recommend it’s gr8

16. What book made you laugh?

Hm... The Vampire Academy series overall is pretty funny, Rose is a riot.

17. What is your favourite book that contains an LGBTQ+ character?

Y’all. Listen. I’m gay as f*ck. My boyfriend is great just a subtle PDA because I so love that man. But um... okay The Mortal Instruments series again but not because Alec because f*ck Alec. Magnus Bane is my spirit animal.

18. Have you read a book with a male protagonist? What is it?

Good. Question. Ummm.... Hatchet! by Gary Paulsen, hell yeah. I didz it.

19. Have you read a book set on another planet? What is it?

Does outer space count...? Um... SKSKSKSKSKSKSKS gah, I’ve read books with Aliens... But on a different planet...? I guess I started reading These Broken Stars. That should count... Right...?

20. Have you ever been glad to not finish a series? Which?

OkAy No! I refuse to DNF books, I’m sorry but I will not. They just get put onto the TBR list.

21. Have you ever read a book series because you were pressured?

Pffff ummm.... Probably not! None of my friends read so I mean hahahahahahaha ow

22. What famous author have you not read any books by?

Sksksksksks um.... I have a few Rainbow Rowell books but I sadly haven’t gotten to reading them yet don’t kill me plz plz plz I promise I’m plannin on reading em

23. Who is your favourite author of all time?

Of ALL TiMe?!?! Gahhh! That’s so hard!!!! Um... Okay. I’m committing. Cassandra Clare and I’m so not sorry.

24. How many bookshelves do you own?

Two big bois~~~ Mmmmm I love looking at my books.

25. How many books do you own?

Um... E-enough... Not enough. Must buy more. Must buy more book babies <3

26. What is your favourite non-fiction book?

Okay, not a huge fan of non-fiction. Not gonna lie about that. Not one bit not at all. But probably... Grrrr.... Nope, can’t do it. I can’t read non-fiction I’m sorry man.

27. What is your favourite children’s/middle-grade book?

Basic bitch answer but: HaRrY PoTtEr

28. What is your next book on your TBR?

SKSKSKSKSSKSKSSKSKSSKSKSKS LEMME FINNISH THE LUX SERIES STOP JUDGINGGGGGGGGG!

29. What book are you currently reading?

... The Lux series

30. What book are you planning on buying next?

Honestly? I have no idea. I just kinda... Let myself go into a book store and browse for hours until my wallet is empty.

31. What was the cheapest book you bought?

Bruh. Used book stores that you find next to libraries are a God sent. Some are like... 25 cents? And they’re in Godly condition? It’s amazing.

32. What was the most expensive book you bought?

Um... Manual wise? Like $70, but book book? Maybe $40 on a pre-ordered, signed, hardcover...

33. What is a book you read after seeing the movie/ TV series?

Mortal Instruments! I’ll admit it! It was still fucking better than the movie, fight me. Books are 99.99999% of the time always better.

34. What is the newest book you have bought?

Recently I got, “The Sun is Also A Star,” and, “The Cruel Prince.” So.... Yes. I’m excite.

35. What three books are you most looking forward to reading this year?

Honestly? I have so many books on my TBR and I’m so excited for all of them.

36. What is a book you love that has a terrible trope? (Love triangle, etc)

Twilight. Enough said. Don’t @ me

37. Have you read a book in a different language? What was it?

Nope! I’m not bilingual but I’m learning German because yes.

38. What is a book you’ve read that is set in a time period before you were born?

The Infernal Devices Trilogy, mmm yes feed my soul with perfection.

39. What book offended you?

Um... Thirteen Reasons Why was offensive for five billion reasons tbh.

40. What is the weirdest book you have read?

OOOOOOOOH okay, honestly? Charming by Krystal Wade was pretty weird.

41. What is your favourite duology?

MMM I’ve read a bit of Six of Crows and it’s pretty good but idk, that’s probably it tbh.

42. What is your favourite trilogy?

... The Infernal Devices.

43. What book did you buy because of its cover?

The thousandth floor.... Don’t judge me.

44. What is a book that you love, but has a terrible cover?

ALL THE TEA IN THE WORLD, but I think any book that has a Movie Tie in Cover just automatically is unattractive... My bad.

45. Do you own a poetry anthology? What is your favourite poem from it?

I don’t! But I do want to start exploring books written in Verse

46. Do you own any colouring books based off other books?

Hm... No... But now I want some...

47. Do you own any historical fiction?

I don’t think so? But the “And I Darken” series has been calling my name for a while so...

48. What book made you angry?

Honestly? The last book of the Divergent series. It was just.. No. It was a let down. And I loved that series with my whole heart.

49. What book has inspired you?

Hm... probably... in all seriousness? It’d probably have to be the shadow falls series. I can’t explain why but... It helped me keep going and pushing forward.

50. What book got you into reading?

Definintely The Mortal Instruments Series. No doubt about it.

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recentnews18-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/i-always-felt-like-i-was-the-funny-friend-of-girls-that-i-fancied-chris-odowd-reflects-his-teen-years/

'I always felt like I was the funny friend of girls that I fancied' - Chris O'Dowd reflects his teen years

Dawn O’Porter and Chris O’Dowd attend the SAG-AFTRA Foundation Patron of the Artists Awards 2017 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on November 9, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA Foundation ) Dawn O’Porter (L) and husband Chris O’Dowd attend the red carpet premiere of EPIX original series “Get Shorty” at Pacfic Design Center on August 10, 2017 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images) Presenter Dawn Porter and fiance Actor Chris O’Dowd attend Fashion Kicks in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support, Beechwood Cancer Care Centre Stockport and the Chefs Adopt a School Project at Lancashire County Cricket Club on May 1, 2012 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage) Actor Chris O’Dowd and wife Dawn Porter attend “The Sapphires” after party during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival at The Brandt House on September 9, 2012 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Todd Oren/Getty Images for Weinstein) Chris O’Dowd and Dawn Porter attend the Elle Style Awards at The Savoy Hotel on February 11, 2013 in London, England. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage) Chris O’Dowd attends the “Juliet, Naked” New York Premiere at Metrograph on August 14, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images) Chris O’Dowd in Get Shorty Actors Chris O’Dowd, Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke attend the “Juliet, Naked” New York Premiere at Metrograph on August 14, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images) Chris O’Dowd with his wife Dawn O’Porter Chris O’Dowd and Dawn O’Porter attend the launch party for The Pool, a unique multi-media platform for busy women co-founded by renowned editor and journalist Sam Baker and broadcaster Lauren Laverne, on April 23, 2015 in London, England. www.the-pool.com (Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images for The Pool)

‘I always felt like I was the funny friend of girls that I fancied’ – Chris O’Dowd reflects his teen years

Independent.ie

Chris O’Dowd ambles into a café to meet me a week before he turns 39.

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/i-always-felt-like-i-was-the-funny-friend-of-girls-that-i-fancied-chris-odowd-reflects-his-teen-years-37518598.html

https://www.independent.ie/incoming/article37218307.ece/5c471/AUTOCROP/h342/GettyImages-872349982.jpg

Chris O’Dowd ambles into a café to meet me a week before he turns 39.

But by his own biological calendar, that birthday is long gone. In O’Dowd years, he’s already 52. “It’s like, ‘Am I not f**king 40 yet?’ I turned 39 when I was about 26. I feel like I’ve been very old for a very long time,” he says, squinting his close-set eyes. “I was the youngest and last kid [of five], left at home as my parents were breaking up. As a 15-year-old, I took on the behaviour of the man of the house. I was a child-man. That’s why I’ve played a lot of man-children.”

His overgrown boys have included tech slacker Roy Trenneman, his breakout role in Channel 4’s cult comedy The IT Crowd, record label jerk Ronnie in Judd Apatow’s This Is 40, and an assortment of oafs (not least a bad boyfriend in Girls). But since his turn in Bridesmaids in 2011, O’Dowd has become a regular in Apatow’s Hollywood gang of everymen. It was Apatow who suggested O’Dowd for the role of his latest emotionally stunted male: Duncan, a narcissistic music nerd in the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked.

This is the first of two projects with Hornby. “I’m starting to feel like his muse,” he says chuckling, but he’s keen to dis-identify with the Hornby-esque male. “I don’t have the arrested development of his characters,” he insists. “I was brought up in a matriarchal household. My mother is a therapist, so we had mature conversations about behaviour and identity. Hornby characters believe, ‘You are what you like’. That’s increasingly part of the male psyche as we are clutching for an identity. We were told for centuries that our identity was tied up with machismo and now we are seeing that machismo has a lot of drawbacks.”

O’Dowd’s public image as the affable Irish slacker who merely stumbled into breaking America does not exactly tally with his dynamic CV. But he’s still conscious that “today’s cockerel is tomorrow’s feather duster”. On his writing desk at home in LA he keeps a photo of a “spit bucket” full of 30 half-masticated burgers for an ad he once did, to remind himself that his success is “not just a given”. He admits to suffering less from impostor syndrome than “an Irish inferiority complex. The British can be a bit snooty about Irish people, even now. They’ve seen the danger of the Irish that the Americans haven’t. Americans just see the Irish as jesters.”

It doesn’t bother him, he says, that he’s still seen as a comic actor despite a raft of dramas over the last five years. But some things do. In fact he can get quite riled, for starters, on the subject of Catholicism. In 2014, in John McDonagh’s Calvary, he played a wife-beating butcher wreaking vengeance on the church for being sexually abused by a priest as a boy. O’Dowd didn’t track down historical Irish victims for his research, he tells me, partly because he already knew so many. “They are not that uncommon. I know many people who priests have exposed themselves to.” He is a vehement atheist, and says the “small turn-out” for Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland in August is “the shape of things to come. For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church provided an identity for Ireland at a time that we were suppressed. The need is no longer there. So if they are going to keep f**king kids, they are in trouble.”

Dawn O’Porter (L) and husband Chris O’Dowd attend the red carpet premiere of EPIX original series “Get Shorty” at Pacfic Design Center on August 10, 2017 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

Read more: Review: Chris O’Dowd is pricelessly funny from start to finish in ‘Juliet, Naked’

The state of oratory is another one of his bugbears: he once wanted to be a political speechwriter. “Theresa May is such a terrible speaker. There’s so much verbosity and such a lack of creativity. Obviously in America, it’s become so juvenile. Taking ideology out of it, the conversation is dumbing because it’s so poor in its execution.” And Brexit: “Increasingly I’m like, ‘F**k the People. F**k you, if you didn’t get that they were lying to you’. It’s like a clown told me a story and I chose to believe it… It’s such a low ebb of human civilisation, a really dangerous time for Anglo-Irish relations. Boris Johnson wants a bridge to Ireland? What’s that going to solve?” Suddenly he stops, worried about moaning.

O’Dowd was born in Boyle, Co Roscommon, to Sean, a graphic designer, and psychotherapist Denise. He was left to the tyranny of his three sisters at 11, after his older brother left home. They amused themselves by painting make-up on their sleeping brother before sending him to school. As a survival mechanism O’Dowd developed a “big personality” in tandem with his fast-growing body. “I was 6ft tall by the time I was 11. I was a looming, towering figure of ridicule”. He played Gaelic football for the county. But, he says, he was never a “Jack the lad”.

By 13, he was already helping raise his 17-year-old sister’s baby. “I always felt like I was the funny friend of girls that I fancied. I found a position of comfort in that.”

By his own account, O’Dowd stumbled into acting after he accompanied a friend to an audition at University College Dublin, where he was studying politics and sociology. He paid his way through drama school with hod-carrying: “It was a very odd time: I’d get up at 5am to work on a building site, then go to a flamenco f**king class.”

There followed breaks in theatre, Vera Drake (2004) and a three-year stint on Irish drama The Clinic. But it was his role in The Festival in 2005 that brought him to the attention of Graham Linehan, who was casting for The IT Crowd.

Since the series began in 2006, the image of “techies” has gone from basement to virtual rock stars. “Our perception of what IT guys are has changed from Bill Gates to Elon Musk.” He’s not entirely sorry that Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been “getting their comeuppance” recently. “I just think that it’s odd that people who seem so socially stunted have got so much control over our lives.” In 2009 he took a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, where he stumbled upon the “naturalistic” comedy creator Judd Apatow backstage at a Louis CK gig. “I said, ‘F**k me, that’s Judd Apatow. I think he’s the reason I came over here.”

Read more: Dawn O’Porter says she was too proud to come home after her US series was dropped

Chris O’Dowd in Get Shorty

The other life-altering encounter in Los Angeles was with Scottish TV presenter and writer Dawn Porter; she changed her name to O’Porter when they married in 2012. There were only brief bachelor days before then, with co-star Jason Segel as his wingman. They once tried to pull the same girl with “verbatim the same text. It said, ‘Why don’t you swing over and we’ll pop open a bottle of vino on the deck’. We’d been hanging out and drinking a lot, so we must have started sharing a vernacular.”

Segel is godfather to O’Dowd’s first son Art, three, brother of one-year-old Valentine, and is a regular at the O’Porter’s weekly Sunday roasts for 20 in West Hollywood. O’Dowd has little tolerance for British cliches about LA. “People think that everyone in LA lives in Beverly Hills and has surgery. It’s the same as when Americans talk about the British as if everybody knows the Queen.”

He’s currently in pre-production for Hornby’s State of the Union, a TV series co-starring Rosamund Pike, following a couple in marriage counselling.

He was reminded of the salad days of his own marriage while unpacking boxes at their new London home. “We found some tea towels printed with a picture of us dressed as bridezillas for Halloween, and Paul Newman’s saying, ‘Keep the arguments clean and the sex dirty’. Now everything else is dirty.” Perhaps, despite two kids, Hollywood stardom and twinkling charm, O’Dowd is discovering you can’t have everything.

Juliet, Naked is currently showing

Chris O’Dowd attends the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival After Party For Love After Love At Up And Down at Up&Down on April 22, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for 2017 Tribeca Film Festival)

Indo Review

Source: https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/i-always-felt-like-i-was-the-funny-friend-of-girls-that-i-fancied-chris-odowd-reflects-his-teen-years-37518598.html

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