For The Record
This montage is three years old so I must have watched it sometime before this morning, and yet I don’t recall doing so. I think I watched another one. (Crazy Cage tributes are ubiquitous.) I know that during the first few seconds I wondered if these were all genuine clips or if it was a mix of real stuff and some imitator sampling Cage classics. People will look at this material 100 years from now and go “Jeez, who was this guy?”
Never gets old. The guy cannot be called subtle.
The absolute highlight is PISSED BLOOOOD! at around the 1.45 mark.
Desperately in need of updating. It’s going to be hard to ever top the most memorable freakout in GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, where you feel like the directors said, “Can you do, like, Nicolas Cage if he was really, really freaking out?”
This montage makes me ridiculously happy. Need it twice a year or so if stuck in a rut!
It’s strange to realize Raising Arizona might be his most nuanced and “normal” role.
The main problem with Cage (if you want to call it that, anyway) isn’t that he can’t be subtle — it’s that he only really has two buttons: “on” and “off.”
And the “off” Cage (see: City of Angels, Windtalkers, Cpt. Corelli’s Mandolin, Family Man, World Trade Center, etc. in addition to practically every post-Con Air Bruckheimer production) is so unbelievably bland onscreen to the point that he seems capable of zombifying anyone who dares lay eyes on him.
His off-the-reservation performances are fun — I’ve never had any problem with them. As a matter of fact, the worse the overall movie is, the more unhinged his persona seems to become (aforementioned Bruckheimer garbage notwithstanding).
Cage’s financial status & caims to someday teach his “shamanic” acting style make me hope we’ll see some kind of acting class tape someday. I’d want to get ahold of that as badly as Brando’s Lying for a Living
Hard to believe he doesn’t have genuine stress inside of him to be able to hit those notes, and therefore impressive that he still doesn’t look bad for the edge of 50.
But yeah I’ll take meltdown Cage over quietly pissed Cage any day.
If he can be that nuts in the movies, imagine what he’s like in real life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYkw-5htPw0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PJddmfesaA