Sunday

Also in this (now legendary) old theguardian Film & Music supplement, besides the articles by Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese on Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, is a short piece on the brilliance of Liam Neeson. He seems to be a remarkably under-rated actor, although this may be self-inflicted. He has done some big roles, but not consistently enough for us to really consider him a great actor. I thought he added gravity to The Phantom Menance, but it may have been a bad choice career-wise. His role in Schindler's List may be what he's remembered most for, and it is true that he plays the 'great man struggling with difficult issues' character very well. Somehow he reminds me Gregory Peck, whom I also like a lot, and who I think also had trouble getting the right roles. They're classical actors, but nowadays we're more interested in flawed heroes, rather than clean-cut ones. Hopefully, however, there's still a place for him. At the moment he's working again with Spielberg on a film about Abraham Lincoln. Interesting.