Bryan cranston

All My Sons, set in an American suburb in the summer of 1947, examines the downfall of Joe Keller, a wealthy and patriotic arms manufacturer. During the war he was falsely accused of selling wonky parts to the US military which caused the deaths of 21 airmen. He blamed his partner for the blunder but when the truth emerges he also finds out why his eldest son, Larry, went missing in action. The plot is one of the greatest inventions in world drama and it deserves to be presented with candour, simplicity and naturalism. Director Ivo van Hove dislikes Miller’s decision to set the play on Joe’s front lawn where the neighbours mingle, chat and exchange secrets. In his version, the vacated stage is overlooked by a huge blank wall decorated to resemble a doormat.

When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire. Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead.

The trailer for Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City, depicts the lonesome, desert sci-fi-induced death of twee. A sepia-toned artifice of the American West filmed near Madrid, it has everyone you would expect to be in a Wes Anderson movie, depicting themselves as always, with that special twinge of beautifully centered shots combined with at least one saccharine line which is designed to make you choke up a bit about a character who probably died off screen. Here is the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXCSXuGTF4&ab_channel=FocusFeatures There is something so horribly depressing about this.

Next week will see the final tranche of episodes of the sixth series of Better Call Saul swaggering onto Netflix. They follow a tense mid-season cliffhanger that saw the sudden death of one major character and the unexpected return of a former nemesis. Expectations for the last installment are appropriately high, not least because of the much-heralded return of the two characters who defined the Breaking Bad universe from which the series was spun off: Aaron Paul’s hapless Jesse Pinkman and, most excitingly of all, Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. Better Call Saul’s creators, Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan, are intelligent men. Gilligan was responsible for Breaking Bad, on which Gould was a writer, producer and director.

I’m really not enjoying Your Honor, the latest vehicle for Bryan Cranston to play a good man driven to the dark side by extraordinary and compelling circumstances designed to make the viewer go: ‘There but for the grace of God go I…’ The problem with the compelling circumstances in this case is that they feel so desperately contrived. Cranston plays a priggishly upright New Orleans judge who radiates implausible goodness and rectitude. We first glimpse this during the case of a trial of a black woman accused by police of concealing drugs in an intimate part of her anatomy. A white cop, sweating integrity, swears on the witness stand that he has witnessed her doing it. Open and shut case, right?