I had somehow missed “Boogie Nights” when it first came out in 1997. I knew it had won Bert Reynolds an Academy Award, in a comeback performance that stunned everybody. But somehow I never got around to seeing it, and eventually it dropped off my radar.<\/p>\n
That is, until recently, when I rented the DVD, curious to learn more about P.T. Anderson’s early work.<\/p>\n
It’s a great movie, and Reynolds was astonishing, easily deserving of his Oscar. But it was the depth of the cast that really stunned me — a succession of great actors, many still yet to become well known.<\/p>\n
One by one they showed up on screen — Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle and Joanna Gleason. Mark Wahlberg as the hot-headed young lead knocked it out of the ballpark, William H. Macy in a tragic performance that ripped out my heart, and Alfred Molina who in one electrifying scene managed to be sexy, ridiculous and utterly terrifying, all at the same time.<\/p>\n
Even Heather Graham was good.<\/p>\n
I remember sitting there, overwhelmed by the sheer bravura talent I was seeing on screen, and thinking “There is no way this movie could be any better.”<\/p>\n
Then Philip Seymour Hoffman showed up. And suddenly it was much, much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had somehow missed “Boogie Nights” when it first came out in 1997. I knew it had won Bert Reynolds an Academy Award, in a comeback performance that stunned everybody. But somehow I never got around to seeing it, and eventually it dropped off my radar. That is, until recently, when I rented the DVD, … Continue reading “PSH”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14426,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14425\/revisions\/14426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}