Welcome to the Shrine to Actors

It goes without saying, Orlando Bloom is an attractive man. (Of course I just said it anyway.) Orlando Bloom is also a fine actor, has lovely physical grace, and has immense capability to charm his audience. His understated acting can be intriguing to watch, but often goes unappreciated by those critics who prefer their actors to flail and chest-thump and do crazy-eyes to show how much they’re emoting.

I prefer subtlety myself. I get more out of Viggo Mortensen arching an eyebrow than two hours of Al Pacino hoo-hahing his way across the screen. Orlando particularly came into his own style with Ridley Scott’s exquisite epic Kingdom of Heaven and Cameron Crowe’s beautiful mess Elizabethtown. In both films, several scenes run just on close-ups alone, and Orlando Bloom holds your attention, speaking volumes simply with subtle shifts of emotion in his eyes. In Elizabethtown, particularly, he excelled in the Viggo Mortensen School of Slaying Your Audience With Your Soulful Eyes.

The little brow furrow always kills me. And you know, Orlando Bloom is also ridiculously good-looking. Did I mention that already?

The problem is, this gorgeous and talented boy doesn’t seem to be doing much these days other than filling tabloid pages with tales of his party/club-opening/gala attendance and whether or not he’s going to marry Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr. And you know, how she feels about the engagement rumors, and how they both deny the rumors, and how they’re jetting off to Spain or Aspen or Yemen or whatever. I just don’t care. I want to know what movies he’s making, and one can barely manage to dig out a tidbit here and there amidst all the flotsam of gossip masquerading as “news”.

There was therefore much joy and hopefulness on my part when the San Francisco Chronicle recently confirmed that Hong Kong action director Johnnie To is directing a remake of The Red Circle–starring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, and Chow Yun-Fat. There’ve been rumors about this circulating since April of last year, including lots of paparazzi photos of Orlando with minor injuries supposedly sustained in martial arts training. Then there was unfortunately a long stretch of months where no news of the film was reported, and I began to fear The Red Circle was another one of those collapsed projects.

Then one of the multitude of Miranda Kerr articles actually had interesting info in it last week, wherein she also mentioned Orlando’s work on The Red Circle film. Now with the added confirmation from the Chronicle, perhaps Orlando is finally doing something that isn’t just tabloid fodder. This could be a very exciting opportunity for him. Keanu Reeves, another pretty man who’s been lashed by critics repeatedly, struck gold when he stepped into the stoic action hero role in Speed. Orlando’s strong suit is his ability to learn physical skills and make them look assured and natural on screen, so this is a great fit for him. A success in a role like this could lead to futher action and martial arts pictures, and hopefully Bloom can win a bit more favor with manly men and grumpy critics.

Orlando worked well with Liam Neeson in Kingdom of Heaven, so it will be a treat to see them together again on the big screen. It’s still disconcerting how sparse the IMDB listing for this film is, but I’m crossing my fingers and hoping there are Orlando movie trailers and interviews and press junkets in our future and a HELL of a lot less about his social habits. The only time I need to know what party Orlando’s attending is if the party is at my house.

*Orlando Bloom Elizabethtown screencap, c2005 Paramount Pictures.

*Watch clips from the film Elizabethtown while Cameron Crowe talks about the music for the film and the casting of Orlando Bloom:

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