More Crazy Look Alikes: Jimmy Stewart and Nicolas Cage

Has anyone else noticed this? Truth is, I didn't. My son recognized the similarity and tells me they look so much alike that he could hardly tell them apart, if it weren't for their different-era clothing.  I think they do look alike, but the real similarity is in some aspects of movement and gesture which are harder to see in stills. But take a look at these and see if you agree:

And look at this great earnest expression they share: 

What do Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Jack Lemmon and James Cagney have in Common? They are look alikes!

Oh wow. Sometimes I just astound myself.

Having nowhere else to really "put" revelations like this one, Lost in British TV gets them. Lucky it.

I recently discovered that Gene Kelly, Jack Lemmon, James Cagney and Bob Hope look alike. Bear with me. Pictures in a minute.

Here's how this came about. We watched Yankee Doodle Dandy recently, which stars James Cagney in a singing and dancing role. His style and general body build kept reminding me of Gene Kelly. So there's one connection.

Then, a week ago, we watched Mister Roberts. This film has the advantage of starring both James Cagney and Jack Lemmon and seeing both in the same film cemented the idea that when he gets older, Lemmon is going to look just like Cagney looks in Mister Roberts. (By extension, I guess that means Lemmon looks like Kelly, too, since he looks like Cagney!)

Finally, the other day, my son noticed (while watching one of his Road pictures) that Bob Hope looks like Jack Lemmon (or was it Gene Kelly?) I don't know. It doesn't matter, because I agreed. And so now, by extension, they must all look alike.

Don't give me that look. I'm prepared to prove it.

First, they all have a similar broad-faced, open countenance, with long horizontal mouths and squarish heads. Although Hope's is the most prominent in this way, they all have a similar long straight nose, with a strong tip. And its not just their faces. They all have a similar body type: not exactly stocky, but a solid compact frame. None of them were slender, lithe men. Cagney was the shortest at 5'5", Kelly, 5'7"; Lemmon was 5'9" Hope was the tallest at 5'10" -- not short, but certainly no giant. Obviously, Cagney and Kelly had the very fit dancers bodies, which I'm sure Hope and Lemmon would be pleased to be compared to, but though they were in different states of fitness, the underlying body type is cut from the same mold.

Now, what you've been waiting for, the photographic proof!

Anita, Andie and June Cleaver

Watching a melodrama parody from 1940 entitled "The Villain Still Pursued Her," I was struck with the beauty of the lead actress, Anita Louise. She was gorgeous in just the way that a modern audience was sure to appreciate. She had a look that struck me as reminiscent of someone I 'knew' well.

It was her mouth.

She had a lovely high cheeckboned sort of overbite that I could picture on someone . . . I knew I'd seen that unique mouth before. But where...

It took awhile, but then I knew it: Andie MacDowell! OK, I'm not saying they are lookalikes, but they do have the same "type" of mouth. I know it because I've always admired it on Andie. Its focused on the upper lip and upper teeth and seems to lead directly in to high, pronounced cheeckbones. Its the kind of look that makes her seem like she is always on the verge of saying the letter "F".

But then, the most interesting thing happened.

We've been watching "Leave it to Beaver" at our house lately. The show was playing this afternoon and I was noticing Barbara Billingsly, who played June Cleaver. Actually there are several things I've been noticing about June Cleaver that I missed the first time around. First, that she is very very thin; second that she is very very tall, and also that she is actually quite funny. But today I noticed something new: she has that mouth!

Maybe not quite as pronounced as Andie, but its there.

Look:

Emma Chambers looks like Claudie Blakely

You'd think that after almost two months of time off from the blog, I'd have been able to come up with something better than this. But here it is, another brief and slightly lame post:

Emma Chambers, playing Hugh Grant's sister "Honey," turns in a charming performance in Notting Hill.

While watching her in that film last night, I was convinced I'd seen her in something else before -- but I can't figure out what it could have been.  Still can't. She seems to have found fame in the Vicor of Dibley, but I've never watched that.

I think what was really going on was that she was reminding me powerfully of Claudie Blakely. I convinced myself I was watching Blakely in Notting Hill and they just didn't credit her for the role. Kidding. But seriously, these two look alike! Their eyes, noses, teeth, even a dimple.  Dead-ringers -- though about 10 years apart in age.

Oh, and as a side note, if you haven't seen it lately, you haven't seen it at all -- give Notting Hill a pop into the dvd player. You won't regret it. Funny, charming and romantic, a wonderful way to spend an evening.

Jobs, Taylor and Spooks

I had a strong desire to listen to Carolina in My Mind by James Taylor this morning. It must be the time of year. November makes me nostalgically wistful and fills me with a sense of longing. Because I don't actually own the song, I went to Youtube to have a listen and whilst there made another discovery. James Taylor reminds me of Steve Jobs.

Sure there's the superficial similarity of a glossy round head, but its more than that. I see deeper resemblance in the chin, eyebrows, nose and sharp, brilliant eyes. Both were visionaries with soft voices and deeply moving intelligence and they may share a lot more than just physical similarities . . .  if I were to stop and think about it I could let you know.  But this post wasn't really supposed to be about them.

Instead, and in addition to the Jobs/Taylor connection, I was thinking about my connections related to that song. Carolina in My Mind is meaningful--a sad and longing song with a positive message about finding what you need inside of you. Taylor said he wrote it while feeling homesick though he didn't really have a home at the time. That's an unsettling sentiment that I totally understand.

I don't know when I first became aware of this song, but sometime, while I was still very young (far too young to really know what it felt to be lonely, removed, and homesick) I first loved it. The ideas in the song touched me. And then later, as an adult, the larger force of the deep longing settled upon me while spending Christmas alone in California far from home. And still later, a few years ago, a good dear friend (who I now miss) drew the song and its message to my attention yet again.

While listening to it today, tears streamed down my cheeks thinking about that friend and I wondered: why did I feel drawn to listen to something I knew would make me sad?

And that, friends, is how I finally get around to the British tv connection and how this post has anything to do with this blog.

This week I've been getting a number of comments and e-mails from those who have felt disappointed and saddened by the Spooks ending (like so many of us were). Someone wrote to me today about being a glutton for punishment by continuing to listen to music from that series though it brought up the sad ending all over again. We all do things like this. But why?

I have to think that making ourselves sad, reveling in our grief, must somehow be a healing act. By taking the time to really feel a loss, we can start to mend at a cellular level. Dredge up the muck, before just paving over the surface. Maybe for me, the call to hear sad songs at Christmastime and have a good cry over friends and family who are gone and places we aren't able to be is a way to prepare for joy. And maybe for those who confront, head-on, their grief over how Spooks ended, will ultimately enjoy that same healing and state of calm.

Me, on the other hand. Well, I'm still not ready to do that with Spooks. I'd rather pretend that the whole last series/season didn't exist. Denial, you see ;)  Just an earlier stage of grief.

The Muppets, The Movie . . . And Me

British TV may be fabulous, but it's not the only thing worth doing. Right in line with that theme, I just came from the new Muppets movie and I'll tell you this: it was great. There were as many "unaccompanied" grown ups in the audience as there were kids and most of them were laughing hard.

The movie was unusual for its continual breaking of that "4th wall" with characters referring to the earlier song numbers or making little jokes about the plot and length of the movie. The whole thing was charming, funny and self aware with lots of great cracks directed at the washed up Muppets of the olden days.

Somehow all the silliness managed to inspire real moments of wistfulness and remembrance and I was surprised to find a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when Miss Piggy and Kermit finally reunited on stage for a rendition of The Rainbow Connection. There were lots of new songs too and many were quite excellent -- especially Man or Muppet which now plays continually in my mind (owing to the fact that we immediately bought the soundtrack) and in which Jason Segel gets to sing lines like "Am I a man or am I a Muppet?! If I'm a Muppet. .  . then I'm a very manly Muppet." He is brilliant in this role, managing to really make us believe in the strange set up.

Amy Adams too, is simply made for movies like this. She's become a Carole Burnett-like figure -- in that blatantly talented, beautiful, singing, dancing, poised and funny sort of way.

And whatever musical genius arranged Smells Like Teen Spirit for Muppet barbershop quartet needs, seriously, to win some awards. Stunningly funny.

A great many stars have cameos in the movie, including Neil Patrick Harris -- which caused me to have a major breakthrough -- I realized I get him confused with Justin Timberlake. This has happened to me before, but I never put my finger on the phenomenon until now.  I don't know if anyone else has this same Harris/Timberlake problem  -- so I am posting the following just to prove I am not crazy. (Although, maybe the following just proves that I am.)

South Riding - Riding Backwards in Time

If you could have any super power, what would it be?

For me, time travel would be up there, high on the list. It might not unseat the ability to fly, turn invisible or read people's minds, but, yeah, I think its a solid 4th.

The other night, by tapping into the powers of a mini-series called South Riding, I traveled to the 1930s so completely and effectively that I can still smell the dusty shelves and moldy sofas.

In a fabulous stroke of luck, I both learned of this production and discovered that my public library had a copy. Starring Anna Maxwell Martin who I loved so much in Bleak House and in North and South, set in the sadly overlooked 1930s, and dealing with the well-worn but always dramatically interesting topic of inspired teacher introducing a new vision of education to a languishing student body, this sounded perfect! As if this all weren't enough, and truly it was, the production also starred Peter Firth and Penelope Wilton, both of whom I have tremendous respect for.

If you have a predilection for period drama, you, like I, can easily appreciate the value of immersing yourself in a different time period. But if you don't -- well, I'm not really sure how to explain the attraction. I think it lies with that feeling of time travel. When every piece of furniture and clothing, the props, caricatures, music, and cars, the look of the street, and the glimpses into whatever tools and technology were available to people in the period du jour are "correct," there is a sense of transportation that is just heady. I can picture my grandparents and their struggles and style of living so well (though I accept that rural Ohio and Yorkshire are a long way apart).

South Riding simply excels at the art of time travel. It is gorgeous and evocative. And because the 1930s is such an interesting time that is not often done (I'm thinking I Capture the Castle and Cold Comfort Farm), I was fascinated. Such an odd time stuffed in between two world wars with a strangely modern feel, as cars and telephones pepper the background, but still so poor and rural and lacking in most of the social innovations that are more important to our modern life than iPods, the 30s are an era that should be remembered. Doing so is like bringing old photos back to life.

Here, our themes of love, loss, politics with a very small "p", clashing world views, changing times and small time money grubbing were skillfully handled by the astonishingly solid, deep cast.

I hadn't noticed this before, but in this production Maxwell Martin, as Sarah Burton, reminded me greatly of Nicola Walker as Ruth in Spooks. (I know it would be easiest to chalk this one up to my MI-5-obsession rather than anything real, so I almost didn't include that observation in the post, but I really, really think its true.) They have similar hooded eyes and their voices and manner of expression are alike as well. In any case, Sarah, whether Ruth-like or not, is an extremely appealing main character - sharp, confident, driven, hard-drinking, fun and kind, she carries the production well. Her main love interest, Robert Carne (played with great sex appeal by David Morrissey) -- a man she dislikes and disagrees with, but is very attracted to -- is also wonderfully done. He's a passionate, interesting person who is also a loving devoted father.

Penelope Wilton was outstanding as the supportive council member, playing a key role in both Sarah and Robert's lives with subtlety. And Peter Firth was hilariously slimy with a serious birth-control haircut.  Not a role for the Firthies to relish as he is small time slick and priggish. Revel in his acting but not in his attractiveness here! And his scenes with his cat were purrfect. Actually, the cat was a great actor as well : )

The whole thing is cloaked in a thick, sluggish, dreamlike mood. And all is not happy and wrapped up cleanly. But the sad plot points seem to match the time frame well and suit the story.

Richard Armitage Looks Like Hugh Jackman

This is something I should have said a long time ago, but let not another moment pass before saying it now: Richard Armitage and Hugh Jackman look alike.

 

That's it. Yes, a pathetically short blog post, but sometimes that's what you get. I will add this: that they are just a few years apart in age and that they look more alike from certain angles. The top two photos here are Hugh, the bottom two are Richard.