Meta on acting options, or what Aleksandar Jovanovic makes me think of?

Since seeing Aleksandar Jovanovic as Dr. Livesey in the German Treasure Island or Die Schatzinsel, I took a glance through what else he may have done. As search engines actually have to be beat at the corporations' game to find anything with actual content and there are so many Jovanovics, my Google-fu must be strong to have stumbled upon relevant things.

One of the first things that sprung up was that Jovanovic has a rather versatile face for an actor. So far I think pictures from his different roles have reminded me of about ten other actors, prompting me to want to make a picture comparison post. I would imagine there is no better thing for an actor on some levels, even if I've also heard having "an actor's face" being used as something other than a compliment.

Who's he reminded me of so far? It depends on the pictures and his age in the respective roles but the first one was Tom Sizemore as said. The latest was Javier Bardem in one of the bearded photos. Current remembered list thus far also includes Hugh Grant, Jude Law, Kevin Durand, James Nesbitt and Jason Isaacs via Lucius Malfoy when playing longer haired assholes. Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory surfaced at one stage and there are hints of Lost's Michael Emerson in some acting or whatever plus a clear young Christopher Walken face in another something.

Good face for an actor in any case.

There also appeared to be some choices that seemed reasonably bold without my actually seeing the movies to be able to tell for sure for myself, so that's another thing to possibly applaud. Entirely unrelated to acting, I can also appreciate anybody apparently doing martial arts given levels of both physical and mental discipline sides, but never mind me and my conjecture of what people do for hobbies. A third point of interest was his also writing and directing, not sticking to "mere" acting. Alas, I doubt I'll ever see any of the work from that side, but let's see about the rest, what?

Vollfilm had some information about him in relation to Agentur Lutter, which doesn't seem to list him in their main sections though so possibly an older one. Agentur Vogel and La Gente seemed the respective places for the acting and directing sides. Regrettably, I'm not in casting or making a movie I'd need a director for even if I knew if he was any good at that side. Practise makes perfect so I'm all for new interesting European directors doing whatever it is they are doing in any case.

Agentur Vogel's section for Aleksandar Jovanovic also had a link to a video of some more recent acting he's done. It's split into sections so it's easy to navigate if you want to jump forward to another thing.

The thing about German TV from the outside always seems to be that it's mostly police shows. You have a certain pattern with the German ones and there are tons of them about, some of which even reach my country. Or then it's picturesque doctor's country practises in the Alps or some such thing, the variations available probably being no greater than where I come from. I don't know about the domestic German film market but even with some interesting hits in Jovanovic's résumé the mainstream side probably hasn't that much available if talking particularly meaty roles either.

My first thought relating to that was actually to wonder if anybody remembered any benevolent or good or hero-category German characters from Hollywood movies though? All it ever seems to be is Nazis or Evil German Accented people, depending on the movie or TV show. I mean, while I get that with something like Fringe the II World War tying in leads to Evil Nazis appearing and Bond movies have whatever type of characters they have, where are the rest of the Germans? If not "mundane extras suffering under Nazi!Germans" or whatever.

I never got around to seeing Tarantino's last big hit but think the Green Hornet's current villain Christoph Waltz waltzed into Hollywood through his success in that. You need a big hit to end up doing something visible on the American market, and then you still most likely end up cast as only villains. I half know actors trying to make it in theatres and to break into TV and how much work there usually is in the background before anything happens, if it ever happens, and there are many people who deliberately seem to eschew the main roles in favour of a more Character Actor-oriented career that allows for less media focus on their lives as well. There are the tiers you climb, but you often get stuck on certain ones.

So it's what's available in roles and then the other thing, what people would allow you to play based on what's been seen before, what you look or seem like and even what your heritage is. I could just imagine the hilarity (or otherwise) of a German actor with apparent Serbian roots not getting cast as villains on American style markets. The only thing better, given the history of the recent decades, would be the offspring of that combo and an Iraqi-Afghani person having grown up in Iran and Syria trying not to get cast only as villains in the States. My apologies if the thought offends, but you've got to admit certain difficulties with people's prejudices and ideas.

On that mention of Syria, Ghassan Massoud respect from me his way, with country connections of other sorts on the side, but no more of that in this post, right.

In my glance through things I thought I'd like to have a look at Die Unlösbaren Fälle des Herrn Sand, Nachtasyl and some other movies Aleksander Jovanovic has been in in any case. It's not mentioned on some of the agency lists though so it's possible Die Fälle was rubbish. Or harder to use to sell someone for other things, which is much the same to me when I doubt I'll get to catch it in any case.

There appeared to be slightly more meat + variation in roles, but I got that "Als Schauspieler habe ich mindestens 20 Menschen getötet und bin über 20 mal selbst gestorben, und der meistgebrauchte Satz meiner Karriere war: "Ich war´s nicht, ich war´s wirklich nicht," line from La Gente's Client at Work section for him. There were the interesting things, but the rest also offered a strong selection of gangsters and "People likely to rough you up one way or another". If you asked me, the über-slick pictures used on the other agency's site don't necessarily help portray another type of potential either, but that's not my business. People probably know what they're doing when taking shots.

For those of the not German speaking audience (as said, I'm doing on 2 years of it some 15+ years ago myself. Look ma, no hands!), the gist of the problem with the roles was only killing people or getting killed yourself.

Theatre or independent productions may be one answer to some, but it's still probably a limited field I guess, along with people always having bills to pay no matter what they do or want to do. So few of even the people I've focused on briefly to check what else they've done have enough there, if talking my tendency to then ask a lot from the actors focused on as well.

For example, I first saw Mark Strong in The Long Firm where he's excellent, of course, and have since then kept wanting things on equal levels out of everything else he's been in that I've seen. He's played good guys and bad guys, tragic figures and people dangerous to know, so many things in even just the six or so years that he's been on my radar. But with the kind of things that get made, I still keep wanting more depth or more out of him. And that's not going into the other side, of making people forget you even are an actor when some unknown face simply plays some everyday figure. Too much of that gets ignored even by me. But it's not that Mark Strong isn't good, it's that the roles and movies don't have quite enough for the impact I half demand from people I know can deliver it.

I had the same problem with some of the plays seen in London, the oomph or final gut punch or coup de grâcemissing from some characters and plays seen. At which I should do a shout-out to Alex Ferns, who's one of those actors whom I keep forgetting to check out otherwise since he got added to the rosters of attention through the work I saw from him in theatre. I came for Ben Cross and got blown away by Ferns instead.

If it's not clear yet, I have my suspicions that Aleksandar Jovanovic could deliver interesting things if I got to see more of the things out there. I liked bits of the Showreel video's Die Anwälte with him in any case. Mostly that look he does at his ex-wife (?) after that one thing in it. I'm less into the "My daughter is dead!" angst side, but that look stays with you or asks for more than the clip provides. It has elements of old paintings where you don't know what's happened or what is going to happen and projections of all sorts about what is going on in the people's minds surface. The look has stories in it. In my case possibly because I don't know the rest of the details around it all, but the effect remains.

Otherwise, pardon me while I laugh my head off at the thought of that "shaving your chest for a year just to play Rocky Horror in his gold pants" thing. Oh, the further hidden pains of being an actor.

German Treasures

There aren't enough pictures from the 2007 German "Treasure Island" (Die Schatzinsel) production on the Internet. This as a preface to why this post probably seems somewhat crowded with sketches. Alas, they're sketches only of Aleksandar Jovanovic's Doctor Livesey character from that Treasure Island, too, but every little helps?

I may have mentioned before that I never bothered to get a TV when I last moved, my mother using the last one I bought after hers went kaputt. So when I postponed my Christmas visit to her place by one day, I missed the first part of that Treasure Island on TV here. By the time I got around to something of part two, my first glance reaction seems to have been that oh, this one has Tom Sizemore in it, looking unexpectedly hot. 

Second glance said I'd been mistaken on the actor. No offence to Sizemore, who looks fine enough otherwise. A minute or two more told me I even had the language wrong, what with the volume being too low to hear properly late at night.

I have a slight fondness for good Long John Silvers and Tobias Moretti wasn't among the worst at least, and this Treasure Island had packed in a good looking bunch of actors in general. I'm fairly sure pirates didn't look quite such a lot back in the day, for one. It also became clear that their version had gone for a Pirates of the Caribbean approach with Mr. Hunter and Mr. Joyce as well as the ending, but who says no to some derring-do or jolly old romps sprinkled with hints of comedy, anyway? Ben Gunn's Apocalypse Now shot may have been slight overkill though.

Another thing they changed was the character of Doctor Livesey, here played by Aleksandar Jovanovic. Not Tom Sizemore, no. Not Hugh Grant either, even if going by the man's floppier hairstyle of 12 years ago, seen in Kurz und Schmerzlos movie snippets on that rather well-known video clip site.

While the story itself isn't a masterclass in deep character analysis, adventure being more it, Doctor David Livesey is more on the noble and altruistic side in the book. Here the impression is more of deep suspicion of Jim Hawkins and of his possibly even having ganged up with Silver for the treasure. If I had to describe the character in one word, asshole would be one option. If I had to add something before it, righteous asshole could do.

Not to fear, that's said with considerable fondness. I always appreciate a good character like that. Despite his emphasis on the pirates hanging, "lawful good" or even "lawful neutral" might not be correct in Dungeons & Dragons style character morality categories. There was far too much scheming and potential to be self-serving while focused on the treasure to easily decide what he was. If I had seen more I'd probably know better.

Appreciation it was in any case. So much so I wanted to remember some of that and other things for later as well. I have a bad habit of being economical with videotapes and only grabbing titbits of whatever. If I've already missed however much, grabbing all of the rest seems a little off, but I grabbed a few snippets from here and there in any case. This stems mostly from my being old enough not to have had the Net and having lived in the middle of nowhere, relatively speaking. You have no idea how much incentive a 12-year-old gets to sketch if there are no pictures, no magazines or anything about their TV shows and such. Being able to do that from a video still was a luxury rarely got.

I don't draw often and there are wonky bits in all of them, even if I was only doing 5-15 minute sketches in any case. I kept writing stuff about the wrong bits or what to remember later on the paper as well, only to end up drawing the next things part over those. The eraser blotched up everything, so I couldn't really use that much either.

If there are bits missing, I've erased irrelevant other sketches or texts from there.The example on the right also leads to my endlessly going on about the top being too short or bottom too long and not meaning to draw the head in either as the top of the paper was coming up and blah blah text blah.

(Medizin für Ihre männ(er?) oder nicht?)?

Why post? Well, I don't think I have another use for them either. It takes such forevers to get around to drawing these days that I doubt I'll have time to arrange for a composite type thing or to redo something properly for a colour version. I had in any case stubbornly decided that I was going to get sketches to bring with me back to where I live, since I wasn't going to have access to anything else either. I understand there may be a DVD of Die Schatzinsel, but like I'd ever get to see that. I'd like another glance at their Mr. Joyce Gotthard Lange as well, there being potential in that character, much as they were used like the pair of soldiers in PotC.

It also seems like a vague excuse to get back after the prolonged absence. Same with having an excuse to draw something again, since there wasn't a lot of material about their Treasure Island online.

It turns out that Aleksandar Jovanovic is apparently a common name combination if going by Google results. I also have no idea why Serbian-origined people use "Aco" for its nickname, and I can't for the life of me remember the German rules for pronouncing o in such words. If they'd even apply, given the foreign origins.

That my German is even more rusty than my drawing is no wonder though, since it's been over 15 years since I had my two years of it. All of which later lead to the realization that I'd lived far longer in times without the Berlin wall than with it, and other random cultural ponderings, of which no more here.

Check that Treasure Island or Schatzinsel out in any case. I understand Francois Göske/Goeske is pretty popular among some people as well, and they added in a girl, gasp. And if you do get it from somewhere, throw me a picture or two, please, so I can stop abusing drawings.