Top 5 characters from book to film

After gushing about Toby Stephens in Jane Eyre on my personal blog yesterday, I was lying in bed in the wee hours of the morning with a unsleepy Elinore beside me thinking about other possibly awesome performances. So I thought it was due time to bring back the KWAW top 5s.

So this is a top 5 list of the actors you think really brought a book character to life, better then you even imagined they were on page. Actors that not only embodied, but enriched the character in your head, totally making it their own.

So here is mine:

1. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.
2. Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.
3. Toby Stephens as Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre.
4. Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird.
5. Hugh Grant as Will in About A Boy.

I struggled putting Hugh Grant up there, but in the end I just had to. His portrayal of Will in that movie was SO entertaining. I really enjoyed his performance and this movie made me like the book a whole lot more then I had before, so I am putting him up there. I don't think I need to explain any of the others.

Top 5 Lazy/Rainy/Sick day movies

Em mentioned in the recent Sunday's With Sue comments that there should be a Top 5 list of lazy/rainy/sick day movies. I was kind of waiting for you to do it Em, but I've made my list, so I'll start it. On afternoons that we feel like watching a movie because we are being lazy, or it's snowing so hard our dish doesn't get signal, these are the top movies Cam and I own that we are most likely to watch. And they aren't in any kind of order.

5- Fargo- I love this and pretty much all Coen brother's movies.

4- The Unforgiven- Clint Eastwood is pretty much my favorite hollywood person and this movie is the best!

3- Lord of the Rings movies- Surprise! I'm including all 3 of them in this one.

2- Mystic River- I love this movie! Sean Penn is wonderful, so is Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. It's also another Eastwood classic, he not only directed it, he composed the music for it. (is there anything he can't do?)

1- It's a 3-way tie! I could not decide, so I just have to list all 3: Zoolander/Open Range/3:10 to Yuma. --

I guess I like westerns, because there are 3 of them on here. If Cam were here he would probably insist on the Star Wars movies, but for some reason, we don't own any of them. My idea behind this posting is movies you own that you can easily just pop in the player and watch.

Attractive Celebrities

I can't figure out how you guys all contributed to the same post. So I'm doing a separate posting of celebrities I find attractive.
Tobey Maguire

There is just something about Tobey. Love him. So dang cute.

Guy Pierce

I first saw Guy Pierce in Memento. Very good looking.

Wentworth Miller

He is in Prison Break. This is a T.V. show I got hooked on about 1/2 way through the first season. Hated the second season, but third season is good.

Joe Perry

He has just the greatest jawline ever (much like Jonny Greenwood).

Kurt Cobain

I've always thought Kurt was way cute.

                               MATT'S PICK

Thomas Carroll - Elizabethan Report

B's Top 5 Most Attractive Celebrities

In no particular order:

I was raised on the music of the Rolling Stones, and a documentary of them, and I always wanted to marry Mick.

Tom Hanks may be my favorite actor of all time. He's also brilliant, and was adorable when he was younger. He has since aged very well.



Matt and I watched a Bob Dylan documentary a while ago, and young Bob was SO cute and into his music, and didn't care what anyone thought. He just wanted to play. I also LOVE his sloppy recording style. He could just play it through once, how he thought it might be, and that was it. It was so cool!!



This is Gaspard Ulliel (Gas-par Oo-lee-ay). He is one of the 5 attractive French boys that I found while I was over there, and he's one of their superstars to boot! He is in one of my FAVORITE French movies, called Une Longue Dimanche de Fiancailles (A Very Long Engagement), that I absolutely loved. He also played a young Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal Rising, and has a dimple on just one cheek.



Starring alongside Gaspard in Une Longue Dimanche was the cutest person on the planet, Audrey Tautou (Aw-dray Tah-too). You must all go rent Le Destin Fabuleux d'Amelie Poulain (The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain) right now. It is rated R, due to the French peoples nonchalance about nudity, and one of the characters works somewhere questionable. However, the storyline and cinematography are the best things EVER, so if you can stand subtitles, GO RENT THIS!! She is soooo cute. She also starred (alongside Tom Hanks) in the DaVince Code. Here she is in Amelie demonstrating how one of her favorite things to do is crack through the top of Creme Brulee. This is probably my favorite movie ever.




Hehe, one honorable mention. Despite my aversion to all things country now, I used to want to marry Garth Brooks if Mick Jagger wasn't available. He was cute in a cowboy way, and I still am a huge fan.

Emily's picks

I used to be obsessed with the dude from Train's mouth. I always just liked his mouth. His music? Eh.

I went 30+ years never realizing how cute Jude Law was. He is cute! Perhaps the only fair haired man I have ever thought good looking.
I do like Colin Firth

Denny, the guy who died waiting for his heart in Grey's Anatomy is attractive

And last but not least-- Jonny. Now, this is not the reason I love him so much, it is just incidental. His talent far out weighs his looks.
I added this picture just for you Sue, Look! He is almost smiling...

Haley's Picks:
(By the way, I totally agree with Em and B that I really could care less about attractive celebrities. I may notice but just move on and think how cute my husband is! Hehe. So, in no particular order, here are my picks.)

Christian Bale
I think I first thought he was cute when I was a teenager and saw him in Little Women. I also think he makes a great Batman.

Josh Hartnett
Call me 13, but I have always thought he was cute.


John Travolta
What more can I say?


Legolas.....
Hehe. Confession time. I don't know why but I thought Legolas (Orlando Bloom) was good looking.


Richard Armitage
I think my mom and I both thought he was good looking when we watched "North & South." Haha. Which was really good by the way Em, nice recommendation.

Sue's picks:

First, I just want to say WAY TO GO!! Thank you girls for not picking obvious choices like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Johnny Depp and Leo!!! Although some of the picks are beyond me, (Garth Brooks for instance) this is a great post that shows what we all see as attractive. This post was hard for me because looks really mean nothing to me. So, over the last couple of days, I really tried to concentrate on what actors just look good to me. I came up with three actors that, when I see them in a TV show or a movie, I say to myself "dang, he is good-looking".

Jason Bateman. He is so dang cute! I have had a crush on him since I was like 10 years old. I think if you were to look up "cute" in the dictionary, a picture of Jason Bateman would come up. I am also a huge fan of his acting. "Arrested Developement" was a great show and he was so great as the druggie, commentarie guy in Dodgeball.

Ed Norton. I think he is one of the best looking Hollywood guys there is. There is so much to like about him. He is a great actor, he is good looking, he is a great actor etc.... He has such a great voice! I am a total voice person. And I love the sound of Ed Norton's voice. He is one of the few actors that I will see a movie just because he is in it.

And my pick on the most attractive celebrity? Peter Sarsgaard! So far, he has mostly done Broadway and some Independant Films. He is so talented and cute, he will someday win an Oscar for sure. He is an amazing actor and he has one of the best voices I've ever heard. For some reason, the actual sound of someone's voice, is quite attractive to me. If you want to see how good he is than see Garden State or Shattered Glass. Or just wait until Hollywood realizes how amazing he his. He is definitely my pick on the best looking actor out there.

Top 5 things that give me the chills

5. The squeaky sound (and feeling) of wet shoes on thin car carpet.

4. Touching pottery or other rough things like maybe cinder blocks after my hands are all raisiny from being wet for a long time.

3. Finger nails on car paint. I think it is worse on older cars that have spots of rust on them.

2. The soap scum build up on drinking glasses. If I so much as think about the feeling of my fingernails touching that, I have to bundle up and get in front of a heater.  (I just zipped up my hoodie)

1. This one is a little hard to explain, but it's bad. When your eating an apple, I swear the juice does something weird to your lips... It's like even though they are wet, they feel dry when your lips touch something! Do you know that feeling? If your lip touches your teeth, tongue, or other lip it feels so gross! It gives me the chills so bad that I even think twice about eating an apple, or I just eat it like a gorilla with my lips all puckered so they stay out of the way.

If your going to do one of your own, I suggest getting somewhere warm! This post sucked to do! I shuddered so much I almost got whip-lash! 

Top 5 Best Cover Songs

Best remakes of all time!

1. 99 Red Balloons - Goldfinger covering Nena
2. I Will Survive - Cake covering Gloria Gaynor
3. Candy Says (Country Jellyfish Version)- Blind Melon covering the Velvet Underground
4. Nobody Does It Better - Radiohead covering Carly Simon (with Jonny's guitar stylings the last half of this song--yeaH baBy! This song never had it better...)
5. Is a tie (from same album)
Superstar - Sonic Youth &
Rainy Days and Mondays - Cracker both covering The Carpenters

Very hard to choose 5!!!!

Honorary mentions:

All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan - TOTALLY made it his song.
Tangerine - Big Head Todd and the Monsters covering Led Zeppelin
Groovy Kind of Love - My Superhero covering The Mindbenders
Cruisin' - D'Angelo covering Billy Holiday (first version of song I know of)
Crash - The Mr. T Experience covering The Primitives
Turning Japanese - No Use For a Name covering The Vapors

I could only find one of my honorary mentions in playlists.com! Shame. Tangerine is particularly good.

Here is Matt's (1) song he mentioned in the comments:

Here are Sue's (sorry, couldn't find Neil's On Broadway, too obscure i guess. Too bad for all but B):

Here's Cats (couldn't find Tom Petty's License to Kill, lame.):

Here is the video to Cat's Tom Petty song:

Newman has been in my top five or six best male actors for a long time. Props to him for staying married to Joanne Woodward, for driving race cars and having blue eyes.

1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

2. Absence of Malice

3. The Sting

4. Cool Hand Luke

5. The Color of Money (sorry to you who don't like Tom Cruse)

RIP, Paul

Top 5 famous people you may be surprised I like

Most of you know that I pretty much dislike most famous people. I think most of them are overrated, over-paid, not as talented as people think they are, and I think most of them would be absolutely dreadful to meet in person. There are however, a lot of them that I do like. This is a list of 5 famous people it will probably surprise you that I like.

5-Al Roker
4-Kathy Lee Gifford
3-Dwayne Johnson "The Rock"
2-Kathy Griffin
1-Donny and Marie Osmond

Surprised? The Kathy Griffin one may not be all that surprising. Her life on the D-List was a very pleasent surprise when I discovered it over the summer. I always thought she was kind of funny, but that show totally cracks me and Cam up. And I don't like The Rock because of his wrestling career, never watched him wrestle. But he can be really funny. If you haven't seen the movie Be Cool, you have to see it. He is the best in it.

Top 5 Shopping/Makeover scenes in movies

1: Brittany Murphy/Tai in Clueless
2: Julia Roberts/Viv in Pretty Woman
3: Drew Barrymore/Danielle in Ever After
4: Belle in the yellow dress/Beauty and the Beast

And the best one EVER

5: Carla Gugino/Rebecca in Son in Law

Top 5 reasons Pretty Woman sucks as a movie

I watched this recently with Dad, and I have to say, it really bugged me. It gets 1

1: It's a Cinderella story about a hooker.
2: Julia Roberts is way too classy to be a hooker.
3: Julia Roberts was not a very good actress in it.
4: My mom has a huge crush on Richard Gere, so he automatically bugs me.
5: Stuckie the lawyer is a complete jerky slimebally.

Sue, I want to know what you think. And I did like her clothes in the movie. Clothes make the movie sometimes.

Top 5 reasons why I love my XL-2 camera

1: It doesn't get annoyed with me because I flush EVERYTHING down the toilet

2: It has never accidently elbowed me in almost every part of my body. 

3: It doesn't talk baby talk for 3 straight hours.

4: It lets me cut my fingernails in church.

5: It doesn't fall asleep during movies.  

Rarnees test blog (pretty much done by B)

Top fives

I have another idea (yeah, I'm full of them!)

In the spirit of High Fidelity (I have only read the book, but I assume they do this in the movie too). They are always doing a "top 5" of something. I think this would also be fun to do randomly on here. Just label them "top fives". In the comments, share with us your top five of the same subject.

I'll start....

Top five Dr. Seuss Books

1. The King's Stilts
2. Yertle the Turtle
3. The Sleep Book
4. The Lorax
5. Thudwicke the Big Hearted Moose

Dr Seuss (list of books if you need a brain jog)