James Gray followed by James White

Here's one of those coincidences in my viewing schedule that I mightn't have caught if I didn't have the ritual of updating the "Most Recently Seen For the First Time" section on the right side of my blog after every new viewing.

Yes, I followed a movie directed by a guy named James Gray (The Lost City of Z) with a movie about a guy named James White.

"Why do I gotta be Mr. Pink?"

"Because you're a faggot, alright?"

Josh Mond, the writer-director of James White, sort of gets to participate as well by having two single syllable names, the first starting with the letter J.

You could say I planned it, but I've had James White out from the library for more than a month (one renewal in there) and I watched it on Thursday night for no other reason than that I have to return it to the library eventually. I might have actually been watching James Gray's movie Thursday night instead, but I forced myself to go to it Wednesday despite being too tired for a 141-minute movie -- a decision I did not regret, if you recall my post from yesterday.

But to give you something of actual substance about James White ... it reminded me that Christopher Abbott has fast become an actor I really look forward to seeing. This despite the fact that I at first found him stagy in the role where I first learned who he was (Hello I Must Be Going), before coming around on him during the course of the movie, and despite the fact that one of the roles I've seen him in, he is ill-advisedly cast as an Arab (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot). I liked him quite a bit in It Comes at Night, though stopped short of loving that movie, and the only other films I've seen him in are Martha Marcy May Marlene, which I like quite a bit but in which I don't remember him, and A Most Violent Year, which I didn't much care for.

I guess the measure of the fact that I like him is that when I saw American Made last Friday night, there was a character I thought was being played by Abbott -- a Colombian drug lord, which was consistent with Foxtrot's notion that Abbott can play races other than white. Despite whitewashing being something I am generally opposed to, I felt glad that it was Abbott in the role -- and disappointed when I discovered it wasn't actually him. This not only suggests that I like his work, but that I consider him a bit of a chameleon, another trait I value in an actor.

So anyway, yeah.