Sally Silverscreen of 18 Cinema Lane tagged me with the "Flaming Hot.... Five Reasons Why" tag.  Thanks, Sally!  You know I do enjoy blog tags :-D

Doesn't hurt that Hugh Jackman is unrelentingly handsome, of course.  But I loved Wolvie in the comic books before the movies even came out, so Hugh's deliciousness is just a sort of bonus, not what makes me swoon over the character.



Sawyer is more than just a handsome face, scruffy beard, long hair, and delicious Southern accent (and it's real, not fake, nom nom nom).  He also reads constantly, is completely devoted to refusing to let anyone ever like him at all, and has an anti-hero complex just begging to be disputed.

Eva at The Caffeinated Fangirl has created a new tag AND tagged me with it!  Which is perfect timing, because I was just hunting through my post drafts to see if I had any unfinished tags to share, and I didn't... but now that doesn't matter, because I have this one to fill out and share :-)

A few years ago, I did a list of my ten favorite movie/TV characters.  It didn't occur to me at the time I was making that list, but... they were all men.  So... time to do another list :-)  Here are my ten favorite female characters on screens big and small.


I love some of these characters in print too, but here I'm focusing on their onscreen iterations, okay?


1.  Victoria Barkley (Miss Barbara Stanwyck) from The Big Valley (1965-69).  I wrote a whole post a few years ago about how much I want to be like Victoria when I grow up.  She is smart, compassionate, feisty, stubborn, generous, loyal, and forgiving.  Wonderful woman.


2.  Anne Shirley (Megan Followes) from Anne of Green Gables (1985) and Anne of Avonlea (1987).  She's very unlike me in a lot of ways -- she's as unshy as I am shy, she's got a quick temper and mine is a slower simmer, and she keeps grudges, while I am usually quick to forgive.  But she's also so similar.  Like me, she's an imaginative daydreamer.  A book-lover.  An outsider.  I relate to Anne a lot, both in the books and in these filmed versions.


3.  Jane Eyre (Zelah Clarke) from the 1983 BBC version of Jane Eyre.  Jane is actually my favorite fictional heroine overall, but this list is supposed to be about on-screen characters, so she drops a few slots here.  Anyway, I love Jane because she is so principled, stalwart, and loving.  She spends her whole life insisting she will obey God (and her conscience) rather than men, and standing up to man after man who tries to bend her to their own will instead of God's.  She's an inspiration to me.


4.  Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) from the Thin Man movies.  Nora is the epitome of a spunky, helpful, supportive wife.  She and her husband Nick Charles (William Powell) are #marriagegoals for me because they genuinely enjoy being together.  They make each other laugh, encourage each other, help each other, and keep each other sane.  I adore them, but especially Nora.


5.  Lucy Eleanor Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) from While You Were Sleeping (1995).  Lucy is basically exactly me.  Put me in that situation, parents dead and me unmarried, and I'd be Lucy.  Have a cat, break things with my Christmas tree, create an imaginary life for myself with a handsome stranger, and totally be unable to tell people truths because I'm so lonely I can't bring myself to give them up.


6.  Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015).  Gaby is extremely competent.  She can fix cars, drive cars, banter, dance, spy, and survive with the best of them.  She is 1/3 of why I love that movie so much.


7.  Beatrice (Emma Thompson) from Much Ado About Nothing (1993).  Oh look, another intelligent, feisty, witty, sarcastic, fierce female character.  Are you sensing a theme here?  Clearly, I have a Type when it comes to female characters I will gravitate toward.  Beatrice also happens to have been written by Shakespeare, so she gets a extra good dialog and some above-par character development.  Thompson manages to blend plenty of wistful in with the prickly so you don't just want her to go away all the time.


8.  Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) from Lost (2004-10).  I'm not into "shipping" and don't go in for "One True Pairings" as a general rule... but Sawyer and Juliet are my Lost OTP.  Also, you'll notice they're a canonical couple.  I get very annoyed with people who want Sawyer to get back with Kate because Juliet is so Right For Him.  She matches him in intelligence and stubbornness, gently guides him to becoming a better person, inspires him, uplifts him, and... it's probably weird for me to be talking so much about a guy on a list that's supposed to be about female characters, but Juliet's patience and perseverance with Sawyer is a big part of why I love her, so... there it is.


9.  Emma Woodhouse (Gwyneth Paltrow) from Emma (1996).  I don't like Emma in Jane Austen's book until the very end, but Paltrow's Emma has a kindness and elegance and sweetness that make the character one I'd love to hang out with, not one I want to kick.  Remarkable achievement, I think.


10.  Dr. Michaela Quinn (Jane Seymour) from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-98).  Smart, stubborn, courageous, kind, helpful, determined, protective, loving, a little bossy... Dr. Mike is everything I like in a woman.  As you may have come to realize while reading this list.

Okay, that's it!  Who are your favorite female screen characters?  Do we share any favorites?

How is it that I've never listed off my ten favorite TV shows?  I did a list of my ten favorite western TV shows a while back, but not of my favorite shows across all genres.  Silly me.  Time to fix that.  Thank you, Eva, for posting your top ten list and inspiring me to do my own!


1.  Combat! (1962-67)  American infantrymen battle their way through Normandy after the D-DAY invasion.  Some of the very best serious writing I've ever seen on a series, and the acting is top-notch too.  The show was so well-respected that movie actors like James Coburn and Lee Marvin asked if they could guest-star on it.  I've loved this show for 23 years, and I've written and co-written close to three dozen fanfic stories for it, which I've posted under my "call sign" of White Queen at the fansite my best friend and I maintain, Fruit-Salad.com.  Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) is my favorite fictional character of all time.  I've got a list of my ten fave eps here.

2.  Angel (1999-2004)  Angel (David Boreanaz) is a vampire who's been cursed with a soul.  Determined to help people for the rest of his time on earth, to make up for all the people he killed when he was evil, Angel sets up what basically is a supernatural detective agency in Los Angeles.  I was first drawn to this show because of Angel's search for forgiveness (well, that and Boreanaz' impossibly handsome looks), but I grew to love all the characters, the mystery-of-the-week format that riffed off the film noir and hard-boiled detective stories I loved, and the amazing writing of Joss Whedon and his pals.  This is the only other TV show I've ever written fanfic for, and you'll find those stories on Fruit-Salad.com too because I crossed it the show with Combat! for extra fun.

3.  The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68)  Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) does his best to keep the peace in quiet Mayberry, NC, with the help of a host of amusing friends and family.  He's one of the best fictional fathers I've ever encountered, caring alone (he's widowed) for his son Opie (Ronnie Howard) with wisdom, love, and good humor.  I've recently introduced my kids to this show, and they love it too now!

4.  The Big Valley (1965-69)  A wealthy widow (Barbara Stanwyck), her children (Richard Long, Peter Breck, Linda Evans), and her husband's illegitimate son (Lee Majors) have a host of interesting adventures on and around their California ranch.  Loads of wonderful guest stars, loads of emotionally engaging stories, and Stanwyck's matriarch is one of my role models.

5.  Star Trek:  The Original Series (1966-69)  Starfleet personnel aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise go boldly where no man, woman, or Vulcan has ever gone before as they explore the universe, meet all kinds of interesting aliens, and generally have lots of adventures.  I've got a list of my ten fave eps posted here.

6.  The Rifleman (1958-63)  Widowed rancher Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) and his young son Mark (Johnny Crawford) spend a lot of time getting into and out of one adventure after another in the little town of North Fork, NM.  Most of the time, Lucas ends up having to use his specially modified Winchester repeater to save the day in one way or another.  Lots of great guest stars on this one too, like Sammy Davis, Jr., Vic Morrow, Robert Vaughn, and John Carradine.  Lucas McCain is probably the other best fictional father I've ever seen, tying with Andy Taylor.  He's tough, but kind.

7.  Five Mile Creek (1983-85)  An American (Jay Kerr) and an Australian (Rod Taylor) team up to start a stage coach line back when Australia was as wild as the American West.  Another American (Louise Caire Clark) and another Australian (Liz Burch) start up a way station to feed the stage line's passengers.  And then they all have lots of family-friendly adventures, some of them fall in love with each other, and it's just generally fun and sweet and exciting and I love it to bits. Whyyyyyyyyy won't they release seasons 2 and 3 to DVD???

8.  Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)  High school girl Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends (aka the Scooby Gang) battle vampires and other monsters while trying to navigate first high school, then college, then adulthood.  (Angel is a spin-off from this show.)  Joss Whedon's way with characters, dialog, and plot twists elevate this from the mindless schlockfest you might expect to a truly poignant look at life, with many of the monsters standing as metaphors for things we endure while growing up.

9.  A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000-02)  Reclusive genius Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) and his energetic operative Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton) solve crimes for a host of interesting clients.  This show got me started reading Rex Stout's novels that form the basis for the show's scripts, but while the books are set in the decades they were written, from the 1930s to the 1970s, the TV show sits solidly in the late 1940s to early 1950s -- just after WWII.  The show as a whole has a sort of "community theatre production" feel to it because they deliberately use the same actors week after week for all the guest characters.

10.  Lost (2004-2010)  A plane crashes on a mysterious island, and the survivors spend the next six seasons trying to survive, solve mysteries, and get off that island.  It is a very odd show, and I wasn't sure I was going to put it on this list, but my deep and abiding love for Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and the fact that I own all six seasons convinced me that yeah, it belongs here.

Interesting patterns here, huh?  I seem to really gravitate to shows that either were made in the 1960s or the early 2000s.  The only one that doesn't fit that is Five Mile Creek.

Also, I am clearly drawn to shows that involve families.  Every single one of these fits that theme!  Every show revolves around either a biological family (The Andy Griffith Show, The Rifleman, The Big Valley) or a "found family" of people who forge a family-like unit under the stress of their adventures.

How about you?  Do you love any of these shows?  Do you have favorites you'd like to share?

Remember the Five Female Characters Tag I did earlier this month?  Olivia of Meanwhile, in Rivendell has tagged me with its counterpart :-)  So here goes!


Rules:
1.) List 5 of your favorite male characters (book or screen)
2.) Tagging other people is optional
3.) If you are tagged link back to the person that tagged you
4.) Link back to Revealed In Time

Choose one from each category:

1.) Hero
2.) Villain
3.) Anti-hero
4.) Best book-to-screen adaption
5.) Best character perception change (as explained here by the tag's originator, Ivy Miranda)

Right, so here goes.  Once again, I'm very happy that this tag specifies these can be "five OF your favorite male characters" because I could choose five or ten for each of these categories. So here are the ones I feel like talking about today:

1.) Hero:  Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson) in The Man from Snowy River (1982)

The Man from Snowy River (1982) has been my favorite movie since I was 2 years old.  I've blogged about it before here and here.  The man himself, Jim Craig, has been object of my aspirations for more than 30 years.  When I watched this the last time, about a year and a half ago, I realized that I have spent my life trying to be like Jim Craig.  Honest, innocent-yet-not-naive, forthright, stubborn, determined, kind, helpful -- that's Jim Craig, and that's what I try to be.


2.) Villain:  Calverra (Eli Wallach) in The Magnificent Seven (1960)


Yeah, I have trouble with villains.  I tend to adamantly dislike them, and the idea of "favorite villain" is a hard one for me.  But I am genuinely fond of Calverra.  I wrote a whole post about him here, but to recap, I like him because he treats the business of being a bandit chieftain as just another day job. He isn't out to be Mean and Nasty and Evul. Robbing just happens to be how he makes his living and provides for the men who depend on him.


3.) Anti-hero:  Sawyer (Josh Holloway) on Lost (2004-2010).


Um, yeah.  Sawyer.  ::Sigh::  How can I explain Sawyer?  He's a con artist who grew up hating con artists.  He works hard to make people dislike him because he dislikes himself.  He tries time and again not to do the right thing because he doesn't believe he's the right kind of guy... but despite himself, over the course of six seasons, he becomes a genuinely Good Guy.  Because I tend to blog about characters I dearly love, I've got a whole post about him too, here.


4.) Best book-to-screen adaption:  Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) from Master and Commander:  The Far Side of the World (2003)


When I blogged about the soundtrack here on James the Movie Reviewer's blog, someone commented that my calling M&C "one of the finest book-to-film adaptations ever" made it seem like I hadn't read the book, because the plot of the movie has very little to do with the plot of Patrick O'Brian's book Master and Commander.  And that's true.  Because the movie pulls from several of the 20 books in the series, all of which I have read.  And when it comes to capturing the essence of characters, and also their mannerisms, foibles, habits, and even physicality, I have yet to see the match of these two.  And yes, I'm talking about both of them because you can't talk about Aubrey without Maturin, and vice versa.  It doesn't work.


5.) Best character perception change  (as explained here by the tag's originator, Ivy Miranda):  Bud White (Russell Crowe) in LA Confidential (1997)


I need to put a big disclaimer here before I talk about Bud.  I would not recommend LA Confidential to most of my blogging friends.  It's not a nice movie.  There's a lot of bad stuff in it:  prostitution, murder, drug use, corruption, violence, greed, lust, anger, woman-hitting, homosexuality, and rotting corpses.  It fully earns its R rating.  I don't ordinarily watch movies like it.  I don't recommend that you do, either.


However.  Bud White.  Just look at him in that picture, and maybe you can understand why the phrase "in his eyes, all the sadness of the world" comes to my mind when I think of Bud.  (Yeah, that's from Phantom of the Opera.  Everything gets mashed together in my head.  It's a fun place.)

When we first meet Bud White, we see him as a thuggish police officer, valuable only for his fists and willingness to use them on command.  He's just a big slab of unemotional muscle.  But as the story unfolds, we get to see the mind behind those muscles, the emotions he fears and tries to control.  When he unleashes his anger and pain, it is fearsome, much more so than the sight of him punching someone when his boss tells him to.  And when we get to see the clever mind behind both the muscles and the emotions, we finally see him for what he is:  an intelligent, damaged, but redeemable man.


Once again, I'm not tagging anyone because I'm supposed to be getting ready for my Hamlet read-along, which starts tomorrow.  However, if you want to do either this tag or the Five Female Characters version, have at it!

Jamie over at Two Blue Eyes tagged me with this a few days ago.  I'm supposed to list off my 10 favorite characters from movies or TV, and then tag up to 10 bloggers to do the same.  I haven't done one of my lists of ten favorite something-or-others for a long time, so I thought this would be a good addition to that series :-)


These are characters I love on screen, though some of them I also love in the books or comics that inspired them.  But I am referring here to particular onscreen incarnations, okay?


1.  Sgt. Saunders (Vic Morrow) from Combat! (1962-67).  I love so much about Saunders.  His courage, his stubbornness, his moral certainty, his compassion -- he's such a nuanced, layered, complex character, and I love him dearly.


2.  Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) from the X-men movies.  Ahh, Wolvie.  What can I say?  I would love to be Wolvie, to have his swagger, his lack of caring about what other people think, his high level of snarkiness.  I'm going to be very sad when Hugh Jackman turns in his claws in a couple of years, as I can't imagine anyone else embodying this character nearly so well.  I kind of don't want to see anyone try.


3.  Angel (David Boreanaz) from Angel (1999-2004) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I have so much sympathy for Angel, with his load of guilt for his past misdeeds, and his burning desire to help people, to atone for all the misery he's caused, to find forgiveness.  And I admire him, too, the way he stands back up every time he stumbles.  Doesn't give up, this vampire of mine.


4.  Sawyer (Josh Holloway) from Lost (2004-2010).  I've never been particularly attracted to "bad boys," but I'm fascinated by con artists and Southerners, so I was interested in him from very early in the series.  I love how he reinvents himself over and over, but can never actually change who he is inside.


5.  Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) from the Granada Television productions (1984-1994).  I love Sherlock Holmes in the original stories, and Brett's performance most closely matches the Holmes in my imagination.  He's brilliant, brusque, and so impatient, but has a kind heart and a twisty sense of humor.


6.  Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) from the Hobbit movies.  I rhapsodized here last month about why I love Bard so much, so today I'll just say that I admire his devotion to his family and his determination to protect them.


7.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth) from the Avengers movies.  I get so annoyed by people who write Thor off as brawny eye candy.  He's so much more than that!  He's intelligent, but somehow a bit guileless, and he overlooks the faults of people he loves, which is why Loki can trick him so easily.  He's loyal, protective, trustworthy, and unselfish.


8.  John Reid (Armie Hammer) from The Lone Ranger (2013).  John Reid is my doppelganger.  Seriously, he is like a male version of me -- I've never found another movie character I identified with quite so closely.  I love his blend of naivety, intelligence, bookishness, manliness, and loyalty.  He's not at all like the original Lone Ranger character, but I am totally cool with that.


9.  John Watson (Martin Freeman) from the BBC's Sherlock (2010--).  He's so unendingly nice, isn't he?  And he puts up with so much nonsense, not without a growl or two, but still, he's the best friend anyone could ask for.


10.  Heath Barkley (Lee Majors) from The Big Valley (1965-69).  Heath's one of those characters I want to hug and take care of.  He's had a rough life, growing up illegitimate and fatherless.  I love how he fits into the Barkley family when he finds them, and yet is always just a little bit "other," never quite feeling secure in his new role as brother and step-son.  Of all the characters I love, he's the one who needs the most emotional TLC, though don't get the idea that he's weak or helpless!  He can shoot, brawl, and ride with the best of 'em.

Now, I'm supposed to tag 10 bloggers, so here goes:

Carissa
DKoren
Emma
Eowyn
Eva
Heidi
Kara
Karis
Olivia
Sadie

Play if you want to!