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What Do Walter Duranty And Ben Kingsley Have In Common?

May 6, 2008
By .
Movies

1) Each won an undeserved prize for excellence in his profession, journalism in the case of Duranty and acting in the case of Kingsley.

2) In each case, the prize involved belittlement, oppression, and butchery of non-western peoples, Ukrainians for Duranty and Indians (or at least their accents) for Kingsley.

3) Each prize should be revoked.

Kingsley's godawful portrayal of Mohandas Gandhi doesn't appear on Cineleet's list of Ten Bizarre Ethnically Challenged Casting Choices, but it should. Apart from that omission, and Pete Postlethwaite's inclusion as an obvious stand-in for Kingsley (and Kayser Soze), I have no problem with anyone's appearance on the list. And I fully agree that when Peter Sellers did it, it was brilliant. Life's not fair.

Via

Edit: Doh! Commenter Dan informs me that Kingsley is in fact one quarter Indian and was born Krishna Bhanji. I still think his performance sucked, but I can't say it was ethnically inappropriate. I leave this post unaltered as a reminder to myself that google exists to be used.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

5 Comments
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5 Comments

  1. Ken  •  May 6, 2008 @10:17 am

    Mickery Rooney is, indeed, burning in Hell for that.

    Whereas Kevin Costner in Robin Hood is merely laughable.

  2. Grandy  •  May 6, 2008 @10:22 am

    Postlewait/Kobayashi don't belong on the list. Kobayashi wasn't necessarily the name of the character, for one (and almost certainly wasn't, or that's how I interpreted it). For two, must all characters have a name that's ethnically/culturally appropriate to the time frame of a viewer? There was no attempt to give the character a particular ethnicity, even if the name was real (errr. . . as in people really called him that, which doesn't make the name re. . . shit never mind).

    Reeves in Little Buddha always struck me as a bizzare casting choice.

  3. Dan  •  May 6, 2008 @10:40 am

    Namaste, pardners. I beg to differ on a couple points regarding Ben Kingsley's role as Gandhi. First, Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Bhanji) is either 1/4 or 1/2 (or somewhere in between) Indian. He only changed his name a few years before landing his role as Gandhi. Second, I'm guessing his accent is pretty good, since the paternal side of his family is Gujarati, same as Gandhi.

  4. Patrick  •  May 6, 2008 @10:45 am

    Well there goes my whole post pardner.

    He's damned good at playing an Englishman.

  5. Andrew  •  May 6, 2008 @2:32 pm

    I agree that Postlethwaite and Kingsley don't belong. I nominate as substitutes:

    – Not-Chinese David Carradine as half-Chinese Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu.

    – South African actress/model Charlize Theron as a redneck American serial killer in Monster. Sure, the performance was great, but I find any movie that makes Charlize Theron look hideous patently offensive.