More Porter / Armitage lip

To start — two pieces of business. I assume you are aware, but in case you aren’t, both these items courtesy of RichardArmitageNet.com:

First, Suzi, a moderator at Richard Armitage Central met Mr. Armitage in Michigan!

Second, if you are a UK resident you can win two tickets to the London premiere of The Hobbit.

***

Servetus reports that Tuesday into Wednesday is going to be the unpleasant chunk of the week this semester.

***

Last night I was screencapping to cheer myself up, and found myself thinking again about Richard Armitage’s upper lip and its evocative moments. Where you don’t necessary tend to expect these is in a fight scene, but that’s where I found myself noticing them last night. Below some of my own caps from Strike Back 1.3 — the scene in the prison courtyard where Porter (played by Armitage) fights that extremely tall, powerful man. Jeffrey Zekele plays the prison guard; Mzwakhe Philemon Dlamini plays Vincent, the very large Zimbabwean; and Tumelo James Sibanda plays Anthony, the young boy.

Some thoughts:

• these aren’t all mouth positions — some of them are caps in which he’s twisting his mouth — but you still see how powerful this gesture is.
• the makeup here helps him out, by drawing attention to his (cut) lip (and to the motion of his nose.
• the very abbreviation of the lip makes him seem more emotional — as if he’s breathing harder, calculating more aggressively, and so on.
• nonetheless, you can see how he gets a lot of mileage out of that lip just because it’s so easy to move to reveal his teeth, which he shows repeatedly in this scene.
• the fact that his lip is less full makes his mouth look deceptively smaller and harsher or hard-bitten in many of these caps.
• his mouth also shows relief / release to contrast to those tense moments. I don’t know exactly how to describe that lip position — in which his lips are extended out from his teeth, as if they reflect blown-out air.

***

***

It was interesting to me, after looking at that scene, to look back at this post (“Armitage dances his way through it“), where I was focused on the dance-like quality of an action scene. But his mouth is also quite vivid there, as well. Mr. Emotional Action Man Armitage.

It was also interesting, as I remember (but can’t find at the moment) Armitage saying that he found the prospect of this fight with Dlamini extremely daunting, that in slomo-ing through the scene I didn’t find any pieces where I noticed a stuntman. Impressive.

~ by Servetus on August 29, 2012.