Striking out on a journey-quest not unlike that of the contemporary Indians of 1989’s “Powwow Highway,” Cree documentarian Neil Diamond sets out in his rambling film “Reel Injun” to locate the true heart of America’s indigenous people in the sideshow babble of Hollywood history.

Charting a course in his rickety “rez car” from his Canadian home near the Arctic Circle to Los Angeles, Diamond constructs a loose travelogue that seeks to examine the evolution Hollywood’s depiction of American Indians in the movies over the past century plus (from Thomas Edison’s earliest Kinetoscope image of Indian dancers onward).

“Reel Injun,” told with no shortage of world-weary irony, makes stops along the way at several iconic locations that figure strongly in the shifting stereotypes that moviemakers have used to depict Native Americans. Those include the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Crow Agency in Montana, Little Big Horn, the Navajo Nation and Utah’s Monument Valley (where so many John Ford-John Wayne shoot-‘em-ups were staged).

Along the way, Diamond identifies various roles that Indian characters have been assigned in movies to fit cultural (read that: white) expectations.

In the silent era, it was the “noble native.” During the Depression came the “brutal savage,” usually vanquished by stalwart Westerners such as John Wayne. In the age of civil rights, we saw the emergence of the “dead Injun,” whose extermination was an emblem of social injustice. And later came the appearance of the “groovy wise man,” a rebellious proto-hippie figure in touch with nature and personified in films such as “Billy Jack.”

Meanwhile, Diamond notes the paradox of juicy Indian roles in films going to white actors such as Burt Lancaster, Charles Bronson, Burt Reynolds and Elvis Presley, and the supreme irony of iconic Indian figure Iron Eyes Cody (of the “Keep America Beautiful” ad campaign) being of Sicilian heritage.

Along the way, Diamond inserts various talking-head signposts in interviews with outspoken activists and actors such as Russell Means and John Trudell and notes some significant cultural events (the occupation of Wounded Knee, Marlon Brando’s sending Sacheen Littlefeather to turn down his best-acting Oscar) that have fueled the distorted media mythologizing of native peoples.

And Diamond aptly wraps up his journey by acknowledging a new generation of young Indian actors (Graham Greene, Adam Beach, Gary Farmer, etc.) and moviemakers telling stories in their own, inimitable voices in films such as Chris Eyre’s “Smoke Signals” and Zacharias Kunik’s “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner.”

While “Reel Injun” perhaps meanders too much to be a definitive study on the subject, it achieves in the bemused, ironic voice of its maker a bittersweet honesty and an entertaining point of view that focuses much-needed attention on Hollywood’s long-held confusion over what it is to be a real Indian.

- Dennis King

One of the most enduring cinematic images of the hippie-dippy 1960s is of Dennis Hopper’s defiant biker Billy tooling down the highway – flowing long hair, floppy bushman’s hat and bandito mustache – astride a souped-up Harley chopper. The film was 1969’s “Easy Rider,” and Hopper was not only its co-star (with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson) but was also the movie’s co-writer, director and most dedicated, lifelong rebel.

In a film career that began with roles in 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause” and 1956’s “Giant,” opposite his fated mentor James Dean, and that forged indelible characters in pictures such as “Apocalypse Now,” “Blue Velvet,” “Hoosiers” and some 115 others, Hopper always maintained his bad-boy edge and air of earnest rebellion.

And the life of this most unpredictable of showbiz players is ably and almost too thoroughly surveyed in “Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel” (Barricade Books, $26.95), author Peter Winkler’s sporadically entertaining and exhaustively researched biography of one of the movie world’s most original and enigmatic characters on-screen and off.

In a career that spanned half a century of highs and lows, Hopper proved himself an artist always eager to push back boundaries. An award-winning actor, writer and director, a painter and photographer, a discerning collector of modern art, a notorious lady’s man and an eclectic counterculture figure, Hopper was definitely a Hollywood original, and publishers assert that this is the first book to chronicle his erratic life and career.

Winkler is certainly thorough and painstaking in detailing Hopper’s life trajectory – from his lonely childhood in rural Kansas through a career of some 200 on-screen roles (earning Oscar and Emmy nominations) and seven directing credits to his death last year from prostate cancer at age 74. Unfortunately, the author never interviewed his subject and most of the quotes in the book (even those of Hopper’s colleagues and co-stars) come from second-hand sources.

Winkler provides a encyclopedic tour of Hopper’s acting life, recounting his seminal early roles opposite Dean (with whom he clashed over the worth of Lee Strasberg and The Actors Studio in New York) through his “Easy Rider” period and the comedown failure of 1971’s “The Last Movie,” to the drug-fueled weirdness of his roles in “Apocalypse Now,” “Blue Velvet” and “River’s Edge,” to his late-career comeback as the reigning villain in big-budget actioners such as “Speed” and “Waterworld.”

In his personal life, Hopper’s world was no less erratic and eventful, and Winkler duly covers his long-standing romance with Natalie Wood; his five marriages (including his efforts to divorce his last wife even in the midst of terminal cancer); his sometimes quarrelsome friendships with Dean, Fonda, Elvis Presley and John Wayne; his drug and alcohol addictions and his mystical sojourn in Taos, N.M.; his emergence as a respected artist and photographer and his forward-looking patronage of modern artists such as Warhol and Lichtenstein.

It’s all very methodical and detailed, even if the book occasionally threatens to get lost in turgid detail (do we really need to know the precise time, day and date of a staging for a one-act play Hopper wrote in high school?).

Still, “Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel” more than lives up to its title. It is indeed a wild ride – through biographical minutiae and sordid scandal, through name-dropping celebrity and dense psychological torment – to paint a pretty fascinating and compelling portrait of the artist who created Billy the biker, the man who went off in search of America.

- Dennis King

He was one of early Hollywood’s so-called “He-man” directors (along with Howard Hawks, John Ford and John Huston). He sported an eye patch and a dashing panache that earned him the affectionate nickname “the one-eyed bandit.” And he lived a life off-screen that was every bit as rugged, momentous and adventurous as the classic film stories he told on screen.

But compared to his more celebrated colleagues in that rough-and-tumble director’s fraternity, Raoul Walsh is today an odd man out. Despite a resume that includes such bona-fide classics as “High Sierra,” “White Heat,” “The Naked and the Dead” and despite having tracked down bandit Pancho Villa, discovered John Wayne and faced down gangster Bugsy Siegel, Walsh’s exploits have been largely forgotten.

That should be remedied somewhat with the publication of “Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood’s Legendary Director” (University Press of Kentucky, $40), the first full-length biography of the flamboyant director by film historian Marilyn Ann Moss.

In his time, Walsh (1887-1980) was regarded as one of the fledgling film industry’s most creative, daring and iconoclastic directors. His career behind the camera spanned a half century and ran from the one- and two-reel silents to the rebellious, cutting-edge 1960s and through many genres (gangster films such as “White Heat” and “The Roaring Twenties,” action movies like “They Died With Their Boots On,” war pictures such as “Objective Burma!” on through Westerns and even romances).
Moss covers the critical aspects of Walsh’s filmmaking with a thorough, thoughtful precision. But the most compelling and surprising aspects of her book focus on Walsh’s amazing life off screen.

During his youth in New York City, Walsh’s parents hobnobbed with the cultural elite – including artist Frederick Remington, President Teddy Roosevelt, showman Buffalo Bill and actor Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes Booth). The young Walsh got his start in Hollywood as an assistant director and cameraman to D.W. Griffith, and he even acted the role of John Wilkes Booth in Griffith’s 1915 landmark film “The Birth of a Nation.”

Moss uncovers some amazing facts and rich anecdotes to color her portrait of this singular movie pioneer – touching on his close friendship and collaboration with swashbuckler Errol Flynn; his decision to change actor Marion Morrison’s name to John Wayne and cast him in “The Big Trail”; his encounter with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and his efforts to persuade Villa to make his life story into a movie; and his manly endeavors away from Hollywood that included cowpunching, hard drinking and enough adventure to truly make him a two-fisted legend.

Moss notes that Walsh is perhaps the last of the founding filmmakers in Hollywood who had been without a full, comprehensive biography.

“Walsh’s one hundred and forty films created a classic cinema of adventure, romance and American hard knocks both vigorous and tenderhearted,” Moss notes. “His films moved to the rhythm of bullets and came at audiences with style and energy… he helped to transform the Hollywood studio yarn into a breathless art form. He belongs to that generation of filmmakers who learned to make movies on a dime in a fledgling industry at the start of the Twentieth century and invented a Hollywood that made movies bigger than life itself.”

- Dennis King

BY GENE TRIPLETT

No telling what John Wayne might’ve thought of his grandson acting in some loco Western called “Cowboys & Aliens.”

“Young ‘un,” the Duke might have bellowed, “you been out in the sun too long without yer Stetson?”

But Brendan Wayne, 39, isn’t so sure his granddaddy would disapprove.

“The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think — relative to today — he’d love it,” the third-generation actor said in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. “It’s a great way to tell a classic story that otherwise can’t be told because you’d offend cultures that don’t deserve to be offended. It was simpler back then. We didn’t understand the breadth of cowboys and Indians.”

Brendan Wayne plays a deputy in a small, 1875 New Mexico town that’s ambushed by varmints from another planet in director Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys & Aliens.”

Daniel Craig trades in his Walther PPK and his Aston Martin for a frontier six-shooter and a fast horse as a stranger who wakes up in the middle of the desert with an odd-looking shackle on his left wrist and no memory of who he is.

“And then he drifts into my town where I’m a deputy with Keith Carradine playing the sheriff,” Wayne said. “And we don’t know what’s going on, but we know that our town’s kind of under attack and that we’re losing people, and we think it’s the Indians coming to take ‘em. And the juxtaposition is that the Indians feel the same way. They think we’re taking their people.”

Meanwhile, Craig’s character discovers that the townspeople don’t cotton to strangers, and everyone takes their orders from the iron-fisted Col. Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). It’s a town that’s already used to living in fear, but when incredible flying machines start streaking down from the sky to snatch people away, things get downright scary.

And as the stranger begins to remember who he is and what he’s just been through, Dolarhyde and his men, a gang of outlaws and an encampment of Chiricahua Apache warriors realize the mysterious drifter’s leadership may be their only chance of fighting off the airborne invaders.

“It’s a journey of spirit,” Wayne said. “You don’t want to put too much on it because it is an action movie. But it’s a good old-fashioned Western in that these people are going to get their people back.”

It’s a plot not unlike a John Wayne Western such as “The Searchers.” Of course, that John Ford film was made about 16 years before Brendan Wayne was born, and he was only 7 when his famous grandfather died in 1979.

“I didn’t get the John Wayne concept,” Brendan Wayne said. “I thought that was granddaddy, and didn’t everybody’s granddad ride horses and stuff?”

He remembers thinking of the man as “a big, goofy, you know, granddad … just a really gentle, sweet, funny guy.”

Born in Encino, Calif., the son of John Wayne’s eldest daughter Mary Antonia “Toni” Wayne La Cava, Brendan grew up around horses, attending rodeos and occasionally visiting his grandfather on movie sets.

“I was on the set of ‘The Shootist,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, I betcha other people’s parents and grandparents, this is where they worked.’ Like, you know, this is normal. It wasn’t until he passed that I was, like, Oh wait, he was a little more extraordinary than I had thought. It started when he was sick and everybody at school was writing him get-well cards. And I went to Catholic school. I said to the nun, I said, ‘Sister Roberta Ann, my best friend Tony, his grandpa was sick, and the whole school didn’t write him cards.’

“And she looked at me and really didn’t have much of an answer. … But that was when I started to piece it together.”

It was after watching his grandfather’s iconic portrayals in films such as “Red River,” “The Searchers” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” that Brendan Wayne decided to study film at the University of Southern California. The father of three is best known for his roles in “Couples Retreat” and “Fast & Furious,” and guest shots on such TV series as “CSI” and “The Closer.”

And if his grandfather were around today, Brendan Wayne honestly believes the Duke would have taken a role in “Cowboys & Aliens” if it were offered to him.

“I don’t think he was afraid of anything,” Wayne said. “Anybody who’d play Genghis Khan (“The Conqueror,” 1956) sure liked a challenge, just to say the least.

“He could have played Daniel Craig’s role, or Harrison Ford’s role, and done them as well as anybody. You know, I think Harrison’s in this movie, to be honest with you, because he’s the closest thing we have to that character type. He’s as tough as they get. He was ridin’ his horse and jumpin’ off it. He wasn’t flinchin’ from the physical. He was willing to challenge anything that came along.”

Wayne said co-stars Craig, Sam Rockwell, Julio Cedillo and Olivia Wilde were game for doing most of their stunts as well — and so was Wayne — in the best daring Duke tradition.

“You’re not going to see a lot of back-of-the-head shots because of stunt guys,” he said, “because those guys were amazing, and they did some great work.”

Listed on wimgo Movies under Action

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Fact is giving fiction a run for its money in this year’s Oscar race, with four of the 10 Best Picture nominees based on true stories and real people.
Biopics of a pair of boxing brothers and a canyoneering survivor were good box office bets on critics’ tip sheets in 2010, but true tales of an Internet innovator and a stammering king are the odds-on favorites in this year’s run for Academy gold.
Here’s how this Oklahoma critic is calling the winners during Sunday night’s moments of truth at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

Best picture

Gene says: A few weeks ago, one didn’t need a computer to figure the odds favored “The Social Network,” the superbly crafted movie screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher made out of Ben Mezrich’s bestselling book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” about the creation of the most powerful electronic narcotic to sweep the world since the advent of the Internet itself. Just like everyone else, most Academy voters are probably Facebook junkies by now, and the story of the gifted geek who invented it is too timely–and the film too well-acted, well-written and utterly intriguing–to be ignored.
You would think.
But it now looks like voters could be swayed by Tom Hooper‘s “The King’s Speech,” the true story of a monarch who struggled against an impossible obstacle to communicate with his subjects on an inspiring, human level. Historically, heart-rending period pieces with British accents have been Oscar magnets.
Still, I’m going to stick with my sucker’s bet …
Should win: “The King’s Speech”
Will win: “The Social Network”

Best actor

Gene says: Colin Firth will have some more public speaking to do Sunday night when he accepts this award for his keen ability to portray the male versions of vulnerable, frightened and courageous all at once, while affecting a startlingly realistic speech impediment that is heartbreaking to witness in “The King’s Speech.” Few of his contemporaries could handle as dodgy a role as this with such perfection. His deserving “A Single Man” performance lost out to Jeff Bridges’ “Crazy Heart” last year, and while I loved the way Bridges outgunned John Wayne with some real acting in the Coen brothers’ “True Grit” remake, my allegiance this year is to Firth’s stuttering King George VI.

Best actress

Gene says: In “The Kids Are All Right,” Annette Bening effortlessly claimed hearts with her smart, funny and deeply sensitive portrayal of a lesbian mom who fears the alienation of her family’s affections when her children seek out their sperm donor father and attempt to bring him into the fold. Her performance was controlled, convincing and enormously engaging, deftly avoiding the emotional showboating this kind of role can tempt in lesser talents. But “Black Swan” star Natalie Portman has youth and popularity going for her and she never misstepped in the dramatically rich role of a prima ballerina pushed to mental breakdown. Still, Bening’s been nominated three times before, so maybe her times has come.

Should win: Annette Bening
Will win: Natalie Portman

Best supporting actor

Gene says: Geoffrey Rush’s sly, low-key take on the oddball Australian speech therapist who comes to the aid of a stammering monarch in “The King’s Speech” was easily one of the most interesting characterizations of the past year, as was John Hawkes’ unsettlingly dark backwoods criminal in “Winter’s Bone.” But Christian Bale was part of the stunning one-two punch of “The Fighter” as the ex-con, failed-boxer-turned-crackhead who trains his half-brother for the welterweight title. His convincingly wired, wild-eyed performance had an unforgettable clout that will no doubt win him the decision.

Should win: Geoffrey Rush
Will win: Christian Bale

Best supporting actress

Gene says: Former Tulsa resident Melissa Leo was the other half of “The Fighter’s” double whammy as the domineering matriarch of a blue collar Lowell, Mass., family and the abrasive manager of her two boxing sons. She nailed the part perfectly, right down the Massachusetts accent. The only other contender who comes close is 14-year-old newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as the spitfire farm girl out for justice in the Coen brothers’ version of “True Grit,” although she should have been nominated as a leading actress in that role.

Should and will win: Melissa Leo

Best director

Gene says: It stands to reason that the person who helmed the Best Picture should win the Best Director prize, but reason seems to have little to do with the thought processes of the average Academy voter. In a perfect world, David Fincher (“Fight Club,” “Seven,” “Zodiak,” “Benjamin Button”) should take the statuette for the stylish visuals, taut pacing and superlative performances found in “The Social Network.” Hooper (“The Damned United”) could pull an upset, however, for his majestic craftsmanship in “The King’s Speech,” or Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”) could dance away with the trophy for his adventurous flair in “Black Swan.”

Should and will win: David Fincher

A few extra bets:

Best original screenplay

Christopher Nolan, “Inception”

Best adapted screenplay

Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Network”

Best animated feature

“Toy Story 3”

Best documentary feature

“Exit through the Gift Shop”

These days, it seems that everything in popular culture is fair game for pundits to politicize.

Example: When it comes to portraying Rooster Cogburn, the “one-eyed fat man” in the two film interpretations of Charles Portis’ “True Grit,” it seems that stars John Wayne (in Henry Hathaway’s 1969 version) and Jeff Bridges (in the Coen brothers new version) don’t exactly see eye to eye.

In the novel, Cogburn is said to have lost one eye in a Civil War skirmish. But, although Portis describes the gnarly old lawman as sporting a mustache, he says nothing about Rooster wearing an eye patch.

In both film versions, Rooster wears an eye patch, although Wayne, the hardcore conservative, portrays him as clean-shaven while Bridges, the outspoken liberal, plays him wearing a scruffy beard.

But it’s the placement of the eye patch really sets political bloggers off on wild tears of conspiratorial speculation.

Consider this from the political blog American Thinker:

“One of the interesting decisions that was made during the filming of ‘True Grit’ was the placement of Rooster Cogburn’s famous eye patch. In the original film John Wayne wore the eye patch over his left eye which allowed him to view the world through his right eye, as the Duke was inclined to do. … In the remake Jeff Bridges covers his right eye leaving his left eye fully exposed, as a subtle reminder of where his ‘Crazy Heart’ resides.”

The blogger goes on to speculate, “If this film should achieve the level of success that many are predicting it will, it could open the door to other revisionist remakes. Imagine if you will (liberal actors) Matt Damon starring in ‘Sergeant York,’ Sean Penn and George Clooney in ‘Big Jim McLain’ or Josh Brolin playing George Gipp in ‘Knute Rockne, All American.’”

Bridges, when informed of the eye-patch debate by one newspaper writer, reportedly joked, “I’m a commie,” then shrugged off any political subtext by explaining simply, “I tried it on the right eye, and it felt good. But on the left eye, not so good.”

So in the blink of an eye, political conspiracy squelched.

- Dennis King

Silly names have been a staple of comedy since the early days of vaudeville, and when old burlesque performers eventually moved in front of Hollywood’s rolling cameras their outlandish sobriquets, garish noms de plume, goofy monikers and loopy pseudonyms came along with them

And so pioneers of comedy traipsed across Nickelodeon screens in the guise of characters such as Egbert Souse, Cuthbert J. Twillie, Larson E. Whipsnide, T. Frothingill Bellows, Rollo La Rue, Elmer Prettywillie and Professor Eustace McGargle (all W.C. Fields inventions), or as Wolf J. Flywheel, Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, Otis B. Driftwood and Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (a.k.a. Groucho Marx).

That va-va-voom vamp Mae West gave us the suggestive Marlo Manners, Flower Belle Lee and Peaches O’Day.

And while the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy mostly appeared onscreen in their heyday as Stan and Ollie, their earlier screen incarnations, both together and individually, were rich with purple appellations. Stan boasted performances as Ferdinand Finkleberry, Romaine Ricketts, Winchell McSweeney, Rhubarb Vaselino, Gabriel Goober, Dippy Donawho and Magnum Dippytack, while Ollie donned such character names as J. Piedmont Mumblethunder, Sharkey Nye, Oswald Schwartzkopple and Solomon Soopmeat.

Preston Sturges, that master of screwball comedy from the 1930s and ‘40s, wrote into his scripts such distinctively nutty character names as Dr. Zodiac Z. Zippe (“Hotel Haywire”), Charles Poncefort Pike (“The Lady Eve”), Constable Edmund Kockenlocker (“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”), Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith and Sgt. Heppelfinger (“Hail the Conquering Hero”), Harold Diddlebock and E.J. Waggleberry (“The Sin of Harold Diddlebock”) and Judge Alfalfa J. O’Toole (“The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend”).

Comic Bob Hope kept close to his vaudeville roots with such movie names as Milford Farnsworth (“Alias Jesse James”), Pippo Popolino (“Casanova’s Big Night”), Hot Lips Barton (“Road to Rio”), Painless Peter Potter (“The Paleface”) and Humphrey “Sorrowful” Jones (“Sorrowful Jones”).

Even sexpot Marilyn Monroe wasn’t immune to a little suggestively silly nicknaming, appearing on screen as such characters as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (“Some Like It Hot”), Pola Debevoise (“How to Marry a Millionaire”) and Dusky Ledoux (“Right Cross”).

Hollywood he-men generally veered toward macho character names in their movies, but every so often they also got saddled with slightly silly monikers. John Wayne turned in one of his best performances ever as Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit,” and as an early matinee cowpoke the Duke labored under such trumped-up sagebrush pseudonyms as Stony Brooke, Duke Slade, Biff Smith, Dare Rudd and Singin’ Sandy Saunders.

Even big star James Stewart suspended his leading man image to play such whimsically named characters as Mattie Appleyard (“Fools’ Parade”), Elwood P. Dowd (“Harvey”) and Rowdy Dow (“The Gorgeous Hussy”).

Some modern comic actors still hold to that old tradition of silly names, notably Ben Stiller, who has created such amusing screen roles as Gaylord Focker (“Meet the Parents”), Tugg Speedman (“Tropic Thunder”), Derek Zoolander (“Zoolander”), Bwick Elias (“If Lucy Fell”), Garth Motherloving (TV’s “The Simpsons”) and Reuben Feffer (“Along Came Polly”). And Woody Allen has contributed two of the best with nebbishy Fielding Mellish (“Bananas”) and the pseudo-murderous Virgil Starkwell (“Take the Money and Run”).

Of course, the silly name phenomenon isn’t limited to film comedies. Occasionally, goofy character names even show up in heavyweight dramas – note Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt (“Interview With the Vampire”) or Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle (“Taxi Driver”). The list is endless.

If there were a Silly Name Hall of Fame we’d nominate all of the above, plus the following, for a place of honor:

Tom Cruise again as Cole Trickle (“Days of Thunder”), Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore (“Goldfinger”), Clint Eastwood as Philo Beddoe (“Every Which Way But Loose”), Uma Thurman as Beatrix Kiddo (“Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2”), Mark Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler (“Boogie Nights”), Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo (“Midnight Cowboy”), Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko (“Wall Street”), Scott B. Morgan (uncredited) as Keyser Soze (“The Usual Suspects”), Harvey Korman as Hedley Lamarr (“Blazing Saddles”), Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink (“Reservoir Dogs”), Yano Anaya and Zack Ward as Grover Dill and Scut Farkus (“A Christmas Story”), Sally Kellerman as Hot Lips O’Houlihan (“MASH”), Jon Heder as Napoleon Dynamite (“Napoleon Dynamite”), Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) and Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley (“Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”).

And naturally there’s George Lucas, who stands in a category of his own for silly and sillier names via “Star Wars” – from the mainstays Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Darth Vader to supporting players such as Boba Fett, Mace Windu, Jar Jar Binks, Hermi Odle, Jek Porkins, Kit Fisto, Lak Sivrak, Momaw Nadon, Mon Mothma, Nute Gunray, Ponda Baba, Salacious B. Crumb, Sy Snootles, Sio Bibble, Plo Koon, Dexter Jettster and on and on.

Did we leave any out? Have your own favorites? Send them in to dking@wimgo.com and we’ll include them soon in an updated version of this post.

- Dennis King