Underrated performances from 2024:

A colleague and acquaintance of mine Jesse Hassenger wrote a great piece in the Guardian on underlooked performances of 2024 so I thought I'd follow suit:

Glenn Powell of Twisters-If Tom Cruise can garner a slight bit of Oscar buzz just for being a matinee idol and holding together a popcorn movie on pure charisma, Powell deserves the same. It's a good reward for a prolific last 18 months, and his performance is based on an actual character, so he should get that non-fiction bonus.

Dolly De Leon-Between the Temples-As a practicing Jew who has been around all sects of the religion, she taps into a fairly wonderful experience of converts who don't fit the traditional mold embracing the religion. She embodies traditional judaism so wonderfully that no one gives a second thought to see a Filipino being a Jewish mother

Jodie Conner, The Bike Riders-Her accent work and her gradual shift in attitude are impressive here.

Kate Winslet, Lee-The story behind the story matters, and she did pretty much everything for this film, including paying the crew out-of-pocket for a couple weeks when financing fell through, mico-managing various departments, and keeping this project going for eight years. I hate to give too much credit to things like make-up and such, but it's certainly a complete transformation.

Sidenote: And no, Andy Samberg doesn't deserve credit here. Even if he did serviceably, that was a bizarre casting choice. Watching the Lonely Island's poster boy in a serious World War II film just took me out of it the instant he appeared on screen. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Samberg has zero history being anything but goofy on screen. Why start here. It's like if Adam Sandler went straight from Happy Madison Productions to Schindler's List.

Jason Schwartzman, Between the Temples-Is this his best performance? It's not too far from his introspective blankness that launched him to stardom in Rushmore, but this film had some insane mood whiplash that Schwartzman navigated with aplomb.

Robin Wright, Here-The put-upon housewife who spent years trying to decide where the line was between accepting her lot in life and taking that chance on something better. The nice touch of complexity in Robin Wright's character and her relationship with Tom Hanks's character is that you know she waited too long to do it. The Thanksgiving scene was a highlight, but it's too spoilery to reveal more.

Jessie Buckley and Anjana Vasan, Wicked Little Letters-Giving a shout out to Olivia Colman seems boring because she always gets recognized, even if she is more of a character actor than a lead. Buckley embodies the typical female firecracker trope but I'm a sucker for those. I wouldn't really advocate for Vasan for an award if I was running PR for this film because her screen time is too small (and that applies to Isabella Rossellini, I'm no hypocrite), but it's a small role, I could see a lot more potential with if it went the right way.

Powerpoint Presentation: Films of the 1980s

 

For Power Point DC, I pulled together a Power Point of the 1980s on film to promote my film of the month club (you would have to click on following me).

 

These were the films I picked and what I riffed off of:

Any Which Way You Can-Clint Eastwood gets into random fist fights, loses Sondra Locke, gains a monkey. It’s better than it looks

Cannonball Run-Is there anything about this film that isn’t fun to talk about? Based on a series of no-holds-barred cross-country races in the 1970s in which cars drove some 150 miles per hour. Roger Moore plays a man who got practical surgery to look like Roger Moore; Jamie Farr plays a shiekh who falls in love with a car hop in 30 seconds minutes; Tony Danza gets paired with a monkey; Terry Bradshaw is in the film; Farrah Fawcett givesboring lectures about how much she loves trees and the men still want her because she’s Farrah Fawcett; and there’s a frankenstein-like doctor who’s sole qualification is that he has a syringe with a mystery substance in it.

A View to a Kill-This James Bond film certainly has some humorously jarring elements: Christopher Walken plays a villain with Christopher Walkenish speech affectations; James Bond escapes death by disrobing into bed with Grace Jones and expecting her to sleep with him; there’s a cheesy California Girls sequence, etc. However, I wouldn’t call this the worst James Bond film because it’s not boring. It’s zany, but boring is the cardinal sin (looking at you “For Your Eyes Only”). 

Cocktail-This film is among the most Tom Cruisiest of Cruise films. It will also make you hate bartenders

Bronco Billy-This movie is on my top films of all time as it embodies the found family trope among a group of misfits who pose as cowboys in a send-off to Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. It’s Clint Eastwood at his hammiest

Cocoon-One of a number of 1980s with aliens who are just there (The Abyss is another example). They’re not particularly violent, they’re arrival is greeted with total indifference, and they’re net effect is curing erectile dysfunction in old people. I also talked about how Wilford Brimley is best known for inappropriate commercials, and Don Ameche earned a paper-thin makeup Oscar here.

Passage to India-There wasn’t as much to riff off here, except the abstract concept of discovering the real India. It’s a long film with a capital “L” as it was directed by David Lean of epics such as Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. It’s an excellent period piece with an Oscar-winning performance from Peggy Ashcroft. I reviewed it here: Passage to India

Short Circuit-The inspiration to Wake, Rattle, and Roll. Both Passage to India and Short Circuit have some amusing (though others might consider offensive) brownface

The Firm (1993)

 

During the early Spring dumping ground – the time between when the last of the great films has come out and the prestige films come in –it’s rarely a good bet to see a film during this time. The studio benefit from putting something new in the theater but don’t want to put their best material in the area.

So I watched a few films outside the realm of the current cycle, including this one.

John Grisham was the JK Rowling of the 90s: An unlikely author who published a book that caught on and created a literary empire.

As a child of the 1990s, many of the dramatic films I watched- A Time to Kill, Pelican Brief, The Client, and Rainmaker —were legal thrillers that were adapted from his books. Surprisingly, none of these films were over my head or inappropriate for me. 

I was a child when I watched The Client in 1994, but the story was told from the POV of a child so I could relate to it. I watched A Time to Kill in 9th grade so I was able to fully absorb its adult themes.  In this sense I grew up with him but strangely enough, I never saw The Firm. I’m not sure why, but this film appears to have the best reputation from various measures (awards buzz, polls I’ve seen of best 90s films, etc.).

Looking it up, I’ve discovered that A Time to Kill was technically Grisham’s first book (and he only got it published after 28 rejections), but it barely sold. It was his second novel, The Firm, which stood atop the New York Times best seller list for 40 weeks,  that put him on the map. The film rights to that film for $600,000 is what put him on the map.

Upon watching the film, it’s easiest to read it mostly as a Tom Cruise vehicle. Like Top Gun or Cocktail, Cruise as drawn as—well, for lack of a better word, Tom Cruise. He sticks out as the most gifted of his peers, he has an intense gaze, he has a fierce independent streak, he’s drawn to monogamy, and he loves to sprint in formal wear.

Tom Cruise films traditionally revolve around one key relationship (in every case that I know of, a male, maybe Eyes Wide Shut is an exception?) in which Cruise’s narrative arc goes from being cocky to learning humility. Films like Rain Man, Top Gun, or Jerry Maguire pair the Tom Cruise persona with a morality pet – a dumb jock, a simpleton rizzo, or a mentally deficient half-brother – that humbles him in learning not to look down on other people. The other type of foil to the Tom Cruise persona is the person who’s even cockier than Cruise himself and earns his respect that way: Paul Newman in Color of Money, Ken Wattanabe in The Last Samurai, and Gene Hackman in the Firm. Hackman even manages to seduce Cruise’s wife (Jean Tripplehorn, I’d be curious to know the etymology of that name). Considering how attractive Hackman is compared to Cruise (not very), that’s swagger!

The twist here is that Tom Cruise’s mentor is not what he seems to be. In a sense, this is the nakedest Tom Cruise has ever been. While he has a fierce independent streak, he rarely is complete without a mentor or sidekick, as I’m discovering while writing this essay.

Beyond Gene Hackman, this is a cast of heavy hitters that would set the template for future John Grisham novels. Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook, David Strathairn, Margo Martindale,  and Wilford Brimley (a mainstay in commercials for Quaker Oats and later Diabetes, but he was also in at least a few good films). Holly Hunter got nominated for an Oscar for this film in the supporting category but I can’t remember her, which is either a sign that the Academy must have owed her for a past snub or it was just that packed a cast.

The odd thing about the film that would put Grisham on the map as the king of the legal thriller genre, is that this isn’t a film with a tremendous amount of court scenes. It devolves into a movie about corruption and personal accountability.

Fortunately, the film made enough money—it was the third highest grossing film of 1993 – to ensure some of the better films in the Grisham repertoire that would mark much of my childhood.

Rock of Ages (2012) Review

Credit: Rotten Tomatoes

Rock of Ages is a messy through-washed affair that has moments of painful cheesiness and glory in such close proximity to one

another that it's hard to take it all in with a straight face. In other words, it's an interesting film to write about.

The film's reason for existing --telling an extremely formulaic love story sprawled among random 80s
power ballads -- seems so tenuous that it makes complete sense that it's adapted from a Broadway
musical where formulaic love and carefully curated songs are more suited to live stage.

Julianne Hough plays ingenue Sherri, who’s fresh off the bus from Tulsa although she's hoping to be a
singer rather than an actress. She arrives at a concert venue on the Sunset Strip that's supposedly
legendary (sorry, this reviewer is a little less hip to 80s music outside popular car commercials and karaoke bars) where she quickly meets her rocker love interest Drew (Diego Boneta). While neither of the two leads are
particularly interesting, but it helps they are surrounded by such a cleverly assembled cast.  

Tom Cruise takes a break from his day job as a stunt man on film to act the hell out of his role as aging
rock God, Stacee Jaxx (that name alone should qualify the screenplay for awards buzz) whose big gig
at the venue could make or break them. Jaxx leans into every stereotype imaginable but displays a
self-consciousness that makes the dialogue crackle when a particularly alluring reporter (Malin
Ackerman) challenges him out of his comfort zone (leading to an extremely hot romance). Screen siren
Catherine Zeta-Jones goes against type as a pent-up politician Patricia acting as rock and roll morality
police. Alec Baldwin (perhaps the only unwise casting decision considering he’s such a good fit as
polished authority figures that it takes a lot to shake that image) plays shaggy-haired club owner
Dennis Dupree with Russell Brand finding his niche as Dennis’s side kick. 

The plot is a lot like the 90s cult classic “Empire Records” whereas there’s a really fun and happening
place that represents the purity of music and all that on one side, and there’s “the man” that wants to
get in the way of all the good fun. The creditors (the actual antagonists in the stage version, here they’re
off-screen) are closing in on the club, a greedy manager (Paul Giamatti) reneges on the proceeds, and
Patricia wants to run a moral crusade against the evils of rock and roll (I imagine this is a crusade that might have worked

around the time of “The Music Man” but the choreography is up to par on "Hit me with Your Best Shot" so I can run with it). 

“Rock of Ages” is populated with a hodgepodge of musical numbers from various 80s ballads. Some are
simply sung by characters walking down the street while a handful (particularly Jefferson Starship’s ”Any
Way You Want It” and Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”) are elaborately choreographed show
stoppers. Director Adam Shankman was able to work some magic with “Hairspray” and does the same
thing here.

Like “Empire Records”, this is a great hang-out movie that drips with a powerful nostalgia. Most people
watching the film won’t be able to relate to the vibe of Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip in its heyday that
inspired the play’s creator. However, most of us have that special hangout of our youth that the film taps

into. With the aging Dennis and Stacee characters finding space in the fictitious realm, the film sends

the affirming message that youth isn’t always wasted on the young.

Like a power ballad, this is a film that rides on raw emotion. It’s a little spotty and non-sensical but it ends
on a clear high. 

A Top 25 Power List of Actors: 2012

1. Leo DiCaprio-Gets his choice of projects, astounds audiences, grows in every film. Even something like J. Edgar not being seen by audiences doesn't really tarnish his exemplary filmography.

2. Matt Damon-Being prolific helps. He's been with every director, starred with nearly everybody, continues to be bold, and still well-liked even in face of bombs.

3. Brad Pitt-Nearly got double-nominated last year. His name above the marquee can probably automatically get a film in the Oscar discussion at this point and that's not saying anything for his ability to increasingly turn in a great performance or his clout to get something greenlit.

4. Daniel Day-Lewis-Being less prolific makes him hard to gauge

5. Johnny Depp-Tourist was a bust but he can still be exciting and creative like no one else. Don't forgot the success of Rango if you're looking for recent hits.

6. Christian Bale-Acknowledged as supremely talented by many in the industry. Did right by Batman and Nolan, he has won an Oscar, and is capable of winning another without a doubt. Also, challenges himself outside of Nolan with collaborations with Terrence Malick and Warner Herzog and doing the Western 3:10 to Yuma.

7. Michael Fassbender-Of five films he made in 2011, three ("Shame", "Dangerous Method", "X-Men First Class") were big critical or commercial hits. He's like Jude Law in 2004 but nearly every film he made turned into gold one way or another. His Oscar snub was highly undeserved last year. In 2012, he had a solid supporting turn in Prometheus.

8. George Clooney-Going a little bit downhill but still viable as a leading man. By downhill, how many times can he reinvent the same variation of a pretty man who becomes disheveled. Some might be shocked I'm putting him this low, but I do think that in front of the camera, he's run out of his ways with his range to produce another Oscar-nominated performance. Behind the camera, that's another story and I think he could get nominated as a director. The truth is his box office receipts don't really keep up with how often he appears in People Magazine.

9. Ryan Gosling-Is in the conversation as the next Clooney and is often in Oscar contention every year.

10. Robert Downey Jr.-Being behind Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, two of the biggest franchises of the last few years and delivering such a strong take on Sherlock Homes that it's worthy of acting buzz  says a lot on its own. He often gets talked about as if he's a comeback when, in my opinion, he should simply get talked about as one of the most talented stars in Hollywood.

11. Hugh Jackman-Les Miserables puts him near the top now. It's a temporary ridge. I think he has to follow it with something great to stay at the top of the A-list. His likability as a person is enormous. He's been a little bigger in the world of theater than film.

12. Sean Penn-Won two Oscars in the last 10 years, so he's not someone to ever count out in an Oscar race. Does not have box office appeal but that's because he doesn't choose projects with box office potential.

13 (tie). Philip Seymour Hoffman-Once a character actor, now a capable lead. When you think about it, he was the main star of "Doubt", "Before the Devil Knows Youre Dead", "Synechdone, New York" and if I'm not mistaken "Pirate Radio." That's pretty unique because the roles he had for the first ten years weren't even supporting roles. In terms of amount of screentime among cast members, he likely ranked 7th for Scent of a Woman, 7th for Big Lebowski, 6th for Talented Mr. Ripley, and 8th for Almost Famous.
13. (tie) Joaquin Phoenix-I think his stunt circa 2009/2010 where he decided to be crazy in character has likely helped him be seen as a badass Daniel Day-Lewis type who can take method acting to new insane levels. In short, it's likely boosted his credibility.
15. Bradley Cooper-I can make his case in four words and a comma: Hangover, Silver Linings Playbook

16. Daniel Craig-The credibility of doing justice to the franchise of James Bond combined with the classic training and ability to knock out supporting parts out of the park ("Road to Perdition" "Infamous" "Munich). I can't see any course of action for Craig other than getting bigger and bigger every year.

17. Joseph Gordon Leavitt-Being in Christoper Nolan's last two hits certainly helped make his case as an A-lister and allowed him to give great performances, but his contributions to 500 Days of Summer and raising that movie to Best Picture Oscar contention helped a lot too. He's clearly artistic in his aims and earning credibility with his blockbusters. Looper got an AFI award for top ten films of the year.

18. Denzel Washington-Up for Oscar #6 and while he hasn't branched out as much as DiCaprio or Damon (he's done most of his work with Spike Lee and the late Tony Scott), he's a surprisingly durable brand. I was thinking he's a relic of the 90's, but double-checked and Unstoppable, Safe House, Inside Man, the Book of Eli and American Gangster were all successful either critically or commercially.

19. Andrew Garfield-I don't know if I like him personally and I don't know why they made a new Spiderman Movie five years after the last one ended, BUT if he is Spiderman, then he will be a big attraction for the next few years.

20. Jamie Foxx-He hasn't quit his string of good performances since Ray. In some cases, he was my favorite part of "The Soloist", "Jarhead" "Dreamgirls" "Horrible Bosses" and while those performances are underacknowledged, in my opinion, I think he easily has the potential to score another Oscar nod at will (kind of like how Will Smith only really tried acting twice and got nominated each time). Hopefully, Djanho Unchained will help rise him to the core

21. Jeremy Renner-He was in the Avengers, on Saturday Night Live, got two Oscar nods in quick succession and took over the Bourne role.

22. Liam Neeson-A talented actor who was cast in the lead in Battleship, The Grey and starred in Wrath of the Titans. While none of these movies had any cultural impact whatsoever and will likely be forgotten in a year's time, they show that Neeson is still being cast in lead roles. He hasn't been the lead of an Oscar-caliber film since Kinsey and it was really around Schindler's List when he was at the peak of his stardom, but one good franchise or one good Oscar winning film could land him back on top and I'm convinced that Hollywood is willing to cast him in it.

23. Tom Cruise-For better or worse, Tom Cruise has survived Oprahgate. He's no longer one of the top stars in the world but he's still being given enormous amounts of money ($75 million for a musical and $60 million for Jack Reacher, although Jack Reacher looks like it cost well over $100 million) to be making action movies and they're not being seen as frequently, but I think the fact that he's still able to do what he's always been doing merits a place on the top 25. I also think he's still showing the shrewdness in movie selection that he did before his fall from grace, especially with Tropic Thunder but I even see the small stuff like how "Knight and Day" does cast him in a slightly different light than his other films and was a good move for him in his career.

24. Ben Kingsley-I don't think this guy is in "old grandfather role" territory just yet and he did strike up a collaboration with Scorsese for his last two films. He's also damn talented as everyone knows, so I can see him being a pretty good asset to any movie, a viable Oscar contender given the right role, and a name on a marquee that could sell a film.

25. Ben Affleck-He likes directing more than acting but that doesn't mean he won't act, and he especially gives it his all when acting in his own projects. He demonstrates with Hollywoodland that he can act very well, so I see no reason why other directors wouldn't want to gobble him up like Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson did in the years after they won directing Oscars.

Old-Timey Reviews of 2 Tom Cruise Films: Valkyrie & Lions for Lambs

VALKYRIE
Valkyrie features Tom Cruise as star and producer of a true story about a group of German officers who made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler and launch a government coup over Germany in order to spare the country a more merciful surrender pact with the Allied forces. Despite a few setbacks, Valkyrie is a well-crafted political thriller.

Chief among these setbacks is Tom Cruise, himself, which is somewhat of a disappointment because this man has taken a lot of beatings from the press and general public over the last couple of years and I'm usually one of his starch defenders. Cruise doesn't even attempt a German accent and doesn't really inject any personality into the role. It's ridiculously hard to suspend your disbelief and think you're watching anything other than some strange time travelling story of Tom Cruise playing himself inserted into 1944 Germany*. Fortunately, Cruise is surrounded by a really solid cast: Among others, Bill Nighy, Terrence Stamp (My Boss' Daughter, Get Smart), and Tom Wilkinson, fresh off his amazing performance in Michael Clayton last year. Wilkinson's character as a top general with loyalties to Hitler could have been someone you could have built an entire movie around.

As in the X-Men series, director Bryan Singer doesn't just jump into the action but takes his time building suspense, even if the score is annoyingly over-dramatic at times. If you're expecting an action film, you're bound to be disappointed. It's more of a backdoor political piece that reminded me a little bit of The Contender. For the first half of the film, Cruise is just going from Nazi official to Nazi official trying to find the right allies and gather signatures to enact his grandiose plan, but it's like a game of political chess. Singer also shoots in stately and grandiose interiors and fulls the visual imagery with symbols of Nazi power to show how daunting of a task to try to topple this regime. Evidently, all Nazis had offices with 30-foot high ceilings. Overall, the picture is thought-provoking, tragic, and memorable.

LIONS FOR LAMBS

A journalist (Meryl Streep) conducts a one-on-one interview with Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) over his new initiative in Iraq. Irving, played with all the cockiness that some of us liken to the Tom Cruise persona (and mistakenly Tom Cruise himself) is forceful in trying to get Streep to see a certain point of view and borderline bullies her into accepting his line of thinking that this new strategy is going to work and is worth the human cost. If you replaced Matt Lauer with Meryl Streep, it would practically be a dramatic reenactment of Cruise's famous tirade on The Today Show arguing against prescription medicine. My point here is Cruise is perfectly cast, and I think Redford was very aware of Cruise's recently damaged likability rating at this point in time.

The second piece of the puzzle is two bright students who volunteered for the army to prove that they were pro-active citizens, against the urging of their professor. These characters are more likable in the flashback scenes because in the present day military conflict their foolishness (in the name of chivalry) stretches plot credibility a little thin.

The third story arc and the one which I found most compelling was between a college professor (the same college professor who discouraged his two former students in plot line #2 from entering the war) and his most promising student during a one-hour advising session. The student (Andrew Garfield) was once a catalyst for some of the class's most most interesting discussions and showed great intelligence, but lately he is becoming more interested in fraternity life and girls and doesn't believe politics are worth it because "they're all crooked." The student is the apotheoses of disengaged undergraduates today and credit goes not just to the actor (it would be easy for a young person to portray a stereotypical member of today's college youth) but to the 40 year old Matthew Carnahan for capturing his language reasonably well. Redford has the most presence on screen out of anyone of the film as the professor.

This is a good and bad thing because I can understand people seeing Redford's films as a blatantly transparent method of getting his political message across that Redford casts himself as the professor and provides the most intelligent source of discourse. This is likely to draw hostility from audiences and be seen as arrogant. I remember they responded that way when M. Night Shamylan cast himself as the writer who would later be the savior to humanity in Lady in the Water. One criticism I might agree with is that rather than making this film, Redford could just as easily go around the country making personal appearances and speaking about these issues (although the answer would be: that would be far more time consuming), but for a filmmaker who has something to say, I can't think of many films (except aMichael Moore documentary) that are so that are so effective at saying it. Redford's film speaks so directly to our generation and the current situation.

Cinematically, Lions for Lambs is not the best film out there. It feels less like a serious and concerted effort on Redford's part to make a good narrative film than it should. But at the same time, I think it says things that haven't been said before, and whether you agree or disagree with his finer points, it's surely an eye-opening experience. It' the larger theme about how this generation deals with the alienation from pointless wars and crooked politics that resonates.

Squaring Off Against a Hater on the Message Boards

I encountered this post on the internet movie database message boards on imdb.com and decided to take on this guy point-by-point. I won't say he comes off as idiotic and that I wanted to put him in his place. We all have opinions and a message board, as opposed to a blog is a good place to just throw opinions out there without thinking too much about him. Nevertheless, he does present his case as if it were an essay and I found it slightly true in a couple places, but mostly unfounded.

His post is displayed in quotes and my point by point rebuttal has bullet points to it.

"1. You have only to watch a few YouTube videos to find Cruise's personality utterly repulsive."
-Just like anything else, the experience of watching it in a movie theater is superior to Youtube.
-There is a coherent story here
-Also, if Youtube and the film's studio/promotion people were properly doing their job, the film wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) be on Youtube anyway.
"2. Cruise is WAY WAY WAY too old for playing pretty boy action star."
He plays it well. When his hair gets gray, he becomes fatter and forms wrinkles (i.e. Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again or Entrapment), then he's too old for the part but he's clearly capable of being an action star.
-Um, hello? Are you not aware that Cruise does stunts himself. Considering, it's highly publicized that he's literally performing the action, there shouldn't be a question of whether he's believable to pretend to be a character who does action scenes
3. Boring and Forgettable is reserved for DVD.
That's begging the question....we're debating whether the film itself is boring and forgettable, this isn't an argument.

"We are burned out on these boring action thriller buddy/romance shoot em up, car chase, explosion movies. EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DONE...AND DONE BETTER AND MORE ORIGINALLY IN the 1990's when our parents forced us to go to this crap."
-Well, it depends on what you look for. Shakespeare said there are only 12 story lines. If you look for the basics, yes, but this had a whole number of things I'd never seen before. I could go down the list but I found the relationship between kidnapper and kidnapped fairly original, I felt it was a convincing arc with which the two developed a relationship, I've never seen the backwards plotline slowly unravelling about his childhood, etc.. It was a genre film so it followed (or parodied, at certain places) the formula but the film tweaked it when appropriate.

"What does Generation Y like?

Hello? Is anyone paying attention? At all???

What do Vampires, Lord of the Rings, and Avatar have in common?

Not just special effects, fantasy and interesting plotlines (ok, Avatar not so much on the good writing--but MAN! those special effects!)"
-Not really: Star Wars was very story heavy and it failed. Vampires and Lord of the Rings have popular source material in common.
-Avatar, we both agree was weak on story (actually, I don't personally agree because I'm still the only person on the planet not to have seen it) but I know enough about it to argue that from what I've heard it's a weak story but great special effects.
-I think the main trend that you mentioned with the successful stories of the last few years is not so much good storylines but source material. Both Twilight and Lord of the Rings had strong followings because of books and the same formula has worked with Bourne Identity and a number of other works. It's not a new thing either. Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, the first two blockbusters, were books first.

"Here's the BIG ONE that no one seems to be GETTING when they crank out this action thriller crap.

Generation Y HAS MORE RESPECT FOR LIFE. Our heroes are not mindless killers. Our heroes don't shoot entire rooms full of people and call it comedy. Our heroes are conflicted and complicated and introspective. If our heroes have to kill, they feel tortured and have no alternative.

Spraying bullets everywhere is not "cool" to generation Yers. We've gone to school afraid of someone going nuts and spraying bullets everywhere because we've seen it happen."
-That's a very good point and I will give you that. Bourne, X-Men, Spiderman, Iron Man, and Bond have all been pretty critical about life-taking in respect to the heroes and take that old convention of the Clint Eastwood-type figure who shoots a hundreds of people without much thought.
I think that Night and Day as well as a couple others (Jonny English and Get Smart, for example) are not in the mold of Rambo or one of Pierce Brosnam's Bonds. It's clearly tongue-and-cheek and somewhat of a satire of those earlier films. We don't really believe that Tom Cruise killed all those people. It's too absurdist to be taken seriously. It's like Steve Carrell being able to outgun a room full of 12 people or hold his own in hand-to-hand combat against Dwayne Johnson. It's so absurdist, you don't take it at face value.

"Generation Y HAS MORE RESPECT FOR THE PLANET. Our heroes don't blow up cars and helicopters and airplanes and WASTE resources constantly."
-I don't think being green carries over to movie watching. I don't think even Ed Begley Junior or Leonardo DiCaprio are turned off by movie heroes who use up a big carbon footprint.

"Generation Yers are more romantic than gratuitously sexual. We're not into gratuitous sex as much as we are into ideals of loyalty and intimacy and friendship. We are the kids of divorce. We want relationships with substance that last. Complexity is HUGE for Generation Y."
I agree (although that's a little bit of a stretch). But what does that have to do with this film? There was no sex in this movie. The characters didn't consumate their relationship at any point and they didn't do it during the closing credits. There's good reason to believe that possibly in their road trip, they'll do it, but maybe the car will blow up.

"Bottom line--older film makers need to grow up and get smarter if they want to sell movie tickets to the under 30 set."

-No, boys under 14 are as immature and loving of violence as they've always been. In fact, even if American culture has changed and has been affected by Columbine shootings or the Virginia Tech shootings or Orange alerts and Blackwayer or whatever else, the American share of the box office is smaller than the international potential and one of the only things that translates across all markets is audiences like seeing stuff get blown up and they might not have those hang-ups with violence that your specific age group does.

-Also, James Mangold is a good filmmaker and is nothing like what you're talking about. 3:10 to Yuma was a classic character study of a film. Long stretches of the film went by without a single bullet being fired. He also did Walk the Line which has very heeavy characters. Mangold has range.

"Movies like this---that have all the substance and depth of a Marshmellow Peep are obsolete."

Bottom line: I agree that Rambo or Charles Bronson are obsolete, except this movie isn't as bad as you say it is.

Tropic Thunder: Tom Cruise is still brilliant

I hadn't seen Tropic Thunder until yesterday afternoon and again this morning, so I heard the buzz about the film before actually experiencing it firsthand. A brief summary of things I've heard and you must have heard too: it's a pretty good movies, there are these fake trailers before the film, Robert Downey Junior gives an Oscar-worthy performance as an Australian actor posing as a black actor and never breaking character, and Tom Cruise has a hilarious cameo.

With regard to the last two points, I found Robert Downey Jr. to be a pretty interesting character, but Tom Cruise practically owns the movie. Can we take a moment to acknowledge that whether you love or hate him as an actor, Tom Cruise lasted as a star not because he's a great actor (good but not great, in my opinion) but because he's always made smart picks as to which movies to be in. That's in fact, why he's been a successful producer in addition to being a movie star.

Even with his career derailed by a blotched interview with Matt Lauer and 30 seconds on a couch with Oprah, Cruise is incredibly smart at choosing which roles to take at the right time. And this is no easy thing to do when the entire nation has suddenly gone from adoring you for 25 years to practically losing all faith in you, and you're depending on them for ticket dollars. Two of the first three films Cruise did post-Oprah Gate were incredibly safe choices. Mission Impossible III was a sequel: Even if you don't like the Tom Cruise of today, you used to like Tom Cruise and you can't deny liking Mission Impossible, so that would get the newly converted Cruise haters to the theater and it pretty much did so: Scoring $47 million opening weekend (word of mouth might have killed its overall gross, but opening weekend gross is based on how successful the marketing is, so i'll cite that figure). In Valkyrie, Tom Cruise is basically pleading with audiences to come with this logic: "Yes, America, I know you think I'm nuts, but I'm trying to kill Hitler in this film. You have to root for me to kill Hitler, right?"

While the general movie going public is still deciding whether Tom Cruise is crazy or not, Cruise dives headfirst into a role that covers the same territory as some of these perceptions and that's so potentially dangerous. It would be like if Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe did a passionate romantic film together after he broke up her marriage to Dennis Quaid by seducing her on the set of Proof of Life. Nonetheless, Cruise's producer character is an excellent, spot-on, and unique comic creation. It also is inaccurate to say it's just a cameo. He was in quite a bit of the film. I was baffled by Hollywood Foreign Press' decision to give Tom Cruise a best supporting actor nomination, but I might just have to agree that if we're (by we, I mean, the Oscars, Golden Globes, Broadcast Film Critics Assosiation, etc.) going to put Rob Downey Jr. in the best supporting actor category, then Tom Cruise as equally as deserving of a supporting actor nomination this year.

What's more, Tropic Thunder also features Matthew McConaughey and Nick Nolte in the best roles I've ever seen them in (although I don't think I've seen Nick Nolte in a lot of roles, come to think of it). McConaughey plays an agent who is willing to fight tooth-and-nail to get his client Tivo while Nolte is the movie-within-a-movie's screenwriter (or rather the novelist that the film is based off of or whatever you call it) of the film, who originally claims to have wrote the book off his war experiences. One of the film's big reveals is that his character WAS in the military, but not so much a combatant but a sanitation engineer for the Coast Guard.

If I were in charge of the SAG best ensemble nominations, I might be tempted to include Tropic Thunder in that category.

Review of Valkyrie

Valkyrie features Tom Cruise as star and producer of a true story about a group of German officers who made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler and launch a government coup over Germany in order to spare the country a more merciful surrender pact with the Allied forces. Despite a few setbacks, Valkyrie is an impressively well-crafted political thriller.

Chief among these setbacks is Tom Cruise, himself, which is somewhat a disappointment because this man has taken a lot of beatings from the press and general public over the last couple of years and I'm usually one of his starch defenders. Cruise doesn't even attempt a German accent and doesn't really inject any personality into the role. It's ridiculously hard to suspend your disbelief and think you're watching anything other than some strange time travelling story of Tom Cruise playing himself inserted into 1944 Germany. But Cruise produced and bankrolled the film and stuck with it through several release date delays, so credit goes to him on that. Fortunately on the acting front, Cruise is surrounded by a really solid cast: Among others, Bill Nighy, Terrence Stamp (My Boss' Daughter, Get Smart), and Tom Wilkinson, fresh off his amazing performance in Michael Clayton last year. Wilkinson's character as a top general with loyalties to Hitler could have been someone you could have built an entire movie around.

As in the X-Men series, director Bryan Singer doesn't just jump into the action but takes his time building suspense, even if the score is annoyingly over-dramatic at parts (it sounded like a horror film). If you're expecting an action film, you're bound to be disappointed. It's more of a backdoor political piece that reminded me a little bit of The Contender. For the first half of the film, Cruise is just going from Nazi official to Nazi official trying to find the right allies and gather signatures to enact his grandiose plan. The payoff is well-worth it, however. It's thought-provoking, tragic, and well-shot.

Are stars obsolete?

I saw this article on time.com about how the movie star era is ending because reliable stars like Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise didn't gross a lot of money for Lions for Lambs and neither did Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721687,00.html

The article claims that since Charlie Wilson's War and Lions for Lambs did not do well that we are no longer in an age of stars and people gravitate towards story lines now. I disagree with Corliss' notion that anything has changed much at all. Take his examples: Lions for Lambs starred Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, and Tom Cruise which I don't consider a good combination of star power to begin with for the time the picture was released.
-Cruise, although I don't say this with any sense of joy, was already going downhill in terms of reputation.
-Streep is in 3-4 films a year which dilutes her star power significantly. It's hard for the public to tell which of the many, many films she's in are worth going to whether it's Evening, Redacted, or Lions for Lambs. In 2004, Manchurian Candidate didn't do particularly well but Lemony Snicket did because Lemony Snicket was a better use of her star power.
-Redford hasn't really been a big star since the 1970's and early '80's. Today's teens and 20-year-olds are going to have to practically be film historians to remember the heyday of Robert Redford and get all worked up about it.

As for Charlie Wilson's War, that film didn't do particularly poorly. It grossed a respectable $66 million dollars and is enjoying a surprisingly long run at the theater. My local 8-theater complex is still playing Charlie Wilson's War all the way into March, and that's what's really important: For your film to still be accessible to the public months after release. Charlie Wilson's War debuted in an incredibly crowded weekend where Tom Hanks' star power competed head-to-head with Johnny Depp in "Sweeny Todd" and Nicholas Cage in "National Treasure 2 "anyway, so it's not like it was a battle of the best stories. As for the failure of Julia Roberts to secure box office clout, she's semi-retired and like Redford hasn't appeared in many films in the last few years to keep her name hot.

There's no doubt that star power still is the controlling factor in Hollywood. It's what makes Will Smith, the trio of Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly and Johnny Depp; and Nicholas Cage dominate the box office with mediocre material. More importantly, stars still capture the public attention. That's why in most Oscar pools, people are 10 times much more excited about the acting races than they are best screenwriting or best directing races. Whenever, I suggest a movie to my parents, the first question they ask is, "Who's in it?"

The only difference between today and yesteryear? The public just has short-term memory. The Oscar races and the special edition end-of-the-year reviews that appear in most newspapers and magazines covering pop culture are eager to crown the stars of today and leave the stars of yesterday behind. How hot are the names Joaquin Pheonix, David Strathain, Reese Whitherspoon, Felicity Huffman, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman right now? How excited do you get about a film when you hear that one of those names is in it? Those were the leading contenders in the best actor and actress races at the 2006 Oscars, just two years ago. Two years ago, the public might have been far more excited about them which just goes to show how fast the trends move.

Not to worry, success can be achieved by catering to this trend. Case in point: Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill not only had the good fortune of being involved in the summer's surprise hit "Knocked Up," but since their next film came out before the summer even ended, they benefited even more from being fresh in the minds of moviegoers. The result: Not only was Superbad a surprise hit as well, but Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill have become stars big enough to attract invites to host Saturday Night Live, and Judd Apatow was named the smartest man in Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly. Shia LeBouf, arguably the year's breakout star has benefited from a double-dose of audience exposure as well, slowly building his familiarity with the movie going public with Disturbia before officially breaking out in Transformers and this strategy has been going on for years. Would "Ray" have enjoyed the same level of hype if Jamie Foxx didn't start getting attention for "Collateral" earlier that summer? Of course being too prolific like Jude Law (the butt of an infamous Chris Rock joke during the Oscars), Will Ferrell, and Ben Stiller can tend to backfire.

So the trends have changed but the same formulas are still there. As long as people ask "Who's in it?" before they ask "What's the storyline?," stars will be the tools that drive the star system.

Lions for Lambs review (2007)

Lions for Lambs is a cinematically sparse film, with so little effort toward presenting a polished cinematic package, that the viewer might find it a little jarring. Three parrallel stories occur over a period of one hour.

A journalist (Meryl Streep) conducts a one-on-one interview with Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) over his new initiative in Iraq. Irving, played with all the cockiness that some of us liken to the Tom Cruise persona (and mistakenly Tom Cruise himself) is forceful in trying to get Streep to see a certain point of view and borderline bullies her into accepting his line of thinking that this new strategy is going to work and is worth the human cost. If you replaced Matt Lauer with Meryl Streep, it would practically be a dramatic reenactment of Cruise's famous tirade on The Today Show arguing against prescription medicine. My point here is Cruise is perfectly cast, and I think Redford was very aware of Cruise's recently damaged likeability rating at this point in time.

The second piece of the puzzle is two bright students who volunteered for the army to prove that they were pro-active citizens, against the urging of their professor. These characters are more likeable in the flashback scenes because in the present day military conflict their foolishness (in the name of chivalry) stretches plot credibility a little thin.

The third story arc and the one which I found most compelling was between a college professor (the same college professor who discouraged his two former students in plotline #2 from enetring the war) and his most promising student during a one-hour advising session. The student (Andrew Garfield) was once a catalyst for some of the class's most most interesting discussions and showed great intelligence, but lately he is becoming more interested in fraternity life and girls and doesn't believe politics are worth it because "they're all crooked." The student is the apothyoses of disengaged undergraduates today and credit goes not just to the actor (it would be easy for a young person to portray a stereotypical member of today's college youth) but to the 40 year old Matthew Carnahan for capturing his language reasonably well. Redford has the most presence on screen out of anyone of the film as the professor.

This is a good and bad thing because I can understand people seeing Redfordt's a blatantly transparent method of getting his political message across that Redford casts himself as the professor and provides the most intelligent source of discourse. This is likely to draw hostility from audiences and be seen as arrogant. I remember they responded that way when M. Night Shamylan cast himself as the writer who would later be the savior to humanity in Lady in the Water. One criticism I might agree with is that rather than making this film, Redford could just as easily go around the country making personal appearances and speaking about these issues (although the answer would be: that would be far more time consuming), but for a filmmaker who has something to say, I can't think of many films (except a Michael Moore documentary) that are so that are so effective at saying it. Redford's film speaks so directly to our generation and the current situation.

Cinematically, Lions for Lambs is not the best film out there. It feels less like a serious and concerted effort on Redford's part to make a good narrative film than it should. But at the same
time, I think it says things that haven't been said before, and whether you agree or disagree with his finer points, it's surely an eye-opening experience. It' the larger theme about how this generation deals with the alienation from pointless wars and crooked politics that resonates.

Michael Clayton as a piece of movie mismarketing

First of all, I saw Michael Clayton and it was a great film.

The poster for the film shows a picture of George Clooney and the film is named after his character. I personally don't believe this is a film centered around one person. Clooney might be the person with the most lines and screentime, but I saw it more as a film about a relationship between Clooney and Wilkinson. There relationship reminded me a little bit of Rain Man in that respect: a sane guy having to deal with a brilliant insane guy. Tilda Swenson and Sydney Pollack also play significant roles.

Lions for Lambs, for example, markets itself as "Cruise, Streep, Redford" and supposedly Tom Cruise is an egomaniac. Why couldn't this film have been "Clooney, Wilkinson, Pollack"?

I think the answer is that Clooney is just a humongous star right now (I personally have no problem with George Clike him, I think his star is just shining a bit too bright, in my opinion) and the best way to sell the film is to market it as a George Clooney vehicle.

Why we can't leave Brittney alone

That person YouTube who got some publicity a couple weeks ago for proclaiming that we should leave Brittney alone actually had a valid point despite the fact that he appeared overemotional about the subject.

Few people realize how inherently wrong it is to pick on celebrities, but the vast majority of celebrities the general American public does have the decency to leave alone. Others like Brittney, Lindsay, Clay Aiken, Christina Aguilerra, and recently Tom Cruise serve an important need in the entertainment industry: Material for talk show hosts' opening monologue jokes. Of course, there are the awkward occasions when one of these guests is actually on the show (rumor has it that J.Lo refuses to be on Conan O'Brien, for example) but it puts the talk show hosts in the good graces of the public as well as their other celebrity guests in the leave-their-private-lives-alone class who enjoy a good laugh as much as the next person.

You would think that these talk show monologues are a small part of a talk show and therefore insignificant, but keep in mind that this industry is expanding to include the likes of Best Week Ever, The Soup, Chelsea Handler, and the TV Guide Channel. I saw Chelsea Handler's show and while she's an admirable comedian, her list of people it's OK to make fun of consist of only five people. If Brittney were to suddenly live a noble, decent and healthy life, Chelsea Handler would lose 20% of her material! So, therefore it's in the interest of people like her to make sure Brittney keeps screwing up in life and to portray her that way

Memo to America and Tom Cruise: It's time to make up

I have had just about enough of the way America is treating Tom Cruise. Poor guy. As a nation, I think we've been a little selfish and inconsiderate to treat someone who's been our favorite actor with such disdain just because he's in love with a girl and wanted to express it and his religious beliefs. Because we all know that in this country it's taboo to proselytise your religion (um...hello, Christian Evangelicals). However, I still can't believe how wishy-washy our nation is. We've held this guy up as our top movie star for 20 years and then all of a sudden, we don't like him anymore because he's crazy? Sure, he's crazy but isn't that what you love him for?

I knew a girl who loved the film Jerry MaGuire but didn't like Tom Cruise because he was crazy and I just don't get that. Tom Cruise's characters are usually not stoners or relaxed people. His screen persona is that of a crazy person. In Jerry MaGuire, he plays a guy who decides to quit his job on the spur of the moment, stays up all night writing some manifesto about how *drum roll* we should be nice to our clients, asks his seceretary to marry her for seemingly no good reason at all, and shouts things at the top of his like "Help Me, Help You" to Cuba Gooding Jr. That guy sounds twice as crazy as the real Tom Cruise and we still love it. The actual Tom Cruise in real life new Katie Homes for longer than he knew the secretary before proposing to her and hasn't ever quit a job. In fact, Tom Cruise is considered by pretty much every director and costar he's ever had to be the hardest-working person they know.

I know Cruise comes off as conceited and arrogant, but actual reports from people who know him say he's the opposite. The more I've looked into Tom Cruise since the couch-jumping incident the more I see less and less to dislike about him.

The sins of Paris Hilton

I think the good news about the Paris Hilton case is that at the very least, she's now making headlines for something that is relevant and a hell of a lot more interesting than when she was making national headlines for absolutely nothing. Paris is a person but one of no significance whatsoever on any artistic level. She's a celebrity who's famous for....honestly, I can't even remember what she was originally famous for. Can anyone else? The truth is that Paris Hilton has always been a media construction. She's famous only because the media says she's famous and even the very debate over whether she deserves to be famous benefited her because it fed into the publicity machine and negative publicity is superior than the realization that there's nothing to be famous about.

But with this whole prison ordeal, things are a-changing. The debate surrounding Paris Hilton is now about far more interesting stuff: the conditions in the prison system, who should pay for prison, whether celebrities are above the law, etc. It's also possible that young teens are getting an education on public health from reading about Paris' disorders.

So whatever you feel about the Paris Hilton case, I call it an improvement. I think the one problem is that people are unwilling to give credit when it's due to Paris, the person. I'm not saying that Paris Hilton neccessarily deserves credit (for the record, I do think she deserves some credit for holding her head up high and accepting the sentence as best she can) but I don't think Paris the person has a fighting chance anymore to prove to the public that she's grown as a person. At this point, she's no match for her own public image and while Paris, the person, is capable of growth, the Paris that the media is used to seeing isn't.

Besides, people are unwilling to forgive Paris for being such a nuissance in our collective culture all these years. My opinion: The angry mob of people who want to see Paris remain in prison aren't really mad at Paris. As I said before, Paris Hilton was never really anything but a media construction. How can you be mad at someone who's nothing? I think the anger that we are showing with this is really directed at ourselves for allowing Paris Hilton to become famous in the first place. I think the anger at Paris is probably misdirected by parents who are mad at their daughters for buying copies of US Weekly and indulging the craze of these celebrities.

War of the Worlds (2005) review

Another review borrowed from jmaddy.com. I think this is a most interesting review in the sense that the response to Tom Cruise has grown worse and worse since the film came off. I even praised Tom Cruise's ability

My main concern going into this film was that I've seen it before and I'm not talking about the 1950s movie or the famous 1930s radio broadcast. I was thinking more in this case of the 1997 summer blockbuster hit Independence Day, and while a film being a remake doesn't automatically drive me away, I really couldn't see where this movie could go that its predecessors hadn't already explored.

Independence Day, after all, was a scientifically updated version with state-of-the-art special effects, and it's not like science has gotten THAT much more modern in the last 8 years...I was proved wrong. With Independence Day, director Roland Emmerich managed to recreate H.G. Wells' original "World" vision into a modern epic by showing us things on a truly global scale (he also showed his talent for globally scaled drama in 2004's Day After Tomorrow). War of the Worlds, on the other hand, tells the same story from the point-of-view of a single family's journey through the crisis.

The film's genius lies in how little he wavers from that vision. It's uncompromising in leaving the questions unanswered that this plot naturally lends itself to being asked (such as "what are these aliens doing here?", "where did they come from?", etc.). As a result, we went through the movie experiencing and learning about the danger at the same time the characters were. The effect was so pervasive it feels more than anything else like a 2-hour roller coaster ride, no doubt enhanced by Spielberg's deft camera- work, which for the first time since Jaws reminding us of his unrivaled brand of terror with which he revolutionized blockbusters 30 years ago in Jaws.

As with other films of his, Spielberg adds an estranged- father-and-son plot on top of the main story, with Tom Cruise as custody-sharing blue collar dad Ray Ferrier and Justin Chatwik as the rebellious son, with Dakota Fanning added as a loving young daughter for contrast. The relationships between Cruise and his two kids, both of whom carry significant loads of the script with precision, adds a whole new depth to the action scenes. As for Cruise, for all his crazy antics that have been filling the newspapers lately, he shows definite growth in this role and doesn't just carry this film with a mistimed sparkling grin, but with a convincing-yet-firm performance as a father.

Book review: Conversations with Billy Wilder

I just read the book Conversations with Billy Wilder and it reminds me a little of Tuesdays with Morie only the interviewee and the interviewer are both famous. Cameron Crowe, most people know from "Jerry MaGuire" and "Almost Famous," but it's a shame not enough people know about Billy Wilder, because he was one of the greatest film geniuses who ever lived. He made some of the most definitive film noirs in Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity, a great war film in Stalag 17, the first film to feature an alcoholic in the oscar-winning The Lost Weekend, the definitive love story in Sabrina (remade in the 1990s), and some of the funniest comedies ever made in The Apartment and Some Like it Hot. To be able to take such sharp wit and use it to explore such dark moods as well as humor was something no one did better than Wilder. What I knew of Wilder before was that he was a German immigrant (he came in the wave along with Premminger, Lang, Dymitrick, and Lubitsch). I also knew that he always wrote his films as well as directed them and that he wrote with collaborators.

The idea for the film, covered in the introduction, started when Cameron Crowe came to Billy Wilder's office wanting him to play a small part in Jerry MaGuire and Wilder was like "yeah, maybe, give me a call," but he was kind of old and senile at the time and he forgot about it and didn't return his phone calls. So Crowe positions an intern outside his office and Wilder never comes out of his office, and in the meantime, Crowe is bragging to everyone how he got the famous Billy Wilder to be in his movie. Eventually, Wilder answers his phone and is like "leave me alone, go away." So on the first day of production when Wilder doesn't show up, Cameron Crowe explains with dissapointment that Wilder turned him down, and Tom Cruise offers to go with him (Crowe) personally to his house, since his agent kows where it is, to try to convince him to be in the film. They hold up production for like an hour visiting Wilder, and Cruise is trying to charm him and they're explaining that they just want him to be in it for symbolic purposes, and he says "no, i'm not an actor, you've got the wrong guy, pick someone else." He does give them some script advice, and chat with Cruise, answering questions about his films for him. They finally give up and shoot the movie without him. When the movie's successful Wilder gives Crowe a call and congratulates him and a mutual friend suggests a book deal, and slowly Crowe wears Wilder down into revealing the secrets of his life and work.

With Cameron Crowe it's not like an interview, but it's like chatting from one writer-director to another and covers all of his movies, collaborations and writing methods in depth. They don't get too technical about it, so it's not boring at all. Wilder also spouts his views on movies that he thought sucked (he didn't like Titanic), and ones that he thought were awesome, and is pretty funny about it. Wilder had this very refreshing blue collar attitude about his job as a movie director. He absolutely wanted to make a good product out of his films, but he didn't take himself seriously and that was refreshing. He had a very systematic, almost mathematical, mind to writing his screenplays (he was more passionate about the writing than the directing, it seemed) where he treated it like a puzzle and took joy in trying to work his way through the obstacles.

He was a big, big admirer of Lubitsch who he once wrote a script for. It was almost like he worshipped him. I say that because like those WWJD bracelets that Christian youth group members where today, Wilder had a sign in his office that says "What would Lubitsch do?" He explains, that when he's stuck in a writing, he tries to imagine how his mentor would have done it. Personally, I found that odd because I've always felt Lubitsch was an inferior version of Wilder, but that's just me.

My favorite part of the book was when Cameron Crowe, who's a former rock journalist asked Billy Wilder about whether he liked rock and roll and he was like "no, that was all crap, it's all for the young kids" and he didn't even know what MTV was. He was like "back in the day we had Ira Gershwin and Rogers and Hammerstein to chose from, no one's better than they were." That must have been dissapointing to Crowe.

50 best actors of all time

A pretty objective list, I think, of the top 50, I’m surprised I made it all the way to 50 and it was a really hard assignment since actors come in different types: mainly those who create a persona and are a personality and those who are character actors, so it's really hard to make a standard list. You also have people who are more prolific and people who made each picture count. Stars who are very bankable, stars who are confined to one niche (i.e. The Western, etc.)

I think i might keep working on providing descriptions and stuff but that would probably take a lot of time, and come on, i can't be here all day writing. Some notes though:

1. Marlon Brando-Notable Roles: Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata, Apocolypse Now, Last Tango in Paris, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Favorite Director: Elia Kazan
2. Humphrey Bogart-Notable Roles: Sabrina, African Queen, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, The Big Sleep. Favorite Director: John Huston
3. Jimmy Stewart-Notable Roles: It's a Wonderful Life, Rear Window, Vertigo, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Winchester '73, Favorite Director: Frank Capra/Alfred Hitchkock
4. Lawrence Olivier-Notable Roles: Hamlet, Richard III, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Favorite Director: Himself
5. Cary Grant-Notable Roles: Arsenic and Old Lace, The Awful Truth, North by Northwest, Charade, His Girl Friday, Bringing up the Baby, Favorite Director: Nomadic
6. Gary Cooper-Notable Roles: The Westerner, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Pride of the Yankees, Seargent York, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, High Noon, Favorite Director: Nomadic
7. Alec Guiness-Notable Roles: The Lavender Hill Mob, Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars, Dr. Zhivago, Favorite Director: Mostly British directors
8. Robert De Niro-Notable Roles: Once Upon a Time in America, Deer Hunter, Godfather II, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, New York New York, Goodfellas, Casino, Favorite Director: Martin Scorsesee
9. James Cagney-Notable Roles: White Heat, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Public Enemy, Favorite Director: Nomadic
10. Henry Fonda-Notable Roles: Young Mr. Lincoln, Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, 12 Angry Men, Once Upon a Time in the West, On Golden Pond, Favorite Director: John Ford, pehaps
11. Orson Welles-Notable Roles: Citizen Kane, Magnificent Ambersons, Lady from Shanghai, Othello, Third Man, Touch of Evil, Favorite Director: Himself
12. Clark Gable-Notable Roles: It Happened One Night, Mutiny on the Bounty, Gone with the Wind, Favorite Director: Nomadic
13. Charlie Chaplain: Modern Times, City Lights, Gold Rush, Great Dictator, Favorite Director: Himself
14. Peter O’Toole: My Favorite Year, Lawrence of Arabia, Beckett, Lion in the Winter, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Last Emperor, Favorite Director: Nomadic
15. Jack Lemmon: The Apartment, Days of Wine and Roses, Mr. Roberts, Some Like it Hot, Save the Tiger, Odd Couple, Glengarry Glenn Ross, Irma la Douce, Favorite Director: Billy Wilder
16. Kirk Douglas: Spartacus, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Out of the Past, Lust for Life, The Champion, Paths to Glory, Favorite Director: Nomadic
17. Dustin Hoffman: The Graduate, Tootsie, Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, Papillon, Kramer vs Kramer, Rain Man, Wag the Dog, Favorite Directors: Barry Levinson, Mike Nicholls
18. Jack Nicholson: Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, The Shining, Prizzi's Honor, Terms of Endearment, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, Favorite Director: Roman Polanski
19. Gregory Peck: Duel in the Sun, Twelve O'Clock High, Gentleman's Agreement, Roman Holiday, To Kill a Mockingbird, Favorite Director: Nomadic
20. William Holden: Network, Bridge on the River Kwai, Sabrina, Stalag 17, Wild Bunch, Towering Inferno, Favorite Director: Billy Wilder
21. Gene Kelly-Notable Roles: Anchors Aweigh, On the Town, Summer Stock, American in Paris, Singing in the Rain, It's Always Fair Weather, Favorite Directors: Stanley Donen, Vincente Minelli
22. John Wayne-Notable Roles: Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, Rio Bravo, The Searchers, The Alamo, True Grit, Favorite Director: John Ford
23. Tom Hanks-Notable Roles: Splash, Big, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Road to Perdition, Favorite Directors: Rob Zemeckis, Ron Howard, Stephen Spielberg
24. Sean Connery-Notable Roles: The Hill, Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Murder on the Orient Express, The Untouchables, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Favorite Director: Sidney Lumet
25. Edward G. Robinson-Notable Roles: Little Ceasar, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Double Indemnity, Key Largo
26. Spencer Tracy-Notable Roles: Boys Town, Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Bad Day at Black Rock, Inherit the Wind, Favorite Director: Stanley Kramer
27. Fred Astaire-Notable Roles: Flying Down to Rio, Top Hat, Swing Time, Holiday Inn, Barkleys on Broadway, Band Wagon, Towering Inferno, Favorite Director: Whomever was assigned by RKO
28. Burt Lancaster-Notable Roles: The Killers, From Here to Eternity, Elmer Gantry, Atlantic City
29. Sidney Portier-Notable Roles: The Defiant Ones, Lillies in the Field, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Favorite Director: Stanley Kramer or Norman Jewison would be my gues
30. Robert Redford-Notable Roles: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Natural, The Sting, The Candidate, The Way We Were, All the President's Men, Out of Africa
31. James Dean
32. Clint Eastwood
33. Paul Newman
34. Al Pacino
35. Montgomery Clift
36. Albert Finney
37. Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
38. Michael Caine
39. Harrison Ford
    
40. Gene Hackman
41. Ben Kingsley
    
42. Frank Sinatra
43. Denzel Washington
44. Walter Matthau
45. Tom Cruise
46. Robert Duvall
47. Anthony Quinn
48. James Coburn
49. Ernest Borgnine
50. John Voight

-I might call this a best actors and actresses of the 20th century list, simply because recent great actors like Russell Crowe, Jonny Depp or Scarlett Johannson who have been much bigger since 2000, have had a much
-Although, i am capable of independently thinking about this, i did consult two sources: AFI's twenty five legends and Premiere's April 2005 issue of top 50 movie stars
-For those keeping track, i basically have Robert De Niro as the best actor today. Obviously, it doesn't look as good with his last few comedic movies but look back before Analyze This
-Among my immediate family, Cary Grant is controversial but oddly enough Premiere Magazine ranked him #1 star of all time and AFI named him the #2 screen legend.
-Walter Matthau was a tough cookie to place, cause what do you have of him without Jack Lemmon
-This isn't really my opinion, although it's a balance between my opinion and popularity
-Ever notice how Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart are all very alike? Gregory Peck has some great performances but he was so cheesy in Gentleman's Agreement
-I would say that the two biggest actors i grew up with are Harrison Ford and Tom Hanks, and it's interesting to put them up against the greats. If you think about movies that are entertaining and exciting, Harrison Ford is always front and center, though admittedly he hasn't had a hit in years. Hanks, to me, is the best, but i weighed that against other stuff. He's my personal favorite, put it that way
-Admittedly Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire aren't the best actors, but keep in mind that those were the only 2 guys out of the entire MGM roster of stars who can act, sing and dance at a level that made those musicals work. Donald O'Connor could dance but he couldn't act that well. Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra could sing but couldn't dance.

-Tom Cruise isn't the best actor, no, but he's done enough good work that he deserves a place on the list. Remember when he used to not be so universally reviled and thought of as one of the biggest stars in the world. It is pretty interesting because Premiere's April '05 (before Oprahgate) Issue ranked Tom Cruise as the greatest living star of today, so it wasn't that long ago. I wonder if the magazine editors who had pages and pages praising Tom Cruise would have changed their minds like the rest of the American public within the following 18 months

-I don't think number of oscars equals greatness. Jack Nicholson isn't number one although some people might say he is. He's good, i like him, he's definitely extroadinarily talented but I think late in his career he's relied on just being Jack. Also, i think i disagree with other people over his best performances (i like 5 Easy Pieces and Chinatown, not As Good as It Gets or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). I also perfer Robert Redford to Paul Newman even though Newman's been nominated a million times.

-James Coburn is interchangable with a number of stars from his era who were in The Great Escape or Magnificent Seven or similar Western/War movies with him-James Garner, Jack Palance, Charles Bronson, etc. It was a close call. I went for Coburn because In Like Flint just blew my mind. Was I supposed to take it seriously or was it a spoof? I couldn't figure out which.

-Sean Connery is also tough to nail down and evaluate outside of Bond. Is he a one-trick pony? The truth is he's done way more than 7 films in his career (that's how many Bond films he did), so it's a shame that he's so associated with Bond. His best acting performance outside of James Bond that i've seen is The Man Who Would be King. He's also not bad in Murder on the Orient Express