What the hell is wrong with Tom Cruise?

Started by filmcritic, July 22, 2003, 03:34:31 PM

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Kal

Official Tom Cruise site launched... made a big media fuzz... pretty well done and it has a great intro video.

www.tomcruise.com



MacGuffin

Tom Cruise Elected President
Teaming with Washington, Noyce for political thriller.

Tom Cruise will reportedly play the President of the United States opposite Denzel Washington as the villain in the Phillip Noyce-directed political thriller 28th Amendment.

The Warner Bros. project was penned by Transformers and Star Trek scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also penned Cruise's Mission: Impossible III.

According to Moviehole, Cruise would play President Ben Cahill who "discovers the United States is actually being controlled by a super secret organization (run by Denzel Washington) that terminates those that get in its way."

The role would mark a promotion for Cruise who last starred as a U.S. senator in Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs. Washington, who starred in the remake of the political conspiracy classic The Manchurian Candidate, is also attached to star in The Matarese Circle, based on the Robert Ludlum novel.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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picolas

i'm not sure if i can have any hope for star trek now knowing it's the guys who wrote transformers.

MacGuffin

Tom Cruise wakes up 'Sleeper'
Actor teams with Sam Raimi, Josh Donen on adaptation
Source: Hollywood Reporter

As Tom Cruise goes about writing the next chapter in his career, he's developing an interest in comic book movies.

Together with Sam Raimi, he is setting up "Sleeper" at Warner Bros. Cruise is loosely attached to star in the adaptation of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic that Raimi would produce with his Star Road Entertainment partner Josh Donen.

Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, "Sleeper," which ran from 2003-05, centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact. He is placed undercover in a villainous organization by an intelligence agency and falls for a member of the group, named Miss Misery.

Although he remains a co-owner of United Artists -- from which his longtime producing partner Paula Weinstein resigned last week -- he's not tied exclusively to that company. It now looks as if his next acting gig will be the Spyglass thriller "Tourist," as if to counter the more cerebral role he played in the UA boxoffice failure "Lions for Lambs" and the upcoming UA WWII period pic "Valkyrie," in which he plays the anti-Nazi Claus van Stauffenberg.

"Sleeper" is the third project that Cruise has become associated with over the past two weeks --all three separate from his commitments at UA. In addition to "Tourist," the actor has expressed interest in the Working Title-Universal comedy "Food Fight."

Also apart from UA, the actor picked up some good notices last week for his uncharacteristic turn as a bald film mogul in DreamWorks-Paramount's "Tropic Thunder."

Even if Cruise opts not to do "Sleeper," his interest in the project is propelling it forward, despite complicated rights issues that must be sorted out. Raimi and Donen have long been fans of the book, and the project could have found homes at Sony and Regency if those issues hadn't been so complex.

"Sleeper" is a spin-off book from Wildstorm flagship title "WildC.A.T.s" and features characters from another spin-off book, "Gen 13."

Both books had been set up at different places around town and some of those deals were made before DC bought the imprint in 1999.

Warners, now involved in a legal wrangle with Fox over the rights to "Watchmen," appears determined to cross all the t's and dot all the i's in its contracts for "Sleeper."

The project is being eyed not only as a starring vehicle for Cruise but also as a possible franchise for the studio.

Matt Reilly is overseeing the project for Warners while Russell Hollander shepherds for Star Road. Gregory Noveck oversees for DC. No writer is attached.

"Sleeper" sees Raimi and Donen continuing their company's superhero, which began when they recently set up the superhero story "The Transplants" at Disney.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Tom Cruise, UA pick up 'Monster'
Studio acquires rights to Douglas Preston book
Source" Variety

VENICE — Tom Cruise and United Artists have acquired rights to serial-killer thriller "The Monster of Florence," with Cruise attached to produce and possibly to star, according to Douglas Preston, author of the bestseller.

Preston and Italo journo Mario Spezi told Corriere della Sera they have inked with UA for a big-screen adaptation of their reconstruction of eight grisly double homicides believed to have been committed single-handedly between 1968 and 1985 in and around the Italian Renaissance gem.

"It's the biggest movie deal in my life," the leading Italo daily quoted Preston as saying in a front page story. Previous Preston tomes made into movies include thriller "The Relic."

"The film will have Florence and the Chianti as protagonists: two of the locations most beloved by Americans," said Spezi, a Florentine crime reporter and "Monster" contributor, to Corriere.

Reps for United Artists could not immediately be reached for comment.

Spezi said the script will be penned by Chris McQuarrie ("Valkyrie") and that Cruise will produce and decide whether he wants to star once he reads it.

The "Monster of Florence" case had previously inspired the Thomas Harris sequel "Hannibal."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Cruise joins Diaz in 'Wichita'
Duo to star in 20th Century Fox action comedy
Source: Variety

Tom Cruise is zeroing in on the 20th Century Fox action comedy "Wichita" as his next star vehicle.

He'll pair with Cameron Diaz in the James Mangold-directed film. That ends a serious courtship that the star had since January with some of the highest-profile projects in Hollywood.

According to sources, Cruise and Diaz have approved the script, and their deals are in advanced negotiations. While Fox has not officially dated the picture, sources said the studio is eyeing a summer 2010 release.

The script has been through many machinations, but the most recent drafts were done by Scott Frank, with Mangold currently fine-tuning the script with Laeta Kalogridis ("Shutter Island"). Two-hander has several action scenes.

Cruise will play a secret agent who pops in and out of the life of a single woman.

Since the opening of "Valkyrie," Cruise has been courted for and has shown serious interest in the Len Wiseman-directed DreamWorks thriller "Motorcade"; the Bharat Nalluri-directed Spyglass remake "The Tourist"; the David Cronenberg-directed MGM drama "The Matarese Circle"; the Universal/Working Title romantic comedy "Lost for Words"; and "The 28th Amendment," the Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck-directed Warner Bros. thriller.

The competition for the slot came down to "Wichita" and "Motorcade." It is possible that Cruise might do one of the other projects down the line.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson to Reunite for 'El Presidente'
By Christopher Campbell; Cinematical

Could you handle a reunion between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson on the big screen? Okay, now that the obligatory reference to the iconic line from 'A Few Good Men' is over with, here's the truth: the two actors will potentially co-star in Warner Bros.'s action comedy 'El Presidente,' about a former commander-in-chief and his Secret Service agent on the run from some sort of threat. Nicholson has so far been offered the role of the "bumbling and degenerate" ex-president, while Cruise is attached to the part of his idealistic protector, according to 24 Frames.

Nothing else is revealed about the film (why the Spanish title?) except that it was written by TV scribe Dan Goor, who has worked for Conan O'Brien, Carson Daly, 'The Daily Show' and currently 'Parks and Recreation.' But it does evoke a lot of memories of other films, not just the one featuring Cruise and Nicholson and a military court-martial case. For one, there's 'Mars Attacks,' in which Nicholson played the president. And then there are the other comedies involving the Secret Service, like 'Guarding Tess' and 'First Kid.'

The main concern here could be that even an IMAX screen is too small to contain such huge personalities together for what's likely the majority of the film's running time. Also, will audiences want to see Cruise as yet another government agent, here again in an action comedy, which didn't suit him so well this past summer with 'Knight and Day.' It's presumed this project would come somewhat soon after the next 'Mission: Impossible' movie. Maybe if he employs prosthetics for his character, a la Len Grossman, it'll be funny?
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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wilder

Tom Cruise Can Still Be Great -- Why Aren't His Movies?
By Calum Marsh Wednesday, Apr 24 2013
via The Village Voice

Though he's long been among the most recognizable celebrities in the world, Tom Cruise has always seemed vaguely irritating, like the popular kid at school everybody secretly dislikes. His is an odd sort of fame: globally recognized but rarely acclaimed, he remains more reliably bankable than nearly any other actor of his generation, his presence an almost guaranteed boon to a film's bottom line despite being a magnet for bad press and, in recent years especially, mild scandal.

art of the problem, of course, is that our gossip-saturated conception of celebrity culture privileges private controversy over professional achievement. That's why, in the public imagination, a few years of incriminating tabloid headlines have apparently eclipsed the accomplishments of a three-decade career, effectively transforming a once-celebrated star into a spectacle of folly.

What's strange about this perceptual shift isn't so much that a respected actor's reputation has been summarily tarnished—it would hardly be the first time public sentiment curdled so suddenly, as it did with Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle—as it is that Cruise's recent bout with popular opinion began during one of his career's most prosperous periods.

In 2005, the year of his notorious couch-hopping meltdown, Cruise had just delivered back-to-back performances in two of his most compelling films: first came Michael Mann's groundbreaking foray into digital filmmaking, Collateral, in which Cruise played a virtuoso hitman chauffeured around downtown Los Angeles by a reluctant cabbie, played by Jamie Foxx. Collateral found Cruise consciously subverting an increasingly shopworn routine, suppressing his trademark charisma and recalibrating his charm toward something decidedly understated.

Cruise starred in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds the following year. Though not particularly well-received upon release—at least by the standards of Spielberg, whose previous film with Cruise, 2002's Minority Report, was a massive hit both critically and commercially—it seems apparent now that Worlds represented a serious effort on the part of both director and star to grapple with some of the lingering residual anxieties of the period. In many ways the film endures as one of the definitive works of post-9/11 cinema. Our cultural conversation neglected this dimension of the film in favor of vacuous rumor-mongering, which suggests the degree to which we value watercooler gossip over deep engagement.

Not that any of this was new to Cruise, mind you. He'd already sparred with the press in a years-long public relations battle more than five years before Scientology and Oprah's couch ever entered the discussion, when aspersions cast on his sexuality eclipsed recognition of his work. This was around 1999, the actor's artistic peak. That was the year in which Cruise starred in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, the great director's final film and arguably his richest, as well as appearing in a crucial supporting role in Paul Thomas Anderson's widely hailed Magnolia.

What these movies share—more than simply being major, somewhat difficult works by important, infamously difficult filmmakers—is that they more or less relegate Cruise to a position of weakness, simultaneously tapping into his stardom and pointedly undermining it. Eyes Wide Shut finds Cruise being shut down and emasculated at every turn; Magnolia, meanwhile, finds his exaggeratedly macho poses thoroughly deconstructed, his persona exposed as phony.

These qualities prove intriguing, but they also prove, more significantly, that Cruise was once willing to relinquish control of his image to filmmakers whose creative judgment he clearly trusted, which resulted in work of surprising intelligence and sophistication—unsurprisingly, some of the best of his career. Lately, however, Cruise has taken the opposite approach: rather than actively seek roles that challenge his iconography and legacy, he's receded into complacency and, even worse, seemingly desperate self-mythologizing.

When he isn't busy reprising one of his least interesting roles—Mission Impossible's milquetoast hero Ethan Hunt—he's hard at work (re)building his own reputation from the ground up, furiously reasserting his masculine prowess and utter infallibility in such trifles as Jack Reacher and the antiseptic sci-fi trifle Oblivion.

It's not that these roles or even films are bad, necessarily—though Jack Reacher is pretty lousy—but rather that they're uninteresting, which for an actor once respected for making genuinely daring choices is disappointing. Cruise seems stuck making films for the sake of his agent rather than for his audience or the cinema. Perhaps this is simply an extended period of downtime for an actor known to occasionally phone it in, as he did in Vanilla Sky and The Last Samurai.

But it's possible that maybe this is a delayed response to how often we've ignored Cruise's capacity to branch out and surprise, a kind of career shrug from a guy resigned to the fact that, no matter how hard he tries, we'll always focus on his personal life instead of his talent. Whenever Tom Cruise most obviously deserves acclaim and recognition, the cameras are directed toward something private and wholly unrelated, and the conversation shifts from praise to scrutiny to vehement rejection.

Lottery

I liked War of the Worlds. Thought it was a fair bit better than Minority Report.