I was leafing through the archives of Alan Edwards’ blog and found this (fictional) book review, which I repeat for its topicality:
Tom Cruise (Overcoming Adversity) by Phelan Powell
Pig-ignorance no bar to fame and fortune February 11, 2002
The
public only see the glamour – but Phelan Powell shows the significant
obstacles Tom Cruise has overcome in order to live his life of pampered
opulence. In Cruise’s case dyslexia was the obstacle – it nearly cost
him the part of the barman in "Cocktail" (he thought it was a film
about cockatiels and told his agent he "didn’t do parrots") and he
bought his own wildebeeste to research the part of Lt Maverick Mitchell
in "Top Gnu".
Henry Raddick
Actually I’ve enjoyed a few Tom Cruise films so I should state that in the tradition of British fair play. But he is better looking than me. So I hate him. And most men.
I can’t resist another one:
The Pop-Up Book of Phobias by Gary Greenberg
Tremendous August 27, 2001
This
pop-up book is sure to be a winner – the spiders and snakes seem to
leap out of the page at you. Well-conceived and beautifully executed,
it even had something for my homophobic Uncle Sandy.
haha! i’d forgotten about henry raddick.
What do you think of T Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut?
What do you think of Eyes Wide Shut?
I only saw about half an hour of it one night when it was on satellite very late and I was tired but too tired to go up to bed. There was some sort of orgy going on in a big house. Don’t know any more than that.
I enjoyed Minority Verdict (is that the right title?) and Last Samurai (although it was romantic fiction in extreme). Not much of a film buff, I’m afraid.
Eyes Wide Shut, on my opinion, is a very powerful film in perfect kubrik’s style about hidden powers in society and how dangerous is to be too curious about them.
Maybe it’s a worning.
The orgy scene you saw is the core of the movie, a flevour of the hidden secrets.
The 1st time I wathced it I didn’t like it very much. I don’t like T Cruise at all and N Kidman either, they are both too “plastic” for me and the super-perfect-man attitude of T Cruise irritates me.
But I’ve to say that, after a couple of further views, I started to make up the theory that Kubrik has used that particular image of the two main actors for his purposes in the movie.
I think that Eyes Wide Shut is the only movie where T Cruise acts superbly, but he’s not conscious of it at all.
He looks like he’s thinking to play the role of the super sofisticated hero which gets involved in some dark games, but he actually represents perfectly the middle class kind of menthality, safe and blind.
The genius of Kubrik sets in this: he has used two mainstream actors using the power of the image they project in real life to play themselves on the scene.
It’s a great movie, nothing to do with the usual crap T cruise is usually in.