Toronto Trim's Hotel Cum Drop-in Centre

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall

If he's not careful, Will Smith is going to take his spot.

TM

Nah, Smith can't be morphed into as many roles as Cruise.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Isn't it trendy to hate any celebrity who starts expounding on anything not directly related to their day jobs? Madonna on Kaballah--wacky; Sarandon and Robbins on anything--fuck off; any star on Kerry--where do they have political credibility. Stars are supposed to stay in their box: look good, act/sing/whatever, have a fling now and then, get a quickie divorce--stuff that makes the cover of US Weekly.

Cruise is trying to escape the box, telling everyone that scientology is great, pills are an abomination, as is counseling, brook shields doesn't have post-partum depression ("it's all in her mind"). He's not behaving right.

Attacking Matt Lauer did not help. He has high Q ratings.

[greatwhitenorthchick]

Originally posted by barely_legal
I was never a huge fan and didn't have a strong opinion one way or the other. Until a couple of nights ago when I dreamed that I was trying to get him to have sex with me. I really wanted him to have sex with me in the dream. Now I feel a little pissed at him b/c I woke up before we did it, and I'm pretty sure it would have been spectacular dream sex. But I'm willing to forgive him if he revisits me one night soon and gives me some nice dream-orgasms.

He didn't talk a lot in the dream. I think that helped.

I had a nightmare last night that I was still with my husband and pregnant and he said he didn't want to raise it so I said I would. But we were still living together and he kept eating big onions and leaving onion skins all over the place. And I had a Gap catalog and it was full of candy so I stashed that away. Then I woke up and thought it was true and got really freaked out and then relieved that I wasn't pregnant. Then I woke up my boyfriend and told him all about it.

I realize this is a pointless post - but I am still freaked out. Especially about the onion skins.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Nah, Smith can't be morphed into as many roles as Cruise.

Well, no black actor can. You can take all those period pieces and throw them out the window. But as far as the big summer blockbuster name game draw goes, Smith is on the cusp. And if Cruise starts to get in the way of his movies because, as Burger says, we see him instead of the bland character he's playing, he's in trouble (relatively speaking).

TM

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
It was the best of whiffs, it was the worst of whiffs.

Tis a far, far better place I whiff than I have ever whiffed before.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Whiff deep at the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsetter people whiff and lament
Another day's useless energy's spent
Impassioned posters whiff as one
Lame post seeks laughs and finds none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior spinsters wish they were young
Cold-hearted orb rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right,
And which is an illusion.

Go not softly into that cold, cold night
Whiff! Whiff, at the dying of the light!

[spookyfish]

Originally posted by robustpuppy
I have never been a fan but only started hating him with Cocktail, which is so cringingly embarrasingly bad I can hardly believe it didn't kill his career. I thought he was well-cast in Jerry Maguire, because he was supposed to be a bit of prick in that movie, but I didn't really buy that he was redeemed by some hard knocks, true love, and the success he gained by looking out for someone else who was going to look after himself regardless of what Jerry did. (Does that make sense?) In other words, his puppy dog schtick at the end didn't fool me. I also didn't think that was such a fantabulous movie. Mission Impossible was a piece of shit, and if I were Tom Cruise and possessed of a normal ego I would feel like the Bourne Identity was the movie MI should have been. Minority Report was okay and it made good use of the nearly-manic intensity in his gaze, which was also put to good use in the Firm. He wasn't bad in A Few Good Men, I'll give him that, but he was playing against Demi Moore a lot of the time, so there you go. I can't even comment on Top Gun.

Bottom line is that I don't understand his monstrous success. His is not a face or a voice or a personality that I can't get enough of on screen.

You're starting to scare me, except for the fact that I've seen neither MI or Minority Report. But I think the thing about Cruise is that the very things that make him a "safe/non-offensive" choice in many movies, are also the things that make him so uninteresting. For example, I thought Risky Business was a great movie, but you could have gotten any young actor of that era to play that role, and most would have been better. For every good movie he's been in, he's done three which suck, and the vast majority of the good movies he's done would have been better with somebody else in them. Great actors can make questionable material good and good material great. He does neither. I just find him totally undeserving of the success and adulation he's received.

In the simplest terms I can put it, he's Tom Hanks without the talent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Well, no black actor can. You can take all those period pieces and throw them out the window. But as far as the big summer blockbuster name game draw goes, Smith is on the cusp. And if Cruise starts to get in the way of his movies because, as Burger says, we see him instead of the bland character he's playing, he's in trouble (relatively speaking).

TM

I don't think its just Smith's blackness. I think he's one of those big personalities that fills up the screen. So if the part doesn't fit his bombastic personality, he won't get cast.

Smith is already one of the kings of the Summer blockbusters. Who's bigger, really?

Smith is a far better actor than Cruise IMO. I still say his best part ever was 6 Degrees of Separation. That movie got panned a lot, but he was fucking incredible in it.

[pony_trekker]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Is it trendy to hate Tom Cruise all of a sudden? I don't particularly like or dislike him, but it seems strange to me that a guy who can guarantee $100 million on any flick he's in, based on pretty much his name alone is so thoroughly detested. He's no great actor, but he never gets in the way of the movie he's in. Is it just his ridiculous Scientology crap and Katie Holmes garbage that makes him such a joke all of a sudden? Or has everyone here detested him like a sickness* since All the Right Moves?

TM

*Extra points for who can tell me where this quote comes from without Googling.

I kind of like his rants. I may not really believe we come from spirits of aliens nuked in volcanoes but I do believe that psychiatry is dogma rather than science.

His blandness and good face is why he is good in so many roles. He has been in some very good movies, or at least movies that I like. I forgot about Minority Report.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Is it trendy to hate Tom Cruise all of a sudden? I don't particularly like or dislike him, but it seems strange to me that a guy who can guarantee $100 million on any flick he's in, based on pretty much his name alone is so thoroughly detested. He's no great actor, but he never gets in the way of the movie he's in. Is it just his ridiculous Scientology crap and Katie Holmes garbage that makes him such a joke all of a sudden? Or has everyone here detested him like a sickness* since All the Right Moves?

TM

*Extra points for who can tell me where this quote comes from without Googling.

Recent wackiness for me. Liked him for quite a while, but his off screen crap started to get in the way. Of his more recent films, I actually rather enjoyed Minority Report, Magnolia and Jerry Maguire. I hated Eyes Wide Shut and his performance had a lot to do with that, though the whole movie bugged me. I haven't seen Collateral, Vanilla Sky or The Last Samurai, precicely because his off screen anctics started bugging me.

I think he's a great supporting actor. Lots of good performances bounce off him (Newman, Nicholson, and Foxx being three that I can think of immediately).

I think that he's not the box office gold he used to be. He certainly didn't save Vanilla Sky, and I don't remember The Last Samurai being an overwhelming box office success.

My sister says that firing his publicist and hiring his sister was the wrost move he could have made. I disagreed and pointed out that if I or any of my other siblings hired her, she'd never let us say the crap that Tom Cruise is saying these days.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Is your sig line a comment on your taste for rough sex?

It's Dylan quote, Nimrod. Or did I just whiff?

[barely_legal]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
I had a nightmare last night that I was still with my husband and pregnant and he said he didn't want to raise it so I said I would. But we were still living together and he kept eating big onions and leaving onion skins all over the place. And I had a Gap catalog and it was full of candy so I stashed that away. Then I woke up and thought it was true and got really freaked out and then relieved that I wasn't pregnant. Then I woke up my boyfriend and told him all about it.

I realize this is a pointless post - but I am still freaked out. Especially about the onion skins.

Next time you start having a dream like that, you are welcome to join me and Tom in my dream instead. I think there was champagne in my dream (and a waffle house) but no onion skins. Oh, and please get rid of the baby before you come over to my dream. I think pregnant women turn Tom off.

[greatwhitenorthchick]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Well, no black actor can. You can take all those period pieces and throw them out the window.

A bunch of operas these days now use a fair amount of black singers even though those operas take place way back when and it seems to work. I can see if it is a period piece about race or something like that - then it wouldn't work, but if it's just a regular old period piece, why not? I think it makes things kind of interesting. Not exactly "authentic" - but I just want to see good- or interesting-looking people who are good actors - when it comes down to it, I don't think it matters what race they are.

[evenodds]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Attacking Matt Lauer did not help. He has high Q ratings.

From the Salon series, Cruise's new empowerment owes more to his rise through the Scientology levels rather than exploiting his own (waning) fame. Plus the whole Katies Holmes missing 16 days thing creeps me out.

Last year, my client's girlfriend got hooked into the Celebrity Centre in LA and spent every dime she had saved from her move from NY theater goddess to LA nobody on "classes" and therapy and whatever. Her friends, who included some primetime tv actresses and platinum selling artists, dropped her when she could no longer afford the CC. According to the CC, the reason she was not getting jobs in LA was because she was not taking the process seriously enough to get clear. Once she could do that (and tithe), she would be successful.

The thing that irritates me the most about the whole Cruise thing -- and by that I mean the erratic behavior/self-loathing closeted thing -- is that I genuinely dislike him as a person but I like some of his work and he continues to make movies I want to see. So, I have every intention of seeing WotW, but I'd like to see it after the opening weekend so that I don't contribute to him thinking that his media blitz helped his movie or that he does have control over his universe.

Great . . . so now I am the crazy one.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by pony_trekker
I kind of like his rants. I may not really believe we come from spirits of aliens nuked in volcanoes but I do believe that psychiatry is dogma rather than science.

DO NOT try his rants at dinner or parties. Saying "drugs are not a solution" or "alcoholism isn't a disease; its a symptom of other problems" will earn you vicious reactions. Never tell people they aren't victims, or that they ought to be responsible for their own actions. Not popular at all.

And never say psychiatry is hogwash. Your aunt in therapy might get up and leave the table and call you an asshole.