In Contention

Tag: United Artists

  • Could everyone just leave Tom Cruise alone?

    Tom CruiseI don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but the en vogue nature of dog-piling Tom Cruise has started to really get under my skin.

    Sure, Rachel Abramowitz and Anne Thompson are playing the pity card in their tone, but you get the pouring-salt-on-wounds vibe nonetheless.  At Variety, Thompson calls “Lions for Lambs” a flop twice (it is, but once was enough) while Abramowitz tosses around words like “crisis” regarding the actor’s career at the LA Times, all in the service of what?

    The real story is about Paula Wagner leaving United Artists last week, and yet the desire of entertainment journalists is to shine a light on Cruise, off in the corner, making his own moves as usual, some successful, some not, and all of them in the course of a career that is, quite frankly, just fine…if in flux.  Follow-up stories have to be about something when the quote well has dried up, I suppose.

    Commentary on Cruise’s situation is fair enough, but to me it seems like another reason for people to bring up the Oprah couch-jumping “meltdown” (I’ve seen meltdowns and that didn’t come close).  It’s another excuse to discuss Cruise’s waning star.  For Thompson, it’s an opportunity to borderline play psychiatrist:

    The details on the 28th Amendment scenario reveal a good deal about what Cruise is looking for in roles. Cruise played a doctor in Eyes Wide Shut, a U.S. Senator in Lions for Lambs, and a Nazi hero in Valkyrie (a role that I hear is quite moving). Cruise also earned raves in a cameo role in Tropic Thunder as a fat balding venal producer.

    I think the implication is a leader complex.  Cruise prefers to be in positions of power on screen, that right?   I’m editorializing, of course, but that’s the gist I’m getting.  Underneath it all, what’s wrong with shying away from the role of a special ops operative because it’s treading “Mission: Impossible” territory?

    Where some are finding reason to question Cruise’s power within the system he’s triumphed for over two decades, I tend to see an actor conscious of his image while seeking out roles that at least stand out to him, mindful of regressing into a cookie-cutter tool for studio usage.

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  • Cimino and Oscar

    Lots of talk about deserving (and undeserving) directors in the Oscar chatting this week. Let’s take it to specifics with one race that stood out to a few commenters.

    It seemed in the spring of 1979, following the Oscar ceremony, there was a sense in the industry that if the Academy could have taken back their votes — which saw “The Deer Hunter” and director Michael Cimino winning for Best Picture and Best Director — they would have done so.

    The first screenings of “The Deer Hunter” had begun the summer before, when executives saw the film and were stunned by its raw, visceral power, leading to buzz within the business that a masterwork had been born. Execs at United Artists sought out Cimino and inked him to a contract to make a film before before the release of the Vietnam epic, a move they would live to regret.

    By the time the film was released in December of 1978, word of mouth was so strong Cimino seemed to be defying anyone to dislike the effort or say anything negative about it. Film critics awarded it best picture and director honors, except those in Los Angeles who gave “Coming Home” highest marks, while Cimino won the directing award. Nominated for nine Oscars, “The Deer Hunter” won five, adding Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing to the aforementioned Best Picture and Best Director trophies.

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  • No Oscar for ‘Valkyrie’ in 2008

    I have to admit, I was looking forward to “Valkyrie,” Bryan Singer’s film about the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Yes, I’m aware that the film stars Tom Cruise, but the remaining cast, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson was intriguing. The film also re-united Singer with Christopher McQuarrie, his screenwriter from “The Usual Suspects.”

    The Sunday Times now reports that the film has been pushed to 2009. Originally scheduled for a summer 2008 release, the film received its first push-back to the fall earlier this year. The paper cites a senior executive at one of Britain’s leading cinema chains who says, “I know there have been all sorts of problems with this production and we will not be screening it at all this year.” The article also notes, ” The quality of Cruise’s German accent was widely commented on. The film has also had to have reshoots after footage was damaged in labs.”

  • Milking that ‘Valkyrie’ teet

    I don’t disagree with a lot of what Michael Cieply has to say about the counted-out “Valkyrie” in this recent New York Times piece. Indeed, the Web is the greatest offender when it comes to instant declarations. It’s a tough balance that plenty of webmasters, myself included, struggle with on a daily basis.

    Indeed, there is much from every side on this story in Cieply’s filing, if certain parties are grossly under-quoted or under-attributed for my tastes. (A closing note from Bryan Singer just isn’t enough.) But the bottom line is, hey — maybe there’s nothing to see here?

    However, when you quote executives in a context such as this:

    In the interim Mr. Cruise, his partners at United Artists and the “Valkyrie” filmmakers are bracing for what will likely be a nine-month fight to prove their critics wrong. “We will not be daunted,” Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists, said last week.

    During a 90-minute interview at the company’s headquarters in a Century City office tower, Ms. Wagner said she and her fellow executives were intent on overcoming negative reactions that she saw as rooted in ignorance of the process of building movie production companies.

    “Anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn’t understand the business,” Ms. Wagner said. She added: “Nothing is going to stop us. We are determined to make this work.”

    How can one not smell blood in the water? Granted, Cieply might have bumped two or three of Wagner’s clearly adamant exclamations that perhaps came at varying times in that 90minute interview, but it still comes across somewhat desperate on her part.

    David Poland is busy washing his hands of all of this, making sure everyone understands that he wasn’t aiming for negativity on “Valkyrie” from the outset. Of course, he’s got that usual balancing act of bashing old media, digging up an old, probably unarchived Oscar call and running through the box office numbers again. But at least he sticks it to Roger Friedman, who Cieply should never have called for such a piece. It takes the story down exponential levels.

    Anyway, I personally could care less about all of this and wish the press would ease off of it. And I’ve said it before, but what good is it doing pulling back the layers on this one?

  • What’s the f***ing point?

    It’s one thing for a report to land by a Hollywood trade that an upcoming release is getting another bump to the next quarter for unverified reasons. But come on.

    I don’t know if it’s just me, but Slate’s Kim Masters always seems to be fishing for a story.

    I don’t take issue often because her pieces tend to have such a brief shelf life when they aim so low. The shit storm is stirred, publicity, however bad, does its job. But to poke Tom Cruise, United Artists and Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie” with two anonymous sources and no apparent angle beyond “something thinks?” Give me a break.

    Of course, there are those who eat this stuff up. Jeffrey Wells keeps linking to and pontificating on every new point, but that’s what he does. Others spin their wheels in other, equally pointless directions. But at least they spin and then walk away. This is a full-blown report, and it amounts to nothing.

    The bottom line is this: who cares? What’s the story? And are you really prepared to justify “It must suck” as the story? Or is your aim just to take a stab at the Gray Lady seven graphs in?

    This is mean-spirited gossip-mongering posing as informative journalism. And sometimes, it just pisses me off.

    Here’s how Masters begins her “story”:

    So, the release of Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise film about the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, has been pushed back—again—from October to February 2009. The studio says that the Presidents’ Day weekend represented an opportunity to cash in. But many see the move as a very bad sign, and, indeed, the buzz on the film is not good.

    And the wrap up:

    Certainly, Stiller has a hit coming next May in Night at the Museum 2. We hear there may be another Cruise cameo in that film (imagine—Cruise, part of Stiller’s comic gang!), though Fox denies that. Meanwhile, our Valkyrie source tells us about a bit of humor on the set. It seems some folks displayed posters of old Cruise movies—Cocktail and so on—and decorated the star’s face with eye patches. Apparently that bit of lightening up was not appreciated.

    More unsubstantiated gossip. Read the rest.