Cruise Avoidance

Yes, I too love J. J. Abrams (as does the couch jumping, thetan hating, “South Park” censoring, media annoyance that is Tom Cruise) and will probably see the film, but I’m with Andrew Sullivan on this one: boycotting Tom Cruise just feels like the right thing to do (at least on opening weekend).

70 thoughts on “Cruise Avoidance”

  1. Avoiding Tom Cruise movies this weekend will be as difficult for me as deciding not to kill kittens this weekend, or deciding not to buy an SUV this weekend or not protesting outisde of a Planned Parenthood location.

  2. my desire to avoid cruise has come into conflict with my desire to throw myself under the mission impossible bus, and i fear the bus has won. by the way, shouldn’t it be comedy central and viacom we boycott first?

  4. Sullivan, who intrigues me most of the time as he is the only righty I can read without getting too upset, actually gave me permission to post what I was tentative about posting on my own (weakling that I am). TC’s such an unctious git (even if he does make smart choices and works hard for the money).

  5. Manohla, I think I love you:

    Although he slams into stationary objects with his customary zeal, the usually dependable Mr. Cruise is off his game here, sabotaged by the misguided attempt to shade his character with gray. The domestication of Ethan Hunt may have seemed like a good idea, a humanizing touch, perhaps, but it only bogs down the action. Worse, it turns a perfectly good franchise into a seriously strange vanity project, as the simpering brunette is swept into a new world by a dashing operative for a clandestine organization. Much like the man playing him, Ethan works only if you don’t know anything about what makes him tick. Once upon a Hollywood time, the studios carefully protected their stars from the press and the public. Now the impossible mission, it seems, is protecting them from themselves.

    Let the public blacklash begin (and don’t be throwing Peter Travers in my face)!

  8. if I were to throw someone in your face, it would probably be Joel Siegel. I suspect his ridiculous mustache could do a lot of damage.

  9. well, we saw it on opening night. decent enough fun but really just another action movie–not very much like the first one, which in tone and incoherent-coherent twistiness was qualitatively different from run of the mill spy-action thrillers. (as i say that, i can’t even remember the second one.) the one twist in this movie is so obvious and you see it coming from so far away that you almost convince yourself that there’s a double-twist. the supporting cast has so little to do, i’m surprised they bothered to hire any names. very anticlimactic disposal of seymour hoffman as well.

    however, the extended preview for the x-men movie was so good i almost combusted in my seat.

  10. Certainly not a great action film, but perfectly adequate to start the summer blockbuster season. If you have $120 million in the bank, and your choices are to make this movie or spend another couple of days occupying Iraq, this is clearly the way to go. In the absence of ‘Magnolia 2’ it is good to see Cruise and Hoffman together again in something. I actually thought Hoffman was a superior villain and enjoyed all the scenes with him, especially the one of the plane bringing him back to the US. He has a toneless matter-of-fact manner of delivering his lines that makes him utterly cold-blooded. The capers are not able to keep up with the audience’s expectations, and nothing here comes close to the break-in at Langley in MI:1, but there was a satisfying professional quality to the mayhem.

    The movie theater was empty when I saw the movie, which either means the movie is a bust, or that at 10.30am on a Sunday in Ohio the anti-God machine lost out to the actual God.

    I was not privileged to see the ‘X-Men 3’ preview, but I loved the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 2’ preview. Johnny Depp camps it up like no one alive.

  11. the theater wasn’t full on opening night in boulder either. true it was cinco de mayo and exam time but still. i did like seymour hoffman as a villain, but was expecting to see more of him. and is the thing in the preview where ving rhames signals to somebody with his eyes actually in the movie? i hate when movies don’t actually contain what’s in the previews.

  12. The only eye signalling I saw was when Crudup tells Cruise where to find the Rabbit’s Foot in Shanghai while Cruise is strapped to the table at Langley.

  13. Gitesh Pandya over at Boxoffice Guru guesstimated a $74 million dollar weekend. Boxoffice Mojo weighed in with a $64 million estimation. Current numbers, however, suggest the film will open with $48 million and while Chris and Arnab needed themselves some Tom Cruise this weekend, others seemed less enthusiastic. In fact, MI:3 raked in $9 million less than the second, Woo directed, entry in the franchise AND nearly $17 million less than War of the Worlds last summer. At an estimated $150 million budget–not to mention pr, prints, advertising and Cruise’s backend deal on gross profits–this one is starting to look like egg on the cover of the current Entertainment Weekly coverboy. Anything over a 40% drop in the second weekend and this will be perceived as a flop (next week Poseidon with The Da Vinci Code the following week). I’ll probably see MI:3 next week, but for now I’m smiling.

  14. Why (smile or see it)? If you don’t like this kind of movie, don’t watch it. If it flops, it tells us nothing profound about the demise of Hollywood movies, any more than success for ‘X-Men 3’ will vindicate the genre. There are so many things worth getting upset about in the world today that glee at Tom Cruise’s downwardly spiralling career seems a little pointless.

  16. I’m smiling cause Tom can bust a move. I’ll see it because I like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and JJ Abrams (or J2 as Mr. Cruise refers to him). I say nothing profound nor do I imagine the success or perceived “failure” of MI:3 to signify anything profound. I simply find Tom Cruise, the $100 million man (who is exactly my age so I’ve grown up with him over the last twenty-five years since the release of Taps), to be an American star/icon/text worthy of critical analysis. Pat Kingsley kept Cruise’s star power contained for over a decade; she reproduced in the public sphere a slippery yet likeable enigma and we all bought in (because he does work hard–in fact–he stands for American individuality and a certain kind of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideology). Indeed, you can have dyslexia and still conquer the world. All it takes is a strong work ethic and a pretty face. Now that he has reached the sixth or seventh level of the Scientology heirarchy, he feels he can condemn psychiatry as a “Nazi Science.” He goes on national television and tells millions of Americans that psychopharmacology reveals inner weakness and bodily corruption. In the last year Cruise has begun campaigning on behalf of the Church of Scientology before politicians and government officials around the world (banned in Paris I understand). I can’t even begin to understand the Katie Holmes abduction, except she’s recently fired her manager and agent for a new Church approved team. Talk about a public performance worthy of the Academy Award. I really hope they are in love and that she has total freedom of choice, but the signs are unclear. I’m on a rant, I know. Did anybody read the Rolling Stone cover story on Cruise last year? Very fascinating. I actually felt sorry for him . . . one imagines he’s never been encouraged to grow up.

    Look, I guess this makes me relgiously intolerant (or at least very wary of the star system many in America so easily worship). Probably so . . . I have similar feelings for the Pope and his organization, and, unlike Cruise’s cultural production, I completely abstain from consuming their products.

  17. OK, OK. These are all good reasons. I have ignored Tom Cruise’s public life because I start from the assumption that all movie stars are dicks, and fucked up in some significant way. I try to separate the person from the performance just as I can’t bear to think about the foibles of the athletes I revere (none of whom are Italian soccer players — just to satisfy Arnab). I just think you focus on the film, and you evaluate it based on its peer group of equally crappy films. That said, Cruise is a jerk, and the movie was not that good. But damn, I love a good explosion.

  18. Do you separate the politics from the politician or the institutional/industrial apparati that support such ideologies? I’m bating you obviously.

    Scholarly interest in star images has proliferated subsequent to Richard Dyer’s important book Stars (1979), which initiated a semiotic notion that stars should be studied as clusters of signs, as systems of signifiers or texts, which communicate meaning to a spectator. These star texts are highly manipulated and have been fabricated through the work of the star, his or her representatives and other cultural workers (such as gossip columnists); for Dyer, star texts are produced across the categories of promotion, publicity, film texts and criticism and commentary. Work on star images has increasingly sought to contextualize such images within larger discursive structures and within the broader parameters of social history, often taking a lead from Dyer’s own subsequent work and in particular Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (1986) where Dyer sought to bring “together the star seen as a set of media signs with the various ways of understanding the world which influenced how people felt about that star.” For Dyer and others, stars thus become major definers of ideas about such things as gender, race, ethnicity, work and sexuality at historically specific moments. In this sense, stars are ideological images that work to resolve pressing ideological contradictions and in part to foster images of ideal selves that are promoted as sources of identification.

    I stole the above statement off the web, but if I had the time I would have attempted to have written something similar.

  19. i need to get this straight: is cruise a jerk, and you all hate him, because he’s an over-zealous scientologist? is that it? (disclaimer: i’m not a scientologist).

  20. I hate him because he’s pretty. Actually, I don’t hate him. I don’t care enough to really hate him. Sometimes when he’s in a movie, I enjoy the movie, and his performance. Sometimes not. I believe Scientologists must be crazy, but then again I’m not sure of the bedrock sanity of most faiths, and as an atheist I’m not exactly interested in distinguishing between the smart beliefs in non-existent beings and the plain silly beliefs in non-existent beings; I mainly believe I’ll have another drink.

    I gather that what we are up in arms about is the strange extravagant eccentricities and egotism of Cruise’s last few years in the media limelight. While I think Jeff raises–or cribs from others’–good points, and while I’m mostly sympathetic to Chris’ desire to ignore the co-curricular hijinks and pay attention to the film, I find it odd to get mad at Cruise for merely exaggerating the shilling (to steal from another discussion) and egotism so endemic, so epidemic, so necessary to the workings of the industry. Taking potshots at Cruise, or boycotting his stuff, doesn’t seem too serious unless accompanied by a rampant dismissal of and derision for Hollywood generally. It’s kind of like being a self-proclaimed vegan but then opting to eat everything but veal. And even then kind of liking veal, if it would just shut up about ritalin and Katie Holmes and be delicious.

  21. I don’t think he’s a jerk or a freak, and I’m not out to overthrow Hollywood, I simply advocated boycotting the opening weekend of the film so that the numbers encourage Cruise to rethink his (potentially hurtful) proselytizing, as his weird antics might actually be affecting his box office. He may decide that box office numbers pale in comparison with the glories of the teaching of L. Ron Hubbard, and if that’s the case . . . more power to him (I’ll respect him for making such a difficult choice). But I’m under the impression that Cruise feels as if he’s been given the privilege to speak his mind. I guess I’m not comfortable with the idea that Cruise thinks he can have it both ways and the money will still flow. So, I said let’s target the opening weekend. Some might call me a hypocrite, because I do support left leaning artists like Susan Sarandon or George Clooney or even Angelina Jolie. But these are also stars who use their power and position to push their political ideas to the forefront of the (inter)national conversation. They are unapologetically political, but Cruise has alwasy struck me as purely apolitical. He doesn’t really seem to care about the state of the world so much as he cares about blowing things up and preaching the gospel of Scientology (not to mention maintaining his hyper-masculine mask . . . ok, fair enough, he’s heterosexual but methinks the man protests too much). I disagree with Mike that it has to be an all or nothing approach. I can enjoy Hollywood product and criticize Cruise’s public persona without entering into a rampant dismissal of and derision for Hollywood (how reductive). As a consumer I get to pick my battles; this is one that seemed worthy of my time (otherwise I would have been there Friday afternoon at 1:00 pm).

  22. i have always found the worldwide crusade against scientology really uncomfortable. there are lots of wacko religions (and mike makes total sense to me when he says that, to an atheist, all religions must seem pretty wacko), just as there are a lot of wacko philosophies, political views, and general takes on the world. as much as i try, i don’t find scientology to be any worse than most. so the guy is against psycho-drugs: big effing deal. i take psycho-drugs, but i wholeheartedly agree with cruise and anyone else who thinks that this country, and these country’s children, are disproportionately drugged up. it’s a huge, HUGE money-making operation, and it should be stopped.

    why not boycott every movie made by a card-carrying republican, or a card-carrying anti-environmentalist, or a card-carrying war supporter? these are the people who are fucking up the world, not the scientologists, for goodnessakes!

    and of course i totally agree with mike: the leni riefenstahl argument, mutatis mutandis. will we boycott the work of a really fucked up artist, all things being equal? is beauty diminished (or enhanced) by the politics of its creators?

  23. Well–You’re right, Jeff, it doesn’t have to be nor should it be an either/or choice, forcing an all-out refutation of the biz or embracing its hucksterism along with its products. That was silly. And I am taking you seriously, even though I’m cracking wise (and I think your initial post was also pretty playful).

    But I’ll come back to some points Gio just made, in a different way. First, I actually prefer it if Cruise is proselytizing–in a country where every elected or election-seeking official must almost as a matter of course drop a nod to Our Christian Father (or, if Jewish, to a saintly faithfulness that makes Christians feel comfortable), I don’t mind that this big public figure is selling a faith that so many agree is “silly” or “crackpot” or “dangerous.” Criticizing his faith when we bow our heads in careful avoidance of critique of other faiths seems not just hypocritical but ideologically suspect: we keep the “good” faith in place by knocking on the “crazy” ones. Bah humbug. Let ‘im rip, I say.

    Same critique goes for the anti-Hollywood biz stuff. It seems to me that Cruise has been taking it on the chin from the mainstream media for the last year. Sure, he deserves it–I am not sympathizing with him. (I’ll sympathize with him when I make over a mil or he buys me a Prius. Either option, and I’ll squirt him a few of my big fat tears.) However, it strikes me as odd that the minute someone goes off-script–showing up on “Today” and not playing by the rules–everyone goes ape on the guy, mockery becomes open. When Tom Hanks goes out and does the shows and interviews, we’ll all love him–and he’s tremendously likable. But his shilling seems more insidious than Cruise’s, precisely because the latter is so inept and the former makes us all comfortable–even pleased–with the business. Cruise’s antics expose the hypocrisies and institutional economics of the biz, so, again, I say let ‘im rip.

    Now, my own hypocrisies are close to what you nailed Chris for–I may talk a big game about institutional this and that, but push come to shove I will probably see this, and a whole slew of other big-budget craptaculars this Summer. And I can’t just tsk-tsk and make like a New Critic that the text has to speak for itself… I know, I know. I, too, like veal, so where do I get off worrying about animal rights? All I can say is, veal is delicious.

    Wait, what was I talking about again?

  27. I’m boycotting the film with even more obstinacy since I have learned that the cinema around the corner from the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center has reported that people have been buying tickets 500 at a time.

    Besides his devotion to Scientology, the thing that I find most repulsive about Tom Cruise is his apparent assumption that we are all genuinely interested in him as a person. In the case of other celebrities, I generally figure that they recognize fans’ prurient interest for what it is: obsession with celebrity; an aspect of the movie star’s job. It seems however that for Tom Cruise, interaction with fans via the press is not so much a part of his job as a substitute for real human conversation. This may be a feature of all celebrity/press interaction, but I find it to be egregiously obvious in Mr. Cruise’s case.

    I continue to welcome any opportunity that arises for me to participate in a mass embarrassment of Mr. Cruise by simply sitting on my couch and contemplating the interest I am earning on the extra $10 I left in my savings account.

  28. The “South Park” link is priceless and, sadly, true to the religion’s mythology to its very core. Mike mentioned how subversive (or at least gloriously inept) Cruise is for actually speaking his mind, while Tom Hanks is little more than a corporate shrill (and by the way, in an earlier post I don’t think I was very friendly to the Catholics). I wish I could come up a smart and humorous Reynolds-worthy rejoinder, but ultimately I would argue I can’t think of a single star of Cruise’s status that proselytizes religious/cultic doctrines as intensely and as irresponsibly as the $100 million man. Hell, most Jews in Hollywood changed their names so we wouldn’t know. Name one Catholic star out there preaching abstinance and celibacy and the evils of abortion. Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians, Mormons, members of the United Church of Christ . . . hell, I’m not even sure I can name one star who identifies themselves with such groups (much less forwarding their agenda in a spectacularly public manner). Even the atheists have managed to keep their beliefs to themselves. The Church of Scientology fetishizes Hollywood celebrities, feeds their insecurities, showers them with praise, attention and plenty of handlers. There are “class” divisions at work in this church that, ignorant as I may be, do not occur in other faiths (at least not in the pages of People. And while Reynolds is happy to privilege Christianity, I can’t name a single Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Moony, Shinto, or (insert faith here), that does what Cruise and his lackeys do every single day.

  29. jeff, marc, you are both ignorant bigots. to the best of my knowledge, the only proselytizing cruise did was to lambast the psychopharmaceutical industry and noise in the delivery room. i find that pretty harmless, but maybe you think i’m naive. maybe scientologists are about to take over the world by refusing to take psycho-drugs and having babies in silent environments. just like christians have taken over the world through “harmless” films like March of the Penguins, every other disney-produced piec’a shit, and awesome deeds like the christian crusade against “terrorists,” the triumph of the gospel of individual salvation (= no taxes for the rich), and the criminalization of gay marriage.

    you don’t have to proselytize when you already own the world! get it?

    scientology is not a classist sect. i am not sure what makes you think that, jeff.

    and, marc, if you find cruise’s engagement with the public offensive and out of boundaries, you must respect anyone who boycotts a film because an openly gay celebrity stars in it.

    get over it, boys: tolerance cuts both ways.

  30. To quote Bart Simpson’s dismissal of some wacky sect, “Thank God we all worship now a 2,000 year old carpenter.” I am sympathetic to both sides of this argument: Scientology, no matter how ridiculous, gets its chance to flower, just as other supernatural doctrines do, each creating its own form of irreparable harm by making people deny the world they’re in in favor of an occult projection of another world. jeff, how can you forget Mel Gibson’s overt proselytizing in Passion of the Christ, where Gibson is overtly anti-semitic as well as strangely obsessive about the physical punishment of Christ and rather less so about the salvation purportedly made possible by the crucifixion.

    Nevertheless I don’t find Mark or Jeff–the “boys”–to be bigots because they reject Scientology; I’d like to see more religious ideas held up to ridicule and Scientology is certainly ripe for it, given its beliefs in salvation by spaceship, its tiers toward “going clear,” (all requiring massive amounts of money),its pathological secrecy and its primary focus on the lost privileged who can afford to indulge in this individualistic drivel. However, if that’s what Cruise believes, that’s fine–I don’t feel the need to boycott his movies. I mean, John Wayne was an asshole politically but that doesn’t stop me from loving The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. As for tolerance–Let a thousand flowers bloom, half of them with a stink that would choke a horse.

    an anecdote: A friend in LA told me once that he had a visit from a relative from overseas. His relative expressed wonder at the Scientology building in West LA and the figure with a horn that can be seen for miles. My friend told his relative that this was a great place of honor and respect….that it was, in fact, Frank Sinatra’s home. All hail to Frank! and juice up my space ride, while you’re at it!

  31. But I bet you weren’t lining up for The Green Beret. Still, the Gibson argument is spot on (and I did boycott that film though I had no blog to stir up the pot). And Gio . . . you outted the Pony! ‘Lil Pony no more . . . its now the more prosaic Marc. Sigh.

  32. Gio, this is an economic boycott, not a boycott of artistic appreciation. If given the chance to see MI3 for free (and even be exposed to its subliminal imagery) I will take it. But I will not make Mr. Cruise richer. Aren’t boycotts so well-respected or at least well-tolerated in this country because they address cultural change as a product of materialism without necessarily questioning capitalism?

    If homophobes didn’t pay to see a movie with an openly gay actor but did see the movie eventually, I would not have a quarrel with that decision. By seeing the movie, homophobic viewers leave open the possibility of a transformative experience, however small, even if they do not pay money which could be used to finance future similar productions.

    (Feel free to probe the logical inconsistency remaining in my argument about cultural change within capitalism here; this is as far as I have thought it through so far.)

    side note specifically to Gio: It’s on, bitches.

    Signed,
    Li’l Pony

  33. It is interesting that our personal decisions not to watch certain movies has morphed into the notion of a boycott. I decided not to watch ‘Passion of the Christ’ but I didn’t think of it as a boycott. If I had mobilized all my friends into not watching the film, and perhaps picketed it, I could see calling it a boycott. Still, I suppose this is the logical conclusion to the personal being political: the individualization of politics. I’m glad for the janitorial staff at Miami that Gio and her colleagues engaged in old-fashioned collective politics.

    For the record, I boycott all films that are described as “heartwarming.”

  37. well spotted, chris! there’s got to be others, but because of my boycott i don’t get to see them.

    you are so right: collective, hands-on political action is totally invigorating. i recommend it to anyone who suffers from a) cruise fatigue, b) anti-scientology bigotry, c) generic depression, and d) all other such bourgeois ailments.

  38. First, I would like to point out that I did call for a collective boycott of the film during its opening weekend. That doesn’t make me any less bourgeois and it certainly doesn’t measure up to fighting for the rights of oppressed workers in Miami, but it was a call for unity nonetheless (and I was prodded on by another call for unity from Andrew Sullivan). How about this from tomorrow’s New York Times:

    A Roman Catholic organization in India has urged Christians to starve themselves to death to protest the release of “The Da Vinci Code” in movie theaters there, Agence France-Presse reported. Joseph Dias, the secretary general of the Catholic Secular Forum, who spoke of the “fast unto death” as a demonstration of “the extent that our feelings have been hurt,” said that it is “a more Christian way of doing things rather than pulling down things and tearing them up.” The forum said that it hoped that thousands of people would turn out for a protest today in Mumbai to burn effigies of Dan Brown, the author of the best-selling novel that is the basis for the film, scheduled for international release on May 19. Yesterday about 100 people gathered in Mumbai to burn pages of the book, but the police stopped them from torching an effigy of Mr. Brown, whose novel posits that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had children and that their line survives. About 2 percent of the 1.1 billion people in India are Christian.

    I would also like to take a moment to celebrate this conversation’s arrival in the WLTW top ten posts of all time. Dance Tommy Dance!

  39. I’m not sure teaching isn’t a collective hands-on political action though I guess it depends on whom and how you teach. I’m also not sure that people who are in many ways on the margin of sciety–in terms of their education and their function within the university (except maybe for those of you who have those nice fat tenure-track positions)–qualify as bourgeois. and many who enter the university as academics do not enter from bourgeois backgrounds. of course, some may be more bourgeois than others, I don’t know (who wants to fess up?) I wonder to what extent we can consider cultural analysis hands-on action and if there’s anything to be said about film’s role in that activity. or do we really need to be in the streets to be more effective and less…well, effete? and who’s Tommy?

  40. I would like to take a moment to celebrate that on April 3 in my review of Thank You For Smoking, I wrote,

    “The audience reaction to Katie Holmes was to recoil and be creeped out, big-time, and I am predicting right here that Tom “Clear” Cruise’s MI3 will flop. They – and their careers – have had it.”

    Taa-daa.

  42. My origins and my privilege, sadly, is cut solely out of bourgeois cloth. You got to be surfing the system with panache to enter a PhD program in theatre studies at age 32 because you want to extend adolescence a few more years. That being said, I was a secondary school teacher for five or six years before (and a McWanderer before that) so maybe teaching as vocation lifts me a few inches out of my comfy upbringing. Still, I can critique my subject position as well as anybody and that seems to count for something.

  43. I did, in fact, line up for The Green Berets. I loved the scene where they found the Cong in the Santa Monica Mountains–Will Rogers Park, to be precise–and when they napalmed the Brown Derby, I cheered! I also enjoyed very much the scene where John Wayne, Gene Barry and Cornel Wilde pistol-whipped the Commie who ordered the vodka tonic at the Formosa Cafe.

  44. Anthony Lane on M:i:III:

    The Cruise fan base has been shaken by a number of public pronouncements, although some of us have merely been confirmed in our original suspicions that there was something about this actor that was not quite of this earth. The stiff-necked jerk of his motions; the grit of his bared teeth; the eyes switched to perennial full beam but never quite blinking, even during tears; his ability to remain totally upright when sprinting, as if carrying an invisible egg and spoon—what are these, if not the techniques of an alien life force who has just graduated summa cum laude in advanced human behavior? Just who was scared of whom, precisely, in last year’s War of the Worlds?

    Can you think of a critic more enjoyable to read?

  46. I’m not sure I learn anything about movies from reading Anthony lane, but his are easily the most enjoyable reviews to read. Ever since his “and then, all Mel breaks out” line about ‘Braveheart’ Lane is the first thing I read in the ‘New Yorker.’ Especially given the contrast with sourpuss David Denby who seems constitutionally incapable of having fun at the movies.

  47. michael, i’m not sure it doesn’t count as hands-on if you don’t leave the house. teaching is good, but you have to do some organizing (get other colleagues to teach in the same way or the same points, do teach-ins, etc.). also, and i may be wrong in this, it’s got to hurt someone or something. at the very least yourself. if it doesn’t hurt it doesn’t matter.

    as to class, you mention it in another post, so i’ll reply there. i went years describing myself as working class (only when i came here — it’s all very different in italy), until one day simon, who’s generally very good and letting me get away with my BS in company, burst out laughing. then i realized that i’m not working class, not even close. the fact that i really, truly don’t know what being working class means should have given me, i suspect, a hint. so i confess: i’m middle class, and fully reaping the benefits of it (mostly in term of an inner feeling of belonging).

  48. OK . . . I saw this film as I said I would and I was willing to be swayed by the explosions and exotic locales and death-defying stunts! My issues with Tom Cruise aside; the failure of this film lies at the feet of JJ Abrams. Mission: Impossible: III played like the most expensive episode of “Alias” ever—down to the comically quirky and chatty, brainiac computer tech support guy (the Marshall Finkman character) as well as Abram’s over-reliance on plot structures that situate the audience in a moment of dire crisis only to take us back two or three days earlier to provide backstory. Indeed, this film has flashbacks within flashbacks! There is a Shanghai sequence which is pretty fun for a while (at least the moment when Cruise pops in for a visit with a very confused janitor). Mostly, however, the film is overkill from start to finish, laughable even. I thought Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance was lumbersome (lugubrious even . . . but with a snarl). At least in “Alias” you get some kick-ass ladies running the show; here the women are all passive victims or objectified bodies to be lured at (Keri Russell fans will be sad that her moment on the big screen lasts about as long as “Felicity” did on TV). Personally, I missed the formal elegance of Brian DePalma’s work on the first installment.

  49. Gio,

    my teaching hurts everyone. It’s a collective hurting!

    I think one reason it is so hard to organize graduate students/adjuncts is that many of them have a middle class mindset though they are in a working class position (low pay, temporary assignments, marginal). And, as you say, much of the working class is in a better circumstance than the academic itinerants–they have fairly secure jobs, retirement plans, etc. Certainly you can see this kind of thing at USC–students who don’t have a pot to piss in identify with established faculty members pulling down 80 grand because they are (ideologically) taught that they are a member of the club, until, of course, it comes down to accepting 10 adjunct assignments for a barely “middle class” living.

  53. Re-reading this long series of exchanges was far, far, far more interesting than the movie itself. Cruise was bland and often irritating, but no more so than in some other cinematic misfires–I am solidly with Jeff (post 48) that the film’s failures are entirely in story, structure, and direction, none of which are interesting in the slightest. Abrams’ stock shifts between a sincere emotion and ‘quirky’ humor, his well-lighted but flat sense of space and motion (very tv), … I put it on 4x speed and I still found it slow-moving.

    I disagree with the J-man about P.S. Hoffman, who is lots of fun precisely because (unlike most villains) he seems to be having no fun at all. It’s simply work, work he hates and because he hates it he does it with a vengeful passion. (I might be talking about his character Owen Davian, or it might actually be a by-product of Hoffman’s engagement with this film. Either way, it plays well.)

    Poor fucking Ving Rhames.

    And I saw a trailer for The Transformers, which has to be the most laughable idea for adaptation into a live-action movie I’ve ever heard. Why, only “Speed Racer” would be more ridiculous. Oh….….. never mind. (“Care Bears”? This time, it’s personal.)

  54. Tom Cruise now has controlling ownership of United Artists. Charlie Chaplin is rolling over in his grave. Douglas Fairbanks is rolling over Mary Pickford in her grave.

  56. Don’t be a hater on Transformers! I’m hoping it’s good. It will be first Michael Bay produced or directed movie I’ve seen since – Hmm…

    How about that – it will be the first Michael Bay movie I will have ever seen!

    And frankly in 8 months I’ll have lost all desire to see it, keeping my perfect record intact.

  57. yeah, MI:III is a really bad movie. tom cruise cries a bit too much. poor michelle monaghan wimpers way too much. ving rhames is too goofy, jonathan rhys myers too much of a non-entity, and billy crudup too transparent. but the worst part was the sentimentalism and that bad bad dialogue. i wish jj abrams had honed in on the plot and the suspense, as brian de palma did, or on the action, as john woo did. instead he decided to go for the cheap heart tugs. oh, what a waste.

  60. The new trailer, shown before Bourne 3.0 today is less obnoxious than the teaser above but far more baffling. What is this movie about? Interesting the way Tom is downplayed to a secondary character. And here’s an interesting essay.

  66. “I’ve had some wild times before, but this year definitely hit a new level of wild. I was like, well, all right: strap in, put your seat belts on, five-point harness on, because we’re going to hit the wall.”

  69. Since this post is about movie stars and their crackpot religious beliefs, I thought it was a good place to vent about Mel Gibson, Opus Dei nut and anti-semite. I must have missed the place in the Gospels where you dump your wife, with whom you have 7 children, take up with a model and get her pregnant while still married. This is the prick who thought it appropriate to present belief in the starkest terms in Passion of the Christ , whose success will no doubt subsidize his outrageous lifestyle in Malibu. I guess Christ suffered so Mel doesn’t have to. Amen.

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