This is Tom Cruise

DAVID CRONENBERG LOOKS TO LOCK IN HIS DENZEL/CRUISE SPY THRILLER ‘THE MATARESE CIRCLE’

2009-04-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

April 3rd, 2009 by Mina | Posted in Movie News |

You can already see the trailer: From the author who brought you Jason Bourne! And the visionary director who blew your mind with “Scanners” and broke your heart with “A History of Violence”! Tom Cruise…and Denzel Washington in…“The Matarese Circle”!!

It pretty much screams Hollywood blockbuster, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For all the ink spilled in the trades and on the Internet over the adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel, MGM has not yet green-lit the ‘Matarese’ project. In an exclusive interview with the man pegged to both write and direct, David Cronenberg revealed to MTV News that the movie, while still on track, is not yet a done deal—because there are neither contracts with the stars nor a final script in place.

“Nobody has signed on,” Cronenberg said. “The Hollywood is term is ‘attached.’ Nobody actually knows what that means. It’s a very abstract, almost religious concept.”

The bottom line, and why he’s certain the film will move foward, Cronenberg explained, is that “Denzel is very interested in the idea of doing a movie with Tom Cruise and with me. It will depend on him loving the script and then signing on. At the moment we don’t have a script that we’re ready to show.”

The book, written in 1979, tells the story of two intelligence agents—one American, one Soviet—who must work together to expose an enigmatic criminal underground that has infiltrated the American government. Denzel would play the US agent and Cruise would play the Russian one.

The team behind “Wanted,” Derek Haas and Michael Brandt, wrote an earlier version of the script and now Cronenberg is busy with his own writing duties. “I wrote an original script that was not based on any other script and that was only somewhat based on the book,” Cronenberg said. “Because the book is thirty years old and it presupposes the Soviet Union and it doesn’t have the technology we have now, it really required a major rethink. I wrote an original script based on some of the concepts in the book and I’m in the process of doing rewrites now.”

Without a finished script or deals in place with the stars, of course, MGM has not yet given the official go-ahead. “It’s not green-lit because we all have to say, ‘We love this script and here’s a budget we feel is correct,’” said Cronenberg. “Then it would be green-lit. You’d have to make the stars pay-or-play at that point to go forward because it would be a very expensive movie.”

As many pieces that still have to fall into place, Cronenberg remains confident that “Matarese” will happen. “MGM is very, very gung-ho about it. They really want it to happen and so do I. It would be very exciting.”

导演David Cronenberg大卫·柯南伯格将期待锁定在由

Denzel/Cruise主演的间谍惊悚片‘马塔斯圆周 ’

4月3日，2009年翻译JBJ 出自：Movie News

你已经可以看到预告片了：作者是杰森伯恩Jason Bourne！并且启用了让“扫描仪”引爆你思想的和用“沉默历史”打破你内心世界的视觉导演！Tom Cruise和Denzel Washington 都在...“马塔斯圆周”！

这肯定是一个好莱坞的重磅炸弹，但是让我们不要超越我们自己。对于所有墨水洒在交易和互联网上适应Rober Ludlum 的小说，MGM（米高美电影制片公司）还没有投入“Matarese”的工程中。在一个对写作和编导都挂钩的人的独家采访中，David Cronenberg向MTV News透露关于这部电影的消息。这部电影还在按计划进行中，还没有最终确定下来，因为既没有和演员联系好也没有最终定下剧本。

导演Cronenberg说：“还没有人签约。好莱坞长期是‘附加的’。没有人确切知道那是什么意思。这是非常抽象的，几乎是宗教观念。”

Cron导演称他为何确定这部电影将要进行下去的底线是他透露：Denzel非常想与汤姆克鲁斯以及他自己合作。如果他喜欢我们的剧本他就会签约的，但是那个时侯我们还拿不出来成型的剧本。

这本书写于1979年，讲述两个情报人员的事情，他们一个是美国人（Denzel扮演）、一个是苏联人（Cruise扮演），并且必须要合作揭露一个神秘的已经渗透到美国政府的地下犯罪团伙。

“通缉令”背后的团队，Derek Haas和 Michael Brandt写过一个早期的剧本，现在Cron正忙于他自己的写作任务。“我写的是一个不依据其他的版本的原始剧本，因为这本书写于30年前，他的前提是苏联，那是没有我们现在拥有的高科技，这确实需要我们一个重大的反思。我写的原始剧本是根据书中的原有观点，并且我现在正在重新整理剧本。”

没有最终确定的剧本，没有与演员的最终签约，当然MGM公司也没有给出官方的程序。导演说“它还没有制作，因为我们都不得不说‘我们喜欢这个剧本，这是个我们认为正确的预算，然后他就会被执行。’你就不得不让这些演员表演或者玩，因为这将会是一个大投资的电影。”

正如很多工作就要就位，Cron导演非常有信心“Matarese”的故事将要上演。“MGM对这部电影很有信心。他们非常希望将它制作成电影，我也是。这将会振奋人心。”

Valkyrie - Online Free Movie

2009-04-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

Director: Bryan Singer
Writter: Christopher McQuarrie, Nathan Alexander
Tom Plays: Col. Claus von Stauffenberg
Status: Finished. Release in December 26th, 2008

Plot

In a country in the grips of evil, in a police state where every move is being watched, in a world where justice and honor have been subverted, a group of men hidden inside the highest reaches of power decide to take action. Tom Cruise stars in the suspense film, VALKYRIE, based on the true story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (CRUISE) and the daring and ingenious plot to eliminate one of the most evil tyrants the world has ever known. Director Bryan Singer (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, X-MEN, SUPERMAN RETURNS) re-teams with Academy Award®-winning USUAL SUSPECTS screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie to bring to life the story of the men who led the operation to assassinate Hitler. The film also stars an acclaimed cast including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten, Thomas Kretschmann, Eddie Izzard, Christian Berkel and Terence Stamp.
A proud military man, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a loyal officer who serves his country all the while hoping that someone will find a way to stop Hitler before Europe and Germany are destroyed. Realizing that time is running out, he decides that he must take action himself and joins the German resistance. Armed with a cunning strategy to use Hitler s own emergency plan known as Operation Valkyrie these men plot to assassinate the dictator and overthrow his Nazi government from the inside.
With everything in place, with the future of the world, the fate of millions and the lives of his wife and children hanging in the balance, von Stauffenberg is thrust from being one of many who oppose Hitler to the one who must kill Hitler himself.
VALKYRIE is produced by Bryan Singer, Christopher McQuarrie and Gilbert Adler. McQuarrie co-wrote the original screenplay with Nathan Alexander who also serves as co-producer. The executive producers are Chris Lee, Ken Kamins, Daniel M. Snyder, Dwight C. Schar and Mark Shapiro.
The film was shot in Germany at various locations where many of the actual events occurred, including the historic Bendlerblock. Recreating the atmosphere of urgency and paranoia inside the German resistance is a team that includes Singer s frequent collaborators Newton Thomas Sigel (SUPERMAN RETURNS, X2, X-MEN) as director of photography and editor/composer John Ottman (SUPERMAN RETURNS, X2); as well as production designers Lilly Kilvert (two-time Oscar®-nominee for THE LAST SAMURAI and LEGENDS OF THE FALL) and Patrick Lumb (THE OMEN) and costume designer Joanna Johnston (MUNICH, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN).

Vanity Fair Covers

2009-04-09T05:14:00.001-07:00

Someone Wanted to See Me?

2009-04-09T04:51:00.000-07:00

Someone Wanted to See Me?

After months of tabloid guessing games about their new baby, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes decided to have Suri meet the world in the pages of Vanity Fair, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Hanging out at the couple's Colorado retreat, Jane Sarkin learns all about their reaction to the media madness, anger over bizarre rumors, and overwhelming joy in bonding with their daughter.

by JANE SARKINOctober 2006

Iam sitting in Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's bedroom with his children Isabella, 13, and Connor, 11. For a good part of a week now, I've been ensconced at their 400-acre retreat in Telluride, Colorado. During that time I've become virtually a part of the extended Cruise family. For every activity, I'm a welcomed tagalong: riding horses, hiking in the hills, driving through the countryside. Every day, all day, I observe Katie and Tom taking on their latest roles—as the Ultimate Hands-On Mom and Dad to their baby girl, Suri Cruise, born April 18.

We eat almost every meal together: Tom and Katie, the kids, Tom's mom, Mary Lee, and his sister Cass and her children, along with many of Katie's family members—15 Holmeses in all—including her parents, Martin and Kathleen, and her brother and sisters and their kids, who have come from Ohio for a summer visit. (Also on hand are photographer Annie Leibovitz, a small crew, and Vanity Fair' s fashion and style director, Michael Roberts.)

The kids and I flop around in the master bedrooom, making jokes, chatting, and just hanging. If Bella and Connor (adopted when Tom was married to Nicole Kidman) were slightly younger, or if these were any other children in America, I think I'd have a remarkable bedtime story to tell them—a parable about family, privacy, and fame in an age of media overload.

It would not be a story about Tom Cruise's film career or the specifics of Scientology. Instead, I would tell them a story about a beautiful baby girl. I would relate the curious chronicle of how a three-and-a-half-month-old (now going on five months)—previously unseen by the media—became so sought after by the prying public eye that her first pictures have metamorphosed from a collection of family photos into a bona fide pop-culture event. And I would tell them how it feels to live 24-7 inside a story about a story.

Each morning the family wakes up in a room dominated by large windows with a stunning view of the Rockies. Bella and Connor, their hair mussed, arise from their red flannel sheets and stumble across the room from their mattresses, which are laid out in the master suite (due to the abundance of houseguests). The kids make their way into the king-size bed with Tom, Katie, and Suri, crawling over a quilt that Katie has made for Tom, which incorporates family photos in the patchwork. Most mornings, everyone tries to be the first to pick up the baby from her crib or to offer her a morning bottle.

Lining the walls of the stairway leading up to the bedroom are photos of the children as well as pictures from Tom and Katie's first year together. In June of 2005, within eight weeks of their first date, he famously proposed to her atop the Eiffel Tower, overlooking the lights of Paris at night. Before asking her to marry him, he got down on one knee and recited a two-page poem he had written. (They have not yet finalized their wedding plans.)

Today, as every day, Mom and Dad are cooing about Suri, born seven pounds seven ounces, 20 inches in length, replete with what appears to be her father's famous helmet of dark-brown hair.

"She has Kate's lips and eyes," says Tom. (Others call her Katie.) "I think she looks like Kate."

"I think she has Tom's eyes," Katie says. "I think she looks like Tom."

They sound like any other doting new parents. "The moment the doctor handed me Suri," Katie insists, "I was just ready. The feeling is indescribable. All I can say is the moment I looked in her eyes I felt like … Mom."

Suri was born exactly one year, to the day, after Tom and Katie went on their first date. "She's a glorious girl," Katie says. "She's the miracle of our life."

Soon, talk turns to the pregnancy and to Katie's inkling, at the time, that she might be having a girl.

"I was craving pink the whole nine months," she says.

In fact, even before an ultrasound test had determined that a girl was on the way, the parents-to-be had settled on her name. "We had the name before we found out because we both thought the baby would be a girl," says Tom. "Some friends of ours sent us two [baby-naming] books. When we came to the name Suri, we both loved it. And we both said, 'Suri Cruise.' We later found out that it meant 'red rose,' and that was just a bonus. Suri—it was perfect."

The house has the feel of a sprawling lodge or chalet, with rustic, log-cabin touches—informal, airy, built with honey-colored deadwood from Oregon. The family room has a vast stone fireplace made by local craftsmen. The Cruises spend long hours in the kitchen, dining room, and living room. There is a guesthouse, called "the bunkhouse," set, like the main quarters, amid stands of aspen, which residents call "quakies." The white bark of the trees has been rubbed dark brown by herds of wandering elk. Around the grounds are a sleep-in tepee and an in-ground trampoline. Tom, who began planning his refuge in 1990, has now realized his dream of having a getaway in the mountains, a home filled with family and friends, a place where he can raise his children. "My whole life I always wanted to be a father," Tom says. "I always said to myself that my children would be able to depend on me and I would always be there for them and love them—that I'd never make a promise to my kids that I couldn't keep. I'm not one of those people who believe you can spoil a child with too much love. You can never give a child too much love. There's just no way."

The Cruise athleticism and competitive spirit are everywhere in evidence. The kids, with Dad in the lead, roar around their homemade motocross track. Katie, Tom, and the family ride horses, fish, exercise, hike—and play round after round of Take Two, a quick-paced crossword-style game, using Scrabble tiles. Tom seems proud to have encouraged his kids to share in his need for speed. Meanwhile, many of the relatives are off flying over the mountains in sleek white gliders. Tom takes the opportunity to fit in a round of golf with his future father-in-law and various Holmes men.

Many nights there's a cookout at the family's favorite spot, simply called the Lookout, with its commanding view of Wilson Peak. Everyone assembles at the fire pit, its stones stacked and shaped by the children. The family gathers around the fire and talks, trading stories while sitting on hewn-timber benches. One night it's hot dogs and s'mores; another night, back at the house, a barbecue is followed by 39 flavors of ice cream.

Attention and talk, nowadays, seem to naturally gravitate to Suri.

Early on, Tom's publicists asked the couple if they wanted to release a single picture of her just to get the media off their backs. They understood that the scoop-starved public felt it was owed a look at the baby. But, for the first three months of Suri's life, Tom and Katie say, they just wanted to be new parents. They kept to themselves in Los Angeles: having friends over, including Penélope Cruz and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith; ordering takeout food from local restaurants; and forgoing the intrusion that any photo session would surely have brought. "She was born," Katie recounts, "as M.I.3[Mission: Impossible III] was coming out, and once Tom was finished promoting the film, all we wanted to do was spend time with Suri and our family and friends. We were always going to release a photo. We just didn't want to get into the whole production of setting up a photo shoot at that time. I really just wanted to enjoy this precious time with my daughter. I knew I'd never get that time back."

"We were just living our lives, being a family," Tom contends. "Actually, we were taking our own photos and always planned to release those at the right time."

"Then all the craziness began," Katie recalls. "This 'Where is Suri?' controversy. Tom and I looked at each other and said, 'What's going on?' We weren't trying to hide anything."

Tom and Katie wanted no part of the feeding frenzy. While all this bizarre speculation was going on, I repeatedly asked for the first photo session with the baby, receiving polite refusals. During the same period, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie released images of their new daughter, Shiloh, donating the proceeds to charity. (Tom and Katie chose not to link Suri's first photo session to anything financial—even though they praise their fellow stars' decision. Tom contributes extensively to charitable causes but declines to draw attention to such donations.) Finally, in late July, I got a call. The pair had decided to have Suri Cruise make her debut in Vanity Fair. Could Annie Leibovitz and I come to Telluride the following week?

Annie and I flew out, spending our days and nights at the compound to limit any suspicions among the paparazzi around town. And for five days Tom and Katie willingly posed for family pictures without complaint. At one point, Tom actually compared the mood to what he's been told about photographer-reporter teams covering celebrities in the 40s, 50s, and 60s for the weekly Lifemagazine: hanging with a star for a week, no holds barred.

The family piles into the S.U.V., James Blunt blaring on the iPod hooked up to its speakers. Tom and Katie belt out the lyrics: "My life is brilliant / My love is pure. / I saw an angel. / Of that I'm sure.… / You're beautiful, it's true."

Up into the mountains they go, to the fire pit, where the photo crew is assembled.

Annie gathers Tom, Katie, and Suri on the hillside, ready to shoot a portrait of just the three of them. (The image will become the cover photograph.)

The other family members observe the scene from behind Annie as she focuses her cameras. Soon, a breathtaking sunset descends on the southwest ridges of Wilson Peak, Gladstone Peak, Sunshine Peak, and volcano-coned Lizard Head, which the Cruises have climbed together.

Tom's mother, an upbeat, outgoing woman from Louisville, Kentucky, moves in closer. She watches her son and daughter-in-law-to-be kiss. She sees her granddaughter Suri smile for the camera. The sun reddens the peaks in the distance. Tom's mom begins to cry. Others on the hillside start to well up, too.

Tom seems to be forcing back the tears himself. Later, as we talk about the poignancy of that moment, I mention how the sunset photo session seemed to belie a line from his film Jerry Maguire. "We live in a cynical world," Tom's character says, "a cynical world." Tom nods in agreement, although he thinks that in some ways that statement is even more true today. "I am very fortunate to have the life that I have, and I know that," he says. "Life does deal out its percentage of—its amount of sorrow. But those moments help you appreciate the joy of life and to recognize that. We'll never forget the bad times, you know, but you have to celebrate the joy. And that's what Suri is: the joy.

"Having children is a new beginning," Tom continues, "and there's not a parent who doesn't know that moment and think back to their children and their grandchildren and reflect on the cycle of life."

Katie says she wants to talk with me privately.

We discuss how she's begun to read filmscripts again. (She has appeared on TV's Dawson's Creek and in 13 feature films, including The Ice Storm, Pieces of April, Thank You for Smoking, and Batman Begins.) We discuss her jewelry, and I suggest that whatever she has on in the photos, and at her upcoming wedding, could inspire a fashion craze. She wears a trinity ring made of three types of gold, set with diamonds, that Tom gave her for Mother's Day, a pair of light-pink diamond-drop earrings, a gift when Suri was born, and a diamond engagement ring surrounded by smaller pink diamonds.

She opens up about the hurtful articles and TV coverage, which she admits she follows.

"I do know what is being said in the press," she says, explaining that she keeps up on the gossip because "this is my future. This is my family, and I care so much about them. The stories are not O.K. It eats away at me because it's justnot O.K. To see how someone as caring and good as Tom is—to see how things can just get so twisted and turned around. I mean, where does it come from? It's been heartbreaking to see that.

"I know he's more used to it than I am. I was overjoyed in being pregnant and then had to withstand ridicule about my pregnancy when it was the most normal, non-controversial thing imaginable. All those things were invented," she asserts. About the rumor that they had purchased ultrasound equipment to personally monitor the child from their own home, she says, "All that garbage about the sonogram [machine]—we were followed by paparazzi and so my doctor had to make house calls. The sonogram was for his use!

"Some of the crap that's out there—the stuff that's said about my parents and my siblings [tabloid accounts implied that Katie's family did not hit it off with Tom]—it's really frustrating the amount of shit that's out there. And the stuff they said about Suri?! You shouldn't say that about us, and you can't say that about my child. As a mother, you hear it and it's just not O.K."

One night around the dining-room table, during a Chinese-and-Thai dinner, there are stories upon stories exchanged about Tom and Katie as children. Soon, talk turns to Tom's adventures with Connor and Bella and all the things they want to do with Suri when she gets older.

Katie observes, "It's really special to see them [Bella and Connor] holding their little sister. To hear them talk about all of the fun things they are going to do together." Tom adds, "It's very moving to me too. I look at those moments of watching Bella and Connor grow up and you get a sense of what kind of people they are going to be as adults."

At one point Tom discusses plans for taking Connor and Bella on a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro. And a batch of fortune cookies is passed around. We all read ours aloud.

Tom unfurls his fortune and smiles.

"Soon," it says, "you will be on top of the world."

We laugh. From the looks of things, he's already there.

Jane Sarkin is Vanity Fair's features editor.

Tom Cruise In Details Magazine

2009-04-09T04:38:00.000-07:00

Tom Cruise In Details Magazine

NOV 25, 2008 AT 12:28 PM

Tom Cruise might be considered couch-jumping crazy by some, but he's still amongst the top 40 most influential men in the world, according to Details Magazine. He comes in at #7 on the list. And in this photo on the cover, they almost have me convinced that he's back to his totally hot Top Gun self!

In case you're wondering, Obama's secret service man came in at #1, the Jonas brothers and even A-Rod all made the list. RANDOM. Read on to see all forty guys, and check out Details website for more information on each of their choices.

#1        The United States Secret Service Agent (age: forties): Let’s face it: The audacity of hope is about to be tested by the tenacity of fear. Yes, it’s amazing to witness the historic, anything-can-happen triumph of Barack Obama, but “anything can happen” is precisely what we need to be worried about. As America’s first black president-elect, Obama is a walking provocation to racists everywhere.

#2        Neel Kashkari, Bailout Czar (age: 35): Thanks to the near collapse of our financial system, a recent M.B.A. has been thrust into the unprecedented position of having to dole out more than $700 billion of our tax dollars.

#3        The National Enquirer Reporter (age: late thirties): The garbage-sifting hacks at the National Enquirer know you don’t think much of them, but just ask John Edwards, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Sarah Palin about these reporters’ sleuthing.

#4        Baitullah Mehsud, Commander, Pakistani Taliban (age: 35): Baitullah Mehsud goaded the United States into an unofficial shooting war with Pakistan, one of our “strong allies.” But it’s not just the U.S. he’s attacking. His efforts against the teetering Pakistani government are just as unsettling.

#5        The Palin Bunch (ages: 7 months, 18, 19, 44): Admit it: Were they not an unfortunate reality of the recent presidential race, they might have been the ultimate reality show cast. Todd, Track, young Trig, and baby-daddy Levi Johnston represented the American male to the rest of the world.

#6        The Bipolar Broker (age: 30 1/8 [53¼]): Krazy Glued to CNBC and hardwired to treat every utterance from Hank Paulson as a signal flare from the end of days, the Bipolar Broker and his twitchy trader friends are determined to turn your retirement savings into chicken feed.

#7        Tom Cruise (age: 46): He’s the man we all love to hate. There’s always something sinister lurking behind his sunny demeanor, absurd good looks, and, most of all, his aggressive sincerity. But there’s no denying he’s the most quintessentially all-American movie star since John Wayne. Now, with his upcoming WWII film Valkyrie, Mr. All The Rights Moves wants to make you rethink some fundamental assumptions about good and evil.

#8        David Plouffe and Jon Favreau, Barack’s Boys (ages: 44, 27; Plouffe’s rank last year: 26): Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe and chief speechwriter Jon Favreau deserve credit for November’s win. Plouffe turned Obama’s nomination clinch into a flawless general election strategy, and Favreau helped “That One” craft the soaring speeches that inspired a nation. Thanks to these two juggernauts, Team Obama proved impossible to beat.

#9        The Greenwashers (age: 40, 41, 42): Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications Technology for GM, David Jones, CEO of Euro RSCG, and Matt Kistler, Senior Vice President of Sustainability for Wal-Mart, are helping some of the country’s most unlikely corporations embrace the environmental movement.

#10      Frenando Sánchez Arellano and Heriberto Lazcano (ages: 34 and 29): The War on Terror has eclipsed the War on Drugs, but Mexico’s escalating narcotics conflict, which is being fought within spitting distance of the U.S., may change that. These two reputed drug kingpins may not last long, but right now their brutal control is making them king for a day.

#11      John Mayer (age: 31): Singer/songwriter John Mayer seems too smart, too sweet, and too self-aware to revel in celebrity climbing. But the proof is in the photo op. Between his anti-paparazzi lobbying efforts and shameless impromptu press conferences addressing his dating life, press-seeking Mayer is deftly working the media to his advantage.

#12      The Hipster Farmer (age: 29): At that murky intersection where your green guilt meets your love for balsamic-marinated beets, you’ll find the Hipster Farmer. And he’ll convince you that buying local and organic isn’t enough. You’ll join the produce co-op before you know what hit you.

#13      The Comic-Book Geek (age: 19): Only one person can make or break a potential blockbuster before it hits theaters. Say hello to the teenage comic-book geek.

#14      Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, Scrabulous (ages: 27 and 22): These brothers made Scrabble cool again thanks to the online word game Scrabulous. Although Hasbro sued the brothers over the online knockoff’s name, the Agarwallas deserve all the credit for creating the ultimate time-waster.

#15      Michael Rapino, Live Nation (age: 43; last year’s rank: 47): Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the world, is considered the industry’s sugar daddy. Transcending basic concert promotion and merchandising, Rapino’s Live Nation is now moving in on ticketing services.

#16      The Broken Soldier (average age: 31): Physical wounds are only the beginning. The number of Iraq veterans returning with psychological or physical problems—or both—will make the cost of war higher than ever imagined.

#17      Larry Rudolph, Britney Spears’ Manager (age: 45): Britney Spears’ biggest mistake wasn’t marrying K-Fed. It was dumping longtime manager Larry Rudolph. Now that he’s driving the Spears train again, Brit’s comeback is inevitable.

#18      Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey, Twitter (ages: 36 and 31): Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has signed up more than 3 million users and is poised to make IMing as relevant as being on Friendster.

#19      Robert Downey Jr. (age: 43): Things haven’t just straightened out for the rehab recidivist, they now appear to be set on a vertical trajectory that has seen him become the hottest commodity in Hollywood.

#20      The Fat Boy (age: 12): Thanks to a diet of Cool Ranch Doritos, a sedentary lifestyle, and generally absent parenting, 9 million kids are overweight. And from trans-fat bans to active video games, you can bet it’s impacting your life.

#21      Joel Osteen (age 45; last year’s rank: 16): Every spiritual leader in America seeks to make God more accessible, but Joel Osteen presents the Almighty as a stand-up suburban dad who throws great barbecues.

#22      The Hollywood Strikers (average age: late thirties): The effects of the writers’ strike are still being felt, and with the Screen Actors Guild facing negotiations as well, SAG members risk more than opening a few wounds.

#23      The Badass Buddhists (ages: twenties and thirties): When fist-pumping Buddhist monks inspired hundreds of thousands to defy Myanmar’s military junta last year it was merely the prologue to a group of lamas’ challenging China’s rulers in a way not seen since Tiananmen Square in 1989.
#24      Nick Jonas (age: 16): While the sibling trio of the Jonas Brothers may be on a serious roll, it’s Nick who will be standing long after the purity rings have been chucked.

#25      Alex Rodriguez (age: 33): He ‘s no stranger to attention, but A-Rod’s ability to pull Madonna from her English accent back to her dirty-girl bona fides makes him a powerful force indeed.

#26      The Hacktivists (ages: usually unknown): It’s not all jokes and infectious ideas on the Internet. Young computer dorks are taking aim via online attacks at politicians, TV hosts, and the Church of Scientology.

#27      Bobby Jindal (age: 37; last year’s rank: 34): Even before Election Day, political pundits were fantasizing about the “Republican Obama.” The Republican governor of Louisiana is the new face of the GOP.

#28      The Preppy (age: 28): The buttoned-down, madras-clad prepster is a classic American export, and it’s in times like these, when everything seems to be in flux, that we always come back to him.

#29      Lil Wayne (age: 26): In June, the diminutive MC defied a decade of nose-diving music sales by moving more than 1 million copies of his new album in its first week. Get used to Wayne’s world. He isn’t going away anytime soon.

#30      Chinese Democracy (age: 14): Chinese Democracy, the insanely delayed opus from Guns N’ Roses, owns you. You don’t want to care, but you simply can’t help yourself.

#31      The Space Invaders (age: 42): The real proof of China’s exploding superpower status is these three taikonauts: Zhai Zhigang, Jing Haipeng, and Liu Boming. Their three-day mission reignited the space race.

#32      Nate Silver (age: 30): Until recently, Silver was known as the sports-betting statistical whiz kid. Now he’s predicting political races and political junkies are taking notice.

#33      Andrew Stanton (age: 43): WALL-E is the perfect example of Andrew Stanton’s Midas touch: the ability to make kid-friendly fare that adults are happy to see.

#34      Rock Band Brothers and The Guitar Hero: Kai Huang (age: 36) and Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy (ages: 39 and 37): When Kai Huang invented the faux-six-string controller and Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy dreamed up the games for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, they created the future of rock and roll.

#35      Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head of Contemporary Arts, Sotherby’s (age: 45): While pretty much the entire economic landscape is in ruins, one gilded corner remains: the soaring art market. Thank Tobias Meyer, who has established himself as the art world’s most dynamic deal-maker.

#36      The Cold Warriors: Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia (age: 40) and Dmitry Medvedev, President of Russia (age: 43): The Georgia-Russia showdown pulverized Georgia, brought the oil-rich Caucasus region to the brink of all-out war, and pulled the U.S. and Russia into a tense standoff full of Cold War rhetoric.
#37      Justin Gaston (age: 20): If Miley Cyrus’ baring her shoulders was deemed scandalous by the parents of her tweenage fan base, what kind of effect will her running around with a 20-year-old underwear model have?

#38      R. Kelly (age: 41): Despite R. Kelly’s six-year-long case involving sex, minors, and videotape, the singer has become infinitely more culturally relevant, releasing four No. 1 albums.

#39      Clay Aiken (age: 30): When Clay Aiken made the least surprising “I’m gay” announcement on the cover of People, he opened the closet door for shameless, publicity-seeking D-listers.

#40      The Pregnant Man: Thomas Beatie (age: 34): Thomas Beatie, technically speaking the world’s first pregnant man, forced us to glimpse what male motherhood is like. Now pregnant with his second child, he’s asking us to do it all over again.

Source:http://men.style.com/details/

Rolling Stone Covers - RS

2009-04-09T04:01:00.000-07:00

Tom Cruise, RS 956, September 2, 2004
Tom Cruise, RS 631, May 28, 1992

Tom Cruise, RS 582-583, July 26, 1990

Tom Cruise, RS 569, January 11, 1990

Tom Cruise, RS 532, August 11, 1988
Tom Cruise, RS 476, June 19, 1986

http://www.rollingstone.com/search?query=tom+cruise&type=&search=Search

About Tom (Monday, Jun. 24, 2002) - TIME

2009-04-09T03:40:00.000-07:00

By BENJAMIN

NUGENT;JESS CAGLE/HOLLYWOOD Monday, Jun. 24, 2002

Tom Cruise always avoids the eyes of other drivers. Zipping confidently through midday Los Angeles traffic in his blue Porsche Carrera, he obscures himself with a baseball cap and sunglasses. Pausing at a light, a car to his left, he discreetly raises his tinted window.

But he can't avoid himself. On the trip from Fox Studios to downtown Hollywood, he is driving straight toward an enormous billboard for Minority Report, his dark and timely new movie directed by Steven Spielberg, opening this week. Stuck in traffic, he gazes up at his famous profile and laughs. "The kids always go, 'There's Dad!'" he says. "I remember seeing a Risky Business billboard on Sunset. That was pretty exciting."

This year, on July 3 to be precise, the irrepressible young actor who danced in his skivvies in Risky Business in 1983 will turn 40. The braces he has been wearing on his teeth for four months ("My mouth wasn't closing properly," he explains) seem as if they should only add to his preternatural boyishness, but the crow's-feet around his eyes suggest a seasoning and maturity that weren't much in evidence before. After 23 films that have grossed more than $2 billion at the box office, Cruise maintains an uncanny ability to excite audiences. At the same time, he is respected and even well liked by many in an industry where his colleagues almost invariably root for only two things: the L.A. Lakers and one another's failures.

He has handled his career the way he drives his Porsche, moving steadily and carefully forward, idling as little as possible. Since 1996, while enriching the coffers of Paramount and his own production company with the Mission: Impossible action movies (a third, to be directed by David Fincher, is in development), he has stretched himself as an actor and received Oscar nominations for riskier roles in Jerry Maguire and Magnolia. Cruise is famously professional and polite, on time and always prepared, Hollywood's eagle scout. His not-so-secret craving is for control, starting with himself but not ending there. For one crucial scene in Minority Report, Cruise was required to submerge himself in a bathtub, then emit a solitary air bubble from one nostril. "Don't worry if you can't do it," Spielberg told him. "I can do it with [special effects]." Cruise insisted on doing it himself. "I kept practicing," says Cruise, sitting next to Spielberg in an office on the Fox lot. "I had to figure out how to get the air and then just control my nostril." Spielberg interjects with a smile: "This is something that Lee Strasberg can't teach."

But what he seems to have perfected--on film and in life--is the ability to win you over, to be liked without really being known. He is solicitous. He laughs at your jokes. He is curious without being prying. He looks you in the eye. He even asks your advice: before making a U-turn in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, he says, "Should I do it?" You ask, "What do you do when the cops catch you?" He answers, "I hand out a few autographs."

Yet he can be as distant as he is pleasant, as guarded as he is engaged, his very politeness a kind of barrier. His steadfast allegiance to the controversial Church of Scientology, his surprising split a year ago from Nicole Kidman, the gay rumors (and his diligent litigation in response) serve to remind us that despite all the ink spilled and all the gossip milled over the past two decades, Cruise remains someone about whom we have never quite been able to connect the dots.

To draw similarities between the actor and John Anderton, his complex, haunted character in Minority Report, is irresistible. In Spielberg's sci-fi mystery, Cruise stars as a seemingly stalwart cop in 2054 who heads an elite squad known as Precrime. Using a trio of psychic mutants called precogs, he can detect a murder before it happens, strap on a jet pack, then arrest the would-be perpetrator. But Anderton leads a double life, scoring a drug called neuroin in dark alleys, seeking oblivion after the unraveling of his family. Based on a 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, the movie takes off when Anderton is accused of a future murder and goes on the run.

Cruise not only brought the story to Spielberg but also tapped into his most harrowing fears as a parent. The father of an adopted son, 7, and daughter, 9, Cruise said Anderton should have a son who was missing. "Tom came up with that to give the character complicated emotional baggage," says Spielberg, who confesses that he "had much more of a popcorn movie in mind until I began to think about the ramifications of arresting people without due process." The director says it was his friend Doris Kearns Goodwin, the historian, who alerted him to the constitutional problems of Precrime. "She said, 'This would be a wonderful thing,'" recalls Spielberg, "'but what about the Bill of Rights?'"

Although Cruise and Spielberg, friends for two decades, have been developing the script since 1999, the movie turns out to be topical, a celluloid mirror of current events. Jointly financed by DreamWorks and Fox, it opens amid controversy over Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision to put a terrorism suspect in military detention. Many have noted the similarity between the movie's idea of Precrime and the legal ramifications of arresting but not charging suspected terrorists.

The timing for Cruise couldn't be better. Minority Report is a smart move for him at this point in his career--an edgy, mind-bending piece of film noir in the vein of Memento and The Matrix. Cruise's audience is vast, but like him, it's getting older. It's the Matrix generation that he needs to capture if he is to remain top gun at the box office. Driving toward Hollywood, he shrugs off a question about his aging demographic. "I'm getting older," he says. "But a story is a story, and a character's a character. That's what I think about."

To begin to understand Cruise, you must understand his relationship with the Church of Scientology, an organization that advocates self-styled scientific methods as cures for ailments of the body, mind and spirit. Founded by the prolific science-fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, Scientology has been accused of using coercion to keep its members in line and intimidation to squelch criticism of its tactics. (Scientology sued TIME in 1992 for libel over a 1991 cover story's portrayal of the church as a ruthless cult; the case was decided in TIME's favor in 2001, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Scientology's appeal.) Cruise is more than a defender of Scientology; he is a resolute advocate. "It's something that has helped me to be able to live the kind of life that I'm living and work toward being the kind of person that I want to be," he says.

Cruise says that Hubbard's teachings helped him put a hard-knocks childhood behind him. "I went to 15 different schools growing up," he says, "because of par-ents divorcing, father losing jobs, transferring, trying to find another job." Even today, Cruise, whose father died in 1984, often mentions the trauma of always being the new guy. "I thought, I can't wait to grow up because it's got to be better than this," he says. "The politics and the fights and always wearing the wrong shoes and having the wrong accent."

He also had a devil of a time learning in class. "It was a real problem for me," says Cruise. "I was diagnosed as having dyslexia. I confused letters. I was a slow reader. I didn't know how to use a dictionary. I tried, but I didn't have a system where I could learn. I couldn't catch up." In high school, he lived in Glen Ridge, N.J., with his mother. Cruise found confidence on the stage (he skipped his graduation because he was appearing in a dinner-theater production of Godspell) and started his movie career in 1981. His first audition was for a small role in Endless Love, and he got the part. "Suddenly I'm working," he says.

In the 1980s, his first wife Mimi Rogers (they would divorce in 1990) introduced him to Scientology. Cruise credits Hubbard's "study technology" with helping him overcome his learning disability. "It really changed my life," says Cruise, who in the past few years has given considerable time and money to the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project (H.E.L.P.). It is a secular organization but uses Hubbard's study technology to offer free tutoring to children and adults.

As Cruise walks through H.E.L.P.'s crowded headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard, none of the tutors or children--seated at desks that he paid for--seem to take special notice of him. He comes here often. "Do I wish I'd had something like this when I was a kid?" asks Cruise. "Absolutely. It would have saved me many hours and days and weeks of pain and embarrassment." When asked if H.E.L.P. could be used as a recruiting tool for the church, he says, "Listen, people who want to know about Scientology, they can read books. People may go in there and say, 'Who is this guy?' and start reading [Hubbard's] other books. Good for them. There are tools that he has that can improve their lives. But the purpose of H.E.L.P. is to help. "

Cruise doesn't seem to need much help of any kind these days. The man who was struggling to read 15 years ago is now regarded as having a keen eye for scripts. He is a tightly programmed individual. Not robotic--Cruise likes to laugh, and he laughs a lot--but he does seem to be remarkably free of the kind of negative emotions that tend to plague mere mortals. And it is playing mere mortals that seems to give him the hardest time. In Eyes Wide Shut, where Stanley Kubrick put a camera on his face to capture inner turmoil, Cruise appears uneasy rather than tormented. He seems most comfortable, onscreen and off, when he is taking action. He describes himself as a pragmatist. He is, above all, organized. "I've always admired the guys who schedule their lives," says Cameron Crowe, who directed him in Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky. "To a person who's not that way, it's something grand to watch. Cruise is that way."

"I don't like dragging things on or having a lot of unfinished projects sitting around," says Cruise. "That drives me insane." He deals with adversity swiftly and without mercy. Last year Kidman told TIME that Cruise's filing for divorce "was a big shock for me." Though both of them have refused to offer reasons for the breakup, it's characteristic of Cruise to make a firm decision, keep his own counsel and move on quickly. Asked why he didn't have the braces put on the back side of his teeth, he replies, "Because it's faster this way, and I really don't care."

With the same deliberateness, he has set out in recent years to eradicate persistent rumors that he is gay. In 1998 he won libel damages against a newspaper that called his marriage a sham. Last year he filed two $100 million lawsuits against men who, according to Cruise, spread lies about his sexuality. "I'm not anti-gay," he says, "but how would you feel if someone said your relationship was a sham?" And yet the lawsuits raise a question: Does he protest too much, inviting even more speculation? "If it made it bigger, so what?" he says. "They've got to be held accountable for what they print."

Twenty-four hours after his visit to H.E.L.P., Cruise is at work, standing in the middle of his tennis court, brandishing a sword. In his next movie, The Last Samurai, he will star as a 19th century American mercenary in Japan. He has been training with Nick Powell, the film's stunt coordinator, who taught Russell Crowe how to use a sword for Gladiator. Cruise is ambidextrous, and he is already able to wield two weapons at once.

"The samurai would test their blades on cadavers," says Cruise, who pauses to apply sunscreen to his face and catch his breath after a series of lunge-and-chop moves across the court. He's starting to sweat in his long sleeves, black Adidas pants and spanking-new Adidas sneakers. "I admire the samurai spirit. Your honor is more important than your body."

After Powell leaves, Cruise sits on the deck overlooking the tennis court and pours himself a glass of lemonade. He signed a lease on this well-manicured west L.A. estate a year ago, right after his split with Kidman. Since moving in, he has ripped the net out of the tennis court; a basketball hoop sits at one end for his kids and their cousins and friends. "They bring bikes down here and scooters," says Cruise. "It's always a party."

As with everything else, Cruise works hard at being a father. When son Connor and daughter Isabella are in his charge, their schedule takes precedence over his. During a series of interviews last week, he was never interrupted, except by them. When an assistant appears to tell him "The kids are on Line 1," he stops and takes the call, kneeling close to the ground and whispering so the reporter can't hear.

He is still adjusting to the role of ex-husband. He is not amused when reminded of Kidman's talk-show zing after the split. "Well," she told David Letterman, "I can wear heels now." He seems a little surprised that such a thing has been brought up, but after a moment says calmly, "I don't care about that. She always wore heels. Truly, I like her in heels. That's never been a problem for me." And how are things going with Kidman? "It's going well. I love Nic. I will always love her. That hasn't changed."

When he's not working, Cruise isn't on the Hollywood scene. He keeps to himself or a small group of intimates. Asked to name his best friends, he pauses. "My family," says Cruise, who is close to his mother and three sisters. "Cameron Crowe, Steven Spielberg. And some people that I work with. Penelope, of course." He's referring to Penelope Cruz, his current girlfriend. The romance has been met with equal parts skepticism and speculation. "If you believe the media," says Cruise, "she's pregnant, we've broken up three times, and we've been married already." For the record, he says they have no plans to marry. "She's a lovely person," he says, and leaves it at that.

At the very least, she should feel at home at Cruise's place. Before he moved in, the imposing stone mansion was used in the movie Blow, in which Cruz appeared with Johnny Depp. Walking across the front lawn, which is shielded by a line of trees and dotted with picnic tables, Cruise calls the estate "a great space for the kids."

Sword training is over. The conversation has wound down. Cruise seems ready to get back to work. Standing at the foot of the driveway, he waves to the guard's station, and the gates slowly swing open. He doesn't shake hands--he hugs you goodbye and laughs when you bend the sunglasses he has hooked to his collar. He has been a perfect host, a forthcoming interview, unfailingly cordial. As you are driving away, you feel that you know him; that you have seen at least some of the man behind the curtain. But as the guard closes the gate behind you, and the house recedes into the distance, you realize that he never invited you inside.

--With reporting by Benjamin Nugent

All Eyes On Them (Monday, Jul. 05, 1999) - TIME

2009-04-09T03:33:00.001-07:00

By RICHARD SCHICKEL;CATHY BOOTH/LOS ANGELES Monday, Jul. 05, 1999

History and horror, crime and war, sci-fi and sexual transgression. He may have made only 13 feature films in the course of his 46-year career, but Stanley Kubrick covered a range that more prolific filmmakers might--and often did--envy. But whether the films were set in the deep past or the near future, whether their prevailing tone was comic or violent, sly or brutish, weary or idealistic, Kubrick really made the same movie over and over again--vivid, brilliant, emotionally unforgiving, imagistically unforgettable variations on the theme that preoccupied him all his mature life.

That theme was at once simple and sophisticated: a man (or sometimes a group of men), without thinking very hard about it, places his faith either in his own rationality or in the rationality of the systems by which his world is governed, whereupon something goes awry, his illusions of order are stripped away, and he is left to fend with the sometimes deadly, always devastating consequences of that loss.

These occurrences need not be cataclysmic. They can be something as simple as the sight of a young girl practicing with her Hula Hoop (Lolita). Or a communications goof in the supposedly fail-safe nuclear-defense program (Dr. Strangelove). Or, as in the case of Eyes Wide Shut--which is due to open July 16 after years of wildly misguided speculation about its content--a confession of unconsummated sexual flirtation.

Such incidents are usually not things most people notice much or worry about greatly. And often enough they're right. Normality generally reasserts itself after one of these blips.

The films that Kubrick cared about--there were three early ones he disowned--are all in one way or another explorations of how minor mishaps can grow into major disasters, with the one exception of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which miscalculation leads to redemption, rebirth, a radiant transcendence of ordinary expectations. But Eyes Wide Shut, though it is finally less bleak in its moral implications than most Kubrick movies, is in the more typical line of a man perpetually disappointed by the world's failure to abide by his standards of logic and civility.

Why, then, the avid interest in it, the reams of goofy gossip and scandalized speculation that have surrounded its lengthy creation? Maybe it had something to do with the very long time between Kubrick pictures--the last one, Full Metal Jacket, was released 12 years ago. Maybe the director's increasing elusiveness had its effect. He had quit talking to reporters years ago, and it seemed to the media's increasingly resentful minions that he got around in public even less than he formerly had, which was not very much. On the other hand, Eyes Wide Shut did encompass the three elements that legitimately capture the public's attention--story, stars, director--in a particularly piquant package.

When Warner Bros. (which is owned by Time Warner, the parent company of this magazine) announced the project in 1995, it merely stated that Kubrick was making "a story of sexual jealousy and obsession starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman." Officially, no one has added anything substantive to that press release in the years since--which is, of course, why the rumor that Cruise and Kidman play psychiatrists drawn into a web of sexual intrigue with their patients got started. And the one about the mad genius Kubrick making an NC-17-rated blue movie. And the one that has Cruise wearing a dress in one sequence.

None of these are remotely true. Movies don't always follow the books on which they're based, but in this case anyone able to track down the novel from which the movie has been rather faithfully adapted by Kubrick and co-writer Frederic Raphael would have been more in the know. Titled Traumnovelle (Dream Story), it was first published in 1926 by Arthur Schnitzler, a Viennese playwright, physician and friend of Freud's, and has been available in paperback in the U.S. since 1995. Like a lot of the novels on which good movies are based, it is an entertaining, erotically charged fiction of the second rank, in need of the vivifying physicalization of the screen and the kind of narrative focus a good director can bring to imperfect but provocative life--especially when he has been thinking about it as long as Kubrick had.

Kubrick's widow Christiane remembers his asking her to read the book as far back as 1968, when he was looking for something to follow 2001. She also remembers not caring greatly for it at the time, probably because she had become "allergic to psychiatric conversations." But Kubrick, she recalls, took the passion of their arguments about the "dream story" as evidence that material so stirring must be worth doing. In any case, using Jay Cocks, then a young film reporter for TIME, as a front, on the grounds that Cocks might acquire rights to the book more cheaply than a famous filmmaker could, Kubrick bought the property. For the next 2 1/2 decades the book haunted him.

One could see, and somehow not quite see, the movie in this story of a fashionable yet conscientious physician and his wife whose nine-year marriage has produced an adored child, genuine mutual affection and a growing sexual restlessness. Everything depended on its realization. Cruise's character, Dr. William Harford, is in some ways a dim and passive fellow, self-victimized and hard to care for. His wife Alice would have been easy to play either ditsy or bitchy. But there is in Cruise a kind of passionate watchfulness and in Kidman a desperate and touching candor, and they keep drawing us past the narrative's improbabilities to its human heart. As for Kubrick, he is typically unsentimental and tough-minded, but his tracking shots are as unselfconscious as ever, gracefully enfolding us in his story.

Kubrick needed to be at his best, for the story turns on a very thin dime. The night after a grand party, at which both husband and wife indulge in potentially dangerous flirtations, she taunts him about his relationships with his female patients and insists on burdening him with a tale of an encounter she had at a seaside resort, where she and a young naval officer eyed each other erotically. Nothing more than that happened, but she tells her husband, in language that is almost identical in novel and screenplay, "Had he called me--I thought--I could not have resisted him...and at the same time you were dearer to me than ever."

Cruise's William accepts this dubious reassurance but is haunted by powerfully lubricious visions of his wife making love to the officer as he goes about his night-time rounds in modern New York City, which Kubrick has substituted for Schnitzler's fin-de-siecle Vienna. The possibilities of relief--or should we call it revenge?--are everywhere: a newly dead patient's daughter comes on to William powerfully yet pathetically; a cheerful prostitute invites him to a casual coupling; and, finally, in the movie's central sequence, he succeeds in invading a secret orgy, where masked couples disport themselves sexually in a display that is more grim than wanton.

In all these encounters eros and thanatos are exquisitely mixed. The dead body of the first woman's father is clearly visible as she confesses her confused passion; the prostitute turns out to be under the threat of AIDS; the orgiasts, resenting William's intrusion on their saturnalia, threaten him with humiliation and death, and he is "redeemed" only by the intervention of a mysterious woman, who pays for his life with her own.

The orgy sequence, along with several others in the film, is full of naked (and mainly handsome) flesh. But as Christiane Kubrick says, "It has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with fear," and although this is the point Kubrick very obviously wanted to make, it may not be a point audiences want to take. Indeed, the deepest daring of Eyes Wide Shut lies in the way it keeps edging viewers toward a place they want very much to go (famous people making out before the camera, for example), then dashing those hopes. It is also a movie that, to put the matter bluntly, constantly edges right up to the thin line separating the emotionally persuasive from the risible, and one that at any moment in the process of (literally) fleshing out the novel's abstractions could dissolve into the unconsciously comical. That's the most obvious danger when your subject is not sex itself, where there are plenty of conventions to guide the filmmaker, but sex in the mind, for which there are very few precedents to guide him.

But Kubrick was used to that danger, even appeared to revel in it. Most of his pictures, whatever their genre roots, disappointed genre expectations, not to mention critical anticipation and occasionally the studio's box-office ambitions. As Eyes Wide Shut seeks to avoid those perils, it has something besides its considerable intrinsic merits going for it.

That something is Cruise and Kidman. Kubrick was usually star shy, preferring ensemble casts of solid players to huge names. But when Terry Semel, who runs Warner Bros. in tandem with Robert Daly, gave the project its green light, he said, "What I would really love you to consider is a movie star in the lead role; you haven't done that since Jack Nicholson [in The Shining]." Kubrick was concerned that a movie star wouldn't share his tireless work ethic. Nevertheless, the Cruises were approached.

The couple gave themselves over entirely to the project. It was, as both Cruise and Kidman agree, never a question of filling in the preordained blanks as efficiently as possible. Nor was it a matter of dithering over lining up or lighting a shot. All the technical side of moviemaking Kubrick had long since absorbed into his bones. It was always a question of getting the emotions right, bit by painful, exhilarating bit. Kubrick insisted on working as no one else in movies does, but as artists in the other forms--painting, music, literature--do: finding the piece as it goes along. That, of course, requires time, and with that he was profligate, ever willing to explore the possibly rewarding digression.

Sidney Pollack, the film director, who replaced Harvey Keitel as Victor Ziegler, the character who ties together all the evil that Cruise's character discovers and who is the most significant addition to the original story, observes that "Stanley had figured out a way to work in England for a fraction of what we pay here. While the rest of us poor bastards are able to get 16 weeks of filming for $70 million with a $20 million star, Stanley could get 45 weeks of shooting for $65 million." In short, says Pollack, "he ensured himself the luxury of trying to work out something that's as complicated emotionally as this film was."

Cruise and Kidman, perhaps still caught up in their detailed work with Kubrick, prefer to see the movie rather indeterminately. "The movie is whatever the audience takes from it," says Cruise. "Wherever you are in life, you're going to take away something different." Kidman says, "I don't think its a morality tale. It's different for every person who watches it." But others draw distinct lessons from the film. Pollack says this "is the story of a man who journeys off the path and then finds his way back onto it, a man who almost loses himself because something awakens a darker part of him, and he follows it against his own better sense." When "he realizes that what he's lived through was about values so far below what he's lived his life for, he's devastated."

Anya Kubrick, one of the director's three daughters, goes further. She regards Eyes Wide Shut as "a very personal statement from my father. He felt very strongly about this subject and theme, and he honed down in it exactly the ideas, principles and moral philosophies he had lived by." Large among them, she says, was the idea that "we are all both good and evil, and if you think you have no evil in you, you're not looking hard enough." Her mother Christiane says the film reflects Kubrick's belief that "most of humanity is not quite bright enough to know what they want and plan how to get it." He did. But like everyone who knew Kubrick, she is at an angry loss to explain the public perception of him as a reclusive, obsessive misanthrope. John Calley, chairman of Sony Pictures and an old friend, spoke for many when he described Kubrick as a man true to an uncompromising vision who always "remained decent, with a family he loved, yet wise, fun, kind and not follow-the-leader."

That such a life revolved around the creation of dark visions of human nature and striving may be counted as an irony. In the end, people who really care about movies always knew, as Steven Spielberg put it, that when you saw one of Kubrick's movies, "you committed yourself to its being part of your life." When the dust of its release settles, it is a virtual certainty that we will be able to see Eyes Wide Shut, in all its challenging richness and strangeness, as Kubrick's haunting final masterpiece.

--With reporting by Cathy Booth/Los Angeles

The Outsiders - 1983

2009-04-09T01:57:00.000-07:00

The Outsiders is a 1983 American drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, an adaption of the 1967 novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. The movie was released in March 1983. Jo Ellen Misakian, a librarian at Lone Star Jr. High School in Fresno, California and her students,[1] were responsible for inspiring Coppola to make the movie.
The Outsiders is noted for being the breakout film of many future stars. The movie earned C. Thomas Howell a Young Artist Award, became the first Brat Pack movie (with Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez cast as supporting Greasers), and further established the careers of Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane. Both Lane and Dillon went on to appear in Coppola's related film Rumble Fish.

Plot

The movie begins with Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) wondering how to write the story. He then starts with the beginning of the novel, followed by the credits. After the credits, the scene shifts to Ponyboy, Dallas Winston (Matt Dillon), and Johnny Cade (Ralph Macchio) sneaking into a drive-in theater and sitting behind two "Soc" (pronounced 'soshe,' as in social) girls, Cherry Valance (Diane Lane) and Marcia (Michelle Meyrink). Dallas starts flirting with Cherry. He refuses to leave her alone until Johnny tells him to back off. Dallas stalks off, and the girls ask Ponyboy and Johnny to sit with them. Then Keith "Two-Bit" Matthews (Emilio Estevez) sneaks up on Johnny with his switchblade and begins to flirt with Marcia. Later, the boys are walking the girls home when their drunken boyfriends, Bob Sheldon (Leif Garrett) and Randy Adderson (Darren Dalton), catch up to them in their Mustang. Bob and Randy are itching to fight with Ponyboy and Johnny, but Cherry defuses the situation by asking Bob and Randy to take Marcia and her home. Johnny and Ponyboy then go to a vacant lot and end up falling asleep.
When Ponyboy goes home, his brother, Darrel (Patrick Swayze), is upset with worry and, during the confrontation, he hits Ponyboy. Ponyboy, who has never been hit by anyone in his family, runs from the house back to the vacant lot and wakes Johnny. They go to a nearby park to cool off. At the park, Ponyboy and Johnny are confronted and harassed by Bob, Randy, and their friends. The Socs try to drown Ponyboy in a fountain, but they flee after Johnny pulls a knife, stabbing and killing Bob. Ponyboy and Johnny seek help from Dallas, who gives them a loaded gun, some money, and directions to an abandoned church in Windrixville, where they are to hide out until Dallas comes to retrieve them. Ponyboy and Johnny cut off their hair to make themselves less recognizable, and Ponyboy bleaches his hair blonde with peroxide. The boys pass the time by smoking cigarettes, playing cards, and eating Bologna sandwiches. Ponyboy also reads to Johnny from a paperback copy of Gone with the Wind and shares the Robert Frost poem Nothing Gold Can Stay with him. Ponyboy confesses that he never quite understood the poem.
A week later, Dallas comes to visit the boys and takes them to get some hot food at a nearby Dairy Queen. Dallas tells Ponyboy and Johnny that Cherry is willing to stick up for them with the authorities. Johnny says that Ponyboy and he want to go home and turn themselves in, which upsets Dallas. Nevertheless, he starts the drive back home. On the way home, Ponyboy, Johnny, and Dallas pass by the church, which is on fire. When they hear the cries of children trapped inside, Ponyboy and Johnny both run in to rescue them, and they get all the children out safely. Ponyboy escapes the inferno, but a beam collapses and falls on Johnny, before he can escape the burning building as well. Dallas immediately goes to rescue Johnny. Afterward, all three boys are taken to the hospital. Dallas has minor injuries to his arm, and Ponyboy is basically unhurt. Johnny, however, is in critical condition with severe burns and a broken lower back. Ponyboy's brothers, Darry and Soda (Rob Lowe), come to see Ponyboy, and as the brothers hug each other tightly, Darrel cries openly—something he hasn't done in years, not even at his parents' funeral—relieved that Ponyboy is alive.
The next day, Ponyboy is resting at home when Steve Randle (Tom Cruise) and Two-Bit Matthews (Emilio Estevez) come over. They show him a newspaper article that calls Ponyboy, Johnny, and Dallas heroes for rescuing the children in Windrixville. The article also says that Johnny is being charged with manslaughter for killing Bob Sheldon and that Ponyboy and Sodapop might be put in a boy's home. Even though Randy Anderson and the other Socs admitted that they were the aggressors, and that Ponyboy and Johnny were only defending themselves, Bob's death at Johnny's hands has sparked the call for a "rumble," a gang fight, from the Socs.
The day of the rumble, Randy seeks out Ponyboy and admits that he doesn't want to fight in the rumble, nor will he, because he feels that no matter what the outcome, nothing will ever change. Randy has grown weary of all the fighting. He tells Ponyboy that he is ready to leave town to get away from it all and just wanted to tell this to someone who would understand how he feels. Dallas breaks out of the hospital to join in the rumble. The rumble begins, and by the end, the Greasers stand victorious. As the Greasers revel in their triumph, Dallas and Ponyboy rush to the hospital. Dallas tells Johnny about the Greasers' victory, but Johnny doesn't seem interested. Dallas then tells Johnny that he is proud of him, which fills the younger boy with happiness. Johnny looks over at Ponyboy and says "Stay gold, Ponyboy" and with that, Johnny dies. Completely heartbroken, Dallas flees the room.
Ponyboy returns home to tell the rest of the gang that Johnny is dead and that Dallas ran off. The gang is worried about what Dallas might do, and their worry becomes alarm when Darrel receives a phone call from Dallas, who has robbed a convenience store and is now being pursued by the police. He tells the gang to meet him at the vacant lot. The gang races to the vacant lot to intercept Dallas, but they are too late; Dallas is already surrounded by police officers. He pulls out an unloaded gun, in the hopes that he will be shot by the police. His plan succeeds in front of his horrified friends.
Days later, Ponyboy is flipping through the copy of Gone With the Wind that Johnny had left behind and finds a letter from Johnny, addressed to him. Johnny's letter explains what the phrase "staying gold" in the Frost poem means. He urges Ponyboy to tell Dallas about it. The film ends with Ponyboy writing the opening line of the film, which is also the first line of the novel: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...

Cast

C. Thomas Howell as Ponyboy Curtis
Ralph Macchio as Johnny Cade
Matt Dillon as Dallas "Dally" Winston
Rob Lowe as Sodapop Curtis
Patrick Swayze as Darrel "Darry" Curtis
Diane Lane as Sherri "Cherry" Valance
Emilio Estevez as Two-Bit Matthews
Tom Cruise as Steve Randle
Glenn Withrow as Tim Shepard
Leif Garrett as Bob Sheldon
Darren Dalton as Randy Anderson
Michelle Meyrink as Marcia
Tom Waits as Buck Merrill
Gailard Sartain as Jerry
Domino as Little Girl
S.E. Hinton as Nurse
Heather Langenkamp (deleted scenes)

Production

Francis Ford Coppola never actually wanted to make a movie about teen angst. What changed his mind was a middle school class, great fans of The Godfather, wrote to him about making a sort of gangster film, except about The Outsiders. When he read the book, he was moved and not only directed the film, he also adapted Rumble Fish into a movie the year after, again with Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, and Glenn Withrow.
The actors playing the Socs were put in luxury hotel accommodations and given leather-bound scripts, while the Greaser-actors were put on the ground floor and received tattered scripts. Coppola is said to have done this to create tension between both groups before filming. The cast played pranks on each other and the hotel staff during the shoot. Years later, Tom Cruise met someone who worked at the hotel, and when he discovered that it was the same hotel where he and the rest of the cast had stayed, his first words were, "I'm sorry." Francis Ford Coppola went to arbitration unsuccessfully for the writing credits of this film.
Two-Bit's fascination with Mickey Mouse, as shown in a later scene in the film, was thought up by Emilio Estevez, who approached the character as a "laid back, easy-going guy." This could also be a reference to a deleted scene (not included on the DVD) where Ponyboy tells Cherry about Sodapop's horse riding career and love for a horse named Mickey Mouse. The scene was also intended to highlight that Sodapop's having already suffered some heartbreak before his girlfriend leaves him, as well as the brothers' own sense of loss, but Coppola cut it because he felt it slowed the film's pace down. The scene where Dallas fell out of his seat at the drive-in was unplanned.
The film was shot on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The drive-in is the Admiral Twin, still going strong in 2008. Coppola filmed The Outsiders and Rumble Fish back-to-back in 1982. He wrote the screenplay for the latter while on days off from shooting the former. Many of the same locations were used in both films, as were many of the same cast and crew members. The credits are shown at the beginning of the movie in the style normally found in a published play.

Critical Reception

The film was met with generally mixed to positive reviews from critics and watchers. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives The Outsiders a certified 65% "Fresh" rating on its site.

Music

The original film's score was composed by the director's father, Carmine Coppola; the main title song, "Stay Gold", was sung by Stevie Wonder. The film did include one rock song, "Gloria", by the band Them.
The re-release of the film removes much of Carmine Coppola's original score, and instead replaces it with many songs that were hits from the 1960s when the film takes place, including:
Real Wild Child - Jerry Lee Lewis
Gloria - Them
Out of Limits - The Marketts
Tomorrow is a Long Time - Bob Dylan (performed by Elvis)
Mystery Train - Elvis Presley
We're Gonna Move - Elvis Presley
Lend Me Your Comb - Carl Perkins
Milky White Way - Elvis Presley
Teen Beat - The Ventures
Stay Gold - Stevie Wonder

Awards and nominations

The Outsiders has been nominated for at least four awards upon its release. C. Thomas Howell won the Young Artist Award for the movie in the category "Best Young Motion Picture Actor in a Feature Film." Diane Lane was also nominated for a Young Artist Award, her being nominated for "Best Young Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture", and the whole movie was nominated for the Young Artist Award "Best Family Feature Motion Picture." Francis Ford Coppola was nominated for a Golden prize.

"The Complete Novel" re-release

In September 2005, Coppola re-released the film on DVD, including 22 minutes of additional footage and new music, entitled The Outsiders: The Complete Novel. Coppola re-inserted some deleted scenes to make the movie more faithful to the book. In the beginning of the movie, he added scenes where Ponyboy gets jumped, the gang talks about going to the movies, and Dally, Pony and Johnny bumming around before going to the movies. In the end, Coppola added the scenes in court, Mr. Syme talking to Ponyboy, and Sodapop, Ponyboy and Darry in the park. Also, much of the original score was removed and replaced with music popular in the 1960s. The director also removed several scenes in order to improve pacing.

Taps - 1981

2009-04-09T01:00:00.000-07:00

In this compelling drama,a cadet major(Timothy Hutton)leads his fellow military students in an armed revolt to prevent authorities from turning their school into a condominium complex.His surrogate father,who is also the academy's commander(George C. Scott),vows to fight the closing as well.But when an unexpected accident leads to the school's demise,military discipling goes haywire and tragedy results. Sean Penn,Tom Cruise and Ronny Cox co-star in this thought-provoking film that questions the vales and morals of today's society.

Directed By:Harold Becker

Also Starring:Timothy Hutton,Tom cruise, George C. Scott, Sean Penn

《熄灯号》上映/发行日期:

美国USA
1981年12月9日......(limited)
美国USA
1981年12月20日
西德West Germany
1982年4月1日
法国France
1982年4月28日
芬兰Finland
1983年2月11日

剧情:

　　碉堡山军官预校的校长是一个具有强烈好斗精神的军官，他一向的治学方针是培养学生强烈的战斗精神。不过，当地政府计划将该校拆除，以利于发展当地的城市建设。在双方没有达成共识的情况下，当地政府强行拆除，有部分学生誓死护校，并武装起来与军警对抗。

导演：哈诺德·贝克

主演：乔治·C·斯科特蒂莫西·赫顿罗尼·考克斯

Source:
MTime.com
Official Tom Cruise Website

Family and early life

2009-04-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York,[7] the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer.[8] Cruise has German and English ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotte Louise Voelker; and Irish ancestry from his paternal great-great-grandfather Thomas O'Mara.[9] It was O'Mara's son Thomas who adopted the name Mapother, the surname of his older half-brothers, becoming Thomas Cruise Mapother I. Tom Cruise's oldest sister, Lee Anne, was born in Louisville. His older sister Marian was born in Syracuse, as were Tom and his younger sister, Cass.[10]
Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public school for grades three, four, and five. The Mapother family then moved to the suburb of Beacon Hill, in Gloucester, Ontario, so Cruise's father could take a position as a defence consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. There, Cruise completed grade six at Henry Munro Middle School, part of the Carleton Board of Education,[11] where he was active in athletics, playing floor hockey almost every night, showing himself to be a ruthless player, eventually chipping his front tooth. In the game "British Bull Dog", he then lost his newly capped tooth and hurt his knee.[12] Henry Munro was also where Cruise became involved in drama, unter the tutelage of George Steinburg.[13] The first play he participated in was called IT, in which Cruise won the co-lead with Michael de Waal, one playing "Evil", the other playing "Good". The play met much acclaim, and toured with five other classmates to various schools around the Ottawa area, even being filmed at the local Ottawa TV station.[14] The two were also singled out for a version of Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as a Marcel Marceau-type act. It was at this point that Mary Lee Mapother helped foster her son's acting aspirations: when the religious overtones of the former caused concern for school principal Jim Brown, Cruise's mother convinced him that the play should proceed, and she founded the Gloucester Players, a theatrical troupe where Cruise and some of the boys in Steinburg's class acted.
When Cruise was twelve, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sister Lee Anne with her.[15] After a long period of near-poverty, in which Tom's newspaper-delivery earnings helped put food on the table, his mother married a plastics salesman named Jack South.
Besides Ottawa, cities in which Cruise lived included Louisville, Kentucky; Winnetka, Illinois; and Wayne, New Jersey. In all, Cruise attended eight elementary schools and three high schools. He briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati (on a church scholarship) and aspired to become a Catholic priest. In his senior year, he played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but he was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game.[16] Cruise graduated from Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey in 1980.
Cruise has said that he suffered from abuse as a child. This was partially due to his suffering from dyslexia. He stated that when something went wrong, his father came down hard on him. He told Parade Magazine that his father was "a bully" and "a merchant of chaos." Cruise said he learned early on that his father was – and, by extension, some people were – not to be trusted: "I knew from being around my father that not everyone means me well."[17] Having gone through fifteen schools in twelve years, Cruise, who dropped his father's name at age twelve, was also a victim of bullying at school.
Cruise started acting after being sidelined from his high school's wrestling team due to a knee injury. While injured, he successfully auditioned for a lead role in his high school's production of Guys and Dolls and decided to become an actor after his success in the role. His cousin William Mapother is also an actor most known for playing Ethan Rom on Lost.

7^ "Cruise's Family Tree Treat". 2004-01-13. Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
8^ "Tom Cruise Biography". Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
9^ "Ancestry of Tom Cruise: Fourth Generation".
10^ Tom Cruise Biography at Tiscali.co.uk
11^ "Tom Cruise's Canadian stay revealed".
12^ "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography".
13^ "Cruise's time in capital one for books".
14^ "Excerpt Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography".
15^ ""I Can Create Who I Am"". 2006-04-09. Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
16^ Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, page 47
17^ CNN report about Parade Magazine article

Tom Cruise

2009-04-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

Tom Cruise
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (pronounced /ˈtɒməs ˈkruːz ˈmeɪpɒθɚ/; born July 3, 1962), better known by his screen name Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006.[1] He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards. His first leading role was the 1983 film Risky Business [2], which has been described as "A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker" for the actor.[3] After playing the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and financially successful 1986 film Top Gun, Cruise continued in this vein, playing a secret agent in a series of Mission: Impossible action films in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition to these heroic roles, he also played other roles, such as the misogynistic male guru in Magnolia (1999) and a cool and calculating sociopathic hitman in the Michael Mann crime-thriller film Collateral (2004).

In 2005, Economist Edward Jay Epstein argued that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer) who are able to guarantee the success of a billion-dollar movie franchise.[4] Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio,[5] with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.[6]

References

1^ "Tom Cruise ranked 1 among The Top 100 Celebrities In 2006". Forbes. 2007-05-01. Retrieved on 2007-05-01.
2^ a b c d Tom Cruise at the Internet Movie Database
3^ a b "Risky Business - Rotten Tomatoes".
4^ a b Edward Jay Epstein. "Tom Cruise Inc. - By Edward Jay Epstein - Slate Magazine". Slate.com. Retrieved on 2008-10-31.
5^ a b c "MGM Partners With Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner to Form New United Artists" - PR Newswire - November 2, 2006
6^ Scientology News: Tom Cruise Tops List of Scientology Celebrities at Celebrity Centre International 34th Anniversary Church of Scientology; 2006; Accessed March 23, 2007