Tom Cruise becomes the Sylvester Stallone of his generation.

Exhibits A, B, C: OBLIVION, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL (re titled EDGE OF TOMORROW and LIVE DIE REPEAT on video), JACK REACHER etc. etc.

Tom Cruise is in his fifties now--but given Hollywood logic for veteran male stars, he gets ten years taken off his age (remembering how the 70-year-old Paul Newman was only 60 in NOBODY'S FOOL, but Newman, even in the 90s, was ageless).

Here's moviesquad commenting on the HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE site (highlighting by me):
I think Tom is in the midst of a mid-life crisis where he's trying to pump out as many of the sort of movies that prove he's still young as he can... and I'm glad for it.
He can do the more serious pics you want him to do when he is no longer believable in these sorts of roles. We need this Tom Cruise at this moment in time.

Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone continues his post-EXPENDABLES career upturn in BULLET TO THE HEAD (directed by Walter Hill, who had a run of good actioners between 1978 and 1987), in which (from evidence in the trailer) he tries to erase two decades from his actual age.

Some random opinions following today's news about Anderson Cooper.

1. Regardless of timing, it's commendable that CNN's Anderson Cooper decided to join his lesser-known colleague Don Lemon (who came out awhile ago) and declare himself proudly gay in both his public and private lives.
2. The irony remains that Cooper works for an organization (Time Warner) which still is a prime mover in keeping certain gay celebrities tightly closeted--and publishing "he/she is straight with his/her supposedly-straight lover/spouse" fantasies for their print/web readership.
3. No comment about the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes divorce (of which a settlement has now been reached--announced Monday July 9th), except to say that it's interesting that it shares the same news cycle as Anderson Cooper's coming-out e-mail to THE ATLANTIC's Andrew Sullivan.
4. Regarding Number 3, it's safe to say that most closeted thespians will remain that way (as Time Warner's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY recently mentioned in a cover story, male celebs who are out aren't likely to be cast in straight romantic mainstream movies--or, likely, superhero/fantasy/action franchises, reinforcing a decades-old casting prejudice of the motion picture business)--unless they're outed or choose to out themselves late in their careers when their better days as money-earners in the Industry are behind them.

RIP Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' marriage.

Wishing young Suri Cruise the best in the wake of the tabloid maelstrom she'll be entering. Here's a poem by IMDB blogger Melanie McFarland: TomKat Blues (with Apologies to W.H. Auden) Shut off your cell phones and stop all the clocks, Put your sweet fashionistas in the somber’est of frocks, Silence the talk shows with their sorrowful preaching, Bring out the pre-nup, let the tabloids start screeching. Let aeroplanes circle as their engines faintly hum Scribbling on the sky the message, “Tom and Katie are Done!” Put jokes up on Twitter about contracts expiring, Let Facebook updates guess which lawyers he’s hiring. She moved him to frolic on Oprah’s plush chaise, She told W Mag, “Tom and I will always be in our honeymoon phase” “He’s my man! He’s my man!” she would go on to cheer, We thought they would last for, like, 10 or so years. The stars have no comment for  E!’s TV hosts, Roll up the red carpet. Go ‘way, New York Post. Cask the Cristal, calm the air with sandalwood, For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Shia LaBeouf told by Steven Spielberg to follow the "example" of Tom Cruise.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-shia-labeouf-20110626,0,3619473.story

Key passage from Rebecca Keegan's article on Shia LaBeouf:
The same impulsiveness that inspired LaBeouf to ball his fists [recently in a fight with a heckler in a Sherman Oaks bar] has also driven him to say some professionally reckless things, including telling reporters at the Cannes International Film Festival last year that he was unhappy with the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie.

LaBeouf says he has been warned by people he respects — including Spielberg — to watch his words in public and smooth some of his rough edges.

"The way Steven described it to me was, 'When Tom Cruise walks outside his house, he doesn't pick his nose. From the minute he leaves his door to the minute he comes back home, he doesn't pick his nose.' Now that's a certain way to live your life that I have no ambitions toward."


As an example of what Gore Vidal calls "The United States of Amnesia", Spielberg apparently forgot whatever dismay and anger he likely had when Cruise jumped up-and-down Oprah Winfrey's couch and rumbled with Matt Lauer on the TODAY show.


All of this occurred when Cruise was doing the media circuit to promote his starring role in Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS remake.


But at least it wasn't literal nose-picking.

SALT made me want to.....see INCEPTION again.

After reading the hype about SALT (especially how the recent Russian spy discoveries and swap occurred close to the film's release--though the central "deep cover" Russian spy gimmick is swiped from Don Siegel's 1977 TELEFON with Charles Bronson, Lee Remick and Tyne Daly), I expected reasonably choice summer action fare--particularly with this being director Phillip Noyce's (with a career ranging from the Australian classic NEWSFRONT to two good-to-very-good Jack Ryan films to the more recent Australian classic RABBIT-PROOF FENCE) return to big-budget American filmmaking.

Unfortunately, SALT is little more than 95 minutes of chase and shoot (with some violence that almost punches a fist through the balsa wood of the PG-13 rating), with occasional character beats/backstory to keep it from being completely tissue-thin.

And it doesn't help that SALT was released a week after the summer's tie-for-best-with-TOY STORY 3-film INCEPTION.

I hope that Angelina Jolie carries on with a viable A-list film career regardless of all the tabloid chatter.  It may be time for her to again opt for a studio-boutique project for her to excel in (like 2008's unjustly ignored A MIGHTY HEART) instead of listening to what's likely to be renewed siren calls from Universal for her to appear in WANTED 2.

[Train-wreck alert: Sony/Columbia has tagged the trailer for Michel Gondry's THE GREEN HORNET to SALT.  And it's fairly obvious that Gondry and star Seth Rogen had only a thirty-second meeting of minds;  Rogen and Sony must have been imagining a GHOSTBUSTERS approach to the subject matter, but it looks like a sequel to the superself-indulgent Bruce Willis early-90s caper comedy film HUDSON HAWK instead.]

Video of poem AN ENCOUNTER WITH TOM CRUISE 11/1/07.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdLSpDd-FBM