George Clooney's career path

Maybe I'll just watch The Good Thief again instead...

SO VERY WRONG

But why the fuck hasn't every other rich star in Hollywood followed his lead?

It's damn funny to watch Clooney in a movie pre-Out Of Sight cuz he's ALWAYS doing that eyes-up/chin-tucked deal. There's a great scene in Batman & Robin when Robin says "I didn't know Alfred was sick" and Clooney responds by grunting "I know" and making at least three unique facial expressions. I'm hoping they did 68 takes and THAT was the best one.

And Cruise is absolutely charisma-free, and even in his good films he's usually some sort of blank slate that exists for other people to react to, or he's a one-dimensional hero. Admittedly he's made some fine films but I'd suggest it's despite him and not because of him.
Clooney has a ton of old-school charisma, which he seems to have learned how to use ever since "Out of Sight". I remember seeing that film and thinking "Wow, if he keeps this up, he's gonna be great." And he has.

PS -- I love George Clooney. Just love him.

"Everett, my beard itches."

You realize it took place in space, of course.

he is immensely likable and charming, but i doubt i will ever feel much empathy for a character he plays. i look forward to all his movies though.

Dan Tyminksi of Allison Kraus' band did the lead vocal for "Man of Constant Sorrow"

the AMG entry for the Soggy Bottom Boys: Tyminski, Harley Allen, & Pat Enright

wow, how things change, eh? The very sight of this smug Bono of the Multiplex in a film irritates me now. Post-Intolerable Cruelty (underrated screwball hommage), I've only been able to entirely enjoy him in Fantastic Mr Fox.

And the early reviews of Monuments Men (the MPAA rating text of which is in my display name) indicate he's directed another turd. Maybe he should stick with powdered donuts like Ocean's Seventeen until he's Harrison Ford's age.

Clooney seems to have settled in to being a movie star, like it's a favorite recliner chair. His reputation is made. He's not looking for challenges. He isn't adding to his craft. He hasn't quite reached the stage of phoning in every performance, like Jack Nicholson. He's still watchable, because he's an old pro now, but the comparison to Harrison Ford seems very apt.

lol historical smoking

rated PC-13

Cloonz does have that showbiz 'liberal' veneer of thinking he's a social filmmaker by developing projects critical of Joe McCarthy, and Nazis stealing art.

He does have the clout to put cigarettes in period films, I'll say that for him.

hey its hard fighting battles that have already been won

only the Nazis smoke in his films.

monuments men looks awful

I was thinking just the other day that, if only there were another movie about Nazis the happiness of the world would be complete.

they belong in a museum!

He hasn't quite reached the stage of phoning in every performance, like Jack Nicholson.

You know the Oscars will be making "George" jokes for decades, once "Jack" abdicates the earth.

he'll be making eyes at starlets yet unborn

when Clooney stars in any movie released after October I shake in horror.

expand yr horizons, Leatherheads was late spring I think.

Leatherheads didn't get Oscar noms iirc

For what it's worth, I believe he's the age Ford was when he made "The Fugitive." It's been pretty much downhill for Ford ever since, so Clooney should tread wisely, especially when his only signifiers are "handsome" or "dates younger women."

Ford had only one Oscar nomination though and doesn't "write" or direct. This man will be a multiformat threat for years.

he'll make a damn Watergate movie if they let him; I wonder who he'll play.

haig imo

Martha Mitchell

Jeb Magruder

Katherine Graham (Joel & Ethan Coen, dir.).

anna chennault

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/.a/6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a5116640ef970c-pi

lol

jesus cate blanchett got roped into that thing

ugh she's so damn predictable. You look at her hair and glasses and coat and you know exactly how she's going to play the character. At least RoboStreep thought of novel ways of grinding her way into people's heads.

it's weird how people seem surprised this is flat and lifeless. did they see his football movie? that was the limpest thing since (insert X-rated joke).

yeah Leatherheads was awful. I knew i was in for some pain when i saw Rick Reilly had a writing credit

I had to look at my review of that to remember how bad it was.

lol i've always wondered just how awful leatherheads could be really, thx to h4a for the quick demonstration

In 2007, a Writers Guild of America arbitration vote decided not to award Clooney a screen credit for the film, preferring to credit only the original writers, longtime Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly and his former magazine colleague, Duncan Brantley. In response to the WGA's ruling, Clooney resigned his full WGA status to go "financial core" within the guild, meaning that while still technically a member, he only has limited rights.[citation needed] While he did not contest the ruling of the WGA, Clooney said that he did not want to exclude Brantley and Reilly, agreeing that they deserved the first position credit for their work, but felt that his "major overhaul" of the 17-year-old script to turn it into a screwball comedy left only two of the original scenes intact.

Viewers in their 50s to 80s were the main audience for the film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherheads

Viewers in their 50s to 80s were the main audience for the film.

Hahah, you think?

Writer arbitration is so weird. From an interview I did with Harold Ramis a lifetime ago:

When a director writes, there's a compulsory arbitration. You have a right to challenge any of the arbitrators, but they pick three of four arbitrators who read all the drafts with no names attached and then allocate credit. So the rule of thumb for a director or producer—which prevents them from just sticking their names on everything—is that you have to contribute substantially more than 50 percent of the character dialogue and story. That's a tough criterion.

yeah, like i'm p sure Kubrick wrote his own version of the Lolita script and filmed it.

I wonder how far those rules or conventions go back. plenty of directors who we don't think of as screenwriters made huge, probably definitive, contributions to their films' screenplays. thinking of folks like ford, hawks.

Hitchcock too. And in the '20s/30s, the production chiefs like Thalberg might write scenes on big pictures, esp if there were reshoots.

Hawks!

also it cannot be overstated how ineffectual and borderline-incompetent that football movie was.

also, john krasinski (sp?) cannot carry a movie. it's supposed to be a love triangle b/t him, clooney, and zellweger and there is zero chemistry in any direction. leading one to wonder what the fuck the movie they are watching is about.

it was also a bit of an embarrasment b/c in press release, interviews etc. clooney said he was going for a "1920s, 1930s" style (which is it? those two things are crazy different when it comes to American film) but the film uses all kinds of mush-producing long lenses and clooney has no sense of staging and so the result looks almost diametrically opposed to a 1930s style, except in that he uses some longer takes.

honestly if it wasn't for clooney's clout i imagine it's the kind of movie that might have gone straight to video after a token one-week release in some crappy NYC theater.

Welles said once Hawks could've sought and gotten cowriting credits if he'd given a shit.

also, john krasinski (sp?) cannot carry a movie.

theres something about that guy, idk i just hate his guts

he's just bland

he only works as the straight man in the context of a bunch of bozos, try to get him to project some positive charisma and carry a movie and it's just a belly flop

I bailed on the US Office after 6 episodes, but Krasinski looked delish in Leatherheads, prob only thing that kept me awake.

http://media3.giphy.com/media/M7gtacN7aPNsc/giphy.gif

can't understand why Clooney continues to make this liberal fairy tale bullshit because i'm sure if he made something where he played against type it wd be critically adore

courage of his convictions innit, health of the democracy above his pride as an artist, all that

in his defense on the Murrow film, McCarthyism isn't quite as dead as I thought it was eight days ago.

remember when krasinsky wrote and directed an adaptation of the interstitial bits from brief interviews with hideous men by david foster wallace, and actors including tv's john krasinsky and ben gibbard sat around in rooms reading david foster wallace prose at each other? one of western civ's lil troughs.

The best part about that movie was how no one wanted to release it and therefore almost no one saw it.

wire alum frankie faison was in it as the guy who talks about his dad the men's room attendant; that was cool.

in his defense on the Murrow film, McCarthyism isn't quite as dead as I thought it was eight days ago.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Friday, February 7, 2014 9:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there has to be some 1p3 thread i can put this in

I just need to say what a piece of shit Monuments Men was. I'm not a cineaste by any stretch, but even as I was watching it I was repeatedly shocked at how sloppily made, badly written and lazily acted it was. I guess the lighting was good.

that's a big letdown, it had such promise.

i thought it was at least pleasant, but yeah it felt like given the story and the cast it should've come together much better.

I skipped it mainly because I didn't feel that I needed to see the Flying Hellfish episode of The Simpsons stretched out to feature length.

Felt completely burned by Monuments Men.

BTW, this is the go-to movie for WWII and saving culture

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/The_train_poster.jpg

I'll check that out, at least it seems fun. Monuments men Monumentally misrepresented an incredibly compelling true life story that was admittedly probably better suited to a documentary. I thought at the very least there would be some lingering glamor shots of beautiful artworks but the camera didn't stay on anything for longer than a couple of seconds.

i guess the train is "fun" -- it can be pretty strident (stylistically and rhetorically) too

i realized clooney was never going to be a decent director w/ that leatherheads fiasco. in interviews he said he wanted to shoot it like a 1930s screwball comedy but the result looks as much like a 1930s screwball comedy as... something that doesn't look remotely like 1930s screwball comedy. he's just incompetent.

the train is newly out on blu-ray btw, it looks gorgeous. i've never loved the film, but burt lancaster is always a big plus. plus you get a really decrepit michel simon in a cameo.

I saw it about 20 years ago and thought it merely OK except for the odd chemistry between Lancaster and Scofield.

the action scenes are a little better than OK, but yeah it's no lost masterpiece

and the style really is strident, you kind of want frankenheimer to cool it after a while

def one of the better mainstream american movies of 1964, because... 1964.

The Train is p much a neglected masterpiece.

guys, sometimes critical consensus is yr friend (re Monuments Men)

i honestly don't think frankenheims had a masterpiece in 'em, as talented though he was

'im

every time i see the train, i forget almost everything but the action sequences until the next time

Seconds is fine for being the Requiem for a Dream of 1966.

Frankenheimer Tried Things. That's what I'll give him credit for

1964 US-studio-made movies

Dr Strangelove
The Train
A Shot in the Dark
Marnie
The Masque of the Red Death (AIP, but certainly mainstream)
The Disorderly Orderly
Goldfinger (kinda)
Seven Days in May
The Night of the Iguana
Fail-Safe
Mary Poppins
Kiss Me, Stupid

kicks the shit outta any year since 1999

'manchurian candidate' is a masterpiece imo

tho masterpiece is kind of a silly word

yeah because The Manchurian Candidate has flaw after flaw but still works

Flawless movies suck.

Here you are, Eric dear. One good burp and you'll be rid of that Ms Morbious.

Dr Strangelove
The Train
A Shot in the Dark
Marnie
The Masque of the Red Death (AIP, but certainly mainstream)
The Disorderly Orderly
Goldfinger (kinda)
Seven Days in May
The Night of the Iguana
Fail-Safe
Mary Poppins
Kiss Me, Stupid

not a bad run but compare it to 1954 or even 1974! or, more proximately, 1959 or 1971! hollywood was definitely in the doldrums, quality-wise (and otherwise) at the time.

i can't say I'm super-fond of any of the above films, except the Corman/Price one (probably their best collaboration IMO). i do like Kiss Me, Stupid quite a bit though it's not my favorite Wilder of the '60s. the others I have to say I'm varying degrees of ho-hum about. Lumet -and- Frankenheimer are both very venturesome as directors in this period (or, what Alfred said) but I don't think they made any stone masterpieces (Frankenheimer never made a film that I admire w/o some cavils, and it took Lumet until the '70s to do so). I recognize this may not be a consensus opinion.

I still think that 64-66 are the worst years for studio filmmaking. I'm excepting the last 10 or 15 years because I don't feel like I have enough perspective. (so Morbs, you might be right that even the mid-60s bests contemporary Hollywood. but I don't feel confident enough to say.)

of course we have to factor in that morbs hates everything that might be called recent

http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/scarecrow.jpg

yeah, it was an exaggeration, but not all that much of one. c'mon, even you have to agree that your default position is that of a grouch!

i should add that aside from the "best" films of the 1960s not being nearly as amazing as those of previous and (to a lesser extent) subsequent decades, the biggest difference is that the whole stew just wasn't as rich. pick a good year in the 1930s or even the 1950s and you'll find an extremely rich cake with multiple layers. i mean there are probably at least 10 great-to-incredible westerns alone in nearly any year of the first 2/3 of the 1950s. and that's while the amount of product made my the studios was in gradual decline. by the mid-1960s the studios aren't producing nearly as many films as just 5-10 years before (choosing to spend more on a few road-show and other "family" features, most of which are execrable). i pity the cinephile who has to spend a ton of time investigating american films of that era.

stew or cake, savory or sweet, pick your metaphor

btw wasn't mann's fall of the roman empire also '64? coz you could add that to your "not-bad films from 1964" list.

I don't like it as much as those others, ditto Lewis' The Patsy tho I'm due for another viewing.

Don't forget I'm an insufferable master of the obvious in politics too

the patsy has some of his funniest stuff, and some of his worst, kind of like the bellboy.

all of both is funnier than Leatherheads

well, yeah. i think you'd be pretty safe saying "[insert random comedy here] is funnier than leatherheads"

dude's directing and producing credits are pretty damn rough

plenty i haven't seen but man, his only films of the last decade i'd go to bat for are Burn After Reading and Michael Clayton. Beyond that, what...Gravity? Ocean's 12? yeesh.

his directing credits get rougher

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4889-the-daily-venice-toronto-2017-clooney-s-suburbicon

Suburbicon is moderately well made, but it's hard to pinpoint any deeper meaning that might make it more than just a mishmash of Pleasantville, Double Indemnity, and Shadow of a Doubt. (I can think of one possibility that's tenuous at best.) Absent that, it's just not strong enough to stand on its own.

wait waht

Today I found out the most fucking insane thing and that's George Clooney did all those Nespresso ads so he could spend millions of dollars keeping his own private satellite in orbit over Sudan for years to keep track of war crimes being committed by the Sudanese government pic.twitter.com/NJpvahqabE

— Cormac Browne (@SimplyTome) November 26, 2019

Nespresso: Clooney is being replaced by Dua Lipa

The only Clooney stuff I've seen is 'Batman & Robin' (awesome, stop being snobs everyone who hates this movie), the second half of 'From Dusk Til Dawn', and as a child I'm sure I must have seen the episode of 'Street Hawk' where Clooney plays the lead character's brother.

not seen the nespresso ads then?

there have apparently been Clooney Nespresso ads in the US since 2015, but I can't recall seeing one. first time I ever saw Clooney hawking Nespresso was on a bus stop in Sydney.

I feel like I've only seen print ads in magazines (if I'm not hallucinating), like Esquire/GQ-type ones. And maybe in an airport.

I’ve seen lots of Clooney nespresso ads over the years. Not disappointed that he is getting replaced by Dua Lipa, though.

solid career, good activism, charisma to sell coffee pods. but she has never taken a shit in Richard Kind's cat litterbox

I first saw them when I was in the UK & Europe in the winter of 2007/2008, and at the time it was another example of an A-list star doing commercial work overseas that wasn't seen in the U.S., a lucrative offer that wouldn't "diminish" their image in the U.S. There was a UK reporter who asked him whether it conflicted with his politics given the controversy over the product's environmental impact. A quick google search found a few sites that preserved the relevant part of the story, but otherwise, it seems to have receded into the past:

Asked about his real-life role in the Nestlé Nespresso advertisements, Mr. Clooney said he did not work for Nestlé, according to ABS-CBN which reports he said unsmilingly: “I’m not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while. I find that an irritating question.”

He has some tequila brand that he plugs, it might be his own... there was a vogue for owning a mezcal/tequila distillery a few years back

Oh yeah, that brand made him a BILLIONAIRE.

Or rather really, really rich if not a billionaire.

Full story here.