i am actually looking forward to "collateral"

I haven't seen After Hours. One of the many, many gaps in my film education.

What phone number can I call you at right now?

Which is just as well, because I have to get up in six hours anyway.

Although there is a broad kind of charm

You said it, man. Broad. There is a charm so broad in almost every Tom Cruise role that it always makes me think of actors with more charm and more talent. There certainly is a quality about Tom Cruise that is innately "broad" -- I'll grant you that. That doesn't make hin Jimmy fucking Stewart. Combine this "broadness" with his arrogance, his superior smirk, and the way he is extremely limited in his talent, and he's more like George W. Bush than like any actor with any acutal talent.

xpost

fuck washing a cat

Right, to a point. The character doesn't rely on *his* texture, though, it just relies on *texture.* It doesn't depend on mega-star power to make it work -- I'd get very depressed if I thought any role did. It's a personality role, sure. Many, many actors have personality. Think... oooh, I like this one... think Benecio Del Toro in that role. Wouldn't that just be thick and delicious?

Truth is, this character is all texture. And a more subtle actor would have provided a more subtle texture. Tom Cruise is incapable of being thick and delicious.

mann went to the london film school y'know.

Yes! I know.

kyle, there is no formula for suckiness. It just happens. I blame the script.

I have decided that Mann must have seen this film as some kind of back-to-basics logistical challenge - (relatively) small budget, location shooting, mainly at night, small cast, etc. I don't think he could have done any better with this material, actually.

Resisting joke.

Anyway, once I have more time, I am going to comment on the Film People! Explain Yourselves! thread because I think my enjoyment of Collateral may have something to do with my relationship to Hollywood these days.

*cellphone hand*

Yes. Although Miami Vice is the show Manhunter *could have been*.

Actually, he does grin very briefly. The camera doesn't hold on it so I wonder if it was a reflexive action that Mann left in and not anything deliberate.

The real star of the movie is the City of Los Angeles - obviously fitting for a neo-noir about anonymity. Each frame could have easily been blown up into a coffee table-sized book of photographs.

Absolutely OTM.

I think it's a Michael Mann thing. I didn't mind it too much - heck even the Oakenfold during the scene at the Fever club was pretty effective. Really the only time I found the music intrusive enough to kick me out of the moment was the idiot song that comes on during the coyote sighting.

I really liked the sequence when Ruffalo seems to save the day, then takes three in the chest, Foxx's shoulders slump and he gets in the cab. Ruffalo's death was unexpected, even under "the good guy automatically gets killed" logic.

Anyway, I went to see it because I love the way his movies look on a big screen. I wasn't disappointed. His movies are like giant video installations, and it was way cooler than anything I saw at the Whitney Biennial.

whoa. lop off the last 30 minutes and the film could easily have gone this route.

spittle, you are cool..

Vincent was just such a weird character, wasn't he? And the way no one in the office building at the beginning or in the hospital reacts at all to this silver-suited dude wearing shades indoors after dark? He was like the most conspicuous hitman ever. But then he wants to be all "anonymous", and has the whole riff about the guy dying on the train and no one even noticing, as if there's anything remotely overlookable about him. But I guess that's what Edelstein got at with that line about the lonely man in the great suit.

spittle, it's funny that you say vincent = imaginary; the other day there was some cruise bio thing on E, and i started cracking up at the thought that he was delivering his interviews to noone, just an empty room with a camera, for hours. there's something abt cruise that invites that kind of dislocation.

i liked the shootout at the club even tho i could feel the movie heading south during and after; cruise (even if he doesn't 'get' his character the way welles got harry lime) does understand the kinetics of that kind of thing. his chilly gunhandling was fantastic.