Day: June 6, 2005

Nice little acknowledgement of my recent WIRED item about Tom Cruise vs. Paramount Pictures (i.e., the discomfort studio topper Brad Grey and his executive homies are feeling over Cruise’s “massive and unreasonable” 30% back-end on the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3) in Rush and Molloy’s “Daily Dish” column today.

This is astonishing…a very bright critic has fallen for Mr. and Mrs. Smith and is bringing up that ludicrous The War of the Roses analogy in the bargain. Newsweek‘s David Ansen is declaring that “Doug Liman’s heavily armed comedy…. [is] a high-wire act, pitched above a gaping chasm of implausibility, and the remarkable thing is how well Liman and his red-hot stars sustain the joke.” Trust me, there is no joke to get…the utter flatness and lack of recognizable humor in this film is stupefying and incontestable. Ansen acknowledges that the film is “preposterous, but Liman gives it such a seductive, playfully hip texture that you happily embrace the fantasy.” I’m sorry but this simply isn’t possible. You’d have to be zonked on high-grade heroin to be happy while sitting through this film.

A news report says that five and a half hours ago, at 4:20 am Monday morning, Russell Crowe was arrested at Manhattan’s Mercer Hotel for allegedly throwing a telephone at a hotel employee. “He was upset because he couldn’t get a call out to Australia,” said Sgt. Michael Wysokowski. “He threw a phone at the employee hitting him in the face and causing a minor laceration.” What I want to know is, what did this asshole — the hotel employee, I mean — do to provoke Crowe? Seriously…Crowe is too intelligent an actor and too large-of-spirit-and-imagination to throw phones at people just to pass the time of day. The hotel employee obviously didn’t understand the golden rule when dealing with celebrities, which is “don’t fuck with the Gods!” I say get those hotel employee wankers…get ’em! Crowe was expected to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court later on Monday. Remember Tom Petty and don’t back down, Russell! Hollywood Elsewhere is pulling for you and the rights of X-factor artists the world over who can’t help themselves when bad people say and do the wrong things.