"One of the running gags at Saturday night’s 24th annual American Cinematheque Ball was how strange it was to be honoring a movie star who hasn’t yet cracked 40. “What can you say about Matt Damon that hasn’t been said about Brendan Fraser?” roasted Jimmy Kimmel. “You’re here tonight because were running out of stars." — Anne Thompson
The Vulture casts an eye over the current slabs of beef jockeying for position once Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, and George Clooney hang up their spurs. I feel like we've found the limits of Tobey Maguire pretty quickly. Jake Gyllenhaal strikes me as efficient, impeturbable and a little unexciting. Ryan Gosling needs to share the joke with the rest of the class. Leonardo di Caprio needs to break up with Martin Scorsese if he is to rediscover any of the freshness he showed as a gangly kid. Most of the candidates
The Vulture comes up with — Zac Ephron, Robert Pattinson, Channing Tatum, Taylor Lautner — are just soda pops who will have lost their fizz in a few years. Sam Worthington seems like a premature attempt to replace Russell Crowe. Ryan Reynolds, Gerald Butler and Bradley Cooper all seem to have been drafted in to help out until the real movie stars turn up. The ones that interest me the most are Chris Pine who showed languid charisma as the young Captain Kirk in
Star Trek, Jay Baruchel for his nervy pubescent routine, and Shia la Beouf: the way he zeroed in on the girl in
Disturbia was almost a special effect in its on right, like that famous reverse-zoom Hitchcock used in
Vertigo. Of those the
Vulture don't mention, I'd single out Michael Cera and James Franco who is turning into quite the jack-in-the-box.
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Agreed on Pine and Shia, who I thought was one of the best things about Indy IV. I'm a big Nick Stahl fan, and wish he'd do higher-profile work from time to time. I also think that Tom Welling has untapped potential, though his failure to break up with the persistently vegetative "Smallville" doesn't bode too well. Kevin McKidd definitely deserves a big break, and Anthony Michael Hall is long overdue for a big comeback. In the meantime, I suppose Damon, Norton, Downey and Craig can hold down the fort, along with Jackman, provided he finds more than one role that isn't terrible (or, depending on how you view it, at least one).
ReplyDeleteTotally agree about Craig - I left the Brits off but would also include Matthew Goode, plus the kid who was Carey Mulligan's suitor in An Education.
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