tom cruise wants our eyes wide shut
In honor of the hot news from Sundance alleging Tom's censorship of Katie's sex scene . . . I sat right down and watched Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999).
You all know how to google, but here's Defamer and PopSugar and Yahoo News. The last is the only source of the three to name the director of the edited/censored film Thank You For Not Smoking.
If Cruise did cut the scene, I think it rates as his creepiest effort yet.
But if Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman did it for promotional reasons, he's fuckin brilliant. Or maybe he's just the son of a man whose been selling sex and teens and celebrity since Katie was just a twinkle in the eye of a Toledo housewife.* That would be Ivan Reitman, producer of Animal House (Landis, 1978) and other fine films in that tradition.
You know what I found creepy about Eyes Wide Shut? The way that USPS mailbox followed Cruise around London.
At the Scientologists' Annual Dinner Dance. (A cheap shot, but I couldn't help it.)
*Note: I do not know if Mrs. Holmes worked outside the home at any point before during or after little Katie's birth.
Categories: surprise/startle, film, currentevents
You all know how to google, but here's Defamer and PopSugar and Yahoo News. The last is the only source of the three to name the director of the edited/censored film Thank You For Not Smoking.
If Cruise did cut the scene, I think it rates as his creepiest effort yet.
But if Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman did it for promotional reasons, he's fuckin brilliant. Or maybe he's just the son of a man whose been selling sex and teens and celebrity since Katie was just a twinkle in the eye of a Toledo housewife.* That would be Ivan Reitman, producer of Animal House (Landis, 1978) and other fine films in that tradition.
You know what I found creepy about Eyes Wide Shut? The way that USPS mailbox followed Cruise around London.
At the Scientologists' Annual Dinner Dance. (A cheap shot, but I couldn't help it.) *Note: I do not know if Mrs. Holmes worked outside the home at any point before during or after little Katie's birth.
Categories: surprise/startle, film, currentevents
posted by zoe p. at 11:48 AM
5 Comments:
Isn't it set in New York?
hi hillary. thanks for piping up! yes it is set in new york.
i was trying to funny (oh well, i'll try again later) . . . i just didn't feel like the locations looked like new york. new york doesn't have that many small streets that end in a T (there are usually more through streets) or that much brick or . . . the whole proportion of sidewalk to building height to street width was off for me. the orgy-mansion looked pretty british too.
obviously the highway signs and a few of the new york street views might have been taken in the us. but the rest of it looked suspiciously british.
i thought the mailbox (they kept using the same one!) and the cabs and some of the street signs looked weirdly unnatural, like product placements , that were supposed to convince us that the action was taking place in new york . . .
i became obsessed with this problem while watching.
the rainbow costume shop had the words "fancy dress" on their sign.
and then the credits thank british locations.
perhaps this is the dream of some british couple that they have been transported to new york? again, just kidding. i think the ill fit was unintentional.
but what about the strangely aggressive xmas decorations? where does that fit in? everywhere he goes has a brightly lit tree?
so is your affection for TomKat on the wane?
When I imagine the inside of Tom and Katie's, I see that white room for 2001. And there's a sonogram machine in the corner.
i mean "from 2001" not "for 2001."
good question, ff. let's see if i remember correctly.
i think i began the post in joyous speculation, assuming that tom cruise was censoring katie holmes film appearances and wondering how this might make sense in terms of his career, hers, the cult . . . you know, gossip. i'd resisted this before, but this time i just gave way . . .
but midway through the post i caught myself and remembered that, as i've argued before, nothing really necessarily adds up and i don't know anything at all about them or their choices . . .
but i did know my own pleasure in speculation. and, having "bought into" the gossip, i figured if anyone could count on anything, someone like reitman could count on the fascination i have with the couple and he could exploit that and create a little promotion for his film, which probably isn't otherwise very interesting.
so the post has my little personal coming-to-consciousness trajectory in it. i still hesitate to speculate about the strange beast that is TomKat, but i know myself well enough to know when i've been had.
i think i read too that reitman announced to the audience (who wouldn't/didn't know a scene was missing) that a scene was missing - why would he do that except to create a story? and he could have planted anonymous tips with the tabloids, etc . . . and then tom cruise could have threatened to have him killed for creating this story . . . .
whoops. there i go again.
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