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标题: Backlash Begins: Nobody wants to be OB in 2005 [打印本页]

作者: LG2004 时间: 2006-2-18 01:38
标题: Backlash Begins: Nobody wants to be OB in 2005
Maybe the Stars Have Gotten Small After All

By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: January 1, 2006
LOS ANGELES

IT was months before the cameras were set to roll on one of 20th Century Fox's most ambitious projects for 2005, a $140 million historic epic about the Crusades by the director Ridley Scott. And still there was no one to play the leading role of Balian.

Mr. Scott had at first envisioned Russell Crowe, the scowling, muscled star of his "Gladiator" hit, to play the role of a blacksmith and reluctant Crusader in the Holy Land. But Mr. Crowe had other projects on his slate, and would not alter them to fit the director's timetable.

It took four more months of searching by casting agents and Mr. Scott to settle on Orlando Bloom, the long-haired, doe-eyed young British actor who was high on Hollywood's list of hot new stars in the making. Mr. Bloom, who had won a fan base of teenage girls with his performance in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and who was fresh off the set of another historical epic, Warner Brothers' "Troy," was the favored choice of Fox executives.

But as it turned out, "Troy" did not catch fire with the audience (not even the teenage girls), or with critics. And Mr. Bloom's next major outing, in Mr. Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven," was a bust, taking in just $211 million in ticket sales around the world, hardly enough to justify its production and marketing costs.

Next came the lead in Cameron Crowe's comic romance, "Elizabethtown," which pancaked at the box office when Paramount released it in the fall, and exposed Mr. Bloom to a withering verdict by movie critics. Just a month later, moreover, the 28-year-old actor was sued by his former management company, the Firm, for breach of contract and failure to pay management fees, over the defection of his manager to another firm.

By the end of 2005, what just a year earlier had looked like the start of an upward climb toward Hollywood stardom began instead to read like a cautionary tale about the difficulty of minting movie superstars from the ranks of a 20-something generation.

Stardom came easier to the young only a decade or two ago. At 23, Tom Cruise grasped it with the release of "Top Gun" in 1986, and flaunted it two years later by turning a vehicle as slight as "Cocktail" into a major hit. Julia Roberts was a superstar at 22, after the success of "Pretty Woman" in 1990, and Leonardo DiCaprio was just 23 when "Titanic" turned him into an international screen presence in 1997.

All quickly rose into Hollywood's top salary tier - the ranks of the $20 million actor, or thereabouts - and achieved bankable status with nervous executives who were willing to make a costly film because these actors were in it.

That kind of glitter has remained out of reach for Mr. Bloom's generation, notwithstanding a new crop of talent in the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, 25, who was featured in this past season's "Jarhead" and "Brokeback Mountain," or Heath Ledger, who co-starred in "Brokeback" and headlined in the just-released "Casanova."

YET none of them have proven their box-office clout with anything close to the certainty of their recent predecessors. And the calculus of the $20 million Hollywood equation has eluded them, as they have so far proved incapable of drawing the kinds of audiences that can justify the rising costs of producing and marketing movies. (One exception may be Daniel Radcliffe, the 16-year-old who recently signed on to star in the fifth "Harry Potter" film for a reported $14.4 million, but he has yet to test his drawing power outside that franchise.)

"The comfort level of hiring a star isn't what it used to be," said Jim Gianopulos, Fox's co-chairman. "I think people have recognized that there's a folly in allowing yourself to fall prey to the expectation that talent will always recover its value in the kinds of numbers we're playing with."

If new stars are born more rarely, it is partly because American audiences have been turning their backs on star-driven pictures. Of last year's top dozen box-office events, only three - "Hitch," with Will Smith; "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; and "Wedding Crashers," with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson - relied more on celebrities than computer wizardry to achieve their success. And several expensive movies with proven stars fell flat, among them "Bewitched" with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, and "Cinderella Man" with Russell Crowe.

"There's a shrinking number of dramatic stars who can guarantee an opening-weekend audience," said Ron Meyer, president of Universal Studios and a former agent for A-list talent including Mr. Cruise and Tom Hanks. "They must be in the right vehicle at the right time."

So, what is the state of Hollywood stardom? Mr. Bloom's recent career experiences show that it is more difficult to achieve than it once was.

Agents and managers and a publicist for Mr. Bloom declined to discuss for the record his recent choices and the growing wariness toward stars on the part of audiences and film executives.

Mr. Bloom wrote in an e-mail message that he was focused on his craft, rather than on achieving stardom. (He declined to be interviewed further). "I am proud of my two films that came out this year, 'Kingdom of Heaven' and 'Elizabethtown,' " he wrote. "I learned so much from both Ridley Scott and Cameron Crowe, and view both experiences as the opportunities of a lifetime."

Still, court documents and interviews with colleagues provide a telling glimpse of a young actor in an era that has a new, more austere take on Hollywood stardom.

Born in Canterbury, England, in 1977, Mr. Bloom came to show business with an unconventional background. His father, Harry Bloom, was a famed political activist who fought for civil rights in South Africa and died when Orlando was 4. The boy was brought up, along with his older sister, by his mother, Sonia, and a family friend, Colin Stone. But when Orlando was a young teenager, his mother revealed that Mr. Stone was actually his biological father.

Suffering from dyslexia as a student, Mr. Bloom was drawn to the arts and poetry in school in the English county of Kent. At 16 he moved to London and joined the National Youth Theater, where he had a scholarship to train in a drama academy. He won a few television roles and had a small role in a 1997 movie about Oscar Wilde titled "Wilde."

Mr. Bloom went on to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where his first big break occurred during a student performance one night in 1998. The director Peter Jackson happened to be in the audience, and he came backstage to ask Mr. Bloom to audition for a set of movies he was preparing based on the J. R. R. Tolkien trilogy, "Lord of the Rings."

The fledgling actor's career quickly took hold as he gathered the accoutrements of Hollywood's star-making machinery. He was signed by International Creative Management in London, where he worked with Fiona McLoughlin, and in Beverly Hills, with Chris Andrews, both agents for young actors.

He made his Hollywood debut at 24 as the dashing Elvish archer Legolas Greenleaf in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," in December 2001. Mr. Bloom became an instant teenage idol - in 2002 he was chosen one of Teen People's "25 Hottest Stars Under 25" - and his following grew through the two Tolkien sequels.

In time-honored fashion, Mr. Bloom's entourage grew as well. He hired a manager, Aleen Keshishian, whose management company, the Firm, had just acquired the apparatus and ambitions of the faltering Hollywood powerbroker Michael Ovitz. He also hired a publicist, Robin Baum, from the high-profile company PMK/HBH.

Led by its chairman, Jeff Kwatinetz, the Firm had eyes for creating big stars and was busy building up the careers of performers like Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Cameron Diaz. Mr. Kwatinetz saw Mr. Bloom as a prime candidate to grow into a $20 million player, especially when Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," in which Mr. Bloom played a supporting role with Johnny Depp, became a surprise hit.

When the role of Paris in "Troy" came along, Mr. Kwatinetz clashed with Ms. Keshishian. He felt that the role presented too weak an image for an actor aspiring to the position of virile leading man. Ms. Keshishian felt differently. Mr. Bloom was slowly building a career, she believed, and a prominent part in a major international epic was a smart move.

Ms. Keshishian prevailed. But the dynamics of the star game were already changing. One star vehicle after another was coming up short at the box office - "Troy" with Brad Pitt," "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks, "The Manchurian Candidate" with Denzel Washington, "The Stepford Wives" with Nicole Kidman - and Hollywood was beginning to edge away from its commitment to high-cost talent.

This shift seemed at first to work in Mr. Bloom's favor. When Russell Crowe, a $20 million actor, bowed out of "Kingdom of Heaven," Mr. Bloom was briefly perceived as a bargain: an actor with a huge fan base among teenage girls, and one who would take a cut in his fee in exchange for the opportunity to have a leading role and work with Mr. Scott. He was paid just $2 million.

But when it opened in May, "Kingdom of Heaven" had disastrous ticket sales of just $47 million in the United States. While it did considerably better abroad, the film seemed to prove that Mr. Bloom was not ready to deliver a mass audience, at least not outside the framework of his earlier fantasy films.

The downward slide continued in another failed test of Mr. Bloom's drawing power, this time in a romantic comedy. Cameron Crowe, the acclaimed writer-director of "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous," had run into casting troubles with "Elizabethtown," about a young, successful sneaker designer who undergoes an identity crisis when his father dies. Mr. Crowe originally cast the 25-year-old television star Ashton Kutcher in the lead. But as the director said in a recent interview, he "didn't feel the movie coming together" during two months of work on location in Kentucky. The two parted ways, and Mr. Crowe looked for a replacement.

He thought of Mr. Bloom, whom he had met three years before when Mr. Crowe wrote and directed a commercial for the Gap in which Mr. Bloom and Kate Beckinsale were chased down the street by fans.

"I needed the same thing from both those actors," said Mr. Crowe, referring to Mr. Kutcher and Mr. Bloom, explaining why he chose a dramatic actor for a comic role. "It was an interior, whimsical thing. It was Bud Cort in 'Harold and Maude.' Ultimately Orlando got me closer."

The studio resisted. Sherry Lansing, then chairwoman of Paramount, wanted Owen Wilson. But Cameron Crowe got his choice, and Mr. Bloom was paid $3 million, which his representatives described as another finnancial compromise made for the chance to work with the director.

Cost, it turned out, was the least of the problems with "Elizabethtown." The film was made for about $70 million, but has taken in just $50 million in ticket sales, making it a calamity for the filmmaker, the studio and, most of all, the star, who was perceived by more than a few critics as having gotten in over his head. (In The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote, "Mr. Bloom distinguishes himself, in this performance as in most of his others, by his steadfast reluctance to explore his range as an actor.")

"You can't blame the actor," Mr. Crowe now says of the movie's failure. "It's not math. It's like catching lightning in a bottle."

And he said that he still believed in the possibility of Mr. Bloom's success: "Stars arrive on their own timetable."

That may be true; just a few years ago Mr. Ledger was written off after the double disasters of "The Four Feathers" and "A Knight's Tale." But that timetable is often of Hollywood's own making, as the inner machinery of the entertainment industry - the agents, managers, lawyers, publicists and movie executives - continually seek the stuff of which stardom is made, and on which their livelihoods depend.

As for Mr. Bloom, he is in the Caribbean, trying to recover his footing with roles in back-to-back sequels to "Pirates of the Caribbean," alongside Mr. Depp. At least in this case, Mr. Bloom has seen his salary rise nicely; he is being paid $11.9 million for the pair of movies.

But Hollywood is most likely already on the march, hunting for its next new naif. The other day Mr. Cameron Crowe heard from a screenwriter friend whose new script calls for a leading man of 25. "He called me and said, 'I'd love to pick your brain,' " Mr. Crowe recalled. "And I said, 'You better get an ax and start working the hard road, my friend. You've got a long journey ahead.' "

作者: LG2004 时间: 2006-2-18 01:41

"The Incredible Shrinking Stars"

from "Pop Watch" of Entertainment Weekly
January 03, 2006
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2006/01/i_am_big_said_f.html#comment-12566959

''I am big,'' said faded star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. ''It's the pictures that got small.'' Today, however, it's the pictures that are big (King Kong, Narnia) and the stars that are small. Case in point: Orlando Bloom (left), whom the New York Times sees as a cautionary example of how Hollywood's current star-making machinery can't manufacture guaranteed box office draws anymore like they could in days of yore. (Way way back, like in Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts' day.) Even well-established names like Nicole Kidman or Will Ferrell can't necessarily open a movie these days (Exhibit A: Bewitched).

To me, this is a myopic way of looking at stardom. (And I say it not just because EW had this dearth-of-new-stars dilemma nailed a couple years ago in a cover story called ''Honey, Who Shrunk the Stars?'') Yes, stars are more disposable now, and for that we can blame reality TV, tabloid journalism, mediocre movies, or any number of causes. But we've also found ourselves in a situation where stardom is now divorced from its day job of making hit movies. It's now possible to be famous and even beloved without actually backing up one's fame with achievement. Colin Farrell is a star without actually having appeared in a hit movie, since stardom is now defined as much by ubiquity offscreen as it is by appearances at the multiplex. Similarly, if Bloom shows up on the red carpet on the arm of Kate Bosworth at this summer's Superman Returns premiere, he'll have done all he needs to do to maintain his stardom for the next year. And let's not forget the big-in-Europe factor that makes bona fide stars overseas out of Hollywood actors who can't open a movie in the United States.

Read another theory on why Bloom's career is flagging -- after the jump.

Finally, while hype often overtakes accomplishment, it takes just one solid performance for a potential star to cement his status -- see Heath Ledger, who didn't live up to his hype until Brokeback Mountain -- but those kind of roles typically come in indie movies seen by relatively few viewers. In other words, to advance your career as a mainstream star, it may be best to choose a role in a non-mainstream, possibly obscure project. Of course, that's a risky career strategy if you ultimately want to land $20 million paydays, but why should we dismiss as non-stars actors who'd prefer to do interesting work over bland but popular movies?

Still, there's something else missing from the Orlando Bloom/Josh Hartnett set, something the Times story doesn't get at because it's hard to put a finger on. That's a certain substance, a sense of solidity and gravitas, that a lot of contemporary stars lack. You could argue that this has been a problem for a while -- how substantive are Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts compared to predecessors like Gary Cooper or Katharine Hepburn? More than ever, individual movie stars are blank slates on which we project our own fantasies. Today's movie stars may be more versatile but also more elusive and ethereal, like they might blow away in a strong wind. George Clooney is one of the few contemporary actors who does have that old-Hollywood gravitas; maybe some of these younger performers will attain it as they grow older and more worldly. Which brings us back to Norma Desmond. ''We had faces then,'' she said of her expressive contemporaries. Today, they have faces but nothing else.

Which of today's movie actors and actresses are most likely to succeed Tom, Julia, and their peers as bankable stars who capture the imaginations of moviegoers?

Posted by Gary Susman | 01. 3.06, 06:05 PM

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-2-18 11:48:42编辑过]

作者: LG2004 时间: 2006-2-18 01:44
"Respect This Movie"

from "Hollywood Elsewhere"
by Jeffrey Wells
01/04/06

It's not a rumor and there's absolutely no question about it: Ridley Scott's 190- minute "extended cut" version of Kingdom of Heaven is a considerably better film than the 145-minute theatrical version that opened last May (and which came out on DVD on 10.11).

I saw it yesterday afternoon at the seedy-but-functioning Laemmle Fairfax in West Hollywood. The projection and sound were fine, but why is a must-see, calling-all- cars revival like this playing in a theatrical equivalent of a doghouse?

Stand-up critics ought to review this version for history's sake, for the sake of salu- ting top-grade filmmaking...whatever. An obviously improved version of what was a respected film to begin with, and from a major director...attention should be paid. When a film this admirable is deliberately gutted by a major studio, critics have an obligation to assess what was what.

Fox has booked this new Kingdom into the Laemmle Fairfax, I presume, as some kind of gesture of respect to Scott, who has made it clear this is the preferred ver- sion. But it shouldn't just play to an audience of five or six people (like it did at yes- terday afternoon's 3:45 pm show) in a sub-run theatre and be forgotten.

Every good movie has a prime "fighting weight." 190 minutes is what Kingdom of Heaven should have been all along, and seeing it at this length proves it.

One presumes the 190-minute version will come out on DVD down the road, but who knows? It's not that Fox publicists won't answer any questions. They just don't know anything (they say), and Kingdom of Heaven is obviously not a priority at this stage, etc.

Last May's Kingdom was a painterly, politically nutritious meal that felt more than a touch truncated and a bit shy of playing like a true epic-type thing. The longer cut makes it into a fuller, tastier, more banquet-y type deal...sweepier and more sumptuous and better told.

The extra 35 minutes or so adds a good deal more in terms of story and character to an extremely moral (I would call it ethically enlightened), highly perceptive, anti- Christian-right epic.

Pretty much every character (except for Ghassan Massoud's Saladin character, who still generates as much panache and admiration as Orlando Bloom's Balian) seems more interesting and filled out. And it reveals a significant new character (the blonde-haired son of Eva Green) and a sub-plot about his fate that the shorter version had completely eliminated.

As exacting and stirring as it is in many respects, the improved Kingdom is still, for me, more of a 90% rather than a 100% thing. There's still something slightly opaque about it. But the longer version is certainly a finer and more substantial film. And this fact makes Fox's decision to release its shorter, runtier kid brother seem more than a little distasteful.

Only an idiot could have watched both versions last spring (or late winter...when- ever it was that Fox and Scott sorted things through) and not realized that the 190-minute version was the distinctly better film.

Obviously the 145-minute version was released to make room for more shows per day, which theoretically allowed for more money to be made during the first two weeks of play. (The movie was a disappointment anyway. It would up making about $200 million worldwide, which, for a movie that cost $130 million to shoot, wasn't enough.)

The decision to put out the shorter Kingdom of Heaven was a shameful dereliction of duty in terms of...okay, an admittedly sentimental responsibility that nonethe- less ought to be embraced by all distributors and filmmakers, which is to put the best films they can make before the public.

In deliberately releasing a not-as-good version in order to increase the chances of making more money during the first 14 days of release, Fox did the "right thing" from the point-of-view of the stockholders, but they betrayed the ticket-buying public...they really did.

Fox and Scott (who didn't squawk at all about the shorter version being released, and who therefore bears some responsibility) were following a familiar pattern.

DreamWorks pulled the same crap when they released the not-as-good version of Almost Famous instead of the obviously better Unititled that came out on DVD later on. Warner Bros. and the Ladd Company did it also in the early '80s with a truncated version of Once Upon a Time in America. It's happened with some other worthy films.

What hasn't changed about Kingdom of Heaven? All the stuff that was good to begin with.

It's a big-canvas historical drama that dares to be different by being complex and unusual, and altogether a textural masterpiece.

Has there ever been a big expensive film about warring armies in which one side didn't triumph absolutely? In which the loser wasn't totally beaten down and slaughtered? I felt amazed and lifted up when this didn't manifest...when life and sanity, in effect, is chosen over death and fanaticism.

The 12th Century milieu feels entirely authentic, the big siege-of-Jerusalem battle scene totally aces Peter Jackson's similar third-act sequence in Return of the King, there are fine supporting performances throughout (especially from Jeremy Irons and a masked Edward Norton), and William Monahan's script, praise Allah, avoids a lot of black-and-white, good-and-evil stereotypes.

[B]New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman wrote a piece last weekend about how the financial failure of Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown (along with the under- whelming U.S. response to Troy) has cast a dark shadow on Orlando Bloom's career.

All that went out the window when I watched him again yesterday. Bloom may have missed the boat in Cameron Crowe's film, but he's got heft and range and really knows how to play a stalwart hero.

The words I wrote last May still apply: "Bloom is bearded, grimy, quiet and steady throughout Kingdom of Heaven. He is manly, in short, and does that classic Jim- my Cagney thing -- planting his feet, looking the other guy in the eye and telling the truth. Does he channel Laurence Olivier? No, but Bloom has definitely held his ground here."[/B]

I suppose that the political attitude of this film -- respectful and even admiring of the Muslims, contemptuous of the arrogant Christian attitudes that led to war -- is partly what I love about Kingdom of Heaven.

It's obviously an impassioned f.u. to the Bush administration's rationale for being in Iraq. It addresses the fundamental folly of being an occupier, and in fact offers an honorable solution for those who find themselves in this situation.

Fox has acted honorably by letting viewers see the extended version of this film, but it should also do the following:

(a) Don't just keep Kingdom of Heaven at the Laemmle Fairfax so other critics can come see it (the film is apparently scheduled to play there only until the night of Thursday, January 5th), but schedule a critics' screening on the lot;

(b) Arange for a similar critics screening in New York City as well as open it at a decent Gotham theatre, and...

(c) Release the "extended" version on DVD before too long.

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-2-18 11:52:38编辑过]

作者: 风魔若舞 时间: 2006-2-18 11:26
好多啊~粗略看了一下。。。某人的怨念无限升级ing。。。。。

作者: VVA 时间: 2006-2-18 16:42
盼望哪位大人可以翻译一下~
我的英语水平还不够啊~
眼花缭乱的

作者: 月月 时间: 2006-2-18 21:21
偶要汉字。。。。汉字。。。。

作者: lin7820 时间: 2006-2-19 01:49
看不懂的大人可以到elflady上看回贴，那些回贴都很好懂，这样你们就知道那些评论是讲什么了。其实不管这些人怎么踩OB，还是不能改变他是A-list上的top ten。既然如此，又何必在意这些话？Respect this movie这篇是为OB的KOH打抱不平的，可以看看，其他的就算了。

作者: 月月 时间: 2006-2-19 17:52
即使开花是B-list也没啥，问题是偶觉得某只确实不象一些人形容得那样差。偶见过最有趣的评价是说开花的表演接近“梦游”和“植物人”，有这两种结论垫底，偶相信再差的评价也不过如此乐。

作者: lin7820 时间: 2006-2-20 06:33
植物人是说他在etown一开始到总公司的神情，不过我倒想问一下有这个质疑的仁兄，换了他处在Drew的位置，他会如何？我就不信他能多有表情。

作者: 踏雪无痕 时间: 2006-2-20 07:08
其实啊~让我奇怪的是，从名字来看那位记者是女性，竟然也这么……
大概是圈内某位地位相仿，与开花呈竞争状态的艺人的饭~

作者: shiningjing 时间: 2006-2-20 17:27
很久没有上来，因为怎么也开不了．终于能上来，开心啊．结果就被这篇英文难住了＾＾

作者: 月月 时间: 2006-2-20 19:50
没事，开花禁踩又禁踹，禁拉又禁拽。

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