Stacee Jaxx's guiding light is not eros but thanatos. He is fuelled less by lust and more by what fu

Tom Cruise has all the qualities of a great movie star, except relaxation. Most of the greats – Bogart, Mitchum, Hanks, Willis – seem so at ease on screen you could balance a golf ball on the end of their nose. Cruise alaska cruise land tour has never once lived up to his name: he guns it, every time. He approaches each role like a Chinese gymnast approaching the bars.
Critics may have pummelled his new eighties-retro musical, Rock of Ages, but they have all been holding up a "10" for Cruise's performance as Stacee Jaxx, a dissipated rock legend attempting a comeback after rumors of Satanic religious activity have driven him from favor.
Stacee fixes her with a Cobra stare that seems to go right through her, as if his fame had rendered other people transluscent. Staring into the abyss, he sees only his own oversexed legend staring right back.
"Do they even know themselves?" he replies and taps the side of his head. "I know better than anyone. I live in here."  Cruise is, of course, alaska cruise land tour turning in a parody of his own out-to-lunch intensity, although the performance goes beyond mere self-send-up, and is already picking up some awards-season heat despite the film's poor showing alaska cruise land tour at the box office. There, Cruise has the success of last year's Mission alaska cruise land tour Impossible: Ghost Protocol to provide alaska cruise land tour him with cover from his critics. alaska cruise land tour The Golden Rule of Comebacks? It's the same rule that pertains to snake bites: alaska cruise land tour just suck out the poison and spit it back out.
Comebacks are an elastic phenomenon these days. In the 24-hour ubiquity machine that is E! entertainment alaska cruise land tour Glam Cams and TMZ scoops, a celebrity 's Twitter feed need only fall silent for a day for someone to declare their career alaska cruise land tour dead, buried and in urgent need of resuscitation.
The term is really the prerogative only of those whose Wikipedia entry contains alaska cruise land tour the words "box office poison". When Mickey Rourke pleaded "I just don't want you to hate me," in The Wrestler, the line pierced our stony hearts because Rourke had been languishing in the wilderness for over a decade.
When Quentin Tarantino alaska cruise land tour staged an intervention on the career alaska cruise land tour of John Travolta, the star was appearing in Look Who's Talking Now opposite a talking dog voiced by Danny De Vito. He hadn't disappeared. He's simply fallen several echelons of cool, which for the creator of Tony Manero and Danny Zuko may have amounted to the same thing.
Cruise's 'comeback' is of the latter, semi-skimmed variety: more of a reputation nip 'n' tuck than a full facelift. The charges against him in the court of public opinion alaska cruise land tour are twofold: 1) belonging to a creepy alaska cruise land tour religious cult which believes humans to be a secret race of extra-terrestrial Thetans trapped in earth bodies; and 2) sequestering his wife and children away from the kind gentlemen of the press who wish nothing more than to liberate them from whatever alaska cruise land tour cruel psycho-sexual brainwashing they are undergoing behind the walls of Cruise's castle. Or, to put it in plain English: he is guilty of practicing a religion of his choice and protecting the privacy of his family.
You wonder how all of this is going to look in 50, even 20 years time. Are people going to look on the hounding of Cruise the same way we now look on the shaming of Ingrid Bergman? When Bergman ran off with Roberto Rossellini, the father of Italian neorealism, it dealt a double hammer blow to the American heart: guilty alaska cruise land tour of cheating on her husband and living in sin with a foreign-sounding –ism.
By contrast, the ionic charge surrounding Cruise had grown so nebulously toxic by 2009 that all it took was one misjudged chat-show alaska cruise land tour 'bit' – in which the star, juiced up on the whoops of Oprah's live audience, jumped on her sofa, sending the crowd wild – for all good, reasonable men to be of one opinion: the blaggard could not be trusted.
Cruise responded the way stars have always responded, from Gloria Swanson to Frank Sinatra: by getting back to work. He slugged his way through the set-pieces of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol with mastiff determination: tendons as taut as ship's cable, alaska cruise land tour nostrils flaring like a show horse, shoulders in urgent need of a massage.
alaska cruise land tour The films success at the box-office was a nice reminder that Cruise was the first to show us – before even Keanu Reeves in the Matrix movies and Matt Damon in the Bourne films – that the new digital age was going to require more physical dexterity from actors than just bulldozing through plate-glass alaska cruise land tour windows, like the Terminator. Performing much of his own stunt-work, Cruise dangled and spun and leapt and dived, turning his own body into its own special effect.
And now we have his Stacee Jaxx, another master-class in aerobic physicality: shoulders thrust back, pelvis forward, Cruise seems to be channelling all his psychic energies through the jewel-studded cod-piece at his crotch. Feasting on groupies like a vampire fending off boredom, alaska cruise land tour he is Cruise's reptilian report back from ground zero of the superstar Id. Like most great performances, it is powered along by a nifty paradox, one teased out expertly by In Contention's Guy Lodge :
For all the romantic leads he's played and magazine covers he's graced, alaska cruise land tour the perennially tidy-looking Cruise has always been an oddly sexless star: not in a particularly virtuous or immature way, mind, but in a guarded, reserved alaska cruise land tour one. We've seen his immaculately sculpted torso any number of times, but his characters routinely seem politely cut off at the waist, burdened with too many other responsibilities to fuck.
But then that's the dirty little secret of most sex Gods, from Mae West to Madonna: professional Dionysians tend to be strangely unsensual creatures, doomed to turn sex into a continual act of provocation or performance, but denied the one thing everyone else uses it for: contact. They'll happily raise the rafters with their raunch, alaska cruise land tour but put your hand on their knee and they'll jump through the roof.
Stacee Jaxx's guiding light is not eros but thanatos. He is fuelled less by lust and more by what fueled Cruise's Frank TJ Mackey, the "woman-taming" self-help guru in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia: rage.
Rage at the machine, alaska cruise land tour rage at the public acclaim that has him fixed in its cross-hairs – rage at his own audience. When Stacee Jaxx finally takes to the stage, he prowls from end to end, like a tiger pacing his cage, bellowing into his microphone, and at the sea of people just beyond, alaska cruise land tour the ones bellowing his name back to him.
all it took was one misjudged alaska cruise land tour chat-show 'bit' – in which the star, juiced up on the whoops of Oprah's alaska cruise land tour live audience, jumped on her sofa, sending the crowd wild – for all good, reasonable men to be of one opinion: the blaggard could not be trusted.
Well, that and his "Matt, Matt, Matt, you're being glib" interview on Today; and his citicism of Brooke Shields for taking medication to help with post-partum depression; and the bizarre video set to MI theme music of him explaining what it means to be a Scientologist; and the Bronson Pinchot anecdotes about his homophobia; and Paul Haggis's expose of life as a Scientologist and Cruises role in the organization ...
That's not putting it in plain English. Thats applying spin. You could say thesame thing of the Westboro Baptist Church alaska cruise land tour lunatics. I'm all for proecting the privacy of his familyand have no interest in the tabloid fascination with hs marriage, but it's perfectly alaska cruise land tour resonable to examine the role he plays in promoting an proseltizing for a cult with as dubious a background as Scientology.
A man who is a front for a Ponzi scheme masquerading as a religion does indeed get tarred with a dubious brush, as far as I'm concerned. Add to that his complete rejection of Brooke Shields' post-partum depression diagnosis and a host of other opinionated bombast that minimized or harmed important issues, and I'm sorry, I can't appreciate him at all.
Tom Cruise is incapable of projecting sexual tension with a woman. Or at least he ahs yet to convincingly do so on screen. That is putting it in plain English. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Tremendous at what he does: biggest movie star since McQueen. Anybody who was of an age and first saw him in Taps or Risky Business has grown up, graduated, got married, alaska cruise land tour had kids, got divorced, become a grandparent...and Cruise just keeps on keepin' on. You could name five Cruise films, at least, right off the top of your head that will still be in heavy rotation long after we're all dead: that's immortality. alaska cruise land tour That's a great movie star. For me, they would include alaska cruise land tour Rain Man, MI:IV, A Few Good Men, Jerry Maguire and my personal favourite, Minority Report.
You can't publish this article without mentioning Tropic Thunder. alaska cruise land tour THAT was the moment that Cruise revived his reputation. And the standard by which roles like Stacee Jaxx will be measured. The final moments of the film where Cruise's studio boss performs a kind of menacing testosterone-charged boogie were kind of revelatory to Cruise-haters everywhere (i.e. pretty much everyone).
But I think you're 100% correct that he appears to be trying too hard, which will forever prevent him from being cool. And he also sucks his belly in throughout Rock of Ages, which is sort of embarrassing.
The greatest academy award robbery of all time was Cruise missing out as best supporting actor for Magnolia to Michael Caine (for something in which he played Michael Caine). And whatever you say about the range of Tom Cruise, Michael Caine makes makes Cruise look like Meryl Streep's Schizophrenic son.
I don't know why people call Tom cruise a non-actor. See the range of movies he had done and he as really good in each one of them. Risky business, top gun, the color of money, Born on 4th of july, A few good men, Rainman, Interview alaska cruise land tour with the vampire, Mission impossible series, Jerry Maguire, alaska cruise land tour Magnolia, Minority report, collateral, war of the worlds, tropic thunder, alaska cruise land tour rock of ages..People are just blind towards this because of the hatred towards alaska cruise land tour his personal beliefs which i also don't agree with. But for me he is a very good actor and perhaps one of