And they were right. More people - me for instance - would have seen MI 3 if it had starred someone else. (starting with me as one extra person) As Mr. Baldwin discovered after the Hunt for Red October, you don’t need to use the same actor even if you are doing a series.

Who was the big star that drew people to the first Spiderman movie? Bruce Campbell?

Why was My Big Fat Greek Wedding such a box-office smash? Star power?

People I think are finally realizing that the so-called stars (selected mostly on the basis of their looks when they are 20 than their acting ability) aren’t really needed to tell a good story, and their egos often turn a good story into a bad movie.

You’re just silly.

1. “It may be a dawn for a new era in hollywood” Yeah, if you are willing to watch mediocre actors make mediocre films. Tom, is an artist. Period. Not all of his movies have been great works of art, but a few have. Such as; Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Born On The Fourth Of July, RainMan and The Color of Money. But, more recent was his role in Collateral. ( great film) In other words, he’s not going anywhere, but your taste in film has.
Even if he did dissapear, wouldnt change his anility to act.

As far as your Lisa McPherson statements go. Please, show me one ounce of PROOF. The charges were dropped.

“Listen, Bill/Jim, nobody killed anybody. Someone died. It happens all the time. But life goes on. It always does……until it doesn’t.” - Eyes Wide Shut.

R

Who’s crazy really?

Take it to Miscavige and the IRS.
Leave him alone, he is used because he was too nice and naive and he was willing to do good. He made a mistake in his youth.
It could have been you. You could have been Tom or Lisa.

Think about it, because you sound arrogant.

For those who call the Lisa McPherson story a conspiracy theory, it’s strange you make a connection immediately to drug companies, considering their is more evidence that Lisa died of the purification rundown, than any connection between the drug companies and Tom’s situation, next you’ll be calling me a psychiatrist, and asking if I rape babies. You’re that transparent.

Atheists of the world are just as capable of evil as are religous people. I see no evidence ortherwise.

Now that Cruise is seen as a nut- and Scientology being a big part of it, the ride might be over-

Amy, I like your spirit of independence (and much of what you post), but I think you are wrong about the relationship between a belief in God and ‘most of the world’s horror.’

Kat has pointed out the horror perpetrated by atheists. Terror isn’t the consequence of a belief (or lack of belief) in God. It’s the consequence of the human condition. We lack of omniscience. Even when we seek to do good we at times produce wicked ends.

Pol Pot and Osma undoubtedly see themselves of agents of good (as they understand good). (I know PP is dead.) Pointing out freaks does not establish that faith or the lack of faith creates horror. For every evil freak there is a St Francis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Richard Dawkins or Bertrand Russell to be found.

(Richard Dawkins claims that ‘religion is the root of all evil.’ He makes his case by specifically ignoring the evil created by atheist. His argument is no doubt well intended, but dishonest. That’s not just my opinion: One world famous scientist on the faculty here (Oxford) remarked to me, ‘Richard wants to substitute one form of irrationalism with another.’ This scientist wasn’t speaking against religious faith or science (or Dawkins generally), but against irrational expression. I don’t know Dawkins personally, but am told that he is a fine person.

Nonetheless, Dawkin’s near hatred of all things religious could well yield up an evil crop. It would be best imho, if he stuck to his university brief (making science accessable to the public), and dropped his crusade against the theology faculty.

1. Who made more money last year? Phizer/Desoxyn or Paramount?

2. How much money has the COS spent on fighting these drug companies?

3. At what length will these drug companies go to protect their interest?

I say this to preface this statement: that you, like so many on the right (and forgive me for assuming you’re a dittohead, but I can’t help myself), are entirely disingenuous when you speak of somebody on the left. The guy isn’t wishing; merely speculating.

I think the Democrats are morons politically, but that’s far less of a danger to us than are the liars on the right. There’s Michael Moore (lefty liar), sure, but the politically expedient lies on the right just dwarf those coming from the left.

Surely you jest?

Is an ‘irrepressible ego’ unusual in Hollywood? Was Travolta without an ‘irrepressible ego’ in his pre scientology days? Maybe Travolta’s irrepressible ego is all Gabe Kaplan’s fault. Without scientology he’d probably be a regular Charlie Sheen.

Scientology seems pretty wacky, but it’s as legal as the LDS. (Or, is it the LSD? Whichever group calls itself the Morons, and once followed Muhammad’s teaching on harem keeping.) If Colonel Doniphan had only followed orders and shot that Smith guy (and friends), we might not now have to deal with beehives, Donney Osmond and Mitt Romney. I think Smith promised Doniphan a planet in exchange for letting them go.

Full disclosure: I am not a scientologist. I am not a member of the LDS.

I am a Baptist. Once upon a time Baptists were persecuted for being Baptists. In the UK, Baptists (and other religious non-conformists) were denied admission to Oxford and Cambridge until about 1909. Indeed, John Bunyan (way back when) was tossed in jail for his Baptist beliefs. That was good. He used his time to write a famous book. No, it wasn’t Mein Kampf, but not everyone has it in them to write a classic on religious toleration like that German guy.

If a temporary dip in Tom Cruise’s reputation wrecks the next picture’s profits, that’s bad. If his permanent self-destruction lowers the value of all those pictures that could still earning money decades from now, that’s a lot worse.

In extreme cases it is probably better for a studio to try to cut its losses before the whole legacy depreciates too much.

Mr. Shaw should read up about Lisa McPherson, or any of a laundry list of Scientology’s mounting pile of victims.

Who is the “We.”

Personally I don’t give rat’s a$$ about Tom Bennet Jakko Gibson OJ Hilton, but I have little choice in the matter.

Just because I am forced to sit through their antics or the latest non-development in the latest case of the missing attractive white women because I would like to know if that cold front is going to come through in the morning or later in the day does not mean I am “obsessed” with nor even remotely “interested”. It simply is not possible in the mainstream media to find a national or even local outlet that does not cover this crap.

What it does mean is I will seek out any alternative to the “mainstream” (which is anything but) and I have been. The list of magazines I no longer subscribe to, network programming I do not watch, radio station I do not listen to and so on, continues to grow.

The “We” seems more and more to be that single demographic anointed on high by “advertisers” as the sole arbiter of all culture, the rest of us are just stuck on this ride, our opinions irrelevant.

Fortunately some alternatives are beginning to emerge, but I am not holding my breath. Too many times have I seen the promising upstart lured by the advertisers into making those “subtle” programming changes which soon renders them undistinguishable from the rest.

Maybe somebody who knows them should have, but not just any buzzybody. Unless he’s done something illegal, why be meddlesome.

Jeff continues: And so they were allowed to get nuttier and nuttier before our very eyes.

Yep, that’s what it means to live in a free country. He’s entitled to be as nutty as he wants to be. As long as he isn’t criminally insane, it’s none of our business.

Enforcing political correctness is a bad idea. It’s one thing to dispute ideas, and quite another to seek to penalise folks for holding those ideas. ‘Stopping’ someone looks to have more in common with coercion than disputation.

Do we really need western ayatollahs?

Does this yo-yo really not know about the trail of deaths the Co$ has left behind it?