My Fair Lady, Roman Holiday and a later work Wait Until Dark are three good ones to start with.
Posted on 09/01/2010 1:50:17 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For the second straight year, "Transformers" star Shia LaBeouf topped a Forbes.com list of Hollywood's Best Actors for the Buck with women claiming five of the top 10 spots compared to zero last year.
Based on the financial news site's own calculations, for every $1 the studios spent on LaBeouf, his films return about $81 of profit. Those movies included "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" ($836 million worldwide box office) and the fourth "Indiana Jones" film ($787 million).
Anne Hathaway took the No. 2 spot, earning the studios $64 off of her films for every dollar they spent for her to star in "Alice in Wonderland" ($1 billion global box office) and "Bride Wars," among others.
Hathaway's emergence bumped last year's runner-up, "Wanted" actor James McAvoy, completely off the top 10 list.
"Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe was No. 3 this year, while "Iron Man's" Robert Downey Jr. nabbed fourth. Both moved up a spot from last year.
Behind them, Cate Blanchett came in fifth and Meryl Streep and Jennifer Aniston were tied in sixth place.
Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker round out the top 10. The full list can be found at www.forbes.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
There won’t be another Hepburn. Not because she was so unique but because part of her appeal was she kept, I believe, her private life just that: private. Nowadays, actors and actresses think they have to parade their private lives and idiotic political and scientific opinions in our faces. Part of the beauty of past celebrities was their mystique, their carefully crafted public personas (even though I know a lot covered up some pretty egregious misbehavior), they at least believed they needed to be classy for their fans. This generation of celebrities think they need to let it all hang out, and I do mean ALL hang out. So, no, there won’t be another Audrey.
Oh I think it’s pretty safe to agree with you that LaBeouf had nothing to do with those movies box office success. He didn’t hurt them though either. He’s kind of like Orlando Bloom in that sense, just a safe but not overly expensive big budget movie star.
Kid works to cheap.
My Fair Lady, Roman Holiday and a later work Wait Until Dark are three good ones to start with.
Shame about the ongoing feud he has going with his brother, Sunni La Beouf.
Transformers was the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a movie theater. No, I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare, just a good action movie. What was wrong with this and almost all current action movies is the directors have no idea how to direct an action scene so it emerges from the story—they’re just sequences of CHAOS, things smashing and blowing up and guns blazing. It’s boring.
Putting Daniel Radcliff on the list shows just how worthless this list actually is—he isn’t the attraction in the Harry Potter movies, the PROPERTY is the attraction.
The reason women are on this list in high numbers for the first time is because, I think, men are sick of male-bashing and metrosexual ideation. Who wants to pay ten bucks to hear that they suck unless they look like some blown-dry douche like George Clooney?
I guess I must be getting really old then, cause I've never even heard of the guy.
OMG, when were you born and/or where have you been? You are pulling our collective legs, right? If not, do a google and rent some of her movies.
RE: just a safe but not overly expensive big budget movie star.
I wonder what “not overly expensive” amounts to... is it still close to a million bucks ? Is it a decent mid to high six figures ? Inquiring minds want to know...
I noticed in Spartacus Blood and Sand, you knew that in every ‘battle to the death’ Spartacus was going to win. No dramatic suspense during any of his battle scenes, you knew he lived to go on to lead an army against Rome. The writers seemed to know this, and seemed to dwell on the battle scenes of his BUDDY! Well he might actually lose! Dramatic suspense maintained!
He was in Constantine with Keanu Reeves.
Johnny Depp is being paid over $60 million for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
Bang for the Buck....and Jenna Jameson isn’t listed?
Bang for the Buck....and Jenna Jameson isn’t listed?
The problem is that the imagery of movies is accepted by the current young audiences even though older folks like me see the fakey computer look of even the best work. Young people today simply don’t see the difference, anymore than (in the reverse situation) our elders thought phoney-looking indoor-for-exterior westerns were a problem.
When people fought in older movies, there was that sense of realism that Spartacus and others simply don’t have with the quick cuts and sped-up motion ala a drunk’s idea of sam Peckinpah. It just looks fake as hell to me, but it is the accepted standard.
Good description of Transformers. I saw it with my best friend, a professinoal CGI artist, and we were laughing at the ‘intensity’ that bordered on impressionism. It’s just the next step from Spielberg and MTV. Next we’ll just sit in the theater and watch flashes of abstract light on the screen.
But what Spartacus fight scenes did have, that Transformers completely lacked, was DECISIVE action. The action of the fight had a narrative, you knew who was winning and who was losing, and could see when that changed. Much different than two gray spiders battling at each other ineffectually!
I noticed this also in the sequel to “the Matrix”. We had already seen Neo take a bullet. We had seen him beat up >100 agent Smiths. During the “dramatic” final fight scene they flew around and hit each other really really hard, to no ill effect to either, only to circle, and then come in for another blow (as if THIS one will be the decisive blow, when the last dozen full strength blows did nothing?). Completely ruined any dramatic suspense from the fight. I did like the scenes ending, where he gave a line from the Oracle (who he had foolishly absorbed, even after musing that she KNEW he was going to do it) - that was dramatic! The fight was a big waste of time.
My producer GF was amazed when I told her that I almost fell asleep during the big car chase scene in “Inception”. Car chases are just big time fillers, the characters will almost always end up where they need to be at the time they need to be there exactly unchanged as if there WAS NO chase, so why have the chase other than to fill time?
The only chase scenes worthy of mention in my mind.... Blues Brothers (hey, I didn't know they put in an Orange Julius) and Terminator 2 (the big semi truck going down the water course).
Another huge problem is that the people playing roles are no longer really adults, but young adults and in some cases teenagers. They aren’t hiring real people and unknowns who add to the story and make it more realistic. Imagine if Schindler’s List had had Adam Sandler as Schindler and Britney Spears as his future wife. Or had perhaps keira Knightly as Amon’s maid. Or had Shea as Schindler’s accountant.
There would have been names, but no substance. Hollywood is relying far too much on names and not realism. In the older movies they had realistic costumes and they actually worked like fiends to put in a good performance. They showed skin, but not to the point of porn. There were actual adults in adult roles and they were human, not all bleached and drugged out. They had strong personalities too.
Unless we expect to directly film people being shot, blown up, losing limbs, planes crashing, mountains falling into the sea, earthquakes destroying cities,etc. there will always be a certain 'fakiness' to the images we see on screen. But I am an 'older guy' as well and frankly I think special effects has come a very, very long way in the past 50 years.
Remember the first version of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'? It was incredibly cheesy but a great story. Somehow in the re-make they managed to move light-years ahead in effects, but completely blew the story. So the first one is still better.
Don't focus on the special effects so much. It's called suspension of disbelief and if you practice it and there is a good story, it will be much more enjoyable than trying to pick the tech side apart. IMHO.
I think Hepburn carried it off since she LOOKED refined and aristocratic/royal. Hathaway is a good Disney princess, but not a real one, if you get my meaning.
Hated the Blues brothers chase—it was just tossing cars on top of cars, pointless. T2 was okay but it did go on too long, I was like “All right, let’s wrap this up.”
Neither comes close to Bullitt, The French Connection, and especially The Seven Ups and To Live and Die in L.A.
As they said on Mystery Science Theater, “Car chases are the drum solos of movies.”
I thought the Matrix movies had a helluva lot more probs than those you mention, but those are good observations. It’s what you get when you keep trying to top spectacle, instead of building drama. A good sign of this: the use of a choir on the soundtrack.
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