I Am Not Alone

Someone else is actually asking: Is Anybody Making Movies We'll Actually Watch in 50 Years? The author is less skeptical than I and seems a bit too enamored with Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise for my taste. He also picks on Betty Grable saying she was a big star then but is nobody now when I'd gamble in fifty years more people will still know Grable than either Catherine Zeta-Jones or Nicole Kidman. But I'm quibbling because his question is a good one and it's good to know I'm not the only one asking it:

Stardom is as unstable as an atom. Exposed to time, it mutates. If your name is Grable, it can be as ephemeral as a passing fashion. If your name is Gable, it's as permanent as marble. After the headlines and the gossip fade, there are only the movies you've left behind to argue your case. But which ones will last is not so easy to predict. Could anyone have guessed, when a transplanted working-class Brit started his career in light '30s comedies such as "Topper," that Cary Grant would leave more lasting movies behind than any other actor in history? His films weren't the prestige items that won best picture or earned him any acting prizes (those went to "serious" stars like Paul Muni). Still, they seem miraculously immune to aging[.]

I agree with his overall conclusion that those with the potential to be great like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie -- don't make very good movies and zero classics. They have starpower and talent but without the guidance of a studio system their judgement when it comes to choosing projects is killing any shot at screen immortality. Another interesting point:

There's a fundamental difference between the big American male stars of Gen X and their predecessors. The icons of the past were men. Paul Newman, Robert Red-ford and Warren Beatty were young and beautiful at the start of their careers, but they were never "boys." Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Will Smith and Cruise, not to mention Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, are defined by their boy-ishness. They began their careers as kids and, even as they move into their 30s and 40s, have never fully lost their dew.

Still, Jimmy Stewart did okay. And Newman, Redford, and Beatty grew into rugged roles and were believable in those roles. Matt Damon looks so out of his league in the Bourne films it's not funny and Leo as Howard hughes was as laughable as a high school play.

This is one of the worst times in Hollywood I can remember. No stars. Bad movies. Hack directors. Before Batman Begins there were 11 eleven trailers for upcoming films. 10 were sequels, remakes, or old tv shows. The 11th was for a piece of shit called Stealth or, Blue Thunder with a jet. 

That's okay. There's DVD.