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When Sharp Corp. wowed the world with its flat-screen liquid-crystal-display (LCD) television in 2001, it wasn't just a technological breakthrough. It was a step away from the box. "For the first time ever, television gave way to design," says Michio Ogawa, a senior member of the design team that created Sharp's pioneering Aquos line. "Flat panels turned the television from an eyesore when it's not turned on to an interior-design fashion statement...
...morning after Thanksgiving, and Smith, 39, is sleepy-eyed and unshaven after hosting 30 friends and family members for dinner. His wife Jada Pinkett Smith enters with breakfast and a kiss, asking, "Want jelly with that, baby?" Even Hollywood's Genghis Khan needs some tenderness before he sacks the box office...
With his ready grin, jug ears and baritone belly laugh, Smith's image is that of the happy-go-lucky Everyguy. But you don't accrue $4.4 billion in worldwide box-office receipts and two Oscar nominations without machine-like drive. Smith's four most recent movies--The Pursuit of Happyness, Hitch, Shark Tale and I, Robot--have each grossed more than $300 million worldwide, vaulting him into a category usually reserved for white guys named Tom. Because Smith has mastered the delicate art of appearing artless, few moviegoers realize that his is one of Hollywood's most meticulously planned...
Smith's role as a slick young con man claiming to be Sidney Poitier's son in the 1993 drama Six Degrees of Separation turned some heads. But it was the cheerful, over-the-top 1995 action film Bad Boys that established the erstwhile Prince as a box-office royal in the making. Since then, he has consistently delivered hits, most often as a good-natured guy saving the rest of us from the trauma of aliens, robots, crooks or poor dating habits. Commercial disappointments, like the golfing flop The Legend of Bagger Vance, are rare. "I look at movies...
...math of moviemaking enthralls Smith, who calls himself a "student of universal patterns." To hear him talk about analyzing the weekend box office with Lassiter is to see flashes of the aspiring engineer who almost attended MIT. "Every Monday morning, we sit down--'O.K., what happened this weekend, and what are the things that resemble things that have happened the last 10, 20, 30 weekends?' It is so much fun to look at something everyone's looking at to see if a different pattern comes out for you." With Legend, Smith hopes to break one of Hollywood's rigid rules...