Word: film
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Actors are salesmen. Stories, characters, movies are their products, and they are the packaging and the pitch. That makes film stars the industry's supersalesmen. And no one closes a deal with more assurance or grace than George Clooney...
...start of the film, we're told, "More of this is true than you would believe." The story may be all-true, yet as scripted by Peter Straughan and directed by Grant Heslov (co-screenwriter on the Clooney-directed Good Night, and Good Luck), it's hard to believe. The movie strains to find a coherent comic tone; it smashes into the wall of plausibility it's trying to run through. (See pictures of George Clooney at play...
...goofy, he can do suave, and in dramas like Syriana, for which he won an Oscar, he can seem close to emotional exhaustion. Up in the Air, which has already been named the year's best film by the National Board of Review, takes him in a new direction, one that may be closer to his core: a self-sufficient man who doesn't want to be tied down. His Ryan Bingham is a management consultant hired by the bosses at large companies to tell their employees they're no longer employed. And he does so with such ostensible sympathy...
...when more than a tenth of the workforce is out of a job. Moreover, Reitman hired a few dozen unemployed nonactors to play the parts of staffers who get the hook. These folks aren't performing; they're bleeding on camera. (See pictures "Glitz and Glamour at the Venice Film Festival...
...though, New Moon is the big news. The international grosses will also be massive. The first film earned $192.7 million in North America and almost exactly the same abroad. The worldwide five-day total for New Moon (which opened two days earlier abroad) is already at $258.8 million; expect a final worldwide gross to near $700 million. The thing's a phenomenon, and all the analysis of its popularity can't explain or diminish it. Sometimes the best strategy for canny film people is to step out of the way and let a hurricane sweep by. Nobody knows anything, except...