Is George Clooney a gifted thespian or a priviledged pretty boy ass? I personally think he’s a stooge. YMMV.
I would not say George is a gifted thespian, his acting is passable. He has gotten better with experience. I could bearly stand to watch him in the early days of ER. He always did that weird head twitching, chin jutting thing, which he has learned to suppress.
Earlier in his career he got cast because he was semi-good looking and probably got a boost because he was born into a show biz family. His big break came when he cut his hair and got cast in ER.
All that said, he is not a stooge. His real gift at this point is knowing exactly what his strengths and weaknesses are and playing into those. He knows he’s got old school matinee idol good looks on film and narrow rakish charm. He knows he’s not going to be competing for Oscars any time soon for his performing.
He certainly doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he is in total control of his career. That has allowed him to persue some non-traditional projects while bankrolling it all by doing commercial work. You may not like him but he is making the right moves and is respected within the entertainment community.
He was excellent in “Solaris.”
I think the guy’s a classic movie star. I enjoy his movies.
Aside from my personal feelings about Clooney’s utter lack of class as a person, his acting is as wooden as a redwood.
Call me a Clooney convert. He’s getting better as an actor, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, his directoral debut, is phenominal. His friendship/partnership with Stephen Soderberg has been very fruitful. He’s been throwing his weight behind some good projects. At least he’s TRYING to put out good movies, and that’s more than you can say about most people in his position.
I think he’s a good actor, but not a great one. And, to his credit, I’ve heard him admit as much (he’s pointed to Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in “My Left Foot,” for instance, and said forthrightly, “That’s one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen- and I can’t do that. I could never do that.”). And, while he doesn’t have great range, he’s been very effective in several different films.
I also give him some points for this: except for the godawful “Batman and Robin” (godawful for MANY reasons- not for Clooney’s performance), he’s steered clear of projects that had “blockbuster” written all over them. He’s made some interesting career choices.
I like the guy, mostly from Dusk 'Til Dawn and Ocean’s Eleven.
I think he does well and stays within his limits. And he’s a babe. A total babe.
He’s done some very good movies: Out of Sight, Three Kings, O’ Brother Where Art Thou?, Solaris and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He may not be a fantastic actor but he has good taste in both material and collaborators. He also has a real flair for screwball comedy as evidenced in O’ Brother…. I look forward to him working with the Coen Bros. and Soderburgh again.
Count me with Icarus, astorian, and Hodge. He’s not a great actor, the way you’d call Ed Harris a great actor. He knows his limitations and he’s careful not to step over that line.
But he has excellent taste. Ever since the Batman and Robin debacle (about which he said, and I paraphrase, “I’d better start getting smarter about my material if I want to have a career”), he’s been very, very intelligent in the directors and other people he chooses to work with. He’s done an excellent job mixing up quality-oriented projects (O Brother) with broadly commercial product (Ocean’s Eleven), and supporting smaller independent work along the way (Welcome to Collinswood, or whatever it was called; he was also an executive producer on Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven).
I also find it interesting that he’s started to work with the same people over and over. He got Brad Pitt and Matt Damon (from Ocean’s Eleven) to do cameos in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, not to mention the Julia Roberts role. He’s been directed by Soderbergh three times, and the Coen Bros. twice (Intolerable Cruelty comes out later this year). Also, he got his cinematographer for Dangerous Mind from Three Kings. If he were an insufferable jerk in person, nobody would want to work with him a second time. (Check out Val Kilmer’s credits, for example. No repeats. Very telling.)
So he’ll never win an acting Oscar, and he’ll never be a big star making $20 mil a flick like Tom Cruise, but none of that matters. I have a ton of respect for the guy, and I think he’ll have a long and interesting career if he keeps playing it as smart as he has.
I was a big fan, until this :
I could give a crap about his political beliefs, but it takes a real asshole to make a statement like that. :mad:
No, it doesn’t.
Not one bit.
Not to people who agree with him. Oh, and welcome to the United States of America. Where people are allowed to make statements like that. :rolleyes:
As for the O.P., I think the guy’s very very clever, and very very loyal. I personally know a technician who moved his career along in very serious ways, because he worked on “ER”, and George and he became close. He is a brilliant technician and Clooney recongized the talent, and kept him with him. The guy is now the Producer of “Third Watch”.
I admire Clooney for this, as well as for his business acument. Yes, yes…Batman. Oh well. Everyone deserves a dud or two. His track record is pretty nifty.
Cartooniverse
1)You can disagree with someone politically and still be respectful and classy about how you do it even in Hollywood. cf Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Tom Hanks and many others.
2)You can agree with someone politically and still think they’re an abject a-hole for mocking someone else’s disability over a political disagreement.
3)The right to free speech doesn’t equal the right to say something and not get criticized for it.
Nice straw man. Where did I say that I don’t think he should say what he wants?
Making fun of someone’s political views is fine with me, but I don’t think Alzheimers is funny.
He’s free to make the comment. I’m free to think he is a jerk for saying it.
Am I being whooshed here? I don’t see where anyone said Clooney lacked the “right” to say any damn fool thing he wants. He just said Clooney’s statement was assholish. Which it was.
I think Barbra Streisand is a liberal dipshit, but if it ever came out that she had, say, cancer, I wouldn’t make tasteless jokes about it, and if I did I wouldn’t then try to justify them on grounds of her strident public political viewpoints. Even though I have the right to do so. Because if I did, that would make me an asshole.
It’s too bad, too, because I had always seen Clooney as a pretty decent guy up until that comment about Heston. Maybe it’s just an isolated incident, but if that’s representative of the way the guy’s mind works he is indeed an asshole.
I wasn’t a big fan, until…
One thing everyone seems to agree is he can be pretty amusing. I think that was funny.
He also seems to be a big hit with women I know. But that’s just animal lust… … On second thoughts, I hate him.
I seem to recall that George Clooney got VERY upset when Howard Stern used to make fun of Martha Raye’s various medical problems. Apparently, George was very close to Raye, a friend of his Aunt Rosemary’s.
I think he even went to the extent of pressing for an LA radio station to drop Stern’s show over this.
He’s a total hypocrite, in my opinion.
I’m a big Clooney convert myself. I’m a hetero male and I think I have a crush on him. I get the feeling he is very tribal - he is very kind and protective of those in his circle and somewhat of a wise ass to anyone else. He takes serious creative risks imo. He was the one behind the live ER and the LIVE remake of “Fail-Safe.” Add to that Solaris, Confessions, and Oh Brother Where Art Thou and you get the picture of a guy who isn’t afraid to take a risk. Also, apparently he personally called everyone who ended up on the cutting room floor during the editing of Confessions which is a really classy thing to do.
I should have been more clear, m’kay?
His original comment about the Alzheimer’s was reprehensible, IMHO. His secondary comment ( the one bolded in the post above ) was the one I was referring to. I was defending Clooney’s right to state his feelings vis a vis the NRA, not attack a person for suffering an atrociously wasting and fatal disease.
I was unclear, and for that alone I surely apologize.
RikWriter, you’re right. The right to free speech does apply to everyone equally, doesn’t it? You’re free to think he’s a jerk for what he said.
Um…but somehow, and I now quote
Yes, I know, it’s another person’s quote that John Harrison was quoting. But since when do you have the right to speak as you wish, and call someone a name with impugnity, but George Clooney “Still had a chance to apologize for the bad humor day”, and chose not to…and while your rights to free speech make your words golden, HIS rights to his free speech make his words…um.?
I think he was way way out of line in his first quote there, it’s an awful thing to think no less say to intimates, no LESS say out loud in public. But, that’s not the real issue. My remarks seem to have struck a nerve here.
This guy has the same rights to free speech as you do, Ric Writer, unless I’m missing something very basic here. His second bolded remark ( the one I was addressing in MY post ) is an indictment of an organization- whatever you may or may not feel about that organization, it is not a personal attack upon someone who is ill. To me, there is a vital difference.
It is a Federal Offense to threaten the life, or speak in a threatening manner, against the President of the United States. However, anyone can decry what the Administration does EN MASSE and be protected by Free Speech.
Mr. Clooney showed disgusting taste in his first remark, but from where I sit, the second remark was as fine as anything anyone else might wish to say on a given topic. Non-attacking of a single person. My two cents.
Again, I must stress that I apologize for not being clear in that other post up there of mine. I truly feel his first statement was awfully tasteless.
Cartooniverse yes, his first statement was tasteless and classless.
His SECOND statement was cowardly and clueless. The fact that you disagree with someone politically IS NOT AN EXCUSE for mocking a physical disability. All Clooney was doing in his second statement was making excuses. There WAS no excuse.