A disappointing date with Top Gun: Maverick I know this will come as a terrible, crushing blow to him, but sometimes you have to speak bluntly. And there’s no easy way of saying this. I don’t fancy Tom Cruise anymore. Like millions of others around the world, I fell in… Read More »Sorry Tom, I’ve Lost That Loving Feeling
We’re all living in Nick Kamen’s Launderette now Another fondly remembered part of the 1980s finished its last cycle last week. Nick Kamen, real name Ivor Neville Kamen, the Essex-born much-gasped-over star of the famous 1985 Levi’s 501 male striptease ‘Launderette’ TV ad, checked out. He was just fifty-nine. Sadly,… Read More »Jeans-Genie – The Lecherous Legacy of Those 80s Levi’s Ads
I’ve been devouring – a little late – High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, Charles Fleming’s page-turning and hair-raising 1998 biography of the late Hollywood producer and ‘bad boy’, who along with his ‘good boy’ partner Jerry Bruckheimer were the most successful independent producers in Hollywood… Read More »How Don & Tom Made ‘Top Gun’ So Steamy
Mark Simpson finds Midway ‘dumb, numb and empty of cum’ When I went to see Roland Emmerich’s teensploitation flick Midway this week I had low expectations. In fact, they were so low I almost ran aground on the way to the multiplex. Emmerich, the director-writer responsible for blockbusters such as Independence Day,… Read More »Midway to Paradise (So Near, Yet So Far Away)
Maverick is back. Though of course he never went away. Since he appeared in that film back in 1986, making him one of Hollywood’s biggest box office draws, Tom Cruise remained forever Maverick for the next three decades or so. Captured like a Mayfly in director Tony Scott’s amber filters,… Read More »Top Gun Reloaded