Ellen Leventry: December 2008 Archives

I was probably going to see "Valkyrie" even before Tom Cruise's astonishing mea culpa-esque appearance yesterday on the "Today Show." The cast is a veritable banquet of my favorite British actors--Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, the brilliant Eddie Izzard--and I'm a fan of director Bryan Singer's work, such as "The Usual Suspects" and "X-Men".

Yet, I felt conflicted about paying to see a Tom Cruise film after all the craziness--the Oprah couch jumping, the tense "Today Show" appearance, the intense proselytizing of Scientology--of the past few years. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that.

Three years after declaring Lauer "glib" in a discussion about the history of psychiatry, Cruise--a devout Scientologist who, like all practitioners is against the use of psycho-pharmaceuticals--admitted that he "came across as arrogant" and "absolutely could have handled that better." Sure, Cruise is an actor, but he seemed genuinely contrite and at a loss for words. (If he wasn't, this man really deserves an Oscar.)

Lost in the hustle and bustle of this past Thanksgiving holiday was one of the most riveting post 9/11, and in this case post 7/7, dramas made to date, "Britz." This thriller follows the lives of Sohail and Nasima, a brother and sister pair who find divergently different ways to deal with the identity issues surrounding being second-generation Muslims in modern day Britain.

Sohail is a law student who, in his desire to repay the country that has given his parents everything and eager to embrace his Britishness, finds his way to MI-5, the British FBI, where he eventually ends up investigating some of his closest friends. Meanwhile, his sister Nasima, a medical student, is spurred to radicalism by the injustices she sees perpetrated against her Muslim friends and neighbors by the British Government.

For a culture commonly stereotyped as prim and proper, the British have always managed to push the envelope when it comes to thought-provoking, controversial documentaries--think Channel 4's 2002 airing of a live--albeit delayed--autopsy before a paying London audience. Sky Television continued the tradition Wednesday night by airing a 2006 assisted suicide called "The Suicide Tourist."

Suffering with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, Craig Ewert, 59, opted for assisted suicide instead of continuing down the path toward complete paralysis. "Once I become completely paralyzed, then I am nothing more than a living tomb that takes in nutrients through a tube in the stomach," he says, summing up both the physical and metal anguish of his condition.

The rumors that "Valkyrie," the Tom Cruise World War II film premiering Christmas Day, is terrible must be true. Otherwise, why would he return to the glibbest morning show on television?

It's been three years since Tom Cruise declared Matt Lauer "glib" during one of the most bizarre "Today" show segments ever and he's making his way back to NBC's Studio 1A this Monday morning.

It was June 2005 when Lauer asked Cruise--a devout Scientologist who, like all practitioners is against the use of psycho-pharmaceuticals--to elaborate on his earlier criticism of Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants to deal with post-partum depression. After minutes of tense to-and-fro, Cruise eventually declared, "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

I like commercials. Most people leave the room when a commercial comes on, but I turn up the volume. I appreciate the artistry needed to manipulate the public into purchasing a product in less than two minutes. And while I absolutely revel in the inventiveness of Burger King's new "Whopper Virgins" campaign, it also leaves an extraordinarily bad taste in my mouth.

The campaign introduces us to people from various isolated groups--Transylvanian, Thai and Greenland villagers--who have "never seen a burger; don't know what a burger is." They have never seen a Whopper, have no concept of the Big Mac and, therefore, can offer the purest taste test in the world. Sure, the ad intones, "The Whopper is America's favorite," but what will these neophytes choose? It's brilliant! It's genius! It's evil!

Enya's seventh studio album, "And Winter Came," is not so much a holiday album as it is an ambient ode to the season. Featuring ten original winter/holiday-themed compositions and two traditional Christmas carols, the CD features the "choir of one"...