LIONS AND AWARDS AND CRUISE OH MY!
by JDitty

Tom Cruise was recently "saluted" by the Museum of the Moving Image with a special dinner at Cipriani restaurant in New York. Apparently, his shortliness, lacked the moral support of Lions for Lambs costars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, but you bet that the 45-year-old outspoken non-pill inducing pietistic Scientolgist had his 27-year-old fixated wife, Katie Holmes, in tow.

Fellow science FICTION fan and L. Ron loyalist Sky Dayton joined the Cruise's at their table, as did Washington Redskin's owner Dan Snyder. Both are high on Redford's list of "people who I would like to spend Thanksgiving with" list.

According to reports, the relationship between Redford, Cruise and Streep is strained following weeks of promotion and pretending to like one another. Said one insider: "Meryl and Bob can't stand Tom. In London, Tom kept trying to push himself into interviews. Bob said 'No.' Tom wouldn't listen. Meryl has done almost nothing for the movie. She wants nothing to do with him."

The highly trustworthy Fox News reported that the trio's recent appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" revealed evident tension and lack of camaraderie as the show's producers edited the piece down to a manageable effort at promotion.

Cruise, of Far and Away fame, plays a manipulative Republican senator with plans for the presidency in Lambs. Perhaps Hollywood liberals Streep and Redford found his portrayal too convincing or maybe Cruise's ego butted heads with the Death Becomes Her and Havana stars.

Lions for Lambs, which manages to reveal none of its plot details in the trailers, after having been promoted to the level of the triumvirate of Spiderman, opened to an astonishing $6.71 million box office receipts. This places Lions in the realm of Redford-helmed cash cows like The Legend of Bagger Vance and Quiz Show. The Cruise/Streep/Redford war epic is the latest from Hollywood in a sad attempt to make American's think about the "war on terror." Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, and The Kingdom all scored big in the U.S. box office ($56 million in total, $47mil of which is thanks to Jamie Foxx), meaning they produced an educated public dedicated to ending the U.S.'s latest Vietnam.

Lambs is Cruise's first film produced under his newly acquired United Artists film company (co-owned by non-acting life partner Paula Wagner). Although the opening weekend may spell flop, it is reassuring to note that Cruise's association with United Artists places him owning the company founded by film greats D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, all noted solipsistic Scientologists.

The next United Artist project for Cruise is the much talked about Valkyrie, which fictionalizes Ethan Hunt traveling in time with Luther (Ving Rhames) to 1940s Rhineland in order to knock off Hitler (with explosions and a "hot" director behind it!). As Cruise attempts to reshape his image following much talked about antics and bull-headedness, he figured buying his own studio and changing history so he's the guy who killed Hitler would win fans back. Tom, you had us at "Hitler."