Movie #3490
Factory Girl
George Hickenlooper, 2006, USA
True-Movie about Andy Warhol's mate Edie Sedgwick, who died typically tragically young of an overdose. Despite having a bunch of characters that should be interesting, they're just annoying and the film is just boring. Best Bit: Hayden Christensen plays a famous musician with whom Edie has an affair. I had my suspicions so looked it up ... Bob Dylan. And you thought I'm Not There had imaginative casting.

To my immense gratification, Russell Crowe has been named as Hollywood’s most overpaid star. Forbes calculated that he earns studios $5 for every $1 of his salary, which hardly seems like the happy returns most execs would hope for. Except for A Good Year, which despite it's big budget director-star credentials made a paltry $7,458,269 in the market-leading US. Coupled with his reputation as an arrogant piece-of-shit in real life, Crowe can now boast the appeal of an Acrington Stanley reserve side practise.

Sadly Nicole Kidman was deemed the most overpaid actress in Hollywood. Raking in sometimes as much as $15M per role seems bloated when you consider that since her Oscar in 2002, she has appeared in 11 movies, only one of which has turned profit. Offsetting challenging indie darlings (Birth, Dogville, Margot at the Wedding), with mainstream misses that parallel the quality of decisions in her personal life (Bewitched, Stepford Wives compared to marrying Keith Urban), consistency has only been found in Box Office failure:

Dogville ($10M, $2M worldwide)
The Human Stain ($30M, $6M worldwide)
Birth ($20M, $7M worldwide)
Fur ($16.8M, $220,914 US gross)
The Invasion ($80M, $15M US gross)
Margot at the Wedding ($10M, $1.41M after 5 weeks)
Golden Compass ($180M, opened to $25.8M in the US)

Which bodes very well for Baz Luhrmann’s long awaited follow-up to Moulin Rouge, the Australian war epic cleverly titled Australia, which is costing $120M. The only time Kidman has appeared in a movie to cross the $100M mark, was her bit part in 1995’s Batman Forever as the ludicrously titled Dr. Chase Meridian.