Monday, April 02, 2012


If loving Clooney is wrong, I don't wanna be right. I think that he has the most integrity, that his career is the most diverse, and is the most talented movie star that we have on the planet. If you would have told me that I was going make such a statement fifteen or so years ago, I would have pointed at you and accused you of being a liar. If you had told me that right after I saw Batman & Robin, I might have pushed you over and taken a couple swings at you with a gold club.

Luckily, a year later, George managed to land a gig in the Steven Soderburgh adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Out of Sight. Since then, he's been puzzle-piecing together what I think will go down as one of the greatest resume's in movie history. Ocean's 12 and 13 weren't groundbreaking works of cinematic genius, but besides for a few lil' mis-steps like that he's been on quite the roll since the late 1990's.

He's played the lead, played supporting parts, played good guys or bad guys or he even once played a fox. When not repeatedly working with his new bestest pal Steven Soderburgh, he's quietly managed to work with nearly every talented filmmaker working in the business (Terrence Malick, the Coen Brothers, Robert Rodriguez, Jason Reitman, Alfonso Cuaron, Wes Anderson, etc...). Along the way he also learned how to be quite the filmmaker himself, directing four impressive films, two of which he also co-wrote. If that's not enough, he's stacked up a bunch of Oscar nominations, a win, and dozens of other nominations and wins.

Tonight I watched The Descendants, and it's not so surprisingly added to my ammunition of proof that Clooney deserves to be allowed to do anything he cinematically wants. If there were more stars out there who cared as much about putting out high-end product as Clooney does, we would have a whole lot better quality movies out there. Imagine if he had been able to wait a few years and do a Bat movie with filmmakers who actually cared about the characters? Being glass half full and unable to time-travel to fix things though, maybe doing the movie taught him a lesson that most others in Hollywood could learn a valuable lesson from. Actors should care more about making a good movie and amassing a good career over getting the big safe pay-cheque.

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