Tom Cruise Decoded

Perusing the New Yorker archive yields so many treasures! Firstly, here is a LONG but worthwhile piece on Hezbollah by Jeffrey Goldberg. Written in 2002, it's still relevant today. Secondly, Anthony Lane comes through in this pithy assessment of Tom Cruise's alien-like qualities in this review of Mission Impossible III. Enjoy:

Since the last installment of “Mission: Impossible,” Cruise has found somebody to marry him for real, and to bear his child. This scarcely unusual news would hardly be worth rehearsing, were it not for the kinks and wavers that have been observed in the arc of his stardom—and “M:i:III,” like many blockbusters, would be nothing without its star. The Cruise fan base has been shaken by a number of public pronouncements, although some of us have merely been confirmed in our original suspicions that there was something about this actor that was not quite of this earth. The stiff-necked jerk of his motions; the grit of his bared teeth; the eyes switched to perennial full beam but never quite blinking, even during tears; his ability to remain totally upright when sprinting, as if carrying an invisible egg and spoon—what are these, if not the techniques of an alien life force who has just graduated summa cum laude in advanced human behavior? Just who was scared of whom, precisely, in last year’s “War of the Worlds”?

It's true! He never blinks! And I've always been mesmerized by his run (there's an opportunity for him to run in every movie. He probably even runs in Born on the Fourth of July before he's wheelchair-bound) and now it all makes sense. Lane has cracked it wide open. TC is really an ET.