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Time mag: Star Power Overrated?
March 26, 2008 -- Are movie stars passé? Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss muses that perhaps audiences have tired of star power because it is non-star vehicles that have thrived. “With Hollywood getting most of its revenue from no-name epics and nonstar animated features like Ratatouille and Alvin and the Chipmunks, the moguls will realize that big names no longer mean big grosses,” writes Corliss. The article, headlined “The Post-Movie-Star Era” notes Lions For Lambs was a box office bomb despite a cast of Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise.
Author Robert Marich thinks the article is provocative but a bit overstated. The problem is stars increasingly pick passions projects – the anti-government and anti-war Lions For Lambs is a case in point. Media may generate lots of coverage of Hollywood’s political views, but movie goers don’t feel Hollywood is credible and political films have always been a turnoff on the screen. There are some exceptions, particularly Fahrenheit 9/11, but consider that moviegoers have not embraced its filmmaker’s subsequent social and political themed film Sicko.
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www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721687,00.html