Your quote of the day:

"The plain truth is that if guys like DiCaprio, Clooney and Robert Redford, were women, they’d be called bimbos."

Burt's article is also good place to post a link to this. First, let's set aside whatever political subtext Cruise and his writers have in mind for choosing this story when they did, and concentrate on the actor. The age is right--in fact, at 45, Tom's nearly a decade older than Claus von Stauffenberg in 1944. But will anyone buy him and his acting mannerisms, which are little changed since the days of playing callow youths in the 1980s, and his whiter-than-white perfect Hollywood dentition as an aristocratic, combat-hardened (not to mention severely wounded) WWII Prussian officer?

Allahpundit acidly sums describes Cruise's acting technique as "his smirking cocksure jackass shtick". In other words, to paraphrase the already revised lyrics from a famous Rush parody from the 2000 election, he lacks gravitas. (And how!) But then, so do virtually all American actors under 60, as Frederica Mathewes-Green pointed out in her exceptional article a few years ago.