Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible 4 - Ghost Protocol

The latest offering of the Mission: Impossible franchise will hold a special attraction for some UAE residents - a chance to see themselves on the big screen.

But while Tom Cruise and assorted other A-list co-stars will get to see the final cut of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol when it premieres on the opening night of the Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) at the Madinat Jumeirah on December 7, the hundreds of residents used as extras in the film may need to wait a little longer to discover if their scenes made it into the movie.

They will all be watching the action thriller with particular interest when the film opens on general release next month to see if their scenes made it or ended up on the cutting room floor.

The extras, who played a variety of roles, were given an opportunity to rub shoulders with the stars and experience the excitement of taking part in a major Hollywood shoot. The casting agency received more than 5,000 applications from would-be extras, and the several hundred who were chosen worked with a 400-strong crew.

In addition to Cruise, the movie also stars Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Josh Holloway, Anil Kapoor and Léa Seydoux.

Rumours have abounded for months that the much-talked about action movie, which was part filmed in Dubai, would premiere here and the festival organisers and Paramount Pictures, the studio behind the production, made the official announcement yesterday.

Filming of the movie hit the international headlines last year when Cruise, 49, was photographed dangling from the outside of the Burj Khalifa in one scene.

Other parts of the film are set at Dubai International Financial Centre and on the Palm Jumeirah. Further shoots took place in Prague, Moscow, Mumbai and Vancouver. The scenes were filmed in high-definition IMAX and the film is expected to be released in this format in the UAE.

Residents were quick to express their delight at the news on Twitter. Louise Nichol tweeted: "Too excited for the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol premiere in Dubai on Dec 7." And a user called Yasmeen summed up the announcement as "Awesome".

Cruise was seen performing hair-raising stunts on the Burj Khalifa in a behind-the-scenes video released recently by the producers and in the latest cinema trailer for the film.

The star reprises the role of Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt in a story that sees the unit closed down after he is framed for a terrorist bombing at the Kremlin.

Abdulhamid Juma, the chairman of Diff, said: "There is no doubt that this film will have a transformative effect on the region's film industry, through knowledge transfer, inspiring emerging filmmakers, paving the way for many more collaborations and drawing attention to cinema from this part of the world."

Ahmad Abdulla Al Shaikh, the director general of the Dubai Government Media Office, said: "We await with great excitement the return of the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol filmmakers, crew, and talent to Dubai in December.

"Dubai's continuing relationship with the film is a mark of trust in Dubai's world-class infrastructure, capabilities and leadership. This relationship is a point of pride not only for the emirate but for the region as a whole.

"Dubai continues to welcome serious filmmakers from around the world, and remains ready to extend all assistance and support necessary to ensure the success of their films. Dubai reaffirms its commitment to the advancement of the local, regional, and international film industries."

Rob Moore, the vice-chairman of Paramount Pictures, said: "We are looking forward to sharing the film first with Dubai." Ghost Protocol is due to go on general release in the UAE on December 15 and will open in the US the following week.

The eighth Diff will run from December 7 to 14.

Katie Holmes threw a surprise birthday party for her husband Tom Cruise at the weekend

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The actress decided to celebrate the star turning 49 by planning a secret dinner in Miami. She invited 40 of his closest friends and family to the exclusive members-only Soho Beach House. Tom was left lost for words when he arrived at the bash and was warmly welcomed by all the guests.

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Christopher McQuarrie's 'One Shot' Wants Tom Cruise to Star

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Director of the upcoming film One Shot, Christopher McQuarrie, is a name that’s been around Hollywood for quite a while, though he’s not yet household. Primarily he has worked as a screenwriter on things like The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie, but he also directed the 2000 film The Way of the Gun.

This new project he’s working on will be an adaptation of a pretty popular novel by Lee Child of the same name. Child’s official website describes the book by saying, “There’s deadly trouble in the corn country of Nebraska … and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved case of a missing child, already decades-old, that Reacher can’t let go.”

While it’s not known who might play the role of Reacher, Deadline Brookfield is reporting that Tom Cruise is in negotiations to play a small role as the Reacher character’s driver. 

Okay, no, that was a lie. Cruise is in negotiations for the starring role. Duh. I haven’t read these books myself, but word on the street is that a lot of fans of the Jack Reacher character are probably going to be up in arms about the possible Cruise casting, because Reacher is known for his gigantic size. 

Dude is like 6’5” and 250 lbs. It doesn’t really make much sense that they’d cast the world’s most handsome midget in the role. Despite the physical disparity, however, Child has gone on record as supporting the decision to cast Cruise. He says, “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.” Yeah, not really; sounds like a pretty big cop out to me. 

More likely Cruise’s brand name represents an unstoppable force of box-office dollars that Child and company are hoping to generate. Are there any fans of the Jack Reacher books out there on this site? Please feel free to use the comment section to spew hate.

Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 4 being shot in South Mumbai, India

Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise starrer Mission Impossible 4 is being shot in South Mumbai. Although the superstar will not be in India but his double was spotted moving in Mumbai’s bylanes in search of veteran Bollywood star Anil Kapoor.

Anil Kapoor who is making his debut in Hollywood venture Mission Impossible 4-Ghost Protocol is being shot in South Mumbai. Insiders stated that most of the action scenes including car chase in the film will be shot by the second unit of the film.

Double of Tom Cruise along with the heroine of the film were seen driving a BMW SS01 specially designed for the film. A source close to the unit of the film stated that none of the lead actors including Tom Cruise or Anil Kapoor will shoot in India.

The film unit after completing their shooting schedule in Mumbai will travel to Bangalore within some days.

Lead actors of the film Anil Kapoor and Tom Cruise have completed the shooting of the interior parts of Bangalore and Mumbai in Vancouver and Dubai which later will be matched with the sequences of the scenes that have been shot in India.

The film stars Tom Cruise, Anil Kapoor, Jeremy Renner and Paul Patton. Mission Impossible 4- Ghost Protocol will hit theatres this December.

Should the Simon Wiesenthal Center honor Tom Cruise?

Let’s for a moment put aside the indelible image of Tom Cruise giddily love-jumping on Oprah’s couch. Even slightly deranged movie stars deserve to fall in love.

Let’s instead go with another image, perhaps also perplexing to digest, but one the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance would like you to see: Tom Cruise, humanitarian.

Picture it: There he is rolling up his custom-made sleeves in Rwanda. There he is again, hugging orphaned children in Haiti. And after that, it’s “Top Gun” redux, as he flies his cargo-loaded jet into Tsunami-stricken Japan.

Or was that George Clooney?

If those images are hard to see, it’s probably because I made them up. And if this subjective measure of what makes a humanitarian seems unfair – sources in Cruise’s camp assure me he’s the consummate philanthropist and gives away “tens of millions”– it’s probably because it is. But even so, tapping Cruise with a “humanitarian” award still seems an odd choice, since one authentic and indisputable aspect of his image is as public champion for the Church of Scientology—and that impenetrable behemoth is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for alleged human trafficking.

The fact that the Wiesenthal Center plans to honor Cruise on May 5 with the 2011 Humanitarian Award is either brilliant strategy or terrible hypocrisy. And it has Tom-lovers-and-haters alike in a tizzy.

One online message board oppugning Cruise’s worthiness quipped, “Hey I know another actor for this prize”—and followed with a wacky photo of Mel Gibson. Another online forum that caters exclusively to “ex-Scientologists” contained a thread around the question: “Do you believe that Tom Cruise is a humanitarian, like within the context of all the other humanitarians who actually did something humanitarian? Like, I don’t know, someone who raised money and went out and cleared landmines, or someone who worked and risked their [life] to stop an actual genocide?”

To be fair, many of the Wiesenthal Center’s honorees from the entertainment industry do not do that type of work. And, yet, every year the center hosts a swanky dinner in Beverly Hills for titans of the industry, the centerpiece of which is the bestowal of the Humanitarian Award—the museum’s highest honor—upon individuals who ostensibly promote human welfare, but perhaps more importantly, can get their friends to write big checks to the museum. Hollywood, as you might imagine, is quite good at this, and over the years recipients have included luminaries like Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Douglas, Amy Pascal, Will Smith, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.

Under these criteria—since Cruise is apparently a big giver and obviously a big star—he would seem a natural fit. Perhaps his religious/spiritual affiliations should not matter; why assume that his chosen spiritual system holds any kind of sway in influencing his values? How horrifically unfair to expect public spokespeople to be held accountable for the interior affairs of the organizations they represent.

“Tom Cruise cannot be responsible for an entire religion,” film director Brett Ratner, who sits on the Wiesenthal’s board of trustees said to me by phone last week.  “You can’t say he’s the reason the religion is doing what it’s doing. That’s like saying, ‘The Jews killed f———Jesus; why am I a Jew?’”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is, after all, home to the Museum of Tolerance, which preaches openness and understanding, “promotes human rights and dignity” and is dedicated to “raising awareness about contemporary issues” (as stated in the tribute invitation). Yet, to the chagrin of some, honorees are not selected based upon their religious persuasion but rather, their commitment to the museum.

Rosalie Zalis, senior vice president of Pacific Capital Group and a Wiesenthal trustee said Cruise has been a “major giver” to the museum for almost two decades, and that he’s been a supporter of the Holocaust Studies program.

“There aren’t too many other people, besides Spielberg and Katzenberg, who have really supported Holocaust studies the way he has,” she said. And she is hardly bothered by the unruly elephant in the room: “I don’t know anything about Scientology,” she said. “It’s just like Islam—as we say ‘not all Muslims are terrorists,’ but to date it seems most terrorists have been Muslims, and yet, you can’t condemn all Muslims. Just because someone is a Scientologist, you can’t condemn them as a trafficker.”

When Lawrence Wright, writing for The New Yorker, first reported the investigation into the Church of Scientology in a lengthy expose published last February, the rumor mills spun into high gear. Picking up on the scandal (without verifying its veracity, because it’s the New Yorker, after all) news aggregates blared headlines implicating Cruise: “Scientology Under FBI Investigation For Work Done For Tom Cruise,” ran one headline, posted on The Huffington Post on Feb. 8. Follow-up calls to the Los Angeles FBI offices to confirm the story’s facts were fruitless, since official policy prohibits officers from confirming or denying an investigation.

“It’s true that the FBI doesn’t normally confirm or deny an investigation, but this was an exception,” Wright, the author of the 25,000-word story wrote in an email, adding, “I can’t really disclose why that is or how it came about. I can tell you that nothing I heard from the FBI involved Cruise.”

Phew.

“We should not engage in any guilt by association,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Wiesenthal Center said. He is focusing on Cruise-the-individual, not Cruise-the Scientology missionary. “We’ve given a medal of valor to the Pope. Does that mean we agree with everything the church has done? No.”

Hier added that the museum is accustomed to taking flack for its high-profile choices, which are determined by the entertainment dinner chairs: Paramount Pictures CEO Brad Grey, CAA Super-agent and partner Kevin Huvane, Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Warner Bros. Entertainment CEO Barry Meyer, Universal Studios president Ron Meyer and Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Tom Rothman. As it often goes in Hollywood, the bigger the celebrity, the bigger the corresponding controversy.

“When we honored Ted Kennedy a long time ago, we received an enormous amount of criticism – enormous!” Hier said. “Because of Chappaquiddick. But we honored him as a great senator and a person who contributed to society. So if you’re asking me if this is the first time we’ve received letters or emails? Not by any stretch of the imagination.”

This could require some Cruise control. One insider suggested Cruise’s handlers may have pressed for the recognition, a little positive PR to keep his image pristine (not that they’d admit it isn’t). For the Church of Scientology, humanitarianism appears to be a value: the official Website lists six different educational projects advocating social responsibility, including programs for criminal rehabilitation and increasing literacy.

Of course, it’s possible Cruise is one of those “quiet givers” who donates munificently to a plethora of organizations. According to the Website looktothestars.org, an online organization that tracks celebrity giving, Cruise has supported the Children’s Hospice & Palliative Care Coalition, the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation and Mentor LA; he also serves as a board member for the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project, a position for which he received an Excellence in Mentoring Award, in 2003, from the National Mentoring Partnership.

All nice things, Tom Cruise, but does giving away lots of dough a humanitarian make?

That’s a question the Wiesenthal Center’s leadership should ponder, for themselves, at least, if not for their viewing public. Because it could be that for the world’s biggest box office draw, writing a check is easy. Even in Hollywood, plenty of celebrities go much further—Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Sean Penn, for instance—all glamorous movie stars who don’t need to prove their justice work, because we’ve seen it.

Mission Humanitarian: Possible.