Tom Cruise's new website and the best PR money can buy

I just checked out Tom Cruise's new web site, and it's magnificent. 

It's beautifully designed with the latest, flashiest user interface and some of the highest-quality Web video I've ever seen.

The video itself -- a five-minute resume of some of Cruise's greatest cinematic moments (in the Lifetime Achievement Award style), is itself a fine work of editing and scene selection. 

And if you like magazine-cover quality pictures of the man's chiseled face, lustrous hair and sartorial splendor, you will be just enchanted.

Tom Cruise's site is clearly intended to remind us that Tom Cruise is an institution -- he's a Hollywood icon with a once-in-a-generation combo of perfect looks, stellar acting talent, and enough onscreen magnetism to attract $50 million in an opening weekend.

So kudos, Tom Cruise Incorporated, LLC International. This is a great website (promoted with Google Adwords, no less). And wow, couple that with a pair of "Oprah" appearances, including today's (in which a parade of celebrities appeared on OprahVision to congratulate Cruise on a great 25 years since "Risky Business"), and the message that Tom is great has reached a few orders of magnitude more people than niggling little global nuisances like spiking oil prices, violence in Darfur, or epidemics in China.

This platinum PR blitz may sing Cruise's praises from the rooftops, but the echoes from below bounce back with a different message. "My image needs bolstering!" we seem to hear. "Please, remember: I'm an actor!"
Not a spokesperson for Scientology, or a guy that jumps on couches or gives medical advice to Brooke Shields or gets 86'd by Sumner Redstone. 

In some bizarro parallel universe where great actors are just actors and no one much cares what they do in their spare time, you wouldn't have the kind of so-called image problems that this campaign's shock and awe are so obviously meant to distract from. But we don't live in that bizarro universe, we live in this one, where image problems themselves are a giant industry.

Incidentally, reports the AP, the PR crowd gives this latest Cruise Control effort high marks. Get what you pay for!

Comments

[Maroki]

I think the music on the site is cool. I am trying to register for updates, but its a bit hard, maybe I am doing something wrong! I would really love a forum on there so fans can talk to each other!

[verycold]

These digital enhanced pictures of celebs these days must be h... for the celeb when people see them in person and are terribly disappointed. Tom does not look like the picture above which is near to perfection. Oprah does not look like herself on the cover of her magazines. Does anybody remember the show some years ago when she allowed the cameras to come see how she looks each morning before her shows. Oh dear.....

[Johnny Bagina]

How convenient for Tom (and sad for us) that the creators of this website neglected to include "Losin' It" (1983) from Tom's filmography. Woody, we hardly knew ye!!

[breathedeeply]

Hey Tom, where's your birthday party this year?
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/04/scientology-freewinds-asbestos-tom-cruise.php

Oh, not on the Freewinds?

[Eva]

I love Tom Cruise and look forward to another 25 years!

[JB The Hut]

Still a HUGE Cocktail fan 20 years later! Should put out an Anniversary DVD with Commentary from TC and Bryan Brown- That would be fun! I've always wanted to quit my American gig and fly down to Jamaica and run a seaside bar- Live the life. Oh Doggie!!!

[Madaline Schmidt]

I Love Tom Cruise, I have a 34 year old son that looks so much like him that even his twelve year old daughter is amazed Hope to see you around for another 25 . P.S. Suri is beautiful and so is her mother

[Ath]

No one seemed to mention that there were about a half dozen Anonymous protestors outside his Oprah filming on Monday ;)

Your career is over, Cruise.

[jeff venturini]

cruise is absolutely my least favorite actor ever. Never could get into any of his roles as his depth is so shallow as to not be believable. Now with these scientology rants he is despicable. Great talent shown by the website designers though!

[Michael]

"No one seemed to mention that there were about a half dozen Anonymous protestors outside his Oprah filming on Monday ;)"

Religious hatred is a terrible disease.. I feel sorry and pray for those 6 people (:

"Your career is over, Cruise."

Keep wishing lol

Cruise is a wonderful actor and a great human being. Thank you for entertaining us for the last 25 years and hopefully for the next decade and a half and perhaps beyond...

Michael.

[Michael]

And to the lady who says that Cruise's has shallow depth, maybe you haven't seen Born on the fourth of july, Magnolia, Interview With The Vampire etc where he has given incredible performances even though he wasn't playing the all American hero?

[William Buddusky]

So, now he says he's just an actor again.
What happened to all the psychiatry advice and claiming to be an "authority" on the mind, drugs, criminality?
What happened to the Tom that laughed out loud at the thought of a planet "Clear" of SP's?
What happened to the Tom that loudly espoused Scientology, the "religion" that believes Christianity. Islam and the Hebrew faith are fake religions implanted by Xenu?

[LEON Bailey Green]

Tom needs to invest in an online marketing expert to get his site to the top of Google when people search for his name!

I did a full article on it ...

http://www.leonbaileygreen.com/index.php/site/permalink/tom_cruise_website/

[LaNon]

Tom Cruise is a nut, and he is nervous; a nervous nut. Doesn't fit the screen image, creating more of a disconnect than he had suffered before, he comes across as even less human. Katie looks like a zombie since he started in on the scientologistic remake of her; and some worry that she may need medical care that is strongly discouraged in their so-called church.

[Sarah A.]

I'm trying to find out the name of the song or artist that appears on Tom Cruise's website in the 5-minute video presentation of his acting career.

The song in question starts playing in the scene from Jerry Maguire when he is telling Renee Zellweger "you complete me" and plays throughout the montage of his romantic moments. The song is haunting me and I can't figure who sings it, though it's so familiar.

Please help! :)