Tom Cruise Climbs Burj Khalifa

Kentuckian Tom Cruise was recently spotted filming a scene for his upcoming Mission Impossible IV, perched atop the tallest building in the world - Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The Burj Khalifa was also examined on this blog here last year, when Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, came to Lexington.

Cruise's latest daring film shoot - which gives me vertigo just to think about it - came during the Islamic Eid al-Adha (عيد الأضحى‎), a religious holiday also known as "the festival of sacrifice". By doing his own dangerous stunt work, Cruise very nearly sacrificed himself by spending such a long time clinging to the top of the tallest structure ever created! In the past few weeks, he's also been seen swinging, Spider-man style, from a cable tethered to the building and - as in the photo above - hanging upside down from one of its highest windows.


(Fun facts about the Burj Khalifa: it's the tallest building on Earth, has the world's longest elevator shaft and the world's fastest elevators, has the world's highest outdoor observation deck, the world's highest Mosque, and the world's highest swimming pool at the 76th floor. It's so tall, you can see it for 60 miles away, and the weather at the top is at least 6 degrees colder with winds sometimes reaching 90 miles per hour.)

Pitt vs. Cruise? Not!

A few days ago, a less-than-reputable German magazine widely - and falsely - attributed a statement to Brad Pitt in which he was knocking Kentuckian Tom Cruise's recent critically acclaimed film Valkyrie. Pitt has a part in a new film, Inglourious Basterds [sic], which, like Cruise's masterpiece, deals with Nazi-era Germany.

According to People Magazine:

Last week's widely picked-up statement attributed to Brad Pitt, unfavorably comparing his WII movie Inglourious Basterds to Tom Cruise's star vehicle Valkyrie, was not only "inaccurate," Pitt's manager tells PEOPLE, but "Brad has never even seen Valkyrie."

The uncharacteristically harsh remark was originally published in a wide-circulation weekly German magazine, and, as could be expected, was reprinted internationally. Problem was, it was never uttered.

Unfortunately, if you look at the vast majority of the amateur blogosphere, most are ignoring Pitt's statement decrying the rumor and instead they're going with the far juicier story that he dissed Cruise. Internet celebrity gossip columnists (among the lowest bottom-feeder scum of the Earth, IMHO) certainly don't let a little thing like truth stand in their way. Pitt and Cruise, who starred together in the classic film adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, are actually good friends.

Valkyrie, shot on a budget of $75 million, has currently grossed well over $250 million worldwide. Kentuckian Tom continues to laugh all the way to the bank despite his detractors.

Versailles in Hollywood

In the summer of 2004, Versailles, KY was swarming with Hollywood film crewmembers for the shooting of Elizabethtown, a film directed by Cameron Crowe and produced by Kentuckian Tom Cruise.

An abandoned downtown athletic center was remodeled to look like an antiquated bait shop, and the facade of Woodford County Senior Citizens Center was transformed into a mom-n-pop candy shop.

Other notable Kentucky scenes were shot in Louisville's Cave Hill Cemetery and Brown Hotel, and in Elizabethtown itself.


Versailles also figured prominently in another Kentucky-themed film: Kurt Russell's Dreamer.

St. Anne Convent

St. Anne Convent, located in Melbourne, KY, is affiliated with the Catholic organization Congregation of Divine Providence and is described on their website as a "spiritual gathering place for liturgies, retreats and celebrations" for over 600 sisters. Their website also says they were founded in 1889 "by a group of pioneering French women in Newport, Kentucky, along the Ohio River".


But most people on Earth's frame of reference for St. Anne's, whether they even know it or not, would be its appearance in the classic film Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Kentuckian Tom Cruise. St. Anne Convent was used by the filmmakers as the location of "Wallbrook", the fictitious mental institution where Hoffman's autistic character resides.

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV

You know, I personally don't think he's all that weird or unusual, but I'm including him here because I understand that some people do. (I don't get the whole furor over him jumping on Oprah's couch - I see other stars do far sillier things for attention, every single day of the week.) Cruise (real name: Thomas Cruise Mapother IV) lived in Kentucky as a child and was a paper boy for the Louisville Courier-Journal, although his family was often uprooted as his father's line of work kept them moving around.

Cruise, known for films such as Magnolia, War of the Worlds, Minority Report, Interview with a Vampire, and fellow Kentuckian Walter Tevis' The Color of Money, currently devotes much of his time to activities with that spooky space-age religion but still finds time to visit Kentucky occasionally, visiting relatives and associates and, of course, attending the Derby.

He'll always be one of the finest actors in Hollywood, for my money, regardless of what controversial hi-jinks he gets up to next (and his upcoming Nazi movie is sure to provide plenty of that!).