'You Can Ride My Tail!'

I haven't seen Valkyrie yet and I probably won't. Given all the Tom Cruise backlash, who would? Last week on the heels of the film's release, Slate published this great story on Cruise and Risky Business. An excerpt:

I can't name another American icon who has been so popular, and for so long, and yet so hard to like, and for so long. (When the studio sent the then-mostly unknown Cruise to Paul Brickman, the writer-director of Risky Business, Brickman recoiled, saying, "This guy's a killer. Let him do Amityville 3.") But note a curious fact about his career: It maps perfectly onto the 25-year bull market in stocks that, like Cruise, is starting to show its age. Nascent in the early '80s, emergent in 1983, dominant in the '90s, suspiciously resilient in the '00s, and, starting in 2005, increasingly prone to alarming meltdowns. Forboth Cruise and the Dow Jones, more and more leverage is required for less and less performance. Place Cruise next to Nicholson, Newman, and Tracy, and he is a riddle. Place him next to Reagan, and he is not so confounding at all.

And then the National Review posted a link to this great video in which Quentin Tarantino tackles Top Gun. Check the jump for the video.

(And, given that it's Tarantino this is stating the obvious, but foul language runs wild in this video.)