As Vanilla Sky is one of my absolute favourite movies of all time (depending on what mood you'll catch me in, it either takes second or third. It inter-changes with Vertigo), I've been looking forward to the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz reunion pic Knight & Day (previously titled Wichita) more than the average movie-blogger, of that I have no doubt. There's something powerful about the chemistry between Cruise & Diaz. They share the spotlight the same way Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman used to. Rarely do you get chemistry so magnetic these days. Not even Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, in the midst of two of God's perfect creatures falling in love with each other, could they conjure up the same kind of atmosphere. Their opening romantic exchange in Vanilla Sky, which Cameron Crowe directed like a Howard Hawks comedy, was classic old Hollywood playful. I could have seen these two work a string of rom-com's together this decade.
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A beautiful still from Vanilla Sky, just moments before David Aames (Cruise) is to be tested by Julie Gianni (Diaz) on his new found life changing ideals, picked up from a "night where true love seeemed possible". If you listen to the DVD commentary track on Vanilla Sky, Crowe mentions that Cameron Diaz, just after she got her big break in The Mask, auditioned for the Renee Zellweger part in Jerry Maguire and although she wasn't quite right for it, nobody could quite forget the chemistry that Diaz and Cruise shared together on set that day. He brought them back together on VS, and now eight years later, Cruise & Diaz jumped on the opportunity to make Knight & Day. The film, opening July 2nd 2010 from 20th Century Fox is an action/comedy, set around a special agent (Cruise) and an unlucky in love Midwestern woman (Diaz) whose blind date, ends in a "violent worldwide journey to protect a powerful battery that holds the key to an infinite power source. Hunter Stephenson at /film, predicts it will be a globe trotting True Lies kind of picture with shifting alliances and unexpected betrayals and the backdrop of Spain, Austria and "somewhere tropical). James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line) is a steady hand behind the camera but doesn't quite have the online following his filmography suggests he should and sadly awareness right now is really low for a picture around eight months away (I blame the original title). However, there's still plenty of time before next summer to get posters, trailers, and this kind of ET special to drum up interest...