He can do it!

Watched 'Up in the Air' tonight. The George Clooney film. You know. The one that was marketed with the one liner his female co-star says: "Think of me as you with a vagina". You could see Clooney move uneasily in his seat when she said it.

For those of you who haven't seen it, all you need to know is that it doesn't really end up as you'd expect a big studio film to end. That was, for me, the first surprise. The second was Clooney. As you will have noticed, he is a film star. Being a film star is very different from being a good actor. An actor is acting as if they were someone else. A film star, and it doesn't matter who they play, always play themselves. A great actor would want you to forget it is them behind the character. A film star would stop being one if they did.

Schwarzenegger is always Schwarzeneger whether he is Conan the Barbarian or Danny DeVito's twin. Robert De Niro used to be a great actor. Taxi Driver, Ranging Bull, Godfather II. In the last 20 years he is nothing more than a film star. Stopping by for a few days to pick up a pay check and lend his name to the marketing machine.

Now I know that Clooney has the pretentions of intellectual depth. He even takes sides in politics. And still, when it comes to movies he is as single dimensional as any big film star. Danny Ocean. Out of Sight. Intolerable Cruelty. All the same character - Clooney. And don't you mention Ulysses Everett McGill, his role in O Brother. Slapstick is the film star's cheapest trick. It is designed to get some respite from the critics, whilst all it asks of the film star is to goof around a bit. God forbid he'll have to act.

That's why Up in the Air took me by surprise. For 2/3 of the movie Clooney was doing a great impression of himself. So good I wasn't sure his mum could tell the two apart. And then, things started changing. Subtly. Suddenly the script started pulling the rug under Clooney's character's feet and, to my surprise, Clooney allowed himself to fall. Not extravagantly, heroically or even amusingly. Simply an awkward, uncomfortable and only slightly embarrassingly fall. And it is this subtlety that made it so depressing. Maybe even more so when it happens to the world's biggest movie star. Or should I just say, accomplished actor.

PS 730km down. 270km to go.