SPOTLIGHT NICOLAS CAGE

I was discussing the motion pictures with a few chums the other day over a few glasses of brandy when it came to my attention that a few people genuinely like Nicolas Cage. I was so shocked I almost sloshed Cognac over my smoking jacket.

Too good to be true.

Here are a few (entirely true) fun facts about Nicolas Cage:

- His son is called Kal-El, and hails from the planet Krypton but was sent to Earth inside a meteorite.

- Jim Carrey once said, and I quote: "Cage has elephant balls". The above picture might disprove that.

- He's the only person, other than the Presleys, to be inside Elvis's bedroom at Graceland.

I may have found a new way of dissin' bros

Nicolas has lived a life filled with excitement and excess (he bought 24 cars in 2007 alone), with Roger Ebert famously saying of the actor: "He has two speeds, intense and intenser. I'm going to have to agree with you there ol' silent Rodge. This is one of the most obvious examples of the latter speed:

JUST SCRAPE IT OFF YOU JACKASS.

Despite what this video might show, Nicolas is actually a half decent actor when he wants to be. I'm thinking of Adaptation (2002, Jonze), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009, Herzog) and Raising Arizona (1987, Coen Bros) primarily. There is one common point through these films: there were people far superior to Cage involved in the creative process. It seems to me that Cage thrives in an environment where he is surrounded by talent, and therefore no matter how hard he tries - he can very rarely screw things up. 

Credit where its due, he has won an Academy Award. However, I feel that Cage has almost become the joke of the movie industry - with his ridiculous nu-wave method acting style in which he turns every role into a raving maniac. In Bad Lieutenant, it seems Cage is instinctually aware of this fact, and turns his role into a joke of himself; almost pastiche. As this diagram perfectly demonstrates:

Nicolas Cage IS the Architect.

As much as I would like to hate Nicolas Cage, the more research I did and the more I wrote about him, the more I found myself falling in love with him. He's actually hilarious. And so I am going to make it my mission to watch every Nicolas Cage film ever by the end of the year. Wish me luck, and by the end of it I'll probably think of him like this:

Nicolas Cage: Superstar