Cinema Experts

"In Wales it's brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes "So what you doing now?" And I go, "Oh, I'm doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins." And they go, "Ooh, good." And that's it."

Catherine Zeta-Jones' stage career began in childhood. She often performed at friends and family functions when she was younger. She was a part of a Catholic congregation's performing troupe before she was 10. She also starred in a London production of Annie, as well as a version of Bugsy Malone. By 1987 she was starring in 42nd Street as Peggy Sawyer in the West End. Once the show closed, Zeta-Jones travelled to France, where she received the lead role in French director Philippe de Broca's 1001 Nights, her feature film debut.
Her exotic looks, along with her singing and dancing ability, suggested a promising future, but it was in a straight acting role, as Mariette in the successful television adaptation of H. E. Bates' The Darling Buds of May (1991-93), that she made her name.
She briefly flirted with a musical career, beginning with a part in the 1992 album: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of Spartacus, from which the single "For All Time" was released in 1989. It failed to chart. She also starred in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as well as in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.
Playing Elena Montero in The Mask of Zorro was Zeta-Jones' first leading role. She continued to find moderate success with a number of television projects, including The Return of the Native (1994) and the mini-series Catherine the Great (1995). She also appeared in Splitting Heirs (1993), a comedy starring Eric Idle, Rick Moranis and John Cleese.
In 1997, she starred in the CBS mini-series Titanic, which also starred Tim Curry and Peter Gallagher. Steven Spielberg, who noted her performance in the mini-series, recommended her to Martin Campbell, the director of The Mask of Zorro. Zeta-Jones subsequently landed a lead role in the film, alongside Antonio Banderas. The following year she co-starred with Sean Connery in the film Entrapment, and alongside Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting. In 2000 she starred in Traffic with future husband Michael Douglas.
In 2003, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Velma Kelly in the film Chicago. Chicago also won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year. On 22 October 2005, she referenced her award, as guest host on the television show Saturday Night Live, surrounded by four male dancers, mimicking the Bob Fosse-inspired Chicago-style dancing, suggesting in song that, no matter how bad she might be that night, "They Can't Take My Oscar Away". For her role in Chicago, she specifically requested a 1920s-style short bob haircut, so her face could be seen and fans wouldn't doubt she did all her dancing herself.
In 2003 she voiced Marina in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, as well as starring in Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney. In 2004 she was in The Terminal, as well as Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven. In 2005 she reprised her role as Elena in The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. She stars in and produces the rugby-related comedy, Coming Out. The film is produced by her company Milkwood Films.

“Do you have an appointment?”
The Terminal is a film that seems to be written for an actor like Hanks. Like the films Castaway and Catch Me If You Can, it's very character-driven. At times, the story loses its direction, but it could be intentional on the part of Spielberg (and the screenwriters), because that's the way the main character (Victor Navorsky) feels.
The film follows Navorsky as he lands at the JFK airport in NYC and eventually learns that he is stuck in the international lounge of the airport due to the dissolution of his homeland and the fact that the US will not immediately recognize the new government. As Navorsky begins to learn of his new predicament and how to cope, he makes mistakes and must use his mind to come up with alternate methods to get food, shelter, money and work. Truly, in many ways, Navorsky's story embodies what the mythological American Dream is all about with him using resourcefulness to show a sort of rugged individualism that causes him to "pull himself up by his bootstraps." That is one of the great strengths of the films script.
The other great strength is the much welcomed femininity of Zeta Jones' character about halfway through the film. At some points, the viewer might wonder how this relationship is going to resolve itself before the end of the film with Zeta Jones as the promiscuous flight attendant and Hanks as the wandering, yet trapped foreigner. Well, I'm happy to say, the writers make the brave choice with her character that isn't Hollywood. At the same time, she still seems to redeem herself.
I have to say it is a great one that first shows the meaning and beauty in our life about waiting and promise. Amelia is waiting for her dream to come true for eighteen years, for herself; Navorski's dad was waiting for something he honored so much for his life; and here comes Navorski, who waits for making his father's left dream come true, for fulfilling his promise, for the woman he fell in love, in a "crack" between the US and his own country.
He has done everything for others around him. If there is a great example of "egoless", he is one. Letting go ego, is the greatness that even Amelia found out when she gives up and scarifies something most important in her life to help Navorski.
This simple story conveys some wonderful philosophy for people living in this country busy around everyday for business, families, and so on, to slow down and reflect on something. As the retired officer said to officer Dixon, there is something we can learn from Navorski. 9/10