Poor business model

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DEMAND AND SUPPLY – Boo Chanco – The Philippine StarDecember 23, 2024 | 12:00am

The Metro Manila condo oversupply, now equivalent to 34 months, is not surprising.

Indeed, anyone with some brains would have expected it to happen.

The country’s condo industry is supply-driven. They build without thinking who will buy all their units. Notice how in malls, nicely dressed agents annoyingly try to sell condos like sidewalk vendors.

Their focus on the speculative buyer who buys “for investment” is dependent on a lot of factors including how buoyant the economy is and if interest rates remain affordable.

The POGOs encouraged more  speculation. The pandemic, rising interest rates and the scuttling of POGOs crashed the assumptions of the business model of our property sector. Now, the property developers have more unsold units than they want. Hopefully, they don’t end up like some of the ghost cities I saw in China. Chinese developers built all those high-rise condo buildings with a bahala na attitude. They were getting easy credit to build so they built. Then, the bottom fell.

According to data provided by Leechiu Property Consultants (LPC), it will take 34 months for the current supply of condo units to be sold, given the prevailing sales pace. Leechiu Research director Roy Golez Jr. explained how they crunch their numbers.

“What we do is we track monthly and quarterly, so the availability of units suddenly shot up. It increased, meaning they were re-released into the market. These were already either blocked off because there was a down payment but the transaction did not push through, mostly that.”

Our property developers are building ever taller condo buildings in the metro area seemingly oblivious to the existence of a market. The Bay Area, where the big casinos are, is becoming a ghost community of unoccupied condo buildings.

Apparently, gone are the days when the elite have a lot of idle money to buy units for speculation. Even the corrupt politicians who buy condo units for their mistresses are apparently deciding to stay financially liquid. The OFW market may also be reaching its limits. But why are condo prices not going down?

The market for condo units has drastically shrunk but the housing backlog of affordable units is as formidable as ever.

The administration earlier announced that they would build a million new housing units a year or a total of six million for the term of BBM. They have backtracked since, cutting the target into half and even then, they are not sure they can accomplish it.

NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan cited the need to balance funds in their decision to slow down on the government’s housing project.

“When we look at the implications in the economy particularly on the fiscal issues – ang sabi natin was hindi kaya because it can impact the other sectors because the program requires subsidizing the targeted beneficiaries who are the low-income households… And as we put in more money there, of course we would have less resources for education, for health, for infrastructures,” Balisacan said.

But the NEDA chief assured the Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino Housing (4PH) Project would be kept, adding that it will contribute to additional jobs for Filipinos.

Earlier, Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development Secretary Jose Rizalino Acuzar admitted that it would be difficult to complete the target of six million housing units until 2028. During the pre-SONA briefing last June, Acuzar explained that while there is no problem with funds, the construction of these housing units has been challenging. He didn’t explain why it is challenging.

One of the guys in my Viber group in the property sector commented that “while we have a surplus of mismatched property investment products, the housing backlog has increased tremendously because focus is principally on homeownership. Other shelter solutions are not being explored.”

He explained that a rental program rather than ownership is more appropriate. The low-income households prioritize food and other necessities to home ownership. They are amenable to rental arrangements of around P5,000 a month or a little more which they now pay to slum lords.

Property developers are also missing out on a ready market for worker dormitories. Those who work in, for example, BGC and live in Caloocan, will spend a fortune on transportation daily and bear the misery of traffic. A nearby dormitory makes sense.

Another member of my Viber group explained that “the current housing loan interest rates are between nine and 9.5 percent. So how can you expect the middle-income workers and OFWs that are the target of many of the condo developers like SMDC, Ayala, DMCI, Robinsons, Federal, Filinvest and others to pay-up?

“Current trend now is the ‘pasalo’ market…where early buyers sell their turned-over units to recover their initial down payment normally between 15 and 30 percent of pre-selling and let the next buyer cover the bank loan/in-house financing…But buyers shy away because of the separate turnover fees charged by the developer outside of the unit cost that now run to seven to 10 percent of additional cost!! So, when you buy the condo its acquisition/takeover cost is 115 percent of pre-selling price…”

Ignoring the market segments that need housing is driven by the greed of our property developers. They shun the affordable segment that actually needs housing because they want quick profits, as big as the market can deliver. Now, their capital is trapped in suspended construction. There are many of those near where I am in Pasig that have not progressed since the pandemic. With no market to sell to and the high cost of interest on money required for completion, why hurry?

If they want to continue selling in Metro Manila, developers must work with the government to address the housing needs of the more economically challenged sector of our population. They may have to change concepts from ownership to rental if they are to become relevant… and have a social conscience to boot.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.

Tourists must register, book slots in Jan 2025 for NUS campus tours and pair up with student guide

Travel

SINGAPORE – Visitors planning to tour the National University of Singapore (NUS) campus between Jan 13 and Feb 21 must register and book a group tour slot. Those not accompanied by a student ambassador or docent will be asked to leave the campus, said an NUS spokeswoman in response to queries from The Straits Times. The move, NUS said, is aimed at managing visitor traffic on its grounds during peak period – the latest in a series of measures taken by the administration to manage a growing influx of tourists to the campus near Clementi.Earlier in

25 Films Named to 2024 National Film Registry for Preservation Including ‘The Miracle Worker,’ ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ and ‘Dirty Dancing’

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

View Comments Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,’ ‘Dirty Dancing,’ ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ ‘Spy Kids,’ ‘Mi Familia,’ ‘Uptown Saturday Night,’ ‘Up in Smoke,’ ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ and ‘The Social Network’ Among Titles Selected for Recognition December 22, 2024 – Twenty-five films have been selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2024…

The movie that made Daniel Craig want to become an actor: “It felt like a movie that I discovered”

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still) Sun 22 December 2024 13:15, UK It’s hard to imagine Daniel Craig as anything other than a movie star. Ever since he scored the role of James Bond in 2006, he’s been an inescapable face at the box office. Even before he donned the 007 moniker, he had proven himself to be a formidable character actor, playing everything from a murderous priest in Elizabeth to the muse and lover of painter Francis Bacon in Love Is the Devil.Craig grew up near Liverpool and left home at 16 to join the National Youth Theatre in London. Although his first roles were on the stage, he had always wanted to be in movies. In a recent interview on the SmartLess podcast, Craig recounted how, as a kid, visiting his local cinema helped shape his career decades down the line, especially after he saw one particular science fiction classic.“We had a little cinema in the town I grew up in,” he said, “Which was, you know, a fleapit.” At the time, he remembered, movies would do the rounds of the cinemas across the country, and by the time they finally ended up in his town, they’d already been out for months. He remembered seeing Bill Murray’s comedy Stripes and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s prehistoric fantasy Quest for Fire, but it was a Ridley Scott movie that changed everything for him.“Blade Runner I remember seeing in the cinema on my own, with kind of an orange juice,” he said. “I had no idea, it was like, blind.” It was playing as a double bill with the Sean Connery space movie Outland, and when that film finished, he got a drink and returned to his seat, unaware of what he was about to see. “The fact that movies could look like that, feel like that, and do that to you was just like, the thing,” he said. “I’d never experienced it. And it felt like a movie that I discovered, that it was nothing to do with Gone with the Wind or It’s a Wonderful Life – or the Bond movies even.”Craig was ahead of his time in his appreciation for Ridley Scott’s classic, and it was no coincidence that he was alone in the theatre when he saw it. Despite being considered one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, Blade Runner was a flop when it was released, dismissed by critics for being overly sombre, existential, and confusing. Interestingly enough, there was another future powerhouse of cinema who was harbouring similar sentiments at the time. Somewhere in London, a young Christopher Nolan had acquired a VHS tape of the film since he was too young to see it in the cinema. “Even on that small screen, something about the immersion of that world and the creation of that world really spoke to me and I watched that film hundreds of times,” Nolan said later.For Craig, it wasn’t a particular performance in Blade Runner that made him want to become an actor, it was, like Nolan suggested, about the world that Scott had created. He didn’t even question whether or not he could make it into the film industry. When asked whether he felt that filmmaking and Hollywood were unattainable for a teen growing up in a small town in England, he was dismissive, saying simply, “I was an arrogant little bitch.” [embedded content]Related TopicsSubscribe To The Far Out Newsletter

Rebel role model: The six movies that made Dennis Hopper an icon

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

(Credits: Far Out / Universal Pictures / Warner Bros. Pictures) Sun 22 December 2024 15:45, UK In his 55-year-long career in the movies, Dennis Hopper brought as much of his own off-kilter personality into his work as anybody. Getting off the ground at just 18, his long life was watched by global audiences who saw him try and sometimes fail to find the correct vent for his artistic energies.He was just as large a life figure outside of his roles as he was in them – just see the time that he blew himself up by attaching dynamite to a chair on a speedway in Austin, Texas, or when he almost took over a Peruvian town following one particularly despicable night out – but it’s his work on the screen and behind the camera that will live on.We can all indulge in Hopper’s hedonism and the wild stories he provides. But, in truth, like any artist, these tales of debauchery wouldn’t be worth nearly as much if he didn’t also have a body of work worth diving into. A crazy personal life is certainly tantalising, but it is his creative work that provides the met to get your teeth stuck in to. Here are the six movies that most accurately mark Hopper’s path through his long life and career, in chronological order.The six movies that made Dennis Hopper an icon:Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)An 18-year-old Dennis Hopper made his big-screen debut in this teen angst classic in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turn as a greaser in the gang of youths threatening James Dean. He can be seen lurking on the roof of a car in the famous Griffith Observatory confrontation scene.This was the movie that made James Dean an icon right after his untimely death in a car collision in central California. His career of just a few years proved iconic enough for him to be remembered as one of the great faces of a generation all the way up to the present day, some 70 years later.But it was Hopper who was given the chance to hang around and become the poster child of his generation as it made its way through the tumultuous history of the 1960s and 1970s. His debut in such a zeitgeist-defining film is par for the course, setting the table for an actor who somehow always managed to be in the right place and at the right time to witness cultural history in the making.And with the doors to Hollywood now open to a young Hopper, he spent the next decade appearing in his fair share of Westerns and genre films, including Gunfight at the OK Corral, From Hell to Texas and Night Tide.(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Pictures)Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)As the free-loving and free-thinking pretensions of the 1960s descended in earnest, Hopper became a guiding star for the darker, riskier and druggier side of the exploding hippy subculture with his thunderous entry into directorial work.Easy Rider is one of those films that define a generation, and with credits as director and a lead character, Hopper became the face of a generation nearly overnight.The practise run, perhaps, was The Trip – a drugsploitation movie directed by prolific schlock merchant Roger Corman that follows Peter Fonda as he wanders the Hollywood Hills after a heroic dose of LSD. The film was written by Jack Nicholson and featured Hopper, who also took a turn in the director’s chair for the second unit. In many ways, this film paved the way for Easy Rider. And just a year later, Fonda and Hopper were revving their engines and heading for New Orleans in this loosely told modern American odyssey.The film’s gonzo shooting style kept costs minimal, and its countercultural popularity made it something of a craze. The picture’s profitability allowed Hopper to push the boat out even further, creating the next entry—a film so ambitious that it saw Hopper essentially exiled from Hollywood for over a decade.Easy Rider (Credits: Far Out / Columbia Pictures)The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971)On the back of Easy Rider’s unprecedented success, Hopper was given $1million and carte blanche to put his wildest dreams to film. What followed was a critical and financial car crash.Hopper took the money and most of his friends down to Cusco, Peru, where he embarked on filming a screenplay by Rebel Without a Cause writer Stewart Stern about native Peruvians who are unsure of where reality ends and fantasy begins in film.In the thick of a drug habit and surrounded by his entourage in the mystical valleys of the Andes, Hopper spent most of the time running the camera on long improvised scenes that left the original screenplay untouched.Maybe it was the drugs or the altitude sickness, but what he came back with and then spent almost a year editing disappointed the studio and saw Hopper himself removed from the director’s chair for over a decade. (Credits: Far Out / Universal Pictures)Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)Hopper spent most of the 1970s appearing in lower-profile films before Francis Ford Coppola plucked him from semi-obscurity for one of his most well-remembered roles.Hopper, himself a keen photographer, played a crazed photojournalist who has fallen under the spell of self-crowned God of the upper Mekong, General Kurtz (played from the shadows by a steadily inflating Marlon Brando). The making of Apocalypse Now is a well-chronicled mess, with typhoons, grave robbers, heart attacks and crumbling interpersonal relationships and finances, making the war movie its own kind of deadly battle. Constant livewire Hopper did nothing to calm things, nearly coming to blows with one of his most famous co-stars.Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now (Credit: YouTube still / United Artists)Blue Velvet (David LynchBack in the high life again, Hopper appeared in his rescuer’s sequel to The Outsiders, appearing as the father in Rumble Fish. From here, he entered a period of playing manic oddballs, earning a name as one of the zaniest character actors in Hollywood. Highlights include his chainsaw-duelling Texas Ranger in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part Two and sex doll-romancing Feck in River’s Edge.However, his most iconic role from this period was that of the sociopathic Frank Booth in David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece, Blue Velvet. The sadistic, gas-huffing, Orbison-loving Booth is an apparition that seems to have crept its way from Hell rather than any kind of criminal underworld. It’s the kind of criminal character that is so removed from humanity as to seem supernatural – a trope seen often enough through the years with examples like No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh, or David Thewlis’ delightfully revolting VM Varga in the Fargo television series. But it’s Hopper who really set the trope with his endlessly disquieting portrayal of a madman.Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (Credit: Alamy)Waterworld (Kevin Reynolds, 1995)Perhaps his proficiency at playing the villainous Frank Booth set the trajectory for the rest of Hopper’s years. Aside from some (slightly) more sympathetic characters like Christian Slater’s doomed dad in True Romance, Hopper made a trade of playing the heel. And like everything in his life, he didn’t go at it half-heartedly. There’s a list of campy bad-guy performances that could each go here and represent this final period in Hopper’s life before his death of prostate cancer in 2010. There’s his disgruntled bomb squad officer in Speed, who sneers down the phone at a flustered Keanu Reeves. There’s his Dick Cheney impression as the corrupt leader of a human refuge in the zombie apocalypse of Land of the Dead. And who could forget the freakish King of the Koopas in Super Mario Bros, which saw Hopper don corn-rows and a long reptilian tongue to square off against the Brooklyn plumbers.But the codifying cheesy Dennis Hopper villain has to be Deacon in the oft-ridiculed Kevin Costner epic Waterworld. As the leader of a gang of cigarette-puffing marine raiders called the Smokers, Hopper chews the scenery with iron teeth.Waterworld(Credit: Alamy)Related TopicsSubscribe To The Far Out Newsletter

How many movies has Samuel L Jackson been in?

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy) Sun 22 December 2024 16:45, UK Samuel L Jackson blasted into the public consciousness as a movie star in the mid-1990s with the one-two punch of Pulp Fiction and Die Hard with a Vengeance. From that point on, there has barely been a moment when Jackson has been away from our screens. He’s one of the most prolific actors, averaging at least five films yearly for the past three decades. Indeed, his ubiquity has been so enduring that cinephiles will often joke that it seems like he’s in everything. Now, the man isn’t in every film released by Hollywood, but he stars in more than his fair share – and shows no signs of slowing down. The running total of Jackson’s movies is more than impressive.One of the most fascinating things about Jackson is that he stars in all kinds of movies, from crime dramas to horror flicks, from action movies to historical epics, from comedies to westerns, and sci-fi films to superhero blockbusters. If you watch movies with any kind of regularity, there is a Jackson for you, whether you gravitate toward Hollywood’s most mainstream fare or off-the-beaten-path arthouse pictures. This ability to fit so well in any kind of film imaginable has served Jackson extremely well – after all, he is the world’s most successful actor. In December 2018, Applied Network Science used an algorithm to establish the most influential actors on pop culture, and Jackson beat out Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood for the top spot. Then, when Box Office Mojo calculated the total takings of all of Jackson’s movies in March 2024, it was discovered that his films have made a mind-boggling $14.6billion worldwide. To put this into further context, that number only included the 66 films where he played the lead role or was part of the lead ensemble – and it was still enough to rank him higher than anyone else.What is it that drives Jackson to work so much, though? Why does he still sign up for so many films when he could afford to be pickier? Well, that’s easy: he loves his job. He once told Gentleman’s Journal, “A painter will get up and paint. A writer’s gonna write. I’m Samuel L Jackson. I’m gonna act!”(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)A strong work ethic was instilled in Jackson from childhood. He told Daily Actor, “I grew up in a working-class family. When I was a kid, all the adults in my house got up and went to work every day. I assumed that’s what grown people do. That’s what I do. I just happen to have a very interesting job that’s kind of cool.”Despite all his success, Jackson admits he still has the same fears that all actors suffer from in their darker moments. He confessed, “My biggest fear is not going to work. I’m still that actor. I tell myself that the phone stops ringing for everybody, doesn’t it?” With this in mind, as long as he’s in demand and he’s able to act to a high level, Jackson will show up to work.So, how many movies has Samuel L Jackson been in?This genuine love for doing the work is why, as of December 2024, Jackson has starred in a whopping 149 movies. Amazingly, his average of five movies per year holds even in 2024 and at 75. This year alone, Jackson has been a part of Argylle, Damaged, The Piano Lesson, The Unholy Trinity, and lent his voice to The Garfield Movie.Amusingly, Jackson has always been honest that he has no qualms about watching his own movies – perhaps because there are so many to choose from. Unlike some actors who claim to be too self-conscious to watch their own performances, Jackson told Time magazine in 2006, “I dig watching myself work.” He added, “If you can’t stand to watch yourself work, then why should people pay $12.50 to watch you work?”Some of Jackson’s favourites from his own career are A Time to Kill, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Jackie Brown, One Eight Seven, The Red Violin, and – hilariously – Deep Blue Sea. He once told Stephen Colbert, “If I’m channel surfing and I haven’t found anything I want to watch, or I’m not specifically looking for something, and I pass something I’m in, I stop and watch it.”(Credit: Miramax)…and what is Samuel L Jackson’s highest-grossing movie?One of the primary reasons for Jackson’s box office dominance, of course, is his recurring role as Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A lifelong comics fan, Jackson has played the eye patch-clad superspy in 11 films, beginning with 2008’s Iron Man. His most recent appearance came in 2023’s The Marvels. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Jackson’s highest-grossing movie is a Marvel joint – 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, to be exact, which racked up $2.8billion at the worldwide box office.[embedded content]Related TopicsSubscribe To The Far Out Newsletter

10 movies that sent great actors on a downward spiral

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

(Credits: Far Out / MGM / United Artists) Sun 22 December 2024 17:15, UK Being an actor is a risky business. In terms of job security, few professions in Hollywood are less stable. Even the biggest stars face the ever-present risk of going from “hot” to “not” in the blink of an eye. One bad film can be enough to undo years of hard work for some actors—or, in extreme cases, throw an entire career into chaos.These ten actors all found that out the hard way. Some of them made extremely bad decisions, signing on to projects that were simply never going to work. Others got very unlucky, ending up in movies that were utterly awful, but not because of anything they did.While some of these performers have since made comebacks, others vanished from our screens for good. Ultimately, they’ve all managed to come out alright in some form or other, but it was certainly touch-and-go for a few of them. Hollywood is a fragile business, and the world of making movies rarely suffers fools for too long. The actors listed below delivered some awful work and, therefore, were sent packing, if only for a little while. Naturally, however, the beauty of art is that some of the pictures mentioned will have their devoted fanbase, meaning that even in their worst moments, some good can come from any movie. 10 movies that almost ruined actors’ careers:Mike Myers – The Love Guru (Marco Schnabel, 2008)With the combined successes of the Shrek movies, the Austin Powers series, and various one-offs, Mike Myers ruled the 2000s comedy roost. He seemed utterly untouchable, but every empire must fall, and Myers’ kingdom of laughs came crashing down thanks to the incredibly ill-judged 2008 film The Love Guru.Myers’ portrayal of an Indian mystic isn’t just offensive in hindsight; it was also poorly received at the time. The backlash from Hindu viewers—combined with the fact that the movie was just no good—severely damaged Myers’ credibility and basically led to him taking an eight-year break from live-action acting.[embedded content]Dana Carvey – Master of Disguise (Perry Andelin Blake, 2002)Myers’ Wayne’s World co-star Dana Carvey was also riding high in the 2000s, off the back of the aforementioned movie and his successful stint on Saturday Night Live. He decided to try to cash in with The Master of Disguise but ended up tanking his own reputation instead.The film, about a man who comes from a family of ‘disguisers’, was welcomed like a hand grenade in a submarine. Critics hated it, panning the unfunny gags and Carvey’s overreliance on stupid facial expressions. After this embarrassment, the comedian not only stepped away from films but from public life entirely, taking time away from the spotlight to focus on his family. [embedded content]Rupert Everett – The Next Best Thing (John Schlesinger, 2000) As either a closeted gay figure in a more ignorant time or the gay best friend of the female lead in a romcom, Rupert Everett was everywhere for a time. Unfortunately, when he teamed up with Madonna for 2000’s The Next Best Thing, this winning formula finally ran out of luck. The film, which is about a gay man and a straight woman who have a child together, was a disaster. Everett described the period after its release as “career death”, and although he has been able to find work since it came out, he’s never quite reached those same heights again.[embedded content]Alicia Silverstone – Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)Chris O’Donnell’s film career was also kind of ruined by the polarising Batman & Robin, but he didn’t have to deal with half the crap that Alicia Silverstone did. As Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, the Clueless star was given a major role in an era where female superheroes were few and far between. Sadly, when the movie flopped, Silverstone was ruthlessly body-shamed and criticised for her portrayal of the heroine. She was never taken seriously again, all because of a terrible movie that wasn’t her fault and some acid-tongued commentators who had no right to be commenting on someone’s physique that way.[embedded content]Kevin Costner – The Postman (Kevin Costner, 1997)In 1990, Kevin Costner directed and starred in the ‘Best Picture’-winning Dances with Wolves. By the end of the decade, his career had seen a dramatic decline, thanks in most part to a horrible post-apocalyptic movie called The Postman.Costner directed himself as a nomad wandering a desolate version of the United States. The movie was viewed as massively self-indulgent and really took the shine away from the Waterworld star. He fell out of favour with both audiences and critics and hasn’t come close to regaining his popularity since.[embedded content]Lori Petty – Tank Girl (Rachel Talalay, 1995)Fans of Orange is the New Black will recognise Lori Petty as Lolly Whitehill, but she’s also known for her roles in A League of Their Own and Free Willy. In 1995, she appeared in the sci-fi flick Tank Girl, and it almost killed her burgeoning career. Aptly, the movie tanked, taking Petty’s growing reputation with it. Though her performance was praised, she struggled to get work in the film space, returning instead to her old TV stomping grounds. Tank Girl has since become a cult favourite, but that was of little comfort to its star when it tore her career apart.[embedded content]Lea Thompson – Howard the Duck (Willard Huyck, 1986)As Lorraine Baines (later McFly), Lea Thompson was a key part of the original Back to the Future, but just one year later, her career was in tatters. All because of one lousy duck. Thompson appeared as love interest Beverly Switzler in the ill-fated Marvel adaptation. “[I]n the course of a year I was in the biggest hit and the biggest bomb so that probably destroyed my film career,” she said of her volatile output in the mid-1980s. She returned for the other two ‘Back to the Futures’, but that was pretty much it.[embedded content]Greta Garbo – Two-Faced Woman (George Cukor, 1941)The name Greta Garbo is still synonymous with the height of Hollywood, the glitz, the glamour, and the other-worldly presence of a movie star. Sadly, Garbo’s esteemed career ended in upsetting fashion with 1941’s Two-Faced Woman. Her stint as a woman pretending to be her own twin to woo back her husband drew negative backlash from the critical elite and put Garbo off acting for good. She never graced the screen again, spending her remaining days as a reclusive art collector before her death in 1990 at the age of 84.[embedded content]Sean Connery – The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington, 2003)Having already been James Bond, Sean Connery really didn’t need The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He definitely didn’t need it to cause him so much stress, as he desperately fought for creative control of the final edit. The lacklustre end result severely affected him and led to some staggeringly bad decisions. Shortly after this movie, Connery turned down both Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Dumbledore in Harry Potter. He would effectively retire after this infamous literary mish-mash, never to return to live-action performing ever again.[embedded content]Elizabeth Berkley – Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995)Few films have undergone as big a critical 180 as Showgirls. Now considered something of a camp masterpiece, Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller was slammed upon its release, described by many as one of if not the worst movie ever made.The consequences were dire for its star, Elizabeth Berkley, who critics savaged for everything from her performance to her physical appearance. Her career and confidence took a massive hit, but she was able to bounce back in the end and can hopefully now enjoy the movie that supposedly ruined her life.[embedded content]Related TopicsSubscribe To The Far Out Newsletter