The Year of The Beef

Shia LaBeouf's been having a good run of luck lately. And his surname is almost the same as the French word for 'the beef' ('le boeuf'). Therefore from henceforth he shall be known as Shia The Beef.

For those unaware, The Beef's latest film, and his first as the proper lead, Disturbia, has just topped the US box office for the third week in a row, which is a rare feat these days. (You can ignore the fact that it was an absolutely terrible weekend where the top film made less than $10 million.)

The film that may confirm 2007 as the Year of The Beef is Transformers. Michael Bay's banking on the young actor to carry the CGI behemoth on his untested shoulders, but the success of the relatively low-profile Disturbia bodes well. I'm still not convinced that Transformers will be that massive (seems like a niche audience to me) but I'll be happy to be proved wrong if the film is good.

Other recent Beef-related news, he's been cast in Indiana Jones 4 - rumoured to be titled Indiana Jones and The City of the Gods, which sounds suitably Indiana Jonesian - by Steven Spielberg, incidentally executive producer of Transformers. All the speculation is that he's playing Indy's son, which sounds logical, if not particularly appealing. Another confirmed cast member is Cate Blanchett, but I'll save my ranting about Indy 4 for another post.

I first saw Mr. The Beef as a young actor in the underrated and underseen Holes, alongside Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. Since then he's appeared as a fairly superfluous but tolerable sidekick character in I, Robot, as well as popping up in Constantine (which I haven't seen) and Bobby (which I have, and he was quite entertaining in it).

So he may well be on the path to superstardom. And with a name like that, who'd bet against it?