Posts tagged Alexandra Maria Lara
“Rush” about Two Beautiful Drivers
Oct 6th
“Two Beautiful Drivers”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Rush is the latest film from Ron Howard, maker of many successful films, and it is about the 1976 Formula 1 championship race, which was notable because of the closeness of the race and the rivalry between the two competing drivers on different teams, James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
The races lasted all year long, and the championship that year came down to the final race held in Japan.
However, that year the intense race for the championship was unique in what happened in August to Lauda, the 1975 world champion.
Chris Hemsworth plays Hunt, the flamboyant playboy driver from England, and Daniel Bruhl plays Lauda, the methodical brilliant technician from Austria, who was a genius at setting up his car for a race.
The two drivers met in 1970 when they were both driving Formula 3 races, and Hunt tells his current girlfriend, “The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel.”
However, they both want to move up and drive the more prestigious, more glamorous, and more dangerous Formula 1 race cars, and because of his family background, Lauda gets a ride first with the successful Ferrari team.
Then Hunt quickly follows by signing with the McLaren team, and the race to the top of their sport is on.
Then the movie starts following each race in 1976, and with beautiful cinematography and excellent camera work we get a terrific feel for how tight, how dangerous, and how exciting Formula 1 racing is.
In the meantime, we meet the love interests of the two drivers, Suzy, played by Olivia Wilde, whom Hunt beds and weds, and Marlene, who eventually becomes Lauda’s wife.
Incidentally, there is a hitchhiking scene with Lauda and Marlene that is reminiscent of the hitchhiking scene in the 1934 It Happened One Night, but with a much funnier ending.
Hunt begins to have trouble at home as well as on the racetracks, and Lauda is affected by marriage, because he believes that “happiness is the enemy” and now he has something to lose, which is a distraction while he is racing.
And then comes the race in August in Germany which changes everything for both drivers.
By the way, you don’t have to be a racing fan to enjoy this tremendous film.
Rush is about not one, but two beautiful drivers.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Rush – Movie Trailer
Sep 29th
Two-time Academy Award (R) winner Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon) teams once again with two-time Academy Award (R)-nominated writer Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen) on Rush, a spectacular big-screen re-creation of the merciless and legendary 1970s Formula 1 rivalry between gifted English playboy James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth of The Avengers, Thor) and his disciplined Austrian opponent, Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl of Inglourious Basterds, The Bourne Ultimatum).
“The Reader” Dealing with Guilt
Jan 7th
Dealing with Guilt
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE READER is a searing examination of guilt and not as straightforward as you might think it is from reading about it.
Starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, the film questions how one’s life can be tragically affected by keeping a secret or by not revealing all of the truth.
In other words, how does one deal with guilt and shame?
The film begins in 1995 Berlin, but then it uses flashbacks to jump back and forth between 1995 and 1958, when the story begins.
We meet 15-year-old Michael Berg, who becomes sick and throws up in the entryway to an apartment building. A young woman in her thirties named Hanna Schmitz lives there, and she stops to help him.
Michael ends up with scarlet fever, and when he is able to leave his room, his parents tell him that he must go back and thank Hanna, which he does, as well as taking her some flowers.
However, before they know it, they wind up in bed together, which prompts Hanna to say, “So, that’s why you came back.”
Michael becomes a regular visitor, and when Hanna learns what he is studying in school, she asks him to read to her, eventually making their routine that first he reads to her and then they make love.
It takes three such visits before Michael even learns Hanna’s name, and she usually refers to him as “Kid.”
This goes on for quite some time, but one day when Michael arrives at Hanna’s apartment, she is gone and has moved out without having told him.
Then we jump to 1966, and Michael is in Heidelberg Law School. The class attends the trial of six female guards of a Nazi concentration camp in World War II, and Michael is shocked to see that Hanna is one of the former guards on trial.
Watching the trial and hearing the testimony, Michael comes to a realization about Hanna that he had never suspected during all the time that they had been together that wonderful summer eight years before.
And as the trial progresses, Michael watches Hanna withhold information that could have helped her defense, and then he struggles with himself over whether he should provide that important information that could help her.
THE READER is much more than just a story about lost love and dealing with guilt.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
