Posts tagged Allison Janney
Get On Up “Loud and Proud”
Aug 14th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
GET ON UP is the story of James Brown, known at various times in his life and career as The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, The Godfather of Soul, or as he preferred to be called by strangers and even friends, “Mr. Brown.”
Brown is played remarkably by Chadwick Boseman, expect him to be nominated for an Academy Award in 2015, and don’t be surprised if he wins one for Best Actor.
TIME magazine said that “From 1958 to 1986, [Brown] landed 116 singles on BILLBOARD’s Hot 100 singles chart, and their irresistible grooves have since been sampled on about 4,000 songs.”
Mick Jagger is one of the producers of the film, and he has said that he copied a lot of Brown’s moves for his performances from what Brown did so remarkably on stage.
Incidentally, one of the most interesting scenes in the movie is when Brown and the Rolling Stones appeared together during a performance and Brown’s manager, played by Dan Aykroyd, tells Brown that the Stones will be has-beens within a year.
When Brown walks off stage after his performance, he passes Jagger, who has been watching Brown from the wings, and Brown says, “Welcome to America.”
The movie jumps around in time to show Brown’s life as a little boy being abused by his father and abandoned by his mother to how he developed an interest in music to how he formed his first singing group, The Famous Flames, with his lifelong friend Bobby Byrd to his many brushes with the law and many relationships with women, but mostly to his many performances of his most famous songs in various performances in various locations around the world.
The editing is almost surreal when it cuts between performances of the same song at different times and locations.
We see how Brown overcame the rules that had already been written in the music business and how they mistreated Black performers, we see how Brown broke away from the Famous Flames and became his own star performer, and we see how Brown mistreated his own band and those around him who loved him.
But most of all, we see outstanding performances that earned him the right to be called “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.”
GET ON UP can bring tears to your eyes.
Get On Up – Movie Trailer
Aug 1st
In his follow-up to the four-time Academy Award (R)-nominated blockbuster The Help, Tate Taylor directs 42’s Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in Get on Up. Based on the incredible life story of the Godfather of Soul, the film will give a fearless look inside the music, moves and moods of Brown, taking audiences on the journey from his impoverished childhood to his evolution into one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Boseman is joined in the drama by Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Nelsan Ellis, Lennie James, Tika Sumpter, Jill Scott and Dan Aykroyd.
“Bad Words” A Joy to Watch
Apr 9th
“A Joy to Watch”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BAD WORDS is an edgy comedy starring Jason Bateman as Guy Trilby, a man who is competing in the national Spelling Bee competition even though he is 40 years old.
Bateman also directed this movie, which has been called an “instant hit.”
You see, Guy discovered a loophole in the rules which allows him to compete against youngsters and be able to spell obscure words correctly, which doesn’t please the directors of the competition, much less the parents of the other kids on whom the parents have spent money for tutors.
At the beginning of the movie, Guy says, “I’m not that good at a lot of stuff,” but his job as a proofreader allows him to be good at spelling a lot of words.
So, we see Guy compete at the 15th annual regional Spelling Bee in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where he shows that he has no remorse in intimidating fellow competitors to get them too flustered to even stand up and try to spell the next word.
One of the rules is that contestants have to be sponsored by a nationally recognized news service, and Guy’s sponsor is an Internet organization whose writer, Jenny Widgeon, is accompanying Guy in order to write a story about him.
However, Guy is very reticent with Jenny, and he won’t talk about himself, which causes Jenny to call in some favors and get a background check on him, which reveals some interesting information.
So, Guy and Jenny move on to the national competition in California, where his reputation has preceded him, and the director, Dr. Bernice Deagan, played by Allison Janey, tries to thwart Guy in every way she can.
She arranges for Guy’s hotel accommodation to be a supply closet, and even though the words given to the competitors are supposed to be random and fair, she manages to secretly circumvent that and tells the angry parents and her subordinates that she will step down as director if Guy makes it to the final round.
Meanwhile, Guy has taken an interest in an Indian boy in the competition, mainly because the kid has a hotel room with a minibar, the kid is eager to become friends with Guy, maybe too eager, and Guy teaches the kid some lessons about life.
BAD WORDS is a joy to watch.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
