Posts tagged Barry Livingston
Jersey Boys “With a Bullet”
Jun 29th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
JERSEY BOYS is an adaptation of the 2005 award-winning musical on Broadway, it is directed by Clint Eastwood, it stars some of the same actors as were in the play, and it tells the story of the rise and fall and rise of the singing legends, Franki Valli and the Four Seasons.
I think the movie is great, and yet it has been getting mostly negative reviews.
The criticism sometimes that I have read has to do with historical accuracy, such as a song in the movie came out after the year we hear that song in the movie, and it isn’t even a Four Seasons song.
Remember, this is not a documentary. It is the story about four kids who were poor in New Jersey, formed a band, and became wildly successful, selling an estimated 175 million records and in 1990 being inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Their success was due largely to the unmistakable falsetto voice of its lead singer, Franki Valli, and here is just a partial list of their hit songs: “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Candy Girl,” “Dawn (Go Away),” “Ronnie,” “Rag Doll,” “Save It for Me,” “Bye Bye Baby (Baby, Goodbye),” “Let’s Hang On (To What We’ve Got),” “Working My Way Back to You,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,’ and “My Eyes Adored You.”
Granted, many in the audience might not have even been born yet when the group was inducted in the Hall of Fame, but if you were around when they were popular, you are probably humming at least one of those songs right now.
The movie uses a technique also used in the stage production with some of the characters looking into the camera and talking to the audience, and at one point Frankie says, “When everything dropped away and all there was was the music, that was the best.”
Yes, at least two of the members served time in jail for criminal activities before they became famous, and, yes, they knew and were helped in their career by people connected with the Mob.
Christopher Walken has a very memorable role as one of those people, Gyp DeCarlo, and actor Joe Pesci helped them before they all became famous.
JERSEY BOYS Boys enters my list of top movies with a bullet.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Jersey Boys – Movie Trailer
Jun 24th
Clint Eastwood’s big screen version of the Tony Award-winning musical tells the story of the four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic `60s rock group The Four Seasons. Their trials and triumphs are accompanied by the hit songs that influenced a generation, and are now being embraced by a new generation of fans through the stage musical.
The Social Network – Movie Trailer
Oct 1st
Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven) teams with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) to explore the meaning of success in the early 21st century from the perspectives of the technological innovators who revolutionized the way we all communicate. The year was 2003. As prohibitively expensive technology became affordable to the masses and the Internet made it easy to stay in touch with people who were halfway across the world, Harvard undergrad and computer programming wizard Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) launched a website with the potential to alter the very fabric of our society. At the time, Zuckerberg was just six years away from making his first million. But his hearty payday would come at a high price, because despite all of Zuckerberg’s wealth and success, his personal life began to suffer as he became mired in legal disputes, and discovered that many of the 500 million people he had friended during his rise to the top were eager to see him fall. Chief among that growing list of detractors was Zuckerberg’s former college friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), whose generous financial contributions to Facebook served as the seed that helped the company to sprout. And some might argue that Zuckerberg’s bold venture wouldn’t have evolved into the cultural juggernaut that it ultimately became had Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) not spread the word about Facebook to the venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) engage Zuckerberg in a fierce courtroom battle for ownership of Facebook that left many suspecting the young entrepreneur might have let his greed eclipse his better judgment. The Social Network was based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich.
