Posts tagged Daniel Radcliffe
“Kill Your Darlings” Is Full of Oddities
Dec 22nd
“Full of Oddities”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Kill Your Darlings is an odd little movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg that tells a story about him and other writers of the Beat Generation in 1943 in New York City.
For those of you in the audience who are too young to know and those of you who are old enough but might have forgotten, Ginsberg was an American poet best known for writing “Howl,” a 1956 long poem attacking American values who later in life was associated with Naropa University in Boulder.
The title refers to advice sometimes given to writers to eliminate the parts of their work they are most in love with, because those parts are probably the most self-indulgent, but in the movie it can also refer to an actual murder.
The movie begins when Ginsberg is 19 years old, and he is accepted to Columbia University, where he will meet other writers with whom he will get in and out of trouble, such as William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and others who didn’t become as famous.
We also see some of Ginsberg’s home life with his father, who was also a poet, and his mother, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was a very troubled woman.
Ginsberg becomes friends with Lucien Carr, and through him he meets David at a weird party at David’s apartment, where David says about Ginsberg, “Under the right circumstances, even he might change the world.”
Remember, this was 70 years ago at a time when writers were serious, and they believed that their writing could change the world, which they hoped would be for the better.
If it also made them successful and famous, then that was better, too.
Ginsberg and his fellow writers also have a saying, “First thought, best thought,” which they believe to be performed and useful in their writing, but if you know anything about serious writing, such an idea would probably fall into that category of darlings which should be killed.
The movie is full of disjointed scenes, and the audience might have trouble keeping the story line straight and also keeping track of who all the characters are.
Of course, homosexuality plays a big role in the story, and this was at a time when homosexuality was illegal in numerous places.
Kill Your Darlings is full of many oddities.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Kill Your Darlings – Movie Trailer
Dec 8th
Daniel Radcliffe stars as Beat Generation icon Allen Ginsberg in this biopic set during the famed poet’s early years at Columbia University, and centering on a murder investigation involving Ginsberg, his handsome classmate Lucien Carr, and fellow Beat author William Burroughs. The year is 1944. Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is a young student at Columbia University when he falls hopelessly under the spell of charismatic classmate Carr (Dane DeHaan). Alongside Carr, Ginsberg manages to strike up friendships with aspiring writers William Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) that would cast conformity to the wind, and serve as the foundation of the Beat movement. Meanwhile, an older outsider named David Krammerer falls deeply and madly in love with the impossibly cool Carr. Later, when Krammerer dies under mysterious circumstances, police arrest Kerouac, Burroughs, and Carr as potential suspects, paving the way for an investigation that would have a major impact on the lives of the three emerging artists.
“The Woman in Black” Is a Movie in Trouble
Feb 11th
A Movie in Trouble
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Woman in Black is a traditional ghost story, and of all the movies about ghosts that have ever been made, this is one of them.
In fact, the only reason to see this yawner with all the tricks and twists and turns of a traditional ghost story is to see Daniel Radcliffe trying to act like an adult in his first starring film role after the “Harry Potter” movies ended in 2011.
Now, seeing as how this is a story about ghosts that wants the audience to take it seriously and realistically, you have to ask yourself one question: “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Well, do you? And then ask yourself more questions.
Radcliffe plays Arthur Kipps, who works for a law firm in London in either the late 1890s or the early 1900s, whose wife died four years earlier while giving birth to their son, Joseph.
Arthur is sent to a little village in northern England to go through the papers of an old woman who died and report if the law firm should take over the house that she left, which is known as the Eel Marsh House and sits on a piece of land whose only access by road is covered by water whenever the tide comes in.
Arthur is told that this assignment is to prove his worth to the head of the law firm and is his “final warning.”
When Arthur arrives at the village, he gets no cooperation at all from the villagers except for one man, Sam Daily, whose son died many years ago, and whose wife could only be called crazy.
In fact, many children in the village have died, and Arthur eventually learns that there is a connection between their so-called “accidental” deaths and the appearance of a mysterious “woman in black” who is seen occasionally and who has a connection with Eel Marsh House.
Well, naturally Arthur stays at the house to go through all the old woman’s papers, scary things naturally happen, and naturally Arthur sees the woman in black more than once, along with many more mysterious events.
Of course, there are many cheap audio and visual shocks designed to scare the audience, but it is possible not to be scared.
The Woman in Black is a movie in trouble with a really cheap ending.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”