Posts tagged David Cross
Obvious Child “Not the Worst Movie”
Jul 6th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
OBVIOUS CHILD has been getting outstanding reviews, but as with most movies these days, it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Heck, it won’t even be everyone’s glass of water.
Jenny Slate stars as Donna Stern, a struggling stand-up comic living in Brooklyn, New York, who is almost 30 years old and who also works in a bookstore to help pay the bills, because her comedy sure won’t.
We can tell this not only from what we see of her comedy act, but also from where she performs at a small bar and comedy club on open-mic nights.
Donna uses her own life and being a woman as material in her act, and not everyone will find jokes about vaginal discharge in women or her boyfriend Ryan particularly funny.
Especially Ryan, who says that he feels weird when she always makes jokes about him in her comedy act.
So, while Ryan is talking to Donna and breaking up with her, he keeps looking at his phone, saying that he doesn’t know where to look.
Donna uses her hand to circle her face and says, “Well, this is probably a good area.”
Donna learns that Ryan has been sleeping with her friend Kate, and the next day she stands across the street from Ryan’s apartment and sees Ryan and Kate come out to walk a dog, which really upsets her.
In the meantime, Donna learns from her boss at the bookstore where she has been working for five years that the bookstore is going to be closed.
Then one night at the comedy club, Donna meets Max, essentially picks him up, they have common interests and taste, they get drunk together, they go back to his place and dance and drink some more, and the next thing we see is Donna sneaking out of bed the next morning while Max is still asleep.
So, a few weeks later, Donna learns that she is pregnant, and she decides to have an abortion.
Even this new aspect of her life becomes material that she uses in her comedy act.
Well, what do you know, but Max has taken a liking to Donna, and he keeps showing up in her life.
OBVIOUS CHILD has an ending that might really annoy you, but it is not the worst movie I have ever seen.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Obvious Child – Movie Trailer
Jun 29th
For aspiring comedian Donna Stern, everyday life as a female twenty-something provides ample material for her incredibly relatable brand of humor. On stage, Donna is unapologetically herself, joking about topics as intimate as her sex life and as crude as her day-old underwear. But when Donna gets dumped, loses her job, and finds herself pregnant just in time for Valentine’s Day, she has to navigate the murky waters of independent adulthood for the first time. As she grapples with an uncertain financial future, an unwanted pregnancy, and a surprising new suitor, Donna begins to discover that the most terrifying thing about adulthood isn’t facing it all on her own. It’s allowing herself to accept the support and love of others. And be truly vulnerable. Never failing to find the comedy and humanity in each awkward situation she encounters, Donna finds out along the way what it means to be as brave in life as she is on stage. Anchored by a breakout performance from Jenny Slate, OBVIOUS CHILD is a winning discovery, packed tight with raw, energetic comedy and moments of poignant human honesty. Writer/Director Gillian Robespierre handles the topic of Donna’s unwanted pregnancy with a refreshing matter-of-factness rarely seen onscreen. And with Donna, Slate and Robespierre have crafted a character for the ages – a female audiences will recognize, cheer for, and love.
“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.”
