Posts tagged Dear Audience
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” Makes the Impossible Possible
Apr 7th
“Making the Impossible Possible”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a love story, and I don’t mean the love that fishermen have for fishing, although there is also that.
On the other hand, Steven Wright says in his act, “There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore looking like an idiot.”
In this movie, the comment is made that the only thing that fishermen care about is fish, and that they are patient and virtuous.
The fishermen, of course, are patient and virtuous, not the fish.
No, we should remember that fish are so dumb that they can’t tell the difference between a real fly and an artificial fly with a hook in it at the end of a fishing line.
Emily Blunt plays Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, and she has a client who is an avid fisherman, Sheik Muhammed from Yemen, who wants to introduce salmon fishing in his desert country.
So, Harriet contacts the salmon expert in the British Fisheries, Dr. Alfred Jones, played by Ewan McGregor, to ask for his help in fulfilling the dream of the sheik, who naturally has enough money to make it happen.
Dr. Jones turns down Harriet’s request, telling her that the project is fundamentally infeasible.
In the meantime, however, Patricia Maxwell, who is the press secretary for the Prime Minister and who is played by Kristin Scott Thomas, tells her people, “We need a good news story from the Middle East and a big one. We need it now.”
So, with pressure from the top of the government, Dr. Jones is practically blackmailed into working with Harriet to make Sheik Muhammed’s dream come true.
And with two attractive people working closely together, romantic sparks are bound to fly, right?
Not so fast, Dear Audience, because Dr. Jones is married, and Harriet has a serious boyfriend.
Dr. Jones changes his assessment of the project’s success from fundamentally infeasible to theoretically possible, the sheik is willing to pay 50 million pounds, and so the problem now is to make it all happen.
Did I mention that there are dissidents in Yemen who believe that the sheik’s dream of building a river in the desert and stocking it with fish is insulting to Allah?
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen makes the impossible possible in so many different ways, and not just in fishing.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Alice in Wonderland” Designed to Amaze Instead of Amuse
Mar 11th
Designed to Amaze Instead of Amuse
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
ALICE IN WONDERLAND is the 2010 version of Lewis Carroll’s wonderful ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, it is produced by the Disney Studios and directed by Tim Burton, and it stars Johnny Depp and is definitely not your childhood ALICE.
In fact, I saw one father lead his young child out of the theater only halfway through.
And, of course, it is just the latest in a long line of recent movies to jump onto the rushing bandwagon of 3-D movies. Hang onto your seats, hang onto your glasses, and hang onto your hats.
Speaking of hats, The Mad Hatter is the star of this version, as played by Depp, and not Alice.
Oh, Alice is there, of course, but she is all grown up now. She is 19, and the premise is that she went down the rabbit hole as a child and had those amazing adventures, but her memories of that experience are just in the form of the same dream that she has had for as long as she can remember.
So, at the beginning of the movie, Alice accompanies her mother to what turns out to be a surprise engagement party for Alice to Lord Hamish, an awkward, unpleasant man for whom Alice has absolutely no feelings whatsoever.
When Lord Hamish proposes to Alice in front of all the guests, Alice says, “I think I . . . I need a moment,” and she rushes away after a white rabbit that she had seen in the bushes.
A white rabbit in a blue waistcoat, naturally, and thus begins Alice’s new adventures in what is here called “Underland.”
All the usual suspects are here, although you might realize that a few are missing or have lesser roles than in the original.
It has been foretold that Alice herself on Frabjous Day will slay the terrifying Jabberwork, which is imprisoned by the evil Queen of Hearts, played by Helena Bonham Carter with a big head, and thereby free the inhabitants of Underland from the tyranny of the Red Queen.
Yes, Dear Audience, it is Alice in Wonderland meets The Lord of the Rings.
And you have to believe that director Burton had more fun designing the film than in directing it or rewriting the beloved story.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND is designed to amaze instead of amuse.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Sherlock Holmes” Deconstructing Holmes
Dec 30th
Deconstructing Holmes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHERLOCK HOLMES takes one of the most famous of all fictional characters, the brilliant but eccentric London detective created in the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and turns him into a modern-day action hero.
The setting is still London in the late 1800s, but Robert Downey Jr.
plays Holmes as just as much a martial-arts fighter as a brilliant thinker.
And Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Sherlock’s partner, colleague, and writer of Sherlock’s famous cases, as just as much an equal in the martial arts as Holmes is.
To steal a line from somebody else, “This is not your great-grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.”
In fact, Watson himself may be onto something, because a major subplot in this mess of a movie is that Dr. Watson is engaged and preparing to move out of their digs at 221B Baker Street.
The fault, Dear Audience, lies with the writers and the director, Guy Ritchie, known for his rock-’em, sock-’em modern-day British crime-caper comedies, but most famous for being the recently divorced husband of Madonna.
When the movie opens, Holmes is in a foul mood, and Watson says to Mrs.
Hudson, the woman who keeps their rooms as tidy as she is allowed to, “He just needs another case, that’s all.”
The last case that Holmes had and presumably solved was three months ago, but before he acquires a new case, Holmes is invited to dinner in a restaurant with Watson and his fiancee, Mary, who insists that Holmes examine her at the table and tell her what his observations reveal about her.
To say that it doesn’t go well would be the understatement of the 19th century.
Holmes eventually gets a case that involves black magic, a midget, a plot to rule England and to reacquire the United States, and Holmes’s female nemesis, Irene Adler, played by the beautiful Rachel McAdams.
Yes, this movie is more like a James Bond adventure than a story about the Sherlock Holmes we have come to know, love, respect, and admire.
The movie is preposterous, the story is preposterous, the action scenes are preposterous, even the acting is preposterous.
And, unfortunately, the ending has all the earmarks of a sequel in the works.
SHERLOCK HOLMES is a silly deconstruction of the four novels and 56 short stories that we have read and loved.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
