Posts tagged Maryann Urbano
Love is Strange “Downer Movie”
Oct 6th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
LOVE IS STRANGE stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as two gay men who have been living together for years and have been partners for even longer than that, and it is about what happens to them after they can finally get officially married.
The movie begins with the wedding ceremony for Ben and George, which is held outdoors in New York City and attended by their families and friends.
At the reception afterwards, held in the roomy apartment that Ben and George own together, Kate, played by Marisa Tomei, who is married to Elliot, Ban’s nephew, makes a toast and says, “May this marriage last forever and beyond.”
Well, unfortunately, their official marriage causes problems for Ben and George, because George, who teaches music at a Catholic school, loses his job, and their loss of income forces them to sell their apartment and move out.
So, while they are looking for another apartment, Ben moves in with Elliot and Kate, where he sleeps on the bottom bunk in the bedroom of their teenage son, Joey, which causes privacy problems with Joey and his friend Vlad.
George moves in with two policemen friends of theirs, who are also gay, and he sleeps on the couch in their living room.
Now, Kate is a novelist who works at home, Ben likes to talk, and he doesn’t realize at first that his talking to Kate is interrupting her concentration and getting on her nerves.
As Ben tells George, “Sometimes when you live with people, you know them better than you care to.”
Ben is a painter, but when Kate suggests that he do some painting to keep him busy, he tells her that he can’t work if someone else is around, because he can’t concentrate.
George is also having difficulties with his new living arrangement sleeping on the couch, because the policemen have a lot of parties and a lot of friends over for activities that don’t interest George at all.
Now, you might get the impression that this sounds like a pretty depressing movie, and you would be right.
Even though other incidents break up the main complication of Ben and George looking for a new place to live, and even though something lucky happens for them, it gets even more depressing.
LOVE IS STRANGE is a downer movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Love is Strange – Movie Trailer
Oct 1st
After nearly four decades together, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) finally tie the knot in an idyllic wedding ceremony in lower Manhattan. But when George loses his job soon after, the couple must sell their apartment and – victims of the relentless New York City real estate market – temporarily live apart until they can find an affordable new home. While George moves in with two cops (Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez) who live down stairs, Ben lands in Brooklyn with his nephew (Darren Burrows), his wife (Marisa Tomei), and their temperamental teenage son (Charlie Tahan), with whom Ben shares a bedroom. While struggling with the pain of separation, Ben and George are further challenged by the intergenerational tensions and capricious family dynamics of their new living arrangements.
“Julie & Julia” Mastering the Art of Fine Filmmaking
Jun 24th
Mastering the Art of Fine Filmmaking
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
JULIE & JULIA tells the story of two women who were both secretaries for U.S. government agencies, who were both married to great guys, and whose lives were both saved by food.
Julia, of course, is the legendary Julia Child, played exquisitely by Meryl Streep, the woman who popularized French cooking for Americans and who was fearless in the kitchen both at home and on the set of her long-running cooking show on television.
Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, is the young woman in New York City who decided in 2002 to change her life by giving herself the challenge of cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in 365 days and writing about her cooking project on the Internet.
Julie says, “Cooking is what I do to get away from what I do all day.”
Julie’s day job is working for a city agency processing claims from victims of 9/11, and her blog became a book which in turn became the basis for half this movie.
The other half is based on Child’s book, My Life in France, and the film switches back and forth between the two stories in a comic telling of two delightful and fascinating lives.
Julia and her husband Paul, played by Stanley Tucci, arrive in Paris in 1949, and in trying to decide what to do with her time, Julia settles on going to cooking school. The scenes of Julia competing with her all-male fellow students are laugh-out-loud funny.
Equally funny are Julie’s attempts to get through all 524 recipes in one year, but not so funny are the strains that it puts on her marriage to her husband Eric, who naturally has to eat everything Julie cooks, but with help from their friends, too, at times.
Yes, there is lots of eating and lots of cooking in this film; so be prepared to be hungry at the end of it, as well as entertained.
Be prepared for pleasant surprises, too, such as Dan Aykroyd’s portrayal of Julia Child on “Saturday Night Live,” which is still hilarious in spite of its disastrous ending.
We see Julie get her book published, and Julia eventually publishes her famous cookbook with two friends, MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING.
JULIE & JULIA is an excellent example of mastering the art of fine filmmaking.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
