Posts tagged Moive
“Snow White and the Huntsman” an Expensive Piece of Nothing
Jun 9th
“Expensive Piece of Nothing”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Snow White and the Huntsman is the second movie about Snow White to come out in two months, and the title indicates that Hollywood is running out of variations on how to make each one different.
Instead, the filmmakers should be concerned about how to make each one better, because this one isn’t.
This time, the evil Queen is played by Charlize Theron, and she even gets a name, Ravenna.
The Huntsman is played by Chris Hemsworth, whom you will recognize as the actor playing Thor in some other action movies, but he doesn’t get a name, just a back story.
And the grownup Snow White is played by Kristen Stewart, whom you will recognize from a lot of other movies.
Once again, we see how it all began, and after Ravenna becomes the stepmother of young Snow White, Ravenna tells her, “I could never take your mother’s place.”
And once again, Snow White is placed in prison by the Queen, high up in the north tower of the castle.
My comment was “Boring!” even before the movie got one-third of the way through.
So, the variation this time is not that the Queen has the Huntsman take Snow White out into the woods to kill her, but Snow White escapes from the castle and the Queen has the Huntsman go into the woods to find Snow White and bring her back.
Now, Charlize Theron chews the scenery as Ravenna, the evil Queen, and that is not easy to do when the scenery is made out of stone walls.
By this time the movie has become a swords and sorcery story, and the woods contain all sorts of menacing things and even a monster.
Finally! About two-thirds of the way through, the dwarfs show up, but right away you notice that there is something strange about them, and the camera doesn’t stay on all of them long enough for you to count them.
Sure enough, you were right, and later in the story an explanation solves the mystery.
Another weird thing about the dwarfs, however, is that you get the nagging feeling that when they are shown in closeup, you think that you recognize the actors playing them, but those actors aren’t actual little people.
Snow White and the Huntsman is an expensive piece of a nothing movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“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.”
