Posts tagged Robert Redford
“All Is Lost” Is Almost Hopeless
Nov 23rd
“Almost Hopeless”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
All Is Lost stars Robert Redford and was made from a script nearly free of dialogue and only 32 pages long.
However, that script could have been shortened to only one sentence: “A man is lost at sea all alone on a small crippled sailboat and struggles to survive.”
When the movie opens, we hear Redford’s voice say, “I tried to be true. I tried to be right. But I wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
Later on, we will learn the significance of those words and where they appear in the story, but first we see a title that says, “8 Days Earlier,” and the story begins.
Called only “Our Man” in the credits, Redford is asleep below deck on his 39-foot yacht when he is awakened by a loud noise and sees water coming into the cabin.
His boat has struck a floating cargo shipping container hard enough to damage both his boat and the container, which is now spilling its contents into the ocean.
And then we watch him struggle to survive and begin to consider our own mortality as surely as he considers his own.
He tries to repair the hole in the boat as best he can, pumps the water out of the cabin and cleans and dries it.
He dries and cleans his radio, finds a signal, and sends out the message, “This is the Virginia Jean with an SOS call. Over,” but he gets no response.
When a storm comes, he tries to secure everything aboard and puts on his gear for wet weather, but he gets knocked overboard.
His boat gets damaged even more, and later he also suffers a nasty gash to his forehead.
With water coming into the boat even more now, he gets his life raft, inflates it, and secures it to the boat and gets ready to abandon ship.
The water in the cabin is now up to his chest, and he retrieves everything he believes he will need, puts it all in the covered life boat, and climbs into it.
One of the items is a sextant, which is still in its box, appears to have been a gift, and he has to read the instructions on how to use it, so that he can plot his position on his navigation map.
All Is Lost is almost hopeless.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
All Is Lost – Movie Trailer
Nov 17th
Academy Award winner Robert Redford stars in ‘All Is Lost’, an open-water thriller about one man’s battle for survival against the elements after his sailboat is destroyed at sea. Written and directed by Academy Award nominee J.C. Chandor (‘Margin Call’) with a musical score by Alex Ebert (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros), the film is a gripping, visceral and powerfully moving tribute to ingenuity and resilience. Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner’s intuition, and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest.
Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.
The Company You Keep – Movie Trailer
Apr 28th
Jim Grant (Robert Redford) is a public interest lawyer and single father raising his daughter in the tranquil suburbs of Albany, New York. Grant’s world is turned upside down,when a brash young reporter named Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) exposes his true identity as a former 1970s antiwar radical fugitive wanted for murder. After living for more than 30 years underground, Grant must now go on the run. With the FBI in hot pursuit, he sets off on a cross-country journey to track down the one person that can clear his name.
Shepard knows the significance of the national news story he has exposed and, for a journalist, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Hell-bent on making a name for himself, he is willing to stop at nothing to capitalize on it. He digs deep into Grant’s past. Despite warnings from his editor and threats from the FBI, Shepard relentlessly tracks Grant across the country.
As Grant reopens old wounds and reconnects with former members of his antiwar group, the Weather Underground, Shepard realizes something about this man is just not adding up. With the FBI closing in, Shepard uncovers the shocking secrets Grant has been keeping for the past three decades. As Grant and Shepard come face to face in the wilderness of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, they each must come to terms with who they really are.
One of Hollywood’s most acclaimed filmmakers and actors, Oscar®- winning director Robert Redford (Ordinary People; Quiz Show; The Sting) directs and heads an all-star ensemble that includes Shia LaBeouf (Transformers: Dark of the Moon) as determined reporter Ben Shepard, and Academy Award®-winner Julie Christie (Red Riding Hood) as Mimi Lurie, the woman inescapably linked to Grant’s past and his future. The cast also includes various figures tied to Grant’s previous life as an antiwar radical: Sam Elliot (Up In The Air) as Mimi Lurie’s current partner, Mac McLeod; Oscar®-nominee Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) as respected history professor Jed Lewis; Oscar®-nominee, Nick Nolte (Warrior) as the ever-loyal Donal; and Oscar®-winner Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise; Dead Man Walking) as housewife-cum-fugitive, Sharon Solarz, whose dramatic arrest sets the story in motion.
Additional cast members include: Oscar® winner,Chris Cooper (Adaptation) as Grant’s brother, Daniel Sloan; Jackie Evancho (America’s Got Talent) as Grant’s daughter, Isabel; Golden Globe nominee Brendan Gleeson (The Guard; In Bruges) as Henry Osborne, a retired police chief harboring secrets of his own; Brit Marling (Another Earth; Sound of My Voice) as Osborne’s daughter, Rebecca; Oscar® nominee Anna Kendrick (50/50; Up in the Air) as Diana, a junior FBI agent; Oscar® nominee Stanley Tucci (The Hunger Games) as Shepard’s editor, Ray Fuller; and Oscar® nominee Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow) as Cornelius, a senior FBI agent determined to bring Grant to justice.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP is based on the novel by Neil Gordon and adapted for the screen by Lem Dobbs (Haywire). The film is directed by Robert Redford. It is produced by Academy Award® winner Nicolas Chartier (The Hurt Locker), Robert Redford and Bill Holderman (The Conspirator; Lions for Lambs). The executive producers are Craig J. Flores (Immortals) and Shawn Williamson (50/50).