Posts tagged Ron Howard
“Rush” about Two Beautiful Drivers
Oct 6th
“Two Beautiful Drivers”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Rush is the latest film from Ron Howard, maker of many successful films, and it is about the 1976 Formula 1 championship race, which was notable because of the closeness of the race and the rivalry between the two competing drivers on different teams, James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
The races lasted all year long, and the championship that year came down to the final race held in Japan.
However, that year the intense race for the championship was unique in what happened in August to Lauda, the 1975 world champion.
Chris Hemsworth plays Hunt, the flamboyant playboy driver from England, and Daniel Bruhl plays Lauda, the methodical brilliant technician from Austria, who was a genius at setting up his car for a race.
The two drivers met in 1970 when they were both driving Formula 3 races, and Hunt tells his current girlfriend, “The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel.”
However, they both want to move up and drive the more prestigious, more glamorous, and more dangerous Formula 1 race cars, and because of his family background, Lauda gets a ride first with the successful Ferrari team.
Then Hunt quickly follows by signing with the McLaren team, and the race to the top of their sport is on.
Then the movie starts following each race in 1976, and with beautiful cinematography and excellent camera work we get a terrific feel for how tight, how dangerous, and how exciting Formula 1 racing is.
In the meantime, we meet the love interests of the two drivers, Suzy, played by Olivia Wilde, whom Hunt beds and weds, and Marlene, who eventually becomes Lauda’s wife.
Incidentally, there is a hitchhiking scene with Lauda and Marlene that is reminiscent of the hitchhiking scene in the 1934 It Happened One Night, but with a much funnier ending.
Hunt begins to have trouble at home as well as on the racetracks, and Lauda is affected by marriage, because he believes that “happiness is the enemy” and now he has something to lose, which is a distraction while he is racing.
And then comes the race in August in Germany which changes everything for both drivers.
By the way, you don’t have to be a racing fan to enjoy this tremendous film.
Rush is about not one, but two beautiful drivers.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Rush – Movie Trailer
Sep 29th
Two-time Academy Award (R) winner Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon) teams once again with two-time Academy Award (R)-nominated writer Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen) on Rush, a spectacular big-screen re-creation of the merciless and legendary 1970s Formula 1 rivalry between gifted English playboy James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth of The Avengers, Thor) and his disciplined Austrian opponent, Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl of Inglourious Basterds, The Bourne Ultimatum).
“Angels & Demons” Leaves Questions Unanswered
May 20th
Leaves Questions Unanswered
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
ANGELS & DEMONS is the much-anticipated follow-up to the highly successful and highly controversial 2006 THE DA VINCI CODE, and although it is entertaining, it is less satisfying.
The reason I say “follow-up” instead of “sequel” is that even though the story is identified as taking place after the events in the first film, the novel by Dan Brown on which this film is based was published three years before the novel of THE DA VINCI CODE was published.
The story begins with the death of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the Cardinals of the Church must choose the next Pope from among them to lead the world’s one billion Catholics.
Then we switch to the CERN Laboratory in Switzerland where the world’s largest particle collider is being used in an experiment to create antimatter.
The experiment succeeds, but one of the scientists is murdered and the antimatter is stolen.
Professor Robert Langdon, again played by Tom Hanks as the professor of symbology at Harvard University but without the ugly haircut this time, is summoned to the Vatican in Rome, because the four Cardinals who were favored for one of them to be chosen as the next Pope have been kidnaped by a group identifying themselves as the Illuminati, saying that they will kill one of the Cardinals every hour leading up to midnight, when they will destroy the Vatican with the stolen antimatter.
Langdon explains that the Illuminati is a secret organization dedicated to science and the search for truth, and when the head of the Vatican police asks Langdon, “Are you anti-Catholic, Professor Langdon?” Langdon answers, “No, I’m anti-vandalism.”
Now, the threat note from the kidnapers contains clues to where each of the Cardinals will be murdered, and so Langdon has to decipher the clues so that they can prevent their death.
And accompanying Langdon and the Vatican police is a beautiful scientist from the CERN Laboratory who can defuse the antimatter “bomb” if they can find if before its battery runs down and it explodes.
Confusing? Yes. Complicated? You bet. At one point I wrote in my notes, “What’s going on?”
The biggest question to ask ourselves, however, is “Why can’t science and religion just get along?”
ANGELS & DEMONS is entertaining, but it leaves too many questions unanswered.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
