Posts tagged Special Interest
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.
“Tim’s Vermeer” Fascinating
Mar 19th
“Fascinating”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
TIM’S VERMEER is an absolutely fascinating documentary of how Tim Jenison went to all the time, trouble, and expense of investigating and eventually reproducing one of the works of art of 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.
Vermeer was not widely appreciated in his own time, and authorities have proclaimed that he painted only between 30 and 35 works, but also that he was one of the greatest painters of all time because of his microscopic observation of objects and meticulous depiction of gradation of daylight on varied shapes and surfaces.
His paintings show details and perspectives found in photographs, and Jenison believes that Vermeer could have used a camera obscura to make his paintings, which is Latin for “dark chamber” and is a darkened enclosure with a pinhole on one side through which light enters to form an image of the outside objects on the opposite surface.
Jenison asks, “How did Vermeer do it?” and decides that he is going to paint a Vermeer even though it seems impossible and Jenison is not a painter, but is an inventor.
So, Jenison went around the world to study Vermeer’s paintings, which he says was a “revelation,” and he realized that Vermeer could have used a small mirror to paint his pictures, which allowed him to match colors perfectly.
Jenison demonstrates his theory to Martin Mull, an entertainer and artist in his own right, and Mull is impressed with what Jenison demonstrates.
Then Jenison decides to reproduce a painting by Vermeer called “The Music Lesson,” which is owned by Queen Elizabeth in England, saying that the process is objective and any painter who uses it would get the same result.
He built the room in the painting himself in 213 working days in a warehouse and says that he wasn’t trying to make the painting look like a Vermeer, but it was looking like a Vermeer.
We see Jenison at work day by day, and he says that the project is a lot like watching paint dry, which implies that it is boring, but watching this documentary is anything but boring.
At one point Jenison was ready to quit, but because a film was being made, he completed the painting.
TIM’S VERMEER, written and narrated by Penn Jillette, directed by partner Teller, is magic to watch.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
