Dan Culberson
Dan Culberson is an author, TV performer, editor and publisher who has been writing about culture, politics and religion since 1994. He was graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in English literature in the Honors Program from the University of Colorado and was president of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He was born in Carmel, CA, but grew up all over the U.S. and Europe, living in Monterey, CA: Medford, OR; Lawton, OK (twice); Pampa, TX; Minot, ND; El Paso, TX; Tacoma, WA; Kennewick, WA; Erlangen, Germany; Lebanon, MO; Colorado Springs, CO (where he attended high school); Boulder, CO (where he attended college and now lives); and Heidelberg while serving in the U.S. Army and Sindelfingen, Germany while on assignment for IBM. He served three years in the U.S. Army, retired from IBM after 25 years with a career in publications and is a writer, editor and publisher who came of age in the Sixties, which he remembers quite well. He was named a Boulder Pacesetter in 1985 by the BOULDER DAILY CAMERA in the first year of that program and was a film reviewer from 1972 to 2014 for newspapers, magazines, radio stations and TV programs.
Homepage: http://c1n.tv
Posts by Dan Culberson
“A Better Life” A Wonderful Film
Jul 21st
“A Wonderful Film”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
A Better Life is a terrific film that deserves as much publicity as it can get, because otherwise audiences will probably overlook it and not give it the attendance it deserves.
It also has a simple story that might not be popular, because it is about the relationship between an undocumented foreigner from Mexico and his teenage son, who live in Los Angeles.
Carlos Galindo has a steady job as a gardener working for another Mexican’s gardening business, and he sleeps on the couch in the living room at home so that his 14-year-old son, Luis, can sleep in the bedroom.
When Carlos finds out that Luis has missed 18 or 19 days of school so far this year, he asks him, “You want to end up like me?” to which Luis answers “No.”
Luis has some resentment toward his father, because he blames Carlos for his mother leaving them, whom Luis never wants to talk about.
Meanwhile, the man for whom Carlos works, Blasco Martinez, wants to retire, and he offers to sell Carlos his beat-up truck so that Carlos can have his own gardening business.
To Carlos, he wouldn’t just be buying a truck. He would be buying the American Dream.
However, not only doesn’t Carlos have the $12,000 that Blasco wants for his truck, but Carlos doesn’t even have a driver’s license, and if he ever gets stopped by the police, he could be deported back to Mexico. That is why Carlos wants to try to stay “invisible.”
Meanwhile, Luis gets suspended from school for fighting, and Carlos is concerned that Luis has a fascination with gangs and might even end up in a gang.
Carlos asks his sister, Anita, for a $12,000 loan, promising to pay the money back and telling her that if it works out, everything is going to change. He won’t have to work on Sunday anymore and can spend more time with Luis, if Luis wants.
Anita loans Carlos the money without telling her husband, who she says is the cheapest man in the world.
So, Carlos buys the truck from Blasco, but his life doesn’t change as he had imagined. Almost immediately, the truck is stolen, and Carlos and Luis have to try to get it back while staying invisible.
A Better Life is a wonderful film.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Horrible Bosses” Great Fun
Jul 13th
“Great Fun”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Horrible Bosses has built right into the title that the bosses in question are much worse than just “bad bosses,” doesn’t it, but the best thing about it is that the movie might just be better and much funnier than you expected it to be.
So, if you have ever had a bad boss or, worse yet, a horrible boss, you owe it to yourself to see this movie and be prepared to laugh your head off.
On the other hand, if you have ever been accused of being a bad boss, or if you think you might have been a bad boss, then you owe it to your employees to see this movie and perhaps learn how to repair the error of your ways.
No, I’ll make it easier for you: Are you now or have you ever been a boss? Then see this movie, even if you have just known a boss, but don’t expect to get any tips from it, either on how to be a bad boss or how to handle a bad boss.
Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis star in the movie, but they are not the bosses of the title. They are the ones who have the bad bosses, who are played by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell, respectively, although you might not recognize Colin Farrell at first.
Early in the movie, Spacey tells Bateman’s character, Nick, “If you want a promotion, you’ve got to earn it.”
And then Spacey does everything in his boss powers to prevent Nick from getting a promotion.
Well, Nick, Dale, and Kurt are friends going back to high school, and they meet regularly for drinks. One night while they are engaged in a mutual commiseration society, they come up with the idea to kill their bosses.
I didn’t say it was a good idea.
They know that they can’t do it themselves without getting caught, and after one hilarious attempt to hire a hit man on the Internet, they end up paying Jamie Foxx in a great performance as their “murder consultant.”
Now, because this is a comedy, you know that everything isn’t going to go as planned, even though the plan seems so simple and even draws from the great mystery writers and also Alfred Hitchcock.
Horrible Bosses is great fun.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Tree of Life” The Film of Pretentiousness
Jun 22nd
“The Film of Pretentiousness”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Tree of Life won the Palme D’or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, which says something more about the French than it does about this film.
Written and directed by Terrence Malick, well-known, reclusive, but slow-working filmmaker, this is only his fifth feature-length film, his first being the 1973 Badlands, which has a cult following, as do most of Malick’s films.
I believe it is safe to say that Malick’s films are an acquired taste, and I found his latest one to be distasteful.
No, “distasteful” is such an ugly word. Let’s just call it boring and pretentious.
The film contains very little dialogue within scenes that are part of what little story there is, and most of the dialogue is voice-over narration, such as when Mrs. O’Brien says at the beginning of the film, “The nuns taught us there were two ways through life–the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.”
Then we see the first of the scenes that will develop this theme, which involve the O’Brien family, Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien, played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, and their three boys, the oldest of whom, Jack, is played by Sean Penn as a grown-up.
Although most of the scenes about the family take place in the 1950s in Texas, sometime in the Sixties Mrs. O’Brien receives a telegram that one of the boys is dead, when he was 19.
So, then we see scenes of grief, hear lots of voice-over spiritual narration, and then we experience a long sequence of images that actually depict the beginning of the cosmos, the planet, the beginnings of life, and, yes, even dinosaurs.
Two women in the theater walked out at this point, before the film got back to the story of the O’Brien family in the Fifties, beginning with the birth of Jack.
Mr. O’Brien is a strict disciplinarian who demands that everyone obey him, but also profess their love for him. He represents nature.
Mrs. O’Brien plays wildly with abandon with the boys when Mr. O’Brien is away on a business trip. She represents grace.
However, the story is weak to begin with, and the film is made even weaker with all the spiritual visual images.
The Tree of Life is the film of pretentiousness.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
