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
“127 Hours” Don’t Try This on Your Own
Feb 2nd
“Don’t Try This on Your Own”
127 HOURS received a number of Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Actor for its star, James Franco.
Franco, of course, plays Aron Ralston, the hiker who in 2003 was hiking by himself in a remote area in Utah when his right arm got pinned underneath a boulder, which he wrote about in his book, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE.
The most interesting part of the story, of course, is that after failing for days to be able to dislodge the boulder, Ralston amputated his arm with a small knife in order to save himself from dying.
So, if you already know the whole story, you might think, why bother seeing this movie?
Well, because of all those Academy Award nominations, of course, and the way that the story is told on screen by director Danny Boyle.
The story begins on a Saturday with Ralston arriving in the area where he is going to start hiking.
He encounters two young women who are lost, and he tells them how to find the place they are looking for, but they look at him with suspicion.
Realizing why, Ralston removes the bandanna from his face and says, “I’m only a psychopath on weekdays. Today is Saturday.”
While the three of them spend some time together, Ralston tells them that he is an engineer, but hiking in areas like this is what he really wants to do, and he considers this his second home.
The girls invite Ralston to a party the next night at the place where they are staying, they say goodbye, and then the interesting part of the story begins.
Ralston falls in a crevice, and a large boulder dislodges and traps his arm against the rock wall.
The girls are out of shouting distance at this point, and now, you might ask, how can the story be interesting for the rest of the movie?
It might not be if the rest consisted of just grimacing, struggling, frustration, more struggling, more grimacing, even more struggling, and even more grimacing, but don’t forget all those Academy Award nominations and the talents of the writers, director, and actor.
127 HOURS is worth all the awards it receives, but don’t try this on your own.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Country Strong” Country Cliche
Jan 27th
“Country Cliche”
COUNTRY STRONG is the story of a six-time, Grammy-winning, country-music superstar who starts off the movie in rehab for alcohol addiction, and thus the audience thinks, “So, what else is new?”
Unfortunately, that comment can be applied to the whole movie, as well.
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Kelly Canter, and we are told that she fell off the stage the year before in Dallas at her previous concert when she was drunk, disorderly, and pregnant.
Well, Kelly has become close friends with one of her sponsors in rehab, Beau Hutton, who is also a country-music singer and songwriter, but he is happy to perform just at local bars and clubs.
Then James shows up to get Kelly out of rehab a month early in order to start performing again. James is Kelly’s husband and manager, he is played by Tim McGraw, whose name country-music fans might recognize, and yet he is the only experienced professional singer who doesn’t sing any songs in the movie.
At one point, Kelly says to James, “I’m sorry about Dallas. We should talk about it sometime.”
Unfortunately, they don’t talk about it, and if they had, this might have been a better movie, but at least the music is pretty good.
Kelly wants to give Beau a break and let him be the opening act for her comeback tour, but James–in addition to being suspicious about Beau–has a new singer in mind to open for Kelly, a young and pretty beauty winner named Chiles Stanton, who is so new in the business that she gets stage fright and freezes up during her chance to audition for James.
Well, you can see that this story is headed for a love triangle if ever there was one, or more likely a love rectangle, and a square one at that.
So, there are the obligatory stops and starts and stops and restarts on Kelly’s comeback tour that James has lined up for her, which of course either helps or hurts the chances of Beau and Chiles to become successful and fan favorites.
In addition, there are the obligatory advances and setbacks in the love aspects of the characters, not unlike what the stories of most country songs say in music.
COUNTRY STRONG is more like “Country Cliche,” but at least the music is pretty good.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Blue Valentine” Biggest Disappointment
Jan 19th
“Biggest Disappointment”
BLUE VALENTINE is a searing look at the rise and fall of a short-lived marriage, and although it has received a lot of praise for its excellence, it just might be a big disappointment to you.
Ryan Gosling plays Dean, and Michelle Williams plays Cindy, and we watch them in scenes of their present-day marriage, as well as scenes of when they first met and fell in love about six years earlier, but in distracting jump cuts back and forth instead of in chronological order.
In fact, this film looks as if the filmmakers finished making the film chronologically and then decided that it was so bad that in order to make it more interesting, they reedited it and rearranged all the scenes to be out of chronological order.
Unfortunately, that only made it worse.
The film begins in the present, Dean and Cindy have a little five-year-old daughter named Frankie, and a family crisis occurs when their dog runs away.
Dean tells Frankie that maybe the dog moved out to Hollywood to become a movie dog, and then they take Frankie to stay with Cindy’s parents for a reason that we don’t know until later.
Then we get a time switch to six years earlier and see Dean working for a moving company and moving an old man named Walter out of his apartment and into an assisted-living home.
Back in the present, Dean tells Cindy, “We’ve got to get out of this house.”
This is the reason they took Frankie to Cindy’s parents, and they book a night in the Future Room of a theme motel, where they have a night of drinking and sexual carousing.
And then it is back and forth to their meeting, falling in love, a nasty encounter with Cindy’s old boyfriend, having dinner at the home of Cindy’s parents, as well as what happens to them after their night in the Future Room.
In the present, Dean is a free-lance painter, a job he admits that he likes because he can start drinking at 8 o’clock. In other words, Dean doesn’t have any big ambitions.
Cindy, on the other hand, works as a nurse and wants to become a doctor.
BLUE VALENTINE is a film I was looking forward to, but so far it is the biggest disappointment of the year.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
