“Secretariat” Greatest Racehorse That Ever Lived
Oct 14th
“Greatest Racehorse That Ever Lived”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SECRETARIAT is based on a real-life racehorse, a real-life person, and a real-life series of events, and even though everyone in the audience already knows the ending going in, the movie is still an uplifting and inspirational experience to see.
After all, it isn’t just little girls who love horses and who love good stories about horses, right?
The movie begins in 1969 in Denver, and we meet a housewife and her family. She is Penny Chenery, played by Diane Lane, and she receives a phone call that her mother has died.
The whole family drives to Virginia for the funeral, where we learn that Penny’s father has been ill for some time and the horse farm he owns has been losing money “hand over fist.”
Penny sends her family back home to Denver, and she stays behind to help out on the farm and try to make it solvent again.
She fires the horse trainer, because he has been cheating the farm, and she tracks down Lucien Laurin, a French Canadian who has been trying to retire and who is played wonderfully by John Malkovich.
Penny offers Lucien the job of being her horse trainer, but he turns her down, saying that he doesn’t even follow racing anymore.
However, when Penny tells him that the farm is about to acquire a newborn foal that was sired by Bold Ruler, a famous racehorse, Lucien says, “Call me when she drops her foal.”
Of course, you can guess the rest, which, as they say, is history, and in this case is actually true, although some minor details have been altered or omitted in order to make the movie tighter, more exciting, and even better.
The Triple Crown is Thoroughbred horseracing’s greatest achievement, which is unofficially awarded a horse that wins the three most prestigious races in one season, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
Before Secretariat did so in 1973, no horse had won the Triple Crown since Citation won it in 1948, 25 years earlier, and Secretariat still owns the best winning time in two of those races, a remarkable achievement for a horse whose sire had a reputation for speed, but not for stamina.
SECRETARIAT is a marvelous film about a horse that is still known as the greatest racehorse that ever lived.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Secretariat – Movie Trailer
Oct 8th
Based on the Novel “Secretariat: The Making of a Champion” By William Nack, Secretariat chronicles the spectacular journey of the 1973 Triple Crown winner. Housewife and mother Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) agrees to take over her ailing father’s Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. Against all odds, Chenery-with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich)-manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and what may be the greatest racehorse of all time.
“The Social Network” Are We Too Linked In?
Oct 6th
“Are We Too Linked In?”
THE SOCIAL NETWORK is the story of the creation of Facebook.com and its aftermath, and if you don’t know what Facebook is, what planet have you been living on for the past six or seven years?
Although it isn’t a documentary, the film is based on the 2009 book by Ben Mezrich, THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES: THE FOUNDING OF FACEBOOK, A TALE OF SEX, MONEY, GENIUS, AND BETRAYAL, which pretty much describes the story, but even the book contains a lengthy disclaimer admitting it contains “fudged facts” for the benefit of a good story.
At any rate, David Fincher directed, Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay, and Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard drop-out who created the world’s most popular social-networking Internet Website and who has been called the world’s youngest billionaire.
And if we can believe the book, the movie, and many other corroborating accounts, the genesis for Facebook occurred in 2003 when Zuckerberg was a geeky sophomore and got dumped by his girlfriend.
What happened next in the life of this socially inept computer genius is the stuff of this marvelous film and the events that affected his career and now is a part of half-a-billion users worldwide.
Imagine the box-office results if every Facebook user wants to see this film.
Stung by his girlfriend’s rejection, Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm room, blogs about the breakup, and then fueled by quite a few beers, hacks into the servers of the Harvard computer system, downloads photos of coeds, and then creates the Facemash domain, which asks visitors to identify which of two girls is “hotter.”
The response is so successful that it crashes the Harvard.edu Website.
Enter the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. They have had an idea for a Harvard social-network site called “The Harvard Connection,” and they approach Zuckerberg to build it for them. The rest, as they say, as does the subtitle of the source book, is “sex, money, genius, and betrayal.”
Zuckerberg’s best friend, initial backer, and original partner in his vision to expand a computer social network beyond Harvard is Eduardo Saverin, and the film consists of interlocking scenes of the two lawsuits against Zuckerberg and flashbacks to the events.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK brings to mind the question, “Are we too linked in to the Internet and modern technology?”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
