“Australia” Simple Stories Writ Large
Dec 4th
Simple Stories Writ Large
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
AUSTRALIA is the big epic film starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman that was directed by Baz Luhrmann and which will likely remind you of many other movies and possibly annoy you with its many endings.
The difference between all those other movies and this one? All those other movies are stitched together into one movie and relocated Down Under in Australia just before World War II.
The reason there are many endings? All the stories are stitched together, one right after the other, each with its own ending, so that just as you think the movie is over at one satisfying ending, another familiar story begins with the same characters and leading to another ending. More than once.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: Hollywood has run out of ideas. This time, big time.
The first story begins in September 1939 at a cattle station called Faraway Downs in the Outback of Australia. We hear the narration of Nullah, a little boy who says he belongs to no one, because he is a “creamy,” a child of mixed race whose father was white and whose mother is an Aborigine.
Nullah sees cattle being stolen, comes face to face with the body of a murdered man, and then proceeds to tell the story of whom he calls “The strangest woman I’ve ever seen.”
She is Lady Sarah Ashley, and we see her in England complaining that her husband spends too much time in Australia. So, she travels to Australia in order to sell Faraway Downs and return to England.
Then we meet The Drover, whose occupation is to drive cattle from one place to another. He was sent to meet Lady Ashley in Darwin and take her to Faraway Downs.
They “meet cute,” with a lot of cheap laughs. They travel to Faraway Downs, which is no easy task. She learns that her husband has been murdered in a connection to steal her cattle and buy out Faraway Downs by a competing rancher.
Then comes the “Cattle Drive” story in which seven people–Lady Ashley included–drive 1500 head of cattle to Darwin to sell to the Army. If you have seen one cattle-drive story, you have seen this one.
But, wait! There is more. Many more.
AUSTRALIA is nothing but simple stories writ large.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Colorado Magazine December 1st – 7th, 2008
Dec 1st
It’s time now for Colorado Magazine’s 2008 Holiday Television Special with Jann Scott, Colorado’s number 1 TV talk show host. In this episode Jann visits with, Art Cleaners, Perry’s Shoe Shop, The Wild Bird Center in Boulder, Customized Nutrition and Exercise, Jalino’s Pizza, Orchid Pavilion, The Drum Shop and a hotshots movie review by Dan Culberson of the film Zack and Miri all right here, right now, on Colorado Magazine.
Find More Colorado Magazine Episodes Here
“Synecdoche, New York” Magnificent Failure
Nov 27th
Magnificent Failure
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK was written and directed by the extremely “different” Charlie Kaufman, and so you know you are in for something, well, “different” if you see this three-hour film.
Kaufman, of course, previously wrote the 1999 BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, the 2002 ADAPTATION, and the 2004 ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, to give you an idea of what you are in for: quirky, more quirky, and quirkiness to the max.
First of all, the title is a play on Schenectady, New York, where the story opens, but then it gets serious, because “synecdoche” is a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole, the whole is put for a part, and so on in the dictionary definition until you come to “or the name of the material for the thing made (as ‘boards’ for ‘stage’).”
I can imagine that Kaufman read this definition once and came up with the idea for the film, because it is about one man’s attempt to put his whole life into a stage play. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Know what I mean? Get it?
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, whose first name means “warrior” and whose last name signifies the psychological disorder whose sufferers imagine themselves to be dead. Get it?
In case you don’t, at one point he says, “It’s a play about death. Birth. Life. Family. It’s about everything.”
Caden is a small-town theater director with quirky ideas of his own.
When
the film opens, he is directing a production of DEATH OF A SALESMAN, a play about one man’s failure at the end of his life, and Caden casts young people to play Willy Loman and everyone else.
Then Caden wins the MacArthur Award “genius” grant, which gives him enough money he can do anything he wants with, and he starts working on his play “about everything.”
Meanwhile, his wife leaves him and takes their daughter to Berlin with her.
Caden is always having accidents, seeing doctors, and going to the hospital, and there are many funerals he attends.
He gets involved with other women, one of whom owns a house that is always burning–literally.
Years pass, he hires actors to play the actors playing himself and other people in his life. The End.
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK shows that a magnificent failure is still a failure.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
