Jersey Boys “With a Bullet”
Jun 29th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
JERSEY BOYS is an adaptation of the 2005 award-winning musical on Broadway, it is directed by Clint Eastwood, it stars some of the same actors as were in the play, and it tells the story of the rise and fall and rise of the singing legends, Franki Valli and the Four Seasons.
I think the movie is great, and yet it has been getting mostly negative reviews.
The criticism sometimes that I have read has to do with historical accuracy, such as a song in the movie came out after the year we hear that song in the movie, and it isn’t even a Four Seasons song.
Remember, this is not a documentary. It is the story about four kids who were poor in New Jersey, formed a band, and became wildly successful, selling an estimated 175 million records and in 1990 being inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Their success was due largely to the unmistakable falsetto voice of its lead singer, Franki Valli, and here is just a partial list of their hit songs: “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Candy Girl,” “Dawn (Go Away),” “Ronnie,” “Rag Doll,” “Save It for Me,” “Bye Bye Baby (Baby, Goodbye),” “Let’s Hang On (To What We’ve Got),” “Working My Way Back to You,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,’ and “My Eyes Adored You.”
Granted, many in the audience might not have even been born yet when the group was inducted in the Hall of Fame, but if you were around when they were popular, you are probably humming at least one of those songs right now.
The movie uses a technique also used in the stage production with some of the characters looking into the camera and talking to the audience, and at one point Frankie says, “When everything dropped away and all there was was the music, that was the best.”
Yes, at least two of the members served time in jail for criminal activities before they became famous, and, yes, they knew and were helped in their career by people connected with the Mob.
Christopher Walken has a very memorable role as one of those people, Gyp DeCarlo, and actor Joe Pesci helped them before they all became famous.
JERSEY BOYS Boys enters my list of top movies with a bullet.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Who is Sky Guy
Jun 24th
A graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Tom Vilot is an artist and self-taught software engineer. He has been part of numerous group shows and participated in Boulder’s jurried “Open Studios” two years.
After working in the software industry for almost twenty years, Mr. Vilot decided it was time to merge his two passions: astronomy and kids.
Being the quintessential “kid magnet,” Mr. Vilot has been volunteering at the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, CO., in their K-12 outreach program.
Mr. Vilot studied acting for two years.
He launched SkyGuy.com, a series of short videos answering the many questions he has received from kids while volunteering at Fiske. The project is an abrupt change from his past, throwing himself into a completely new industry and learning all new tools. Once again, he is rapidly teaching himself. This time it is video, lighting, sound, editing and animation.
After working in the software industry for almost twenty years, Mr. Vilot decided it was time to merge his two passions: astronomy and kids.
Being the quintessential “kid magnet,” Mr. Vilot has been volunteering at the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, CO., in their K-12 outreach program.
Mr. Vilot studied acting for two years.
He launched SkyGuy.com, a series of short videos answering the many questions he has received from kids while volunteering at Fiske. The project is an abrupt change from his past, throwing himself into a completely new industry and learning all new tools. Once again, he is rapidly teaching himself. This time it is video, lighting, sound, editing and animation.
“Julie & Julia” Mastering the Art of Fine Filmmaking
Jun 24th
Mastering the Art of Fine Filmmaking
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
JULIE & JULIA tells the story of two women who were both secretaries for U.S. government agencies, who were both married to great guys, and whose lives were both saved by food.
Julia, of course, is the legendary Julia Child, played exquisitely by Meryl Streep, the woman who popularized French cooking for Americans and who was fearless in the kitchen both at home and on the set of her long-running cooking show on television.
Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, is the young woman in New York City who decided in 2002 to change her life by giving herself the challenge of cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in 365 days and writing about her cooking project on the Internet.
Julie says, “Cooking is what I do to get away from what I do all day.”
Julie’s day job is working for a city agency processing claims from victims of 9/11, and her blog became a book which in turn became the basis for half this movie.
The other half is based on Child’s book, My Life in France, and the film switches back and forth between the two stories in a comic telling of two delightful and fascinating lives.
Julia and her husband Paul, played by Stanley Tucci, arrive in Paris in 1949, and in trying to decide what to do with her time, Julia settles on going to cooking school. The scenes of Julia competing with her all-male fellow students are laugh-out-loud funny.
Equally funny are Julie’s attempts to get through all 524 recipes in one year, but not so funny are the strains that it puts on her marriage to her husband Eric, who naturally has to eat everything Julie cooks, but with help from their friends, too, at times.
Yes, there is lots of eating and lots of cooking in this film; so be prepared to be hungry at the end of it, as well as entertained.
Be prepared for pleasant surprises, too, such as Dan Aykroyd’s portrayal of Julia Child on “Saturday Night Live,” which is still hilarious in spite of its disastrous ending.
We see Julie get her book published, and Julia eventually publishes her famous cookbook with two friends, MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING.
JULIE & JULIA is an excellent example of mastering the art of fine filmmaking.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
