Posts tagged Academy Award
“The Blind Side” Watch Your Blind Side
Nov 25th
Watch Your Blind Side
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE BLIND SIDE tells the true-life story of how Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher was a homeless teenager who was taken in by a wealthy Memphis family and helped to get into college.
Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the woman who was the driving force behind this remarkable story, and she gives a performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination and could just as easily win next year for Best Actress.
Tim McGraw plays Sean Tuohy, Leigh Anne’s husband, and one night the family is out driving in the rain when they spot Michael walking along the road. Leigh Anne’s two children know who he is, because he attends the same school they do, and so Leigh Anne makes Sean stop, and she gets out to ask Michael if he has a place to stay that night, adding, “Don’t you lie to me.”
As Sean and his son and daughter watch, Sean says, “I’ve seen that look many times. She’s about to get her way.”
So, the Tuohys take “Big Mike,” as he is called at school, home with them and let him sleep overnight on the couch, which leads to a much longer relationship and the basis for this heartwarming, inspirational, and tearful movie.
Because of Big Mike’s size, he is a natural to try out for the school’s football team, but he is not a natural at playing the game, and some of the humor in the story comes from the scenes of coaching and working with the Tuohy’s son, Sean Jr., who knows the game, but is too small himself to play.
However, it is Leigh Anne who teaches Michael the fundamental reason for playing left offensive tackle, which is the basis for the title of the film. She says that Michael has to protect the quarterback’s blind side from an onrushing defensive player and that he should think of the quarterback as he does his new family: When he is protecting the quarterback, he is protecting them.
Everybody in the family pitches in to help Michael with his grades, too, so that he can remain eligible to play, and Leigh Anne even hires a tutor for him to help him get a scholarship for college.
THE BLIND SIDE is so good that you will need to watch your own emotional blind side.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Amelia” You Won’t Be Enthralled
Oct 29th
You Won’t Be Enthralled
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
AMELIA is the story of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to perform a number of flying accomplishments in the Twenties and Thirties, and she is played stunningly by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank.
Unfortunately, if the film were a jet airplane, it would have to be called a flameout, whereas everyone involved with it and many in the audience were hoping that it would soar to wonderful and exiting heights.
Part of the reason is that we know how the story ends, and so there is hardly any suspense at all.
Another part is the construction of the film. It jumps back and forth in time and setting without warning, so that the audience is disoriented along with being dissatisfied.
As a matter of fact, the opening scene takes place in June 1937 in Miami, Florida, at the beginning of Earhart’s ill-fated attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world.
Then we jump back to April 1928 in New York City and see the preparations for Earhart’s first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, in which she didn’t fly the airplane, but was just a passenger, although she was named the “commander”
of the flight over two men who did the actual flying.
Now, some of these jumps are identified by titles for the audience, but others aren’t, and scenes from Earhart’s final flight keep being thrown into the somewhat chronological story at this point.
We see Earhart’s relationship with publisher and promoter George Putnam, played by Richard Gere, and the first time he asks her to marry him, she says, “I don’t want to get married, George. I’m not the marrying kind.”
However, they do get married, only without the part in the marriage vows about “obey.” Earhart says that she can’t promise that.
We also see Earhart’s relationship with flying instructor Gene Vidal, played by Ewan McGregor, the father of Gore Vidal, who appears in the film as a young boy.
Also, many shots of beautiful scenery are thrown in that have nothing to do with the story but just look pretty.
All in all, the film is too melodramatic, but without much drama and certainly without any suspense.
AMELIA might teach you something you didn’t know about Earhart’s life, but you won’t be enthralled with it, whereas I wanted to be enthralled.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Capitalism: A Love Story” How We Got Here
Oct 15th
How We Got Here
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is the latest film by Michael Moore, the Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, and if you know anything about Moore, you can guess that this very good film will be entertaining and informative and that the title is ironic.
By that I don’t mean just the part about “Love Story,” but also the part about “Capitalism,” which in the United States has turned our economic system into something more resembling feudalism in the Middle Ages, but with modern corporations taking the place of lords and the nobility.
In fact, at one point Moore talks about insurance policies that some corporations take out on their employees, naming the corporation as beneficiary if an employee should die, and in the business these are known as “dead peasants”
policies.
Let me emphasize that: Corporations refer to their employees as “peasants.”
At another point, Moore says, “This is democracy, a system of taking and giving–mostly taking.”
The movie opens with an unusual request that certain people should leave the auditorium before the movie even starts, because what they are about to see might be too much for them.
Then we see a nice comparison between the Roman Empire and what caused its downfall with present-day United States, followed by disturbing videos shot during the forced evictions of homeowners from their homes.
We then get a history lesson of the career of Ronald Reagan, the star of B movies before he became a television spokesman for corporate greed and then continued as a spokesman for corporate greed after becoming president.
Moore says that the country was run by corporations and it was done for sort-term profits and destroying the unions, and we see and hear how corporations and banks wanted to remake America to serve them instead of the people.
The messages and examples are so upsetting that you would cry if you weren’t laughing at Moore’s commentary and his filmmaking tactics for making his points.
In the end, however, the film is very patriotic, and you will cry for joy at the hope that still remains.
However, be sure to stay for the closing credits to learn more interesting details about information in the film.
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is an eye-opening and entertaining lesson in where we are and how we got here.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”