Posts tagged changes
“The Place Beyond the Pines” a Terrific, Wonderful Drama
Apr 13th
“Terrific, Wonderful Drama”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Place Beyond the Pines is a wonderful drama in three parts about the influence of one generation on the next, or as William Wordsworth put it in “My Heart Leaps Up,” “The child is father of the man.”
The action takes place in Schenectady, New York, and when the movie opens we meet Luke, played by Ryan Gosling, who performs in a traveling circus as a motorcycle stunt daredevil.
One night a young woman named Romina, played by Eva Mendes, approaches him, and Luke recognizes her as the woman he had a fling with the year before when he was in town.
They talk, and Luke gives Romina a ride home, where he tells her that he leaves town the next day and won’t be back for another year.
Well, the next day Luke goes back to Romina’s house to see her, but she is away at work.
The woman who answers the door is holding a baby in her arms, and she tells Luke, “He’s yours. You want to hold him?”
Luke is immediately smitten by this surprise addition to his life, and he makes some dramatic changes because of it.
He quits his job with the circus, stays in town, and determines that he is going to take care of Romina and the baby, who is named Jason.
Unfortunately, Romina, Jason, and her mother are living in the house of Romina’s boyfriend, Kofi, and Kofi doesn’t take kindly to Luke’s sudden appearance and desires.
Meanwhile, Luke meets a man named Robin, who has a small mechanic shop out in the woods, and he gets a job working for Robin, which also gives Luke a place to stay.
Robin also gives Luke the idea for how Luke can make some fast money to give to Romina and Jason, but it leads to disastrous results.
Then we meet Avery, played by Bradley Cooper, who is a rookie policeman in Schenectady, and his first encounter with Luke makes Avery a hero in the eyes of his fellow policemen, which leads to ill-fated consequences.
Avery has a wife, Jennifer, played by Rose Byrne, and a young baby named AJ.
Then the movie shifts 15 years later to the two teenage boys, Jason and AJ.
The Place Beyond the Pines is a terrific film, and I cannot praise it enough.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Ferrari 458 Spider Display at the 2013 Denver Auto Show
Mar 23rd
An effortless marriage of technology, design and beauty, it is also the first car ever to combine a mid-rear engine with a retractable folding hard top that delivers both unprecedented in-cabin comfort when closed and unparalleled Spider performance.
A story that changes with the times but which also continues a glorious tradition founded in great part on fabulous open-top cars designed for hot sunny days: Spiders, Cabriolets and Barchettas. All cars that are spectacularly wonderful to drive because having just the open sky above you as you grip the wheel has a unique and truly unforgettable emotional impact: hearing the engine’s soundtrack, feeling the car’s speed, having the perfumes of the world swirl around you.
The Ferrari 458 Spider offers a whole new set of emotions and adds a genuine sense of sportiness and power to weekend trips à deux. A clever mix of sounds supplied by the car’s 570 horsepower incorporates just the right notes, turning it into music to your ears: music that acts as a brilliant soundtrack not only to the pleasure of driving a Prancing Horse car but in-car chat.
“Rust and Bone” Is French Murkiness
Jan 29th
“French Murkiness”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Rust and Bone is a French film, and sometimes that is all that needs to be said, but in this case that describes only half of it.
It stars Marion Cotillard, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 2007 La Vie en Rose, in which she portrayed French songstress Edith Piaf.
In this film, she plays an orca trainer at a Marineland in the south of France who has a tragic accident.
When the film opens, we see a man named Ali traveling with his five-year-old son, Sam, on a train to southern France.
Once they arrive, they go to his sister’s house, whom he hasn’t seen in five years, where she is living with another man, Richard.
When Anna gets home from work as a store clerk, Richard says to her, “Some reunion. Not kissing your brother?”
We don’t know the reason that Ali and Sam have moved to stay with Anna and Richard, but it could very well be that Ali has fallen on hard times.
Ali gets a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, and one night he meets Stephanie, rescuing her from a fight and afterwards taking her back to her home, where he treats his bloodied hands by putting them in ice.
Then Stephanie has an accident where she works at Marineland, and she loses both her legs below the knees.
About four months later, she calls Ali, and he comes to visit her. She now gets around by a wheelchair, and Ali takes her out to the beach, where he goes swimming and convinces her to go swimming, too.
So, the rest of the film is about the growing relationship between these two people. She is physically crippled, and he is emotionally crippled.
Ali changes jobs, and eventually he makes extra money by fighting in underground kickboxing fights, which he is successful at and which fascinates Stephanie.
Stephanie gets some artificial legs and is able to get around more easily, but Ali gets into trouble where he is working as a security guard, and he has to leave town.
However, even though Cotillard has received praise for this film, you might ask what the point is, especially with the phony ending.
Rust and Bone might be to your liking, or you might think it is just French murkiness.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”