Posts tagged drama
Begin Again – Movie Trailer
Jul 21st
The latest film from writer-director John Carney (ONCE), BEGIN AGAIN is a soul-stirring comedy about what happens when lost souls meet and make beautiful music together. Gretta (Keira Knightley) and her long-time boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) are college sweethearts and songwriting partners who decamp for New York when he lands a deal with a major label. But the trappings of his new-found fame soon tempt Dave to stray, and a reeling, lovelorn Gretta is left on her own. Her world takes a turn for the better when Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a disgraced record-label exec, stumbles upon her performing on an East Village stage and is immediately captivated by her raw talent. From this chance encounter emerges an enchanting portrait of a mutually transformative collaboration, set to the soundtrack of a summer in New York City. BEGIN AGAIN is produced and financed by Exclusive Media and produced by Anthony Bregman, Tobin Armbrust and Judd Apatow.
“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.”
The Fault In Our Stars “LOVE STORY for Teenagers”
Jun 12th
(“LOVE STORY for Teenagers”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS takes its title from Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR and not ROMEO AND JULIET, which would be more appropriate, except that this movie comes nowhere near the quality of any Shakespeare work.
In fact, the movie is based on the highly successful novel for young adults by John Green, and keep that in mind if you are any sort of adult other than the “young” kind.
Otherwise, you might be sucked into the story that you have seen many times before and think “Been there, seen that, took out my hanky.”
Shailene Woodley stars as Hazel Grace Lancaster, who is 17 years old and has thyroid cancer, which causes her to wheel around an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes.
However, don’t feel sorry for Hazel, because she certainly doesn’t, and in her narration she says, “Depression is not a side effect of cancer; it’s a side effect of dying.”
We learn that Hazel takes eight prescription drugs three times a day and that support groups are not her “thing,” although she is persuaded to attend one for other teenagers with cancer, because the reason she does anything these days is to make her parents happy.
Hazel’s mother is Frannie, played by Laura Dern.
At the first group meeting, Hazel meets Augustus Waters, played by Ansel Elgort, who takes an immediate interest in Hazel and flirts with her.
Gus used to be a basketball star before he lost his leg to osteosarcoma, and he makes jokes about everything, claiming that he is at group meetings only in support of his best friend, Isaac, who lost an eye to cancer and is in danger of losing his remaining eye.
Hazel and Gus become close friends, avoiding any talk of love, and they exchange their favorite books for the other to read, Hazel’s being AN IMPERIAL AFFLICTION, about a girl with cancer that ends infuriatingly in the middle of a sentence.
Then Gus helps Hazel get a response from the author, Peter Van Houten, an American now living in Amsterdam and played by Willem Dafoe, who responds that if Hazel is ever in Amsterdam to look him up.
And then here come the surprises, right and left, and then the tragedies, up and down.
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is just a LOVE STORY for teenagers.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
