Posts tagged Internet
“Horrible Bosses” Great Fun
Jul 13th
“Great Fun”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Horrible Bosses has built right into the title that the bosses in question are much worse than just “bad bosses,” doesn’t it, but the best thing about it is that the movie might just be better and much funnier than you expected it to be.
So, if you have ever had a bad boss or, worse yet, a horrible boss, you owe it to yourself to see this movie and be prepared to laugh your head off.
On the other hand, if you have ever been accused of being a bad boss, or if you think you might have been a bad boss, then you owe it to your employees to see this movie and perhaps learn how to repair the error of your ways.
No, I’ll make it easier for you: Are you now or have you ever been a boss? Then see this movie, even if you have just known a boss, but don’t expect to get any tips from it, either on how to be a bad boss or how to handle a bad boss.
Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis star in the movie, but they are not the bosses of the title. They are the ones who have the bad bosses, who are played by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell, respectively, although you might not recognize Colin Farrell at first.
Early in the movie, Spacey tells Bateman’s character, Nick, “If you want a promotion, you’ve got to earn it.”
And then Spacey does everything in his boss powers to prevent Nick from getting a promotion.
Well, Nick, Dale, and Kurt are friends going back to high school, and they meet regularly for drinks. One night while they are engaged in a mutual commiseration society, they come up with the idea to kill their bosses.
I didn’t say it was a good idea.
They know that they can’t do it themselves without getting caught, and after one hilarious attempt to hire a hit man on the Internet, they end up paying Jamie Foxx in a great performance as their “murder consultant.”
Now, because this is a comedy, you know that everything isn’t going to go as planned, even though the plan seems so simple and even draws from the great mystery writers and also Alfred Hitchcock.
Horrible Bosses is great fun.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Bridesmaids” All Very Funny
May 19th
Bridesmaids is one of the funniest movies you will ever see if you are a gal and also one of the funniest movies you will ever see if you are a guy, because contrary to what you might think at first glance, it is definitely not a “chick flick.”
In other words, it is not rated “R” for “Romance.”
No, if anything, it is rated “R” for raunchy, ribaldry, repartee, regale, revelry, romping, roughhousing, rattlebrain, roguery, rascality, ridiculing, razzing, raillery, ragging, and ribbing, not to mention rude. Kristen Wiig stars as
Annie, and Maya Rudolph plays Lillian, Annie’s best friend, who is getting married.
So, Lillian asks Annie to be her maid of honor and to handle all the duties that a maid of honor takes care of, which Annie enthusiastically agrees to do.
Unfortunately, Annie doesn’t have any experience with being a maid of honor, and she has to look up what the duties are on the Internet.
In fact, Annie’s own boyfriend recently left her, and although she works selling rings in a store, her sales technique leaves a lot to be desired. She tells one couple who want to buy wedding rings, “You cannot trust anybody, ever.”
Then Annie meets Helen, one of the other bridesmaids, whose husband is very wealthy and who is very competitive. At the engagement party, Annie and Helen get into a “dueling speeches” contest trying to outdo each other, which escalates into a “dueling songs” contest.
Lillian asks Annie to hang out with Helen just once, hoping that they will become friends, and so they arrange to meet for tennis at Helen’s country club, but before they start playing, they can’t resist getting into a “dueling philosophies” contest, and the tennis itself quickly becomes a “dueling tennis” contest.
One of the other bridesmaids is Megan, and to say that she is unique would be stating the obvious. She is overweight, but completely unselfconscious about it, she is not afraid to say anything or to do anything in public, and she does.
Meanwhile, there is a policeman that Annie keeps having encounters with, some public and some private, and there is an especially funny scene when Annie tries to get arrested because she wants the policeman to help her.
Bridesmaids is all this and very much more, and all very funny.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Social Network” Are We Too Linked In?
Oct 6th
“Are We Too Linked In?”
THE SOCIAL NETWORK is the story of the creation of Facebook.com and its aftermath, and if you don’t know what Facebook is, what planet have you been living on for the past six or seven years?
Although it isn’t a documentary, the film is based on the 2009 book by Ben Mezrich, THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES: THE FOUNDING OF FACEBOOK, A TALE OF SEX, MONEY, GENIUS, AND BETRAYAL, which pretty much describes the story, but even the book contains a lengthy disclaimer admitting it contains “fudged facts” for the benefit of a good story.
At any rate, David Fincher directed, Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay, and Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard drop-out who created the world’s most popular social-networking Internet Website and who has been called the world’s youngest billionaire.
And if we can believe the book, the movie, and many other corroborating accounts, the genesis for Facebook occurred in 2003 when Zuckerberg was a geeky sophomore and got dumped by his girlfriend.
What happened next in the life of this socially inept computer genius is the stuff of this marvelous film and the events that affected his career and now is a part of half-a-billion users worldwide.
Imagine the box-office results if every Facebook user wants to see this film.
Stung by his girlfriend’s rejection, Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm room, blogs about the breakup, and then fueled by quite a few beers, hacks into the servers of the Harvard computer system, downloads photos of coeds, and then creates the Facemash domain, which asks visitors to identify which of two girls is “hotter.”
The response is so successful that it crashes the Harvard.edu Website.
Enter the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. They have had an idea for a Harvard social-network site called “The Harvard Connection,” and they approach Zuckerberg to build it for them. The rest, as they say, as does the subtitle of the source book, is “sex, money, genius, and betrayal.”
Zuckerberg’s best friend, initial backer, and original partner in his vision to expand a computer social network beyond Harvard is Eduardo Saverin, and the film consists of interlocking scenes of the two lawsuits against Zuckerberg and flashbacks to the events.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK brings to mind the question, “Are we too linked in to the Internet and modern technology?”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”