Posts tagged J.K. Simmons
“Up In The Air” One Perfect Movie
Dec 23rd
One Perfect Movie
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
UP IN THE AIR is a delightful film about a very undelightful subject: firing people from their jobs.
Written and directed by Jason Reitman, who previously made the 2006 THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and the 2007 JUNO, this film has already won some awards and is sure to win many more.
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a “termination engineer” based out of Omaha, Nebraska, who flies all over the country to fire people whose own bosses don’t want to do it themselves.
In a voice-over narration, Bingham says, “Last year I spent 322 days on the road, which means that I had to spend 43 miserable days at home.”
Yes, Bingham loves to travel, which he has developed into a science of efficiency, and he doesn’t spend a nickel if he can help it, unless it adds to his frequent-flyer miles. He wants to hit 10 million miles and become one of only seven people to have reached that prestigious mark.
However, Bingham encounters an obstacle to his plans the next time he goes home and sees his boss, played by Jason Bateman, at the company that employs him.
His boss has hired Natalie Keener, a young efficiency expert fresh out of college, and she has come up with a way that the company doesn’t have to have
23 people on the road at least 250 days a year.
Yes, fire people long-distance by using videoconferencing to give them the bad news.
Of course, Bingham is against this way of working, and their boss tells him to take Natalie out on the road with him to show her the ropes of flying and of firing people face-to-face.
In the meantime, Bingham has met another frequent flyer on the road working for another company, and they try to arrange their schedules so that they can meet in the same city occasionally and share a hotel room together, if you catch my drift.
As another subplot, Bingham’s sister is getting married, and he has been given the task of taking a large cutout photo of the couple with him on his travels and photographing the cutout in front of various landmarks.
UP IN THE AIR is smart, it is funny, it is thoughtful, Clooney is terrific, and it is one perfect movie up in the air or on the ground.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Up in the Air – Movie Trailer
Dec 22nd
Jason Reitman’s adaptation of the novel Up in the Air tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who makes his living personally handing out pink slips — he’s the top hatchet man at a company that other companies hire when they are downsizing. And since business is booming, his job keeps him on the go constantly. He flies all across the country, staying in a series of nice hotels. And although this itinerant lifestyle prevents him from having any kind of stable, regular life, this doesn’t bother him in the slightest — he’s thrilled to be a boy in a traveling bubble. During one particular layover, he strikes up a conversation with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), a fellow savvy traveler. They bond over the ins and outs of various airlines and hotels, and quickly fall into bed. By morning, they are figuring out when their schedules will allow them to meet up again, even though they both make it clear that there are no strings attached. When Ryan arrives back in the home office, he meets no-nonsense career-oriented twentysomething Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a fast-rising up-and-comer who wants to change the company’s practices and save millions by having the staff fire people remotely via webcams. Furious at the thought of losing a lifestyle he’s grown quite comfortable with, he convinces his boss (Jason Bateman) to let him take Natalie on a few trips so that she can learn what it’s really like to fire someone. Melanie Lynskey, Danny McBride, and J.K. Simmons co-star in this Best Picture Academy Award nominee.
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” Surrealist Insanity
Nov 12th
Surrealist Insanity
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is based on the 2005 nonfiction book by Jon Ronson, and it is a comedic look at real-life events about a top-secret branch of an experimental U.S. Army unit called the New Earth Battalion, which was created to change the way that wars are fought.
As the film says at one point, the Army was investigating how love and gentleness could win wars, and a notice at the beginning of the film says, “More of this is true than you would believe.”
Full disclosure: You might need to have served in the military in order to appreciate the full impact of this film. Otherwise, you might dismiss it as a fantasy instead of an honest account of just how cockeyed and wacky life can be in the military, even in the midst of a war.
In other words, young audiences today will probably not enjoy this film as much as older people who actually spent time in the military, as I did for three years back in the Sixties.
Most of the film takes place in 2003 in Iraq, but we also get flashbacks that show how the New Earth Battalion came to be and some of the training and experiences of recurring characters.
George Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, one of the Jedi Warriors, as they called themselves, and the most gifted psychic that another character who had served with Cassady had ever met.
That character tells Bob Wilton, a reporter played by Ewan McGregor, about the New Earth Battalion and says, “We were trying to kill animals with just our minds.”
That is where the title comes from, because in the early days the unit had a secret goat lab, and the men would try to kill a goat just by staring at it.
Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey also star in the film, and Wilton meets them all after he first meets Cassady in Kuwait and they travel into Iraq to accomplish Cassady’s secret mission.
CATCH-22, the 1961 novel by Joseph Heller that was made into a 1970 film, captured the surrealist insanity of World War II Army life during that war.
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is the CATCH-22 of the war in Iraq, and as the film says, more of it is true than you would believe.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”