Posts tagged meeting
“Confessions of a Shopaholic” Pretty Lame
Mar 11th
Pretty Lame
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC starts off bad, goes downhill from there, and then manages to redeem itself just enough that all in all it is not good, not bad, but just okay.
This says something about a movie that, after all, is making fun of what is a serious problem for some people.
No, I am not talking about compulsive behavior that causes some people to spend money beyond their means. I am talking about the compulsion that some people have to search for romantic love.
Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Greenwood, a young and attractive magazine writer in New York City who discovered the power of shopping when she was a little girl and the fact that you didn’t have to pay money for anything if you had a “magic card,” which is what she called a credit card.
Now she has 12 of them and the bills to prove it.
To explain her compulsive behavior, Rebecca says, “When I shop, the world gets better, and then it’s not anymore and I need to do it again.”
When the magazine that Rebecca works for fails, she buys an expensive green scarf that she cannot afford for an interview with a fashion magazine for a job that she believes will make her happy forever if she gets it.
Then through a series of ridiculous setups and even more ridiculous payoffs, Rebecca is hired to be a columnist for a financial magazine and to write about how to save money.
Hugh Dancy plays Luke Brandon, the editor of the magazine whom Rebecca lied to about her credentials, and so now she is in serious trouble, right?
Wrong. Rebecca’s even more serious problem is that she has a bill collector after her who she tells Luke is an ex-boyfriend who is stalking her.
So, Rebecca is advising people about debt and she is up to her eyeballs in it, she lied about herself to her editor to get the job, she has a bill collector after her, and what else could go wrong?
Well, for one thing she attends a meeting of Shopaholics Anonymous and when she talks about shopping, she causes all the other members to relapse.
CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC is pretty lame from beginning to end, but if you’re a sucker for romance–and who isn’t–it redeems itself.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Four Christmases” Four Disappointments
Dec 12th
Four Disappointments
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
FOUR CHRISTMASES starts off bad, goes downhill from there with a lot of cheap laughs and easy shtick, and then it even also ends poorly, which all make it the perfect representation for Christmas.
Reese Witherspoon stars as Kate, Vince Vaughn is Brad, and they have been dating for three years with no intention of ever getting married or having children.
They live in San Francisco, and every year at Christmas they have lied to their parents in order to avoid spending Christmas with them.
As Brad tells his friends at one point, “You can’t really spell ‘families’ without ‘lies.'”
However, I am getting ahead of myself: The opening of the film is cheap and bogus, and it is designed to fool the audience more than to lend an insight into Kate and Brad.
So, rather than spend Christmas with either of their parents, they lie to them and tell them that they have to go off somewhere and do charity work, when in reality Kate and Brad are off to some exotic country for a vacation.
This year they plan to go to Fiji, but when they get to the airport, intense fog has caused all flights to be canceled, and they happen to be interviewed live by a local television crew about their canceled plans.
Of course, their parents see them on the news being interviewed, call them immediately, and guilt them into visiting on Christmas. Only problem is, both sets of parents are divorced, and thus Kate and Brad have to make four visits in one day, which adds up to “four Christmases.” Get it?
The four parents are played by Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, and Mary Steenburgen, and so we are not dealing with lightweight actors here, just lightweight material.
They visit Brad’s father first, and Kate learns some secrets about Brad that he had never told her. Then they visit Kate’s mother, and Brad learns some secrets about Kate that she had never told him.
Do you see a pattern here?
Yes, in satisfying their parents at Christmastime and meeting each other’s siblings, Kate and Brad learn more about each other, which can either strengthen their relationship or end it altogether.
And the moral of the story is nothing really beats being honest.
FOUR CHRISTMASES is nothing more than four disappointments.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Body of War” And for What?
Aug 21st
And for What?
BODY OF WAR is a movie everyone should see about something that should never have happened. It is a documentary about what life is like today for a young man who joined the Army after 9/11 and served in Iraq for only five days. Tomas Young’s unit had never been in Iraq before, and on their very first mission Tomas was in a truck and took a shot from above that hit him in the left shoulder and paralyzed him from the chest down. He never fired a bullet, and his war was over.
So, we follow Tomas around now that he is back in the United States, giving talks to various groups, meeting with different people, and just struggling to get around.
In an early scene, Tomas is at Ground Zero in New York City, and he says, “If it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t have joined the Army.” And if he hadn’t have joined the Army, wanting to go fight the terrorists in Afghanistan, he wouldn’t have been shot in Iraq, he wouldn’t have become paralyzed, and he wouldn’t have become dependent on the help from his mother and the wife he married after coming home.
Throughout the movie, we see and hear the roll call in the U.S. Senate as the Senators vote overwhelmingly to give President Bush the powers to go to war, as well as the testimony of various Senators and Congressmen in support of the bill.
One notable exception, however, is that of Senator Robert Byrd, who cautions against rushing into judgment and doing something they will regret.
There are also scenes from the White House Correspondents Dinner at which President Bush makes fun of looking for weapons of mass destruction in the Oval Office and everyone laughing inappropriately at the so-called “joke.”
You cannot watch this movie without crying for what we have done and for what we have allowed to be done.
The final vote in the Senate was 77 to 23, and the movie ends with a meeting between Tomas and Senator Byrd in which Senator Byrd refers to the 23 no-voters as the Immortal 23 and reads their names to Tomas as their votes are shown to the audience. Then Senator Byrd and Tomas congratulate each other for serving their country.
BODY OF WAR leaves everyone with the question, “And for What?”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
