Posts tagged Movie
“The Soloist” Could Have Been Better
May 14th
Could Have Been Better
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE SOLOIST is based on a true story, and yet it comes across as if the filmmakers weren’t exactly sure where they wanted the focus to be.
It stars Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as Steve Lopez, two men whose lives change dramatically when they meet each other and become friends.
Lopez is a columnist for THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and one day he encounters Ayers in a park playing beautiful music on a violin that has only two strings.
Lopez thinks that Ayers could be the subject of an interesting column, writing “violin guy” in his notebook for ideas, and he begins finding out all he can about this homeless man with amazing musical talent.
He learns that Ayers had been a student at the Juilliard School of Music, but had dropped out before graduating. And when he tracks down the sister of Ayers in Cleveland, she asks him why he is interested in her brother, and Lopez says, “Everyone has a story, and it’s interesting.”
The sister tells Lopez that Nathaniel had become fascinated with music when he was a young boy and after that there was no more football, no more baseball, just music. She says, “That was all he did, just music.”
We see flashbacks to when Ayers was a kid that show his fascination and also to when he arrived in New York City to attend Juilliard, which also give us an indication as to why he dropped out before graduating.
Lopez begins writing some columns about Ayers, which cause one reader to send him a cello that she can’t play anymore to give to Ayers, because the cello was his first instrument of choice.
Lopez involves himself even more into the homeless man’s life, managing to obtain an apartment for Ayers, cello lessons for the first time in three decades, and even to arrange for Ayers to attend a rehearsal for a Beethoven concert.
However, things don’t always go the way Lopez plans them, and the relationship between Ayers and Lopez takes a turn for the worse.
Because we see so many details of Lopez’s life at home and at the office, we begin to wonder if the filmmakers wanted to tell the story about Lopez or about Ayers.
THE SOLOIST is good, but could have been better.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Earth” Tears to Your Eyes
Apr 30th
Tears to Your Eyes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
EARTH is a beautiful film that covers the globe from the Arctic to Antarctica and focuses on a family of polar bears, elephants, and humpback whales in the process.
To do so, dozens of film crews used 200 locations in 64 countries, and the result is magnificent.
The film begins in January in the high Arctic where there has been no sun for months.
The narrator, James Earl Jones, says, “Every living thing is waiting.”
Then we see a mother polar bear and her two cubs come our of their den. The mother hasn’t eaten in five months and has lost half her body weight, we are told.
In the meantime, we also see the father polar bear in his solitary search for food, which becomes increasingly difficult because of the melting polar ice.
We see herds of caribou in migration across the tundra and the wolves who shadow them.
At this point, you might ask, “How did they manage to film this?” Stick around for the closing credits, and you will see how those shots were made and some of the dangers that the film crews encountered.
We see baby ducklings and their first flying experience out of the tree, or more accurately, as the narrator says, “falling with style.”
Then we are in the Tropics, where the sun shines 12 hours a day every day, and we see the Birds of Paradise in New Guinea. You can try to ignore the cheap jokes and comments from the narrator, but it is also hard to forget that he was also the voice of Darth Vader, remember?
We travel to the dry season in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa and pick up a mother elephant and her calf struggling to keep up with the herd on their search for water.
We watch the drama unfold between the hunter and the hunted in extreme slow motion.
The pictures of scenery are majestic and make you appreciate what a wonderful planet we live on, as well as how fragile and dangerous life on it is for us all.
The final family we track is a mother humpback whale and her calf, who have to travel 4,000 miles from their breeding ground to Antarctica in search of food.
EARTH is so moving that it brings tears to your eyes.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”