Posts tagged one day
“In a World…” Is Too Amateurish
Sep 20th
“Too Amateurish”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
In a World… takes its title from the opening words made famous by legendary voiceover artist Don LaFontaine from the many promos and movie previews he recorded in Hollywood.
Lake Bell wrote, directed, and stars as Carol Solomon in this film about the voiceover industry in Hollywood, which we are told is sexist, in that very few women are used as voiceover artists.
Now, we know how Hollywood likes to make movies about itself, but if most of those self-absorbed movies are about as interesting as insiders inspecting their own belly buttons, this one about an aspect of Hollywood that is less known than making films themselves is, could be dismissed as being so self-absorbed and self-indulgent that it is as interesting as insiders inspecting their belly buttons and their toes for toe jam.
However, it does contain some subplots that are intended to make the film more interesting, such as the lousy way that Carol’s father treats her and her older sister, Danielle.
For example, at the beginning of the movie Carol is living at home with her widowed father, who comes home one day and tells Carol, “Jamie is going to be moving in, you’re going to have to find another place to live.”
Jamie is Sam’s girlfriend, and she is the stereotypical dumb blonde bimbo, a character included in movies written by lazy writers to get some cheap laughs.
So, Carol, who makes her living as a vocal coach, moves in with her sister, who works as a concierge at a fancy hotel.
However, Carol would like to break into the voiceover business, where Sam is well known and respected as a voiceover artist.
A search is on for a voiceover artist to record the promos for an upcoming series of films known as The Amazon Games, and Carol would like to get that gig, knowing that her father desperately wants that job himself.
Then there are other subplots involving Louis, an engineer at the recording studio where Carol works, who would like to go out with Carol, but he is too shy to ask, and a guest at the hotel where Danielle works is interested in Danielle, which causes problems in Danielle’s personal life.
The main plot and all the subplots are like belly buttons and toe jam.
In a World… is too amateurish.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Endangered Species Act Protection Proposed for Wolverine
Sep 1st
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“Safe Haven” Might Have Started with Gimmicky Ending First
Feb 24th
“Gimmicky Ending First”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Safe Haven is from a Nicholas Sparks novel, and for those of you out there who are familiar with his novels and the movies made from his novels, I need to say nothing more.
However, for those of you out there who aren’t familiar with them, here goes.
The movie begins with a young woman played by Julianne Hough running through the rain in Boston and getting onto a bus.
The bus makes a rest stop at a small fishing village in North Carolina, but the woman doesn’t get back onto the bus.
She gets a job as a waitress at Ivan’s Fish Shack, and she finds a place to stay, a small cabin isolated in the woods that needs quite a bit of fixing up.
One day a young woman named Jo stops by and says that she also lives in the woods, because she is rustically inclined.
Then we see a policeman back in Boston going through the police work as he tries to track the first young woman down, who is named Katie.
Meanwhile, Katie buys some yellow paint to paint her kitchen floor in the general store, where she meets Alex, a young widower with two children, who is played by Josh Duhamel.
Katie and Alex begin to develop a romantic relationship, and Katie tells him, “I was just looking for a change, and I’ve always wanted to live in a small town.”
In the meantime, you might think that the movie contains a lot of unnecessary scenes, but we also get some flashbacks that begin to explain the situation that caused Katie to run away in the rain in Boston, which point to her as having been responsible for having done something awful.
Of course, there are also scenes that are not too subtle of Katie and Alex falling in love, but she keeps whatever it was she did back in Boston a secret from him.
And then as the audience learns the secret through flashbacks and scenes of the policeman tracking Katie down, you might even begin to think that the backstory is completely gratuitous to the love story going on between Katie and Alex.
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.
Safe Haven ends, however, as if the writer thought up a gimmicky ending first and then wrote the story second.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”