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“Flight” Features a “Junior Birdman”
Nov 10th
“Junior Birdman”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Flight stars Denzel Washington as a commercial airline pilot with more problems than just flying and landing the airliner on time.
Right away at the beginning of the movie we know that Captain Whip Whitaker is not who he pretends to be. But, Man, does Denzel Washington look mighty fine in his captain’s uniform as he walks through the airport to take command of his airplane.
The flight is from Orlando, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, and right after he sits down in the pilot’s chair in the cockpit, Whip starts acting a bit unusual and different from how we would want our pilot to act.
He takes a couple of hits of oxygen before taking off and asks the copilot if he would like a hit.
Then when they encounter some turbulence, Whip personally goes back into the cabin to reassure the passengers, and he tells them that there won’t be any service of beverages for safety reasons, but as he is telling the passengers and crew this, he is fixing himself a glass of orange juice and vodka out of sight from everyone.
Back in his pilot’s seat, Whip suddenly experiences what appears to be a mechanical failure, and the airliner goes into an uncontrollable nose dive in what is one of the most harrowing scenes about an airplane you will ever see.
Miraculously, Whip manages to roll the airliner upside down in order to get control back, and he then glides the airplane to a soft landing in an open field, and only six people of the 102 aboard die.
Captain Whitaker is called a hero, but a required investigation into the accident turns up some evidence that could damage his reputation and career and even send him to prison.
The rest of the movie is about that investigation, and John Goodman and Don Cheadle show up in important roles in the story.
Also, Whip gets involved with a woman who distracts him from his problem at hand: staying sober and getting through the investigation with his reputation and career intact.
This is a very serious movie, but I couldn’t help being reminded of the lyrics to an old song called “Junior Birdman” and flying “upside down!”
Flight is an excellent film about difficult subjects, and we should hope we never experience any of them firsthand.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Chasing Mavericks” More Like “The Surfer Kid”
Nov 3rd
“The Surfer Kid”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Chasing Mavericks is not a story about ranch cowboys chasing after motherless calves, but is instead based on a true story about one particular teenage boy who wanted to learn how to surf some of the most dangerous waves in the world.
Those waves are located near Santa Cruz, California, they are created whenever an El Nino weather system occurs, and they are called “the mavericks.”
The story begins in 1987, and we see 8-year-old Jay and his slightly older friend Kim playing near a beach with heavy surf. Jay jumps into the water to save Kim’s dog, but then Jay gets caught by the waves and could easily drown.
Suddenly a man who had been surfing appears, and he pulls Jay out of the water.
The man is Frosty Hesson, played by Gerard Butler, and surfing is his passion, his life, and his escape.
Jay learns how to surf, and then we jump seven years later when he is now played by Jonny Weston. Coincidentally, Frosty lives right across the street with his wife and two kids from where Jay lives with his alcoholic mother, played by Elisabeth Shue.
One night Jay hitches a ride on Frosty’s van when Jay sees him leave to go surfing, and he watches Frosty and three men surf the most powerful waves you can imagine, which are talked about in the area, but no one knew for sure that they existed.
As Frosty tells Jay, “That wave is a myth, and the four of us want to keep it that way.”
Well, you can imagine the rest of the story. Jay asks Frosty to teach him how to surf the mavericks, Frosty reluctantly agrees, and then we watch a regimen of training right out of the 1984 The Karate Kid, but fortunately without the “Wax on, wax off” scenes, only there are some shots of Jay waxing his surfboard.
Although the movie is about surfing and includes many scenes of surfing, there are additional subplots involving Jay’s personal and home life, Frosty’s relationship with his wife and family, and Jay’s relationship with Kim.
In other words, it is a traditional movie about a nontraditional subject, and the “big game” at the end this time is surfing the “big wave.”
Chasing Mavericks could even more likely have been called The Surfer Kid.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”