Posts tagged romantic
The Five Year Engagement – Movie Trailer
Apr 28th
The director and writer/star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall reteam for the irreverent comedy The Five-Year Engagement. Beginning where most romantic comedies end, the new film from director Nicholas Stoller, producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and Rodney Rothman (Get Him to the Greek) looks at what happens when an engaged couple, Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, keeps getting tripped up on the long walk down the aisle.
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” Makes the Impossible Possible
Apr 7th
“Making the Impossible Possible”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a love story, and I don’t mean the love that fishermen have for fishing, although there is also that.
On the other hand, Steven Wright says in his act, “There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore looking like an idiot.”
In this movie, the comment is made that the only thing that fishermen care about is fish, and that they are patient and virtuous.
The fishermen, of course, are patient and virtuous, not the fish.
No, we should remember that fish are so dumb that they can’t tell the difference between a real fly and an artificial fly with a hook in it at the end of a fishing line.
Emily Blunt plays Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, and she has a client who is an avid fisherman, Sheik Muhammed from Yemen, who wants to introduce salmon fishing in his desert country.
So, Harriet contacts the salmon expert in the British Fisheries, Dr. Alfred Jones, played by Ewan McGregor, to ask for his help in fulfilling the dream of the sheik, who naturally has enough money to make it happen.
Dr. Jones turns down Harriet’s request, telling her that the project is fundamentally infeasible.
In the meantime, however, Patricia Maxwell, who is the press secretary for the Prime Minister and who is played by Kristin Scott Thomas, tells her people, “We need a good news story from the Middle East and a big one. We need it now.”
So, with pressure from the top of the government, Dr. Jones is practically blackmailed into working with Harriet to make Sheik Muhammed’s dream come true.
And with two attractive people working closely together, romantic sparks are bound to fly, right?
Not so fast, Dear Audience, because Dr. Jones is married, and Harriet has a serious boyfriend.
Dr. Jones changes his assessment of the project’s success from fundamentally infeasible to theoretically possible, the sheik is willing to pay 50 million pounds, and so the problem now is to make it all happen.
Did I mention that there are dissidents in Yemen who believe that the sheik’s dream of building a river in the desert and stocking it with fish is insulting to Allah?
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen makes the impossible possible in so many different ways, and not just in fishing.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Friends with Kids” Has Its Ups and Downs
Mar 17th
“Ups and Downs”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Friends with Kids is a comedy about three sets of couples who are all friends, but if you want to talk about it, you almost need a scorecard in order to keep everybody straight and to understand everything that goes on.
First of all, the movie was written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, who also stars as julie, the only woman in the three sets of friends who isn’t married.
Julie’s best friend is Jason, played by Adam Scott, who also stars in the “Parks and Recreation” TV series. Julie and Jason have been best friends forever, but they aren’t romantically involved with each other.
Second of all, Westfeldt’s real-life boyfriend, Jon Hamm, plays Ben, who is married to Missy, played by Kristen Wiig, who currently stars in “Saturday Night Live.”
And finally, the third couple are Leslie, played by Maya Rudolph, and Alex, played by Chris O’Dowd, who are also married and who are the first of the friends to have a baby.
When Ben and Missy also have a baby, there seems to be pandemonium whenever the friends get together, and the couples who have kids seem to be fighting more.
Meanwhile, Jason and Julie would also like to be parents, but because they are still looking for a romantic mate, they decide that they will have a baby together, but not get married, and Jason assures Julie, “I will be 100% committed to this half the time.”
Jason and Julie live in the same apartment building, and so it is easy ehough for them to share the parenting duties of their baby son, and they still discuss their respective dates with other people together, while they still search for “the one.”
Then they all go on a ski trip together, including Jason’s new girlfriend and Julie’s new boyfriend, and you can guess that something is going to happen that changes the lives of all the friends, but it is not what you expect.
You can also guess how the movie is going to end, but you might be wrong on that count, too, including a scene that contains the least romantic seduction you can imagine.
Friends with Kids goes on a little too long to get to where we expect it is going, and it has high points and low points and ups and downs.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”