Posts tagged star
The Blind Side – Movie Trailer
Nov 20th
Taken in by a well-to-do family and offered a second chance at life, a homeless teen grows to become the star athlete projected to be the first pick at the NFL draft in this sports-themed comedy drama inspired by author Michael Lewis’ best-seller The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Michael Oher was living on the streets when he was welcomed into the home of a conservative suburban family, but over time he matured into a talented athlete. As the NFL draft approaches, fans and sports radio personalities alike speculate that Oher will be the hottest pick of the year. Sandra Bullock stars in a film written and directed by John Lee Hancock (The Rookie, The Alamo).
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” Surrealist Insanity
Nov 12th
Surrealist Insanity
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is based on the 2005 nonfiction book by Jon Ronson, and it is a comedic look at real-life events about a top-secret branch of an experimental U.S. Army unit called the New Earth Battalion, which was created to change the way that wars are fought.
As the film says at one point, the Army was investigating how love and gentleness could win wars, and a notice at the beginning of the film says, “More of this is true than you would believe.”
Full disclosure: You might need to have served in the military in order to appreciate the full impact of this film. Otherwise, you might dismiss it as a fantasy instead of an honest account of just how cockeyed and wacky life can be in the military, even in the midst of a war.
In other words, young audiences today will probably not enjoy this film as much as older people who actually spent time in the military, as I did for three years back in the Sixties.
Most of the film takes place in 2003 in Iraq, but we also get flashbacks that show how the New Earth Battalion came to be and some of the training and experiences of recurring characters.
George Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, one of the Jedi Warriors, as they called themselves, and the most gifted psychic that another character who had served with Cassady had ever met.
That character tells Bob Wilton, a reporter played by Ewan McGregor, about the New Earth Battalion and says, “We were trying to kill animals with just our minds.”
That is where the title comes from, because in the early days the unit had a secret goat lab, and the men would try to kill a goat just by staring at it.
Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey also star in the film, and Wilton meets them all after he first meets Cassady in Kuwait and they travel into Iraq to accomplish Cassady’s secret mission.
CATCH-22, the 1961 novel by Joseph Heller that was made into a 1970 film, captured the surrealist insanity of World War II Army life during that war.
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is the CATCH-22 of the war in Iraq, and as the film says, more of it is true than you would believe.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Amelia – Movie Trailer
Oct 23rd
Hilary Swank and Richard Gere star in director Mira Nair’s biopic tracing the life of famed aviator Amelia Earhart — who made history in 1932 by becoming the first woman ever to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip made the aviatrix a national celebrity — with help from her publicist George Putnam (Gere), whom she fell in love with and eventually married. Their union was tested, however, as Earhart developed feelings for contemporary Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor ), and the couple’s marriage faced the ultimate tragedy years later, as Earhart’s fierce independent spirit spurred her to attempt to fly around the world — a venture that infamously shrouded her in mystery, as the pilot simply vanished after crashing into the Pacific Ocean. Christopher Eccleston and co-star in the Avalon Pictures production.
