Posts tagged woman
“American Hustle” Shows Never Con a Con Artist
Dec 28th
“Never Con a Con Artist”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
American Hustle is so good that don’t be surprised if during some awards ceremony it sweeps an award in all the major categories.
In fact, it is so good that Robert De Niro appears in it as an important character and doesn’t even get listed in the credits.
However, appearing both in the movie and in the credits are Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Jennifer Lawrence, and most if not all of them are going to come out winners during the next awards season.
The movie is based on one of the most stunning scandals and sting operations in the late Seventies, and it begins with a title that says, “Some of this actually happened.”
We are introduced to Irving, who is a con artist with such an elaborate comb-over that he not only combs his long hair over, but also glues it to his bald scalp.
Irving says, “I learned how to survive when I was a kid,” and we see how he broke the law in order to send more customers to his father’s business.
As an adult, however, and even though he owns some legitimate businesses, Irving prefers to make most of his money by charging people a nonrefundable $5,000 fee in order to get them a loan, but then he never comes back with the loan.
Irving’s partner in crime and in love is Sydney, a woman whose dream was to become anyone other than who she was, and her role in the scam is to pretend to be British royalty with bank connections.
Unfortunately, one man they try to con turns out to be Richie, who is an FBI agent with dreams of exposing and bringing down dirty politicians, and when he reveals himself to Irving and Sydney, he promises not to arrest them if they will help him in his own sting operation, which eventually involves a New Jersey mayor who wants to relaunch the casino industry in Atlantic City, a sheik who might provide the money, and mobsters from Miami who might provide the connections.
So, can you see how those involved in the operation might be in over their heads, especially when they are still keeping secrets from each other?
And all this time Irving has been married.
American Hustle is a truly enjoyable comedy.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Kill Your Darlings” Is Full of Oddities
Dec 22nd
“Full of Oddities”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Kill Your Darlings is an odd little movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg that tells a story about him and other writers of the Beat Generation in 1943 in New York City.
For those of you in the audience who are too young to know and those of you who are old enough but might have forgotten, Ginsberg was an American poet best known for writing “Howl,” a 1956 long poem attacking American values who later in life was associated with Naropa University in Boulder.
The title refers to advice sometimes given to writers to eliminate the parts of their work they are most in love with, because those parts are probably the most self-indulgent, but in the movie it can also refer to an actual murder.
The movie begins when Ginsberg is 19 years old, and he is accepted to Columbia University, where he will meet other writers with whom he will get in and out of trouble, such as William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and others who didn’t become as famous.
We also see some of Ginsberg’s home life with his father, who was also a poet, and his mother, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who was a very troubled woman.
Ginsberg becomes friends with Lucien Carr, and through him he meets David at a weird party at David’s apartment, where David says about Ginsberg, “Under the right circumstances, even he might change the world.”
Remember, this was 70 years ago at a time when writers were serious, and they believed that their writing could change the world, which they hoped would be for the better.
If it also made them successful and famous, then that was better, too.
Ginsberg and his fellow writers also have a saying, “First thought, best thought,” which they believe to be performed and useful in their writing, but if you know anything about serious writing, such an idea would probably fall into that category of darlings which should be killed.
The movie is full of disjointed scenes, and the audience might have trouble keeping the story line straight and also keeping track of who all the characters are.
Of course, homosexuality plays a big role in the story, and this was at a time when homosexuality was illegal in numerous places.
Kill Your Darlings is full of many oddities.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”