“Is Anybody There” Yes, There Is
May 7th
Yes, There Is
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
IS ANYBODY THERE? is a film with a fairly familiar story about the contrast between youth and old age, but it has one thing in it that makes it stand out above all the others and that makes it worth seeing: Sir Michael Caine.
Caine doesn’t like to be called “Sir,” even though he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2000, and he doesn’t like to be referred to by his title, which is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE.
Pretty good for a Cockney kid who was born Maurice Micklewhite, but who has been making movies for more than 50 years, i’n’t it?
Here he plays “The Amazing Clarence,” a retired magician who checks himself into “a residence home for the elderly” that is run by a young couple with a 10-year-old son named Edward.
Edward isn’t happy to meet Clarence at first, because Clarence is given Edward’s old room, which Edward was hoping he would get back after the previous resident had died in it. In fact, Edward asked his parents, “Can I have my room back now that Arthur’s dead?”
Edward is fascinated with ghosts and the idea of people dying, and he had put his tape recorder under the bed of his room’s previous occupant in order to record the very moment when he died.
Clarence and Edward take a reluctant liking to each other, and Clarence gives Edward some practical advice, telling him, “Your life changes, Buster, and not always for the better.”
Clarence also teaches Edward some magic tricks, which Edward uses at school in order to impress his classmates.
Edward then convinces Clarence to put on a magic show for the residents of the old-folks home, and despite some polite resistance at first, Clarence is eager to perform, but to say that one of his tricks ends not quite how he planned it would be a major understatement.
Along the way, both Clarence and Edward help each other out in their respective troubling times, and you will probably predict how you think the story is going to end, but you could also be very wrong.
You will also never forget who is appearing in the film and what a privilege that is.
IS ANYBODY THERE? answers its own question with a resounding “Yes, there is.”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Earth” Tears to Your Eyes
Apr 30th
Tears to Your Eyes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
EARTH is a beautiful film that covers the globe from the Arctic to Antarctica and focuses on a family of polar bears, elephants, and humpback whales in the process.
To do so, dozens of film crews used 200 locations in 64 countries, and the result is magnificent.
The film begins in January in the high Arctic where there has been no sun for months.
The narrator, James Earl Jones, says, “Every living thing is waiting.”
Then we see a mother polar bear and her two cubs come our of their den. The mother hasn’t eaten in five months and has lost half her body weight, we are told.
In the meantime, we also see the father polar bear in his solitary search for food, which becomes increasingly difficult because of the melting polar ice.
We see herds of caribou in migration across the tundra and the wolves who shadow them.
At this point, you might ask, “How did they manage to film this?” Stick around for the closing credits, and you will see how those shots were made and some of the dangers that the film crews encountered.
We see baby ducklings and their first flying experience out of the tree, or more accurately, as the narrator says, “falling with style.”
Then we are in the Tropics, where the sun shines 12 hours a day every day, and we see the Birds of Paradise in New Guinea. You can try to ignore the cheap jokes and comments from the narrator, but it is also hard to forget that he was also the voice of Darth Vader, remember?
We travel to the dry season in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa and pick up a mother elephant and her calf struggling to keep up with the herd on their search for water.
We watch the drama unfold between the hunter and the hunted in extreme slow motion.
The pictures of scenery are majestic and make you appreciate what a wonderful planet we live on, as well as how fragile and dangerous life on it is for us all.
The final family we track is a mother humpback whale and her calf, who have to travel 4,000 miles from their breeding ground to Antarctica in search of food.
EARTH is so moving that it brings tears to your eyes.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
The Soloist – Movie Trailer
Apr 24th
Academy Award-nominated Atonement director Joe Wright teams with screenwriter Susannah Grant to tell the true-life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former cello prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) is a disenchanted journalist stuck in a dead-end job. His marriage to a fellow journalist having recently come to an end, Steve is wandering through Los Angeles’ Skid Row when he notices a bedraggled figure playing a two-stringed violin. The figure in question is Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a man whose promising career in music was cut short due to a debilitating bout with mental illness. The more Lopez learns about Ayers, the greater his respect grows for the troubled soul. How could a man with such remarkable talent wind up living on the streets, and not be performing on-stage with a symphony orchestra? Later, as Lopez embarks on a quixotic quest to help Ayers pull his life together and launch a career in music, he gradually comes to realize that it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own.
