“Julie & Julia” Mastering the Art of Fine Filmmaking
Jun 24th
Mastering the Art of Fine Filmmaking
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
JULIE & JULIA tells the story of two women who were both secretaries for U.S. government agencies, who were both married to great guys, and whose lives were both saved by food.
Julia, of course, is the legendary Julia Child, played exquisitely by Meryl Streep, the woman who popularized French cooking for Americans and who was fearless in the kitchen both at home and on the set of her long-running cooking show on television.
Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, is the young woman in New York City who decided in 2002 to change her life by giving herself the challenge of cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in 365 days and writing about her cooking project on the Internet.
Julie says, “Cooking is what I do to get away from what I do all day.”
Julie’s day job is working for a city agency processing claims from victims of 9/11, and her blog became a book which in turn became the basis for half this movie.
The other half is based on Child’s book, My Life in France, and the film switches back and forth between the two stories in a comic telling of two delightful and fascinating lives.
Julia and her husband Paul, played by Stanley Tucci, arrive in Paris in 1949, and in trying to decide what to do with her time, Julia settles on going to cooking school. The scenes of Julia competing with her all-male fellow students are laugh-out-loud funny.
Equally funny are Julie’s attempts to get through all 524 recipes in one year, but not so funny are the strains that it puts on her marriage to her husband Eric, who naturally has to eat everything Julie cooks, but with help from their friends, too, at times.
Yes, there is lots of eating and lots of cooking in this film; so be prepared to be hungry at the end of it, as well as entertained.
Be prepared for pleasant surprises, too, such as Dan Aykroyd’s portrayal of Julia Child on “Saturday Night Live,” which is still hilarious in spite of its disastrous ending.
We see Julie get her book published, and Julia eventually publishes her famous cookbook with two friends, MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING.
JULIE & JULIA is an excellent example of mastering the art of fine filmmaking.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Jersey Boys – Movie Trailer
Jun 24th
Clint Eastwood’s big screen version of the Tony Award-winning musical tells the story of the four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic `60s rock group The Four Seasons. Their trials and triumphs are accompanied by the hit songs that influenced a generation, and are now being embraced by a new generation of fans through the stage musical.
22 Jump Street “Lowbrow As It Gets”
Jun 24th
(“Lowbrow As It Gets”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
22 JUMP STREET is the sequel to the 2012 21 JUMP STREET, which in turn was a spoofy adaptation of the 1980 TV series, all of which just keeps on proving that Hollywood has run out of ideas.
Once again, Jonah Hill stars as Schmidt and Channing Tatum stars as Jenko, Schmidt’s partner as they go undercover yet again to bust up a drug ring.
“Wait a minute!” you say? “Didn’t they do that in the first movie?” you say?
Well, yes, but in the first movie they pretended to be high-school students, whereas in this movie they pretend to be college students, which makes the running joke of their looking too old to be students a little less jokey this time, especially the more often we hear it.
Also, their offices in an old Korean church at 21 Jump Street have changed, because the Koreans bought the church back, and so they were moved across the street into an old Vietnamese church at 22 Jump Street, which also leads to a mildly entertaining sequence at the end of the movie for the possibility of more sequels than you can shake a nightstick at.
The explanation that the partners receive is that they got lucky on 21 Jump street, and so the budget was increased and now they’re to do the same as last time and everyone will be happy, which leads Jenko to believe they have Cate Blanchett to do what they want.
They will have the same identity and the same assignment, except that they will be in college instead of high school.
So, Jenko, the more dim-witted of the two, says, “I’m the first person in my family to pretend to go to college.”
Well, in an attempt to blend in with their fellow college students, Jenko becomes friends with a fraternity leader and football star, and Schmidt becomes friends with an art-major coed.
Jenko’s buddy, Zook, says that they are like Batman and Robin, except that they are both Batman.
And Schmidt becomes so “friendly” with Maya, the art major, that it causes problems during parents weekend when Maya’s parents meet Schmidt.
The humor is so lowbrow that when Jenko suggests maybe they should start “investigating” other people, you might miss that he’s implying “seeing.”
22 JUMP STREET is as lowbrow as it gets.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
