"Joy" a drama of invention

Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper star in this strange odyssey loosely based on some of the events in the life of Joy Mangano. A lot is fictionalized.

Jeanne and I are both exploring the concepts of creativity so that we can learn to better better creators and better artists.

This film is a hard look at how life can devour our hopes and dreams and how one woman fought to make hers a reality. 

At a critical point, Trudy (Isabella Rossellini) asks Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) her husbands 4 questions that determine if you're a good financial risk.
1. Where did you go to High School
2. Who were you in High School
3. Are you prepared within 6 months of commencing  this venture to show adequate returns
4. You are in a room and there is a gun on the table, and the only other person in the room is an adversary in commerce. Only one of you can prevail, Yet, you have protected your business and Morris's money. Do you pick up the gun, Joy?

I found this to be a very good drama that fills my need for inspiration to do more and be more creative.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Running Down A Dream

This a biopic project that Peter Bogdonovic wrote and directed. He went through years of materials to create a completely organized and thoughtful portrayal of this incredible band. The video I watched on Netflix was almost 4 hours long and it held my interest all the way through. But the one small nugget I got to in about hour 3 was the similarity that many successful rock stars have in common. Either their Mothers died early, leaving them to fend for themselves, or their Fathers were abusive. This thread seems to create an anger in the artists that drives them to keep on fighting during their carriers. 

Art & Copy

Here  is a documentary that Jeanne and I just watched on Netflix. Put out on PBS it's a documentary that explores how art in advertising can be used to motivate us to higher levels. To explore greater heights of expression. They show many examples of ads that get to the heart of the problem that the clients want to overcome. They show how the agencies often  give the companies that come to them bigger dreams, a larger sense of self. They help to define their greater mission. This documentary isn't just entertaining, it's inspiring.

Bottle Shock

With the passing of Alan Rickman, I began thinking of his movie history. Somehow, to be remembered as the Snapes character in the Harry Potter series is unfortunate, since he was the absolute best villain in Die Hard and then in Quigley Down Under. But his best role, or one of my favorite is Steven Spurrier in Bottle Shock.

This is a film set in the mid 70's when California's wine country was just beginning to create some great wines. Bill Pullman and Chris Pine are the Father and Son who make wine out of a passion that is driving. There are great moments is this character driven drama.

I've watched this movie several times. It stands the test of time and should be on your list of favorites.

Alan Rickman died in Jan 2016 at the age of 69 from cancer. He was a voice that added to the great perfomances and a light which will be remembered at least for his role in the Harry Potter Series.

A friend wrote on Facebook,  "By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!" a quote from his role in Galaxy Quest.

Fantastic Four 2016

This is the second try for the fantastic four.

You may recall F4 in 2005 and F4 Rise Of Silver Surfer in 2007. They were pretty good.

This one isn't. It fails on many levels. While we watched it, Jeanne, our son Dane and I were incredibly bored. They were showing details of the backstory that should have been engaging but they weren't. They got to action sequences that should have been at least interesting, but they just seemed flat. Even at the most energized parts of the show, the emotional impact just wasn't there. As I sat there wondering why the movie wasn't that good, I was dumbfounded as I realized this was a MARVEL production. They don't make bad films...what was missing?

It's the music! Maybe the sound editor was asleep. You should watch this movie and compare it to others. You'll be amazed at the difference between this and any good movie. This flick is like going to film school to learn what can go wrong. If the music was more talented and maybe had more volume compared to the rest of the soundtrack, it would have worked much better. 

Here's a perfect example of how badly they missed. There's a moment where Sue Storm asks for some music, because it helps her concentrate. Then it just shows her with a set of headphones on and coding. DUH! This was a perfect point to add some hard pounding rock that continued for the next scene creating an energetic montage that would have built the excitement of the movie, But they missed it and every other time throughout.

Too bad, it could have been great but they missed.

Gotham On Fox (Hulu)

The new season (2nd) has started on Fox  It's dark and gritty and very well done. I'm enjoying it as any comic fan will!

Hulu is a great deal!

The new TV season is upon us. If you're like me and need to shift your viewing, try Hulu. It's really great and now for a small payment, you can skip commercials. What a deal.

LDS General Conference

Okay, it's not really a mainstream form of entertainment, but I really enjoy watching the LDS general conference when they broadcast it twice a year. The speakers seem genuinely nice and caring, concerned with the folks they are addressing.

Hector and the Search For Happiness

Here's an R rated film I can wholeheartedly recommend. I try to avoid that rating since so many plunge the viewer into worlds they'd be better off not experiencing, but this is a fairly wholesome light comedy that verges the borderline. There are a few F words and some undraped human form (but not full frontal nudity).

Hector is a British psychiatrist who is finding something wrong with life so he embarks on a search for happiness. And the results are magical. He finds many reasons or statements about happiness.

I found it to be a vicarious journey of self discovery and that made it easy to ignore the occasional crude humor. I find Simon Pegg to be an extremely gifted talent and this 2015 DVD release is one of those that contend for my top 100 films of all time! He brought life to his role as Scotty in the new Star Trek movies and he was great in Shaun Of The Dead and I even liked his efforts in Run Fat Boy, Run. There are several projects that I have steered clear of because of his lack of filtering, but this is one that deserves high praise.

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Project Almanac

I didn't expect much but this flick was still a disappointment. It was shot in that steady cam, home made movie style that was popularized by the Blair Witch Project. So it's already got one big strike against it, this style of movie making just begs for hard to follow crappy scripting.

So, they did have some moments that would have been fascinating if done in a normal movie style but it seemed so much more fake being a steady cam "real" experience.

And the ending was horrible! It's like they got tired of telling the story so they just wrapped it up! All through the movie they build up to a scene they discovered on an old videotape, so it comes and they just throw it away with no good resolution. 

Disappointing.

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