Tag: Hollywood

Drive-In Movie Theaters: Going Way of T-Rex?

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Drive In Movie Theaters

This article evoked vivid, early teen memories. Sultry Friday and Saturday nights in August. Shad flies filling the night time sky over the Kootenay River. We would race our bikes to beat the twilight turning to dusk. We’d hide our bikes in the bushes and go searching for a grassy spot on the hill at the Sunset Drive-in. The tantalizing smell of buttered popcorn and hot dogs. The car window speakers cackling. The older high school kids cozying up to their girls.

I googled the Sunset Drive-in and was shocked to learn that it showed its last movie in 1986, over 25 years ago. The old drive-in is now a RV Park known as Kootenay River Kampground.

Italo Calvino’s words capture my recollection of these memories from where we sit today, in front of our screens, big and little, in our homes: “Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.”

Here’s a few excerpts from the BusinessWeek article titled: America’s Last, Remaining Drive-Ins Face a New Threat

Continue reading “Drive-In Movie Theaters: Going Way of T-Rex?” →

Tootsie = Epiphany

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This emotional three minute interview with Dustin Hoffman has gone viral on Youtube.  Hoffman said he’d initially had doubts about making the movie Tootsie unless he could be made to look like a beautiful woman.  In the moment he was told that he was as attractive as he was going to get as a woman, the actor said he had an epiphany.

“I went home and started crying, talking to my wife, and I said, ‘I have to make this picture,’” Hoffman said, choking up as he recalled his reaction. “And she said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because I think I’m an interesting woman, when I look at myself on-screen, and I know that if I met myself at a party I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out.’

“She says, ‘What are you saying?’ And I said, ‘There’s too many interesting women I have … not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed. And that was never a comedy for me,” he said.

Hoffman, 75, has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning two for his performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Main.  His other notable films include Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Papillon, All The President’s Men, Tootsie, Hook and Wag the Dog.

Source: Thank you (again) Lori @ Donna & Diablo.  Moved.  Full stop.

I do it for me. That’s it. That’s it.

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“I do it for me and like-minded people. That’s it. That’s it. My career, I look at it in a Darwinian framework. I’m going to do exactly what I want, and I’m going to survive or I’m not. I’m not going to pander, I’m not going to change things, I’m not going to do focus groups. I’ll live and die by the sword. I don’t care. Because I couldn’t live with myself…Everything I’ve done has been existential. Everything, really. Everything is always about, ‘Am I living a good life? Am I making the most of my life?'”

— Ricky Gervais

Clips from GQ.com (Note “R” rated for vulgar language): Chris Heath on Gervais: “…I think there is a sense that someone who seemed like one of us, and on our side, may have slipped his moorings.” Continue reading “I do it for me. That’s it. That’s it.” →

Character: $6B in movie ticket sales and not slightly offended by being rejected

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“While describing the uncommon experience of being rejected for a role he coveted, Harrison Ford is amused and understated. He provides the details calmly, without disdain or condescension for the director who initially refused to even talk to him. The story has a successful ending with Ford getting exactly what he wanted, but the striking part about Ford telling it is the noticeable absence of entitlement. Here is a man who has generated an estimated $6 billion in movie-ticket sales worldwide and is one of the most successful actors in film history. But he is still not even slightly offended by a hesitant director.

The character Ford found so compelling is Branch Rickey, a man of surpassing intelligence who played a significant role in advancing civil rights in this country, not only because it was morally proper but also because it was good business. Rickey was the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the man who desegregated baseball by signing 26-year-old Jackie Robinson in 1945 to play for the Montreal Royals, the organization’s top farm team. After spending the 1946 season with Montreal, Robinson was promoted to the major leagues in 1947. Their story is told in the film 42, which debuts in theaters this month. In Rickey, Ford saw a man with complex motivations — honorable because Rickey deplored racial prejudice, but also practical because the better his baseball team, the more money he made.  “Ethnic prejudice has no place in sports,” Rickey once lectured, “and baseball must recognize that truth if it is to maintain stature as a national game.”

Harrison Ford.  An inspiration.  Read more @ American Way Magazine

The Intouchables

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A jobless Senegalese man (Omar Sy) applies for a caregiver position for Philippe, a wealthy quadriplegic (Francois Cluzet). He is hired and brings Philippe a reinvigorated appreciation for living.  As improbable as the plot line may be, the movie is feel-good medicine for a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  It is light, warm-hearted and funny.  Omar Sy steals the show.  The movie was a smashing success in France.  Critics’ Reviews: Andrew O’Hehir (Salon), Roger Ebert (Sun-Times), Rex Reed (NY Observer).  DK Grade: * * * * *

The Intouchables @ Amazon.  (Note: this is a French flick with subtitles.)