A little belated but here it is for this past weekend.
Get On Up: Picture two studio execs sitting in an office and thinking about what they can produce in film that will be popular and make money. They talk about recent Academy Award winners who has won based on biopics in the music industry. They include Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line), RAY with Jamie Foxx, Marion Cottilard (La Vie en Rose) etc etc. Now these execs think, who else could we portray?! How about the King of Soul? Yea, James Brown! He is colourful!! Indeed he is. And so they go. But what to leave in and what to leave out? Chadwick Boseman does an admirable job at trying to portray James Brown. I frankly find the speech hard to understand at times. But I think that’s the whole point. I couldn’t understand Ozzy Osbourne or Bob Dylan either. Too many drugs likely. Anyway, this story bounces around and Brown has the odd behaviour of talking into the camera often trying to make a point or bring up something. James Brown had a hard life. Prison early on. Parents who abandon him and he made the best anyone ever could of a bad situation with talent and hard work. He also lived in difficult times and yet still flourished. We did not see his many flings with women (He fathered at least 10 kids), nor his extensive drug use nor his physical abusiveness with his wives. In the end, as a movie, this was not as enjoyable. I preferred Boseman in 42 as Jackie Robinson. I cannot recommend this film.
I am working my way through Mad Men. Season 5 was a lot of fun with many divorces and occurrences at the office. I truly do not like the Betty Francis story at all. She is a nasty woman and terrible mother. Overweight, and nasty towards Don (although he obviously deserves it). He early in Season 6 simply cannot stop himself. He is such an above board business man (like dumping Jaguar) while personally his life is a mess.
More movies to come although there has been very little in the theatres to go and see. More tv shows to watch too like The Fall, and Orange is the New Black among others.
Mondays With Robbie 