Talkshoplive is a startup that’s worked with stars like Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks, as well as small businesses, to host shopping-focused live videos. Today, it’s announcing that it has raised $3 million in seed funding from Spero Ventures. CEO Bryan Moore founded the company with his sister Tina in 2018. Moore previously led social media […]
Popcorn and Inspiration: ‘Breaking Away’: As Stirring as It Is Whimsical
PG | 1h 41min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 20 July 1979 (USA)
Films about underdogs that are sports-oriented, particularly ones that relate to the American Dream, can be tricky to pull off. Some, such as 1976’s “Rocky” and 1981’s “Chariots of Fire,” can go on to become classics and deservedly so. Many others, however, can feel derivative and unauthentic, and in some cases, downright manipulative.
“Breaking Away” (1979) fits among the former camp a rare gem in a large pile of coal. It feels incredibly grounded in authenticity, as well as very earnest in its delivery. Some of today’s cynics would probably even say naive.
Christopher Plummer, suave Canadian actor best known as von Trapp in The Sound of Music – obituary
A gifted classical actor on stage, he was disdainful of his best-known film role, which he said he was ‘dying to send up’
Plummer: liked playing ‘larger-than-life characters’
Credit: Martin Pope
Christopher Plummer, the Oscar-winning Canadian actor, who has died aged 91, achieved fame in the early 1950s in a succession of Shakespearean roles, but was best remembered, to his lasting irritation, for his sentimental portrayal of Captain Georg von Trapp in the film musical The Sound of Music (1965). In 2012, when he was in his eighties, he became the oldest actor to win an Academy Award.
Rewind, Review, and Re-Rate: ‘Ford v Ferrari’: Delivers Right Up to the Final Checkered Flag
PG-13 | 2h 32min | Action, Biography, Drama | 15 November 2019 (USA)
I’ve never been a huge fan of racing films. I’m not a gearhead and don’t watch racing as a sport. The goofy, unrealistic car-action stunts and the shallow storylines of perhaps the longest-running racing series “The Fast & Furious” franchise hardly did anything to change that. However, after seeing the trailer for 2019’s “Ford v Ferrari,” I decided to give it a shot. And boy, am I glad I did.
The film is directed by James Mangold, who comes mainly from a background of making episodic TV series. As such, the movie has sort of an episodic structure to it and is a little long, as it tries to pack in as much about the two main characters’ lives as possible: Friends Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale) chase after their dreams of racing fame and fortune.