Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Year 10, Day 62 - 3/3/18 - Movie #2,863

BEFORE: I'm going in as cold as I can to this one, though I've heard various things about it over the years - and I do have a tiny connection to the film, which I'll explain later.  I'm assuming that there's a romantic angle to the storyline here, which means that my annual romance chain is still going.  And if it is, I'm not sure where it will end, but probably at some point next week in the middle of a Richard Burton/Liz Taylor chain.  (But, hey, you could say all romance in the 1970's died in the middle of a Burton/Taylor thing...)

Two observations - first, I think this has been the most musical February chain I ever put together, with 10 classic movie musicals (5 with Fred Astaire, 5 with Howard Keel) and then the more modern musicals: "Once", "Sing Street", "Beauty and the Beast", and "Mamma Mia!".  That's just about half a month's programming for me coming from where romance and music coincide.  So maybe this is the perfect time to get to "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", which later morphed into a Broadway musical itself.  (EDIT: Oh, I guess it was an off-Broadway musical first, then a film, but then it became a Broadway musical. My bad.)

Secondly, it's been, rather inadvertently, the queerest February on record.  That started back with "Far From Heaven" and then gay (or at least bi-curious) characters popped up in "The Overnight", "Nocturnal Animals", "Beginners", "Beauty and the Beast", "Mamma Mia!" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2".  OK, so in some films they were more important to the plot than in others, but at least they're getting more representation these days in movies, and my programming's starting to reflect that.  Jeez, if I'd known this was going to be such a running theme this month, I would have worked "Albert Nobbs" into the February chain (with Glenn Close appearing in "Le Divorce", I'm sure it must have been possible...).

Anyway, this was another (nearly) un-linkable film, but I got lucky, and Andrea Martin carries over from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" - however, tomorrow I'm going to need to rely on another indirect link in order to continue.

THE PLOT: A transgender punk-rock girl from East Berlin tours the U.S. with her band as she tells her life story and follows the former lover/band-mate who stole her songs.

AFTER: I really should pay more attention to each film's director, because I just realized that in addition to starring in and directing today's film, John Cameron Mitchell also directed "Rabbit Hole", the film I used to kick off this February's chain.  (If only he had done a cameo in that film, my linking job could have been much, much easier...). Anyway, my tenuous connection to this film is that I was at the Sundance Festival in 2001 when it played there.  An animated film I produced, "Mutant Aliens" was in the midnight section of that same festival, and we rented a small apartment in town with two bedrooms and a pull-out couch, and had about 17 or 18 people sleeping there.  Three of our crew were also there to see "Hedwig", which they had also worked on, but tickets for that were difficult to get. I was the guy then who would get up early (or more accurately, stay up all night) so I could go to the ticket office at 5 am and buy whatever I could, re-selling my extras to my friends.  I ended up seeing a ridiculous number of movies that week, but not "Hedwig".  (This trip was repeated 3 years later in 2004 with me trying in vain to see "Super Size Me".). So I always felt a little guilty that I didn't make more of an effort to see this film that three friends worked on - I'm fixing that today.

I'm secure enough that I can admit that there are many things that I don't understand about the gay or trans experience, despite having an ex-wife who now has a wife, and living in NYC throughout the 1990's, when the gay rights movement got radicalized as ACT-UP and people in general became more open about their orientation and preferences - I know this term "sexual preference" has fallen out of favor, but I'm not up on the current lingo.  I guess to some people it implies that orientation is a choice, and they would rather have everyone believe that it's ingrained - I don't have any problem with the term because hey, at least you live in a society that allows you to HAVE a preference in the first place, isn't that a positive thing?  And if someone is born with an orientation, don't they make a choice over whether to follow it or not?

Here's what I don't understand about Hedwig's story (which seems like it might have been just a bit ahead of its time, or is that just me?) - when he's a teen in East Germany, and he falls in love with a U.S. soldier, that man wants to marry him and bring him out of his Communist country, back to the U.S. as his wife.  But to do that, because there was no gay marriage then, Hedwig had to get a sex change operation (I guess now they call it "gender reassignment surgery") and become a transsexual woman.  But if the soldier was in love with him as a gay man, how would the surgery improve on that?  I don't know why the soldier would rather marry a surgically-created woman than the man he fell in love with, this seems to run counter to the gay rights movement that told people in the 1990's that they were fine the way they were born, that being a gay man wasn't wrong or in need of some correction.  So either I'm not following the logic, or this is a NITPICK POINT plot problem, or I have a large lack of understanding where gay relationships are concerned.  But possibly I've encountered an imbalance between the transgender rights movement and the gay rights movement.  Current PC reasoning tells us that gender reassignment surgery is fine, but gay conversion therapy is not - and now I'm thinking there might be a very fine line between the two.

Anyway, Hedwig goes through with the operation, which is not a success, and after moving to America, her husband leaves her for another man, and then another ironic twist - the Berlin Wall comes down, Germany is reunited, and East Germany becomes free, meaning the rules that led to Hedwig's operation are no more.  I can't decide if this timing was included just to make the story more tragic, or if there's some larger life lesson.  But if there is, it's somewhat contradictory as well, because while the general gay rights advice is to go out and try to change the world, the takeaway here seems to be that if you are just patient and wait, the world may change around you.  But then I guess history has not always favored the pioneers and radicals.

After forming her first band with other Army wives (mostly ones from Korea), Hedwig takes up with Tommy, the son of the Army base's commander, who's questioning his Christian morality and also trying to start a music career.  Together they compose songs, and form a band and a relationship, but at some point (when Tommy discovers Hedwig's medical abnormality? It's tough to say...) Tommy leaves and takes all of their songs with him, and this leads Hedwig to file a lawsuit, form a new band, and follow the now-famous Tommy on the road.

This is another film that follows a split-timeline structure, though - and while that's easy enough to understand at the start, the audience is still thrown into the middle of the story and has to play catch-up.  Flashbacks detail Hedwig's early history and (eventually) her break-up with Tommy, but for the first half of the film, we don't know WHY Hedwig is dogging Tommy, or what she's trying to accomplish.  That's all well and good, I support keeping things mysterious for a time, but the non-linear storytelling leads to problems when Hedwig and Tommy meet again - I wasn't sure if this was taking place in the present, the past or some potential imagined future.

The animated sequences I mentioned before recount an ancient tale of a time when humans had two heads, four arms and four legs, and were split in half by the gods.  (This goes back to Plato and Aristophanes, so my Greek connection is maintained for another day!)  It was a nonsensical story even back then, about why we humans spend so much time searching for relationships, because we're all trying to find out "other halves".  But this updated version of the story makes things even more complicated, by showing the three sexes that existed before the split - the Children of the Sun (who looked like two men stuck together), the Children of the Earth (like two women) and the Children of the Moon (who looked like four-armed, four-legged hermaphrodites).  So after the gods split these three sexes, this supposedly explains why some men seek out women, some men seek out men, and so on.  I don't know, this is a long way to go, isn't it easier in the end just to say that some dudes like to sleep with other dudes?

The film drags (sorry, no pun intended) in the middle part, and the ending was super-confusing.  Like there's a final (dream sequence?) where Hedwig takes off her wig and dress, and gives the wig to another male band member, who is then transformed into a beautiful woman - or was she a woman in drag as a man the whole time?  (I knew it was an actress playing a man, because, come on...)  Then Hedwig walks off naked into the night.  But I lost track of what was going on well before that, so it seemed more like a non-ending than anything else.  Dumb it down for us straights so we can at least try to understand where you're coming from...

Also starring John Cameron Mitchell, Miriam Shor (last seen in "Bedazzled"), Stephen Trask, Michael Pitt (last seen in "Criminal"), Theodore Liscinski, Rob Campbell (last seen in "Rabbit Hole"), Michael Aronov, Alberta Watson, Ben Mayer-Goodman, Gene Pyrz, Sook-Yin Lee, Maurice Dean Wint, Karen Hines (last seen in "Man of the Year"), with a cameo from Rosie O'Donnell (last seen in "The Flintstones").

RATING: 4 out of 10 (conveniently identical looking) Bilgewater's restaurants

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Year 10, Day 61 - 3/2/18 - Movie #2,862

BEFORE: This is an easy one, Nia Vardalos carries over from "My Life in Ruins", and two other actors do also.  (Three in a row for Rita Wilson!)  And it's something of a Greek trilogy, since "Mamma Mia!" was set in Greece (an American film with a half-British cast, an Italian title and Swedish songs, set in Greece, of course...) and then so was "My Life in Ruins" took place in Greece, now it's a film all about Greek-Americans.  (If only TCM had shown "Zorba the Greek" this week....)

Here's the schedule for tomorrow, March 3, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", and we've reached the last day, the end of the Oscar-themed programming.  The final Best Picture nominees and winners are:

5:15 am "Naughty Marietta" (1935)
7:15 am "Captain Blood" (1935)
9:30 am "Ivanhoe" (1952)
11:30 am "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962)
2:45 pm "The Music Man" (1962)
5:30 pm "The Yearling" (1946)
8:00 pm "Gandhi" (1982) - winner
11:30 pm "Braveheart" (1995) - winner
2:45 am "Ben-Hur" (1959) - winner

I'm finishing with a final six films seen out of the last batch: "Captain Blood", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "The Music Man", "Gandhi", "Braveheart" and "Ben-Hur", and the final 6 out of 9 brings my total up to 140 seen out of 342.  Final Tally, let's round it up to 41%. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (Movie #1,945)

THE PLOT: A Portokalos family secret brings the beloved characters back together for an even bigger and Greeker wedding.

AFTER: This is what I was talking about when I said that sometimes, by the time I get around to seeing a movie, the sequel is close to being released.  I watched the first "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" film in February 2015, and then this sequel was in theaters just a year later.  Now it's two years later (for me) and Toula and her husband now have a teenage daughter applying for college.  So forgive me if it feels like she grew up SUPER fast.  (I know, the original came out in 2002, so a full 14 years have passed in the real world since the first film, but that still doesn't explain how she aged to 17 or 18.  BTW, the actress was 19 at the time of release, but looks only about 14 on the poster.)

More time-passage problems, Toula was said to be 32 at the time of the first movie, and if this is set 18 years later, she would be 50, and she does not look it.  Then they go and reveal that her parents were married "fifty years ago", which is fine for Toula, but her sister Athena's supposed to be three years older, so was she born three years before her parents got married?  Ha ha, it's a trick question, because it's possible that Toula's parents were never officially married, in one of those "only in the movies" situations where documents weren't processed properly in the old country.  So that's one generation that has to fix their relationship, plus Toula and her husband seem to be spending less and less time together, meanwhile Toula's daughter (who's somehow aged at a super-fast rate, like kids on soap operas...) is taking her first steps into the world of dating boys, which involves a lot of rolling her eyes whenever she gets advice from her mother or grandfather.

It's probably hard enough for this teen girl, attending a high school where her own father is the principal.  That's social suicide, really, which would probably cut down on not only female friends, but make her un-approachable to any teen boys.  So it's no wonder she's considering going to college somewhere - anywhere - further away than a four-hour drive.                            

I would have liked to see some character development among the Greek family, but no, it's pretty much the same jokes that appeared in the first one.  I don't get the 500 uses that they have for Windex, the patriarch even uses it here on his bad hip, instead of going to his physical therapy like he's supposed to.  Perhaps it has some kind of placebo effect for him, but I have to call foul on this, because it's not only terrible medical advice to put in a movie, but it's simply not funny.  And there was a great opportunity for character growth if he would only be shown realizing that this "medical" solution doesn't work.

It's the same issues from the first film, the big, meddling family can't help but get overly involved with everyone's affairs, and then even when Toula vows to be a different kind of mother, she ends up falling into the same traps, and being over-protective and meddling in the affairs of her daughter.  Hey, if she can't make the necessary break from the family members that bother her, then it's her own damn fault if she finds herself repeating their mistakes, or right back where she started, helping out in their restaurant. (which we hardly ever get to see them visit during the course of this film...)

But the main thing that's bothering me is how easy it is to load up a film like this with a lot of ethnic stereotypes, all in the name of humor, but to such an exaggerated degree that I end up wondering if that's really the appropriate thing to do.  I touched on this a bit in the review of the first "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" film - does it really do a service to reduce everyone in this Greek family to what is, essentially, a cartoon (or cartoonish) character?  I re-ask the question - what if the title had been "My Big Fat African-American Wedding", and the filmmakers fell back on the absolute easiest, most basic stereotypes about black people (they're lazy, they eat fried chicken, etc.) Or what if it were "My Big Fat German Wedding", and all the characters wore lederhosen and those silly hats and talked about how Hitler wasn't such a bad guy, after all?  That would be very WRONG, so how is it correct for Greek people to be talking about how Alexander the Great was, umm, great? 

I plan to discuss this further when I review "Black Panther". While I completely support the depiction of an African nation and its peoples, because it was mostly very positive, I still noticed that all the American and British actors were instructed to speak in a manner that was meant to be "more African" - and that's a very fine line to walk, because in doing so, they ended up pigeon-holing a whole race of people, just by pointing out that they talk differently.  And then there were the tribal tattoos, which I think were a bit over-the-top, and then they had one guy with a plate in his lip, and they made sure that he was in the background of every important crowd shot.  To me, it came across as "Hey, we got a real African guy here, let's make sure everyone sees him!" and with too much of that, it starts to feel like cultural exploitation, even if that's not the way they intended it. 

Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this, because there are definitely British actors that can do American accents, and American actors that can do British accents, with varying degrees of success.  But then when you've got all these non-Africans doing an African accent, it feels a little over-the-line.  Same thing for all these Greek accents in tonight's film, it's just a bit too much and when it started to feel more than stereotypical speech, it started to feel derogatory, if that makes any sense.  And it doesn't really help that the writer falls back on being Greek herself, as if that makes it OK to portray Greeks as simple, or stupid, or ill-intentioned, because she can just say, "Well, that's the way MY family was..." but in my book, still not OK. 

OK, rant over.  It's painfully obvious where they're going to take this story next, the easiest thing in the world would be to have Toula's daughter get married - if they wait another 7 or 8 years before making "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3", she'll be 25 or so, and that's a fine age.  They really should do something different, though, like have her marry the wrong man first, get divorced and marry the right guy second.  Or maybe they should change things up by bringing the whole family over to Greece for a destination wedding, that would at least be different, plus then the audience could meet some new family members descended from Kostas' brother, Panos.  And the Greek-Americans would get to see how much their homeland has changed - I know my grandmother always pictured Germany as rural, the way it was when she left.  She never thought of it as modern or industrial in any way, because she had no frame of reference for that - so seeing the discrepancy between the way the American Portokaloses imagine the old country vs. the way it really is today could at least be the source for some new jokes.

NITPICK POINT: The teen daughter is seen attending her prom, which just HAPPENS to fall on the same date as the big family wedding mentioned in the title.  It's obvious why this was done, so the montage effect can cut between three couples who are all celebrating being together, supposedly at the same time.  It's too bad this could never happen - I'm not an expert on proms, since I never went to one, but I believe that 99% of them take place in the evening, and this wedding is clearly shown to be taking place during the day, therefore most likely on a weekend.  So, proms take place at night, wedding during the day - I can't see how they could coincide, unless the girl goes to a very weird school, or her prom somehow got moved to a Saturday afternoon for some weird reason.

NITPICK POINT #2: If it really is prom time, then her senior year is almost over.  Yet just a few weeks before prom, she's seen waiting for acceptance letters from college and then deciding between several schools, and this is occurring much too late, unless she's planning to take a semester off or something.  Most people attend college fairs during their junior year, get their applications in midway through senior year, and by prom-time, they should already know where they'll be attending college in the fall.  Whoever wrote this didn't do any research about when most college applications are due. 

Also starring John Corbett (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), Elena Kampouris (last seen in "Labor Day"), Lainie Kazan (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "Club Paradise"), Michael Constantine (also last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), Louis Mandylor (ditto), Gia Carides (ditto), Gerry Mendicino (ditto), Joey Fatone (ditto), Bess Meisler (ditto), Stavroula Logothettis (ditto), Ian Gomez (also carrying over from "My Life in Ruins"), Rita Wilson (ditto), Jayne Eastwood (ditto), Fiona Reid (ditto), Bruce Gray (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), John Stamos (last seen in "They Came Together"), Mark Margolis (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Alex Wolff (last seen in "Patriots Day"), Kathryn Greenwood (last seen in "The Man"), Ashleigh Rains, Jeff White, with a cameo from Rob Riggle (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2")

RATING: 4 out of 10 shots of ouzo

My Life in Ruins

Year 10, Day 60 - 3/1/18 - Movie #2,861

BEFORE: In the last few moments of "Mamma Mia!", during the closing credits, there was a final musical number, and there were two quick shots of people dressed as Greek gods and goddesses, looking down on the singing characters.  Two of those gods were the male members of ABBA, and one of the goddesses was Rita Wilson, who also was an executive producer of the film.  This cameo was NOT listed as a credit in the IMDB, but it was noted in the "Trivia" section, and I spotted it on the film's Wikipedia page.  This keeps my chain alive, as I was able to factor this in when I was planning my February line-up - so Rita Wilson carries over to tonight's film, where she's also credited as an executive producer, and with an acting cameo.

Here's the schedule for tomorrow, March 2, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", the next-to-last day of Best Picture nominees and winners:

6:00 am "Five Star Final" (1931)
7:45 am "Lost Horizon" (1937)
10:00 am "The Nun's Story" (1959)
12:45 pm "The Great Dictator" (1940)
3:00 pm "Foreign Correspondent" (1940)
5:15 pm "The Guns of Nazarene" (1961)
8:00 pm "Annie Hall" (1977) - winner
10:00 pm "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) - winner
12:00 am "A Man For All Seasons" (1966) - winner
2:15 am "The Great Ziegfeld" (1936) - winner

I'm hitting big today, which means I'll finish strong, with over 40% of films seen.  I've got a copy of "The Nun's Story" on DVD, so I'm going to try to get to that this year, and I've already seen "The Great Dictator", "Foreign Correspondent", "The Guns of Navarone", "Annie Hall", "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "A Man For All Seasons".  Another 7 out of 11 brings my total up to 134 seen out of 333.  Up to 40.2%

THE PLOT: A travel guide rediscovers her romantic side on a trip around Greece.

AFTER: Well, you can't say I wasn't warned about this film - my BFF saw it on a print-out of my watchlist and tried to convince me to avoid it, but it was too late.  I'd already burned it to DVD to fill up a disc with tomorrow's film, which meant that it had become part of my collection, and therefore needed to be watched.

Like "Mamma Mia!", there's no emotional reaction to anything that couldn't be made larger, or completely blown out of proportion.  This formula for overdoing everything extended here to every last bit of comedy, so naturally they couldn't just have a FEW things go wrong with the tour, instead nearly EVERYTHING needed to go wrong on the tour, from the air conditioning on the bus to the exploding light bulbs, broken showers and non-working elevators in the hotels.  Plus there's a kleptomaniac senior citizen, obnoxious Americans, Australians that talk funny, and British people that can't stand being in the sun or enjoying themselves.  And the result is the only screenplay cobbled completely together from negative Yelp! travel reviews and oversimplified cultural stereotypes.

Greek people probably get the worst of it, though - Greek people are lazy, Greek people are too hairy, they eat nothing but spanakopita and dolmades, and they all break plates while that simple, slowly speeding-up balalaika music plays in the background.  Come on, give me a break.  I'm honestly surprised that they weren't depicted here wearing togas with laurel leaves on their heads.  The lead character, Georgia, is a tour guide who's had enough of the place and dealing with all the terrible tourists, so she resigns before heading out on what will become her final tour of the Greek ruins.

For extra special "fun", her rival at the tour company, who gets the "A-level" tourists and leaves her with the "B-level" scrubs, has set out to make her life miserable so that she'll quit.  Of course, he doesn't know that she's already quit - ha ha!  What hilarity!  But somehow on this last tour, once she learns to relax a little bit and not be so structured about forcing history lessons down people's throats, she realizes that people on holiday just want to have some fun (umm, duh...) and maybe go to a beach once in a while instead of seeing yet another crumbling monument.  And once she takes a little time to get to know the tourists (umm, what was preventing her from doing that before?) she realizes that the guy making wisecracks is really covering his personal grief, and the Americans who call her by the wrong name are doing so as a compliment.  Again, come on, give me a break...
 And once she figures out the real identity of who's been leaving flowers on her seat - (ha ha! More hilarity, she almost slept with the wrong dude!) she realizes that she's been the one that's closed herself off to the possibilities of romance, and has been standing in the way of her own happiness.  So she doesn't need to get a new job back in the U.S., when it's easier to just be happy and content where she already is.  (Now excuse me while I puke...)

NITPICK POINT: About the only thing that didn't happen to the tour group was to have anything stolen from them.  So why did the dialogue punch up the fact that the tour bus would be locked, and the tourists could leave anything in it, at any time?  This seems like a weird thing to mention if it's not going to be important to the plot, and it wasn't.

NITPICK POINT #2: The film's Wikipedia plot summary suggests that late in the film, when they steal the bus keys from the rival tour guide, that the B-level tourists steal the air conditioning from the good bus and install it in their bus.  Wouldn't this require a certain level of expertise in air conditioning tech, and also bus repair?  Since Georgia mentioned a "swap", doesn't it make more sense to think that they swapped buses entirely, maybe transferring a few personal items from one bus to the other, and then giving the A-level guide back the wrong set of keys?  I mean, the buses were almost identical except for the A/C, and this would have been a lot easier and quicker than changing the A/C units.  But then I suppose then they would run the risk of the drivers noticing the change in license plates - so I guess either way, this is a plothole, and just doesn't work.

Also starring Nia Vardalos (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"), Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Paranoia"), Alexis Georgoulis, Alistair McGowan, Harland Williams (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Rachel Dratch (last seen in "Sisters"), Caroline Goodall (last seen in "Disclosure"), Ian Ogilvy, Sophie Stuckey, Maria Botto (last seen in "Risen"), Maria Adanez, Brian Palermo (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Jareb Dauplaise, Simon Gleeson, Natalie O'Donnell, Sheila Bernette, Ralph Nossek, Bernice Stegers, Ian Gomez (last seen in "Edtv"), Nacho Perez.

RATING: 3 out of 10 ice cream stains

Mamma Mia!

Year 10, Day 59 - 2/28/18 - Movie #2,860 

BEFORE: It may be the last day in February, but my romance-themed chain is going to be running over into March.  I've got a few more modern films on topic, then I'm going to snap back to the 1960's for some Richard Burton/Liz Taylor films.  Then that leads me (at long last) to the old Sherlock Holmes films, then after that I'll be back on more modern stuff before the end of the month.  That should give me time to sort through the Academy screeners and find the ones I'll need for April, and also record a few more key movies from cable on to DVD. 

Meanwhile, Colin Firth carries over from "Bridget Jones's Baby", and as an added bonus, in both films he plays one of several possible fathers, one of the two fathers of a baby last night, and one of the THREE potential fathers of an adult woman in this film.  It's a rather odd coincidence.

Here's the schedule for tomorrow, March 1, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" with more Best Picture nominees and winners.  Looks like their programming is going into overtime, also. 

6:00 am"The Crowd" (1928)
7:45 am "Smilin' Through" (1932)
9:30 am "Stage Door" (1937)
11:15 am "Double Indemnity" (1944)
1:15 pm "Anchors Aweigh" (1945)
3:45 pm "The Pride of the Yankees" (1942)
6:00 pm "Sounder" (1972)
8:00 pm "An American in Paris" (1951) - winner
10:15 pm "My Fair Lady" (1964) - winner
1:30 am "Oliver!" (1968) - winner
4:15 am "The Broadway Melody" (1929) - winner

I'm going to cross off another 5 as seen: "Stage Door", "Double Indemnity", "An American in Paris", "My Fair Lady" and "Oliver!" Now, I don't own a copy of "Oliver!", so I'd like to record it tonight - the only problem is, my cable guide is listing tonight's films as screening again tomorrow, and I know that can't be right.  The weekly TV guide from the Sunday Daily News also lists a Thursday repeat of Wednesday night's films, namely "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Patton", "From Here to Eternity" and "Casablanca".  I don't know how this happened, the whole point of this programming is that they're NOT showing any films twice, all month long.  Someone in the programming department really screwed up on this.  I don't think I'll be able to record "Oliver!" as I planned, because the wrong movies are listed on my DVR guide, with the wrong starting times.

But another 5 out of 11 brings my total up to 127 seen out of 323.  Up to 39.3%

THE PLOT: The story of a bride-to-be trying to find her real father, told using hit songs by the popular 1970's group ABBA. 

AFTER: It stands to reason that by the time I finally get around to a movie, there's often a sequel in the works.  When I watched "Paddington", the trailers started circulating for "Paddington 2", and by the time I got to the first 2 "Bridget Jones" films, the third one was due in theatres about 6 months later.  It's almost like Hollywood doesn't take my schedule into account when they set release dates, and as a result, it feels like I'm always playing catch-up.  So of course, in just about 5 months, there will be a sequel to this film, called "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again".

I kind of forgot this was a Broadway musical, too, just like "Beauty & The Beast" was.  Is there anything that can't be turned into a Broadway musical, and then (back) into a film a couple decades later?  I guess it's a world of cross-platform entertainment, and if you're not adapting your material into a new format, then it's just dying on the vine.

Like "Bridget Jones's Baby", this story tries to wring the maximum amount of dramatic tension out of the fact that a woman can have several sex partners and then NOT know which one got her pregnant. You would think that this girl would have asked her mother who her father was at some point during her first, what 18 or 20 (?) years of life, and you would be WRONG.  This is something so important, so character-defining, so all-encompassing that it simply can NOT be broached during casual conversation.  Instead she must steal her mother's diary, review her entire sexual history, and invite the three most likely candidates to her wedding, despite the fact that none of them have had any contact with her for the last two decades.  So, this all must be done behind her mother's back, for fear that this could lead to an open, honest conversation between them - God forbid THAT should happen.

No, this is a family that has to SING all of their important conversations about their feelings, in the form of chart-topping ABBA hits.  Feeling concerned about money?  There's an ABBA song for that, it's called "Money Money Money".  Feeling hopeful about the future?  There's a song called "I Have a Dream".  Feeling flirty?  "Take a Chance on Me" is right there, or if the man being flirted with is on the younger side, then there's "Does Your Mother Know?".

The bride in question here is Sophie, daughter of Donna, who (unlike Bridget Jones) decided that she didn't need any man's help in raising a child, and - get this - she actually stuck with that plan!  Good for her.  But she sort of took it to the other extreme, by not telling Sophie anything about who her father was, and that just seems ill-advised also.  Doesn't she have a right to know?  Well, at least the situation is comically complicated, although I really don't see the humor in the situation.  By the same token, each of the three possible fathers deserved (at the very least) to know that he MIGHT have a daughter.  So even though everyone is happily singing pop tunes, in essence everyone here is being really horrible to each other, just by not discussing this topic.

Two of the potential fathers miss the ferry that will take them to Donna's Greek island resort, the location of the wedding, so they're forced to ride on the boat belonging to the third possible father.  What a coincidence, it's almost like some god-like screenwriter wanted them to all meet and hash out their differences or something.  Also heading to the island on the proper ferry are Donna's old mates from her girl group, Donna and the Dynamos, and when they perform together later, it's the perfect opportunity to shoehorn in the last few ABBA hits that didn't seem to fit anywhere else ("Super Trouper", for one.)

One by one, Sophie lets her possible fathers know that they might have passed on their genes, and they react in vastly different ways.  But it leads to a very awkward wedding ceremony when all three men come forward to give the bride away.  It's almost an "I am Spartacus!"-style moment, except "I'll take a third of a daughter!" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.  But considering how absent all three of these men have been over the years, perhaps being a third of a father is the best that each one of them can do.

Unfortunately, some of the performances were spoiled by two things - Pierce Brosnan's lack of singing ability (easily the worst of the three men, but at least he tried) and the over-emoting from the women, Streep's a bit over the top and Baranski is WAY over the top.  That's a stage actress who clearly was playing to the cheap seats, only that doesn't really work in a movie, it just makes everything come off as super-corny.

Also starring Meryl Streep (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Lovelace"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "The World's End"), Stellan Skarsgard (last seen in "Cinderella"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Paddington"), Dominic Cooper (last seen in "Warcraft"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), Philip Michael, Juan Pablo Di Pace, Ashley Lilley, Rachel McDowall, Enzo Squillino, Niall Buggy, with cameos from Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Rita Wilson (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities").

RATING: 4 out of 10 townspeople in the "Greek chorus" (I see what you did there...)

Bridget Jones's Baby

Year 10, Day 58 - 2/27/18 - Movie #2,859

BEFORE: Final day in Atlantic City, and I'm watching a second film on my phone via Netflix.  I've been waiting for this one to air on premium cable, so I can put it on a DVD with "Miss Potter", but it just isn't happening.  So, Netflix it is.

Now, I could have had Ewan McGregor carry over again, to a film like "T2 - Trainspotting", but it's still February, and something tells me that film isn't properly classified as a romance.  So that film is being rescheduled for a later date, even though it shared several actors with tonight's film.  It's kind of like how you can know that a tomato is technically a fruit, but you need to be smart enough culinarily to not put it in a fruit salad.  So instead, Emma Thompson carries over from "Beauty and the Beast", and "Trainspotting 2" is rescheduled for April, just after Easter.  (Yes, there is now a plan for April/May)

Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 28, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" with more Best Picture nominees and winners:

6:00 am "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (1932)
7:45 am "Grand Illusion" (1937)
9:45 am "Broadway Melody of 1936" (1936)
11:30 am "Ninotchka" (1939)
1:30 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)
4:00 pm "Mildred Pierce" (1945)
6:00 pm "Father of the Bride" (1950)
8:00 pm "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) - winner
11:00 pm "Patton" (1970) - winner
2:00 am "From Here to Eternity" (1953) - winner
4:15 am "Casablanca" (1942) - winner

I'm going to claim another 6 today: "Mildred Pierce", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Patton", "From Here to Eternity" and "Casablanca" seen, plus I have "Grand Illusion" on my list, and I'm trying to get to it.  So another 6 out of 11 brings my total up to 122 seen out of 312.  Up to 39.1%

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" (Movie #2,251)

THE PLOT: Bridget's focus on single life and her career is interrupted when she finds herself pregnant, with one hitch... she can only be fifty percent sure of the identity of her baby's father.

AFTER: Well, if I wasn't sure if Belle presented a proper feminist icon last night, I'm thinking that goes double for Bridget Jones.  I mean, this is the same character that was supposed to be more representative of "real" women in the first film, partially because she may have had a few extra pounds over the "fake" Hollywood standard, then it wasn't long before she was attending a "Vicars and Tarts" party, dressed as a Playboy bunny.  OK, so which is it, are we for or against the sexploitation of women?  (Now, if she had dressed like a vicar, that would have been a bold move...)

We're supposed to be proud of our bodies, even if they're not perfect, isn't that the new feminist ideal?  But it's not long into this third film that Bridget proclaims that she's finally reached her "ideal" weight.  Huh?  If she truly wasn't concerned about how men view her, then she wouldn't have an "ideal" weight at all.  Then she goes and gets herself pregnant, so I guess she won't be back at her ideal weight for a while.  Why can't she just learn to be happy the way she is?

Truly, that seems like an impossible task for Bridget.  Over the last two films, she managed to muck things up with Mark Darcy AND Daniel Cleaver, whenever she got close to one, she would wonder what the other one was doing, and so on, back and forth like a yo-yo.  Stop defining yourself through your relationships, girl!  So here in the third film, the first thing they do is kill off the Daniel character (Hugh Grant apparently would not return for this sequel, or simply wasn't available) leaving Bridget free to pursue Mr. Darcy.  Only he's married now.  So when her birthday rolls around yet again, it's finally time for Bridget to be happy and content as a single woman, to not be defined by her relationships, or lack thereof.

Just kidding - as soon as she's content to be single, she realizes how free she is to pursue relationships with random men.  And that sound you hear is thousands of feminists doing face-palms.  Five minutes of contentment as a strong, single woman, and she runs right out to find a new man.  How about a little time for herself?  Maybe work on the career goals, read a book, take some pottery class?  Nope, it's right on to shagging strangers.  And she gets lucky not once, but twice, by sleeping with an American internet millionaire at a sleep-over music festival (yeah, pretty sure there's no such thing...) and then a couple weeks later with the newly single Mark Darcy.  Can you see the hilarity coming when she can't (or won't) figure out which one is the father?

I say "won't" because there was a simple way to take a DNA sample from the baby, it's called amniocentesis, and the needle wouldn't come anywhere near the baby, they'd only use it to gather some amniotic fluid.  But just because of the size of the needle (OK, and the slight chance of miscarriage) determining the identity of the father has to wait until the baby is born.  Making the "comedy" involved with getting hair samples from the possible fathers completely pointless.

It's incredibly convenient that Bridget Jones is a nincompoop, because if there's any part of the plot that doesn't make any sense, it's covered with a simple, "Oh, but Bridget didn't KNOW that..."  How the heck did she get to be the producer of a news-type show (not a typo, I stand by that...) if she's so flipping dumb?  "Oh, Bridget didn't know that the microphone was on..."  "Oh, Bridget didn't know that condoms have an expiration date..." "Oh, Bridget can't remember her PIN at the bank..."  Really?  Who forgets their PIN at the bank?  The whole reason that you HAVE a particular PIN is that it's easy for you to remember....

I'm tired of making excuses for her, Bridget Jones is stupid, all in the name of comedy.  She's not a good role models, girls and women could aim so much higher.  Even after having a discussion with her mother about how she doesn't NEED to be married, she could raise her baby by herself, five minutes later it's like she never had that conversation at all, because she falls right back into the classic love triangle, and feels that she has to decide between the two men.  Wait a minute, what happened to "None of the above"?  What happened to "I can raise the baby by myself"?  What if neither of these relationships has the power to go the distance, what would she do then?

Nope, it comes down to either THIS guy or THAT guy, which is a gross over-simplification of the problem.  And allowing to let her choice be defined by which man's sperm cell managed to reach her egg, well, that's just stupid, she might as well just flip a coin.  Or, as I suggest, choose neither, that would be a bolder move.  The character even makes a point of pledging to not make the same mistakes as before, preferring instead to go out and make all NEW mistakes, but that's a crock, because here in the third film, she just ended up making the same "juggling two lovers" mistake all over again.

NITPICK POINT: As producer of this news-ish TV show, Bridget stands over the interview stage, she just can't resist as her mysterious (at this point, anyway) sexual partner is being asked questions on live TV.  She doesn't want to be seen, yet she stands up and draws nearer to him to view him through the glass.  How does she NOT realize that he can see her, too, through the very same glass?  Suddenly she ducks behind the desk, but the damage is done.  So, is Bridget smart, or stupid?  Since she didn't realize that glass is see-through in both directions, I'm going with "stupid".

NITPICK POINT #2: If you should happen to leave something behind in an ATM kiosk (Bridget somehow leaves without her purse after the machine eats her bank card, because again, she can't seem to remember her PIN...) the easiest solution to this problem is to just WAIT by the entrance to the bank, even if it is raining.  Probably within the next 5 or 10 minutes, someone else will need to use the ATM, and they will use their bank card to open the door.  Then she could have just walked in with that other person and grabbed her purse.  But NO, she had to give up and go home, losing her entire purse and all of its contents.  Another stupid move made by a stupid character.

Also starring Renée Zellweger (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Kingsman: The Secret Service"), Patrick Dempsey (last seen in "Outbreak"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "The Crying Game"), Gemma Jones (last seen in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"), Sally Phillips (ditto), James Callis (ditto), Neil Pearson (ditto), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "24 Hour Party People"), Julian Rhind-Tutt (last seen in "Rush"), Ben Willbond, Sarah Solemani (last seen in "Mrs. Henderson Presents"), Kate O'Flynn (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Joanna Scanlan (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Celia Imrie (last seen in "Calendar Girls"), Enzo Cilenti (last seen in "The Man Who Knew Infinity"), James Faulkner (also last seen in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"), Jessica Hynes (ditto), Donald Douglas (ditto), Shirley Dixon (ditto), Dolly Wells, Agni Scott, with a cameo from Ed Sheeran.

RATING: 3 out of 10 sonograms

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Year 10, Day 57 - 2/26/18 - Movie #2,858

BEFORE: Got to Atlantic City yesterday afternoon, went out for a big dinner at a steakhouse, between two sessions of gambling on the slots at Bally's and Caesar's.  I was up $54 after the first round of play, then lost some at night to finish at a $18 profit for Day 1.  I should have stopped playing in the afternoon if I wanted to make some money, but then I wouldn't have much to do last night and today.

Ewan McGregor carries over from "Beginners", to a film that I can fortunately watch on Netflix on my phone, while I'm away from home.

Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 27, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" with more Best Picture nominees and winners:

5:45 am "42nd Street" (1933)
7:30 am "The Letter" (1940)
9:15 am "Captains Courageous" (1937)
11:15 am "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943)
12:45 pm "The Sundowners" (1960)
3:00 pm "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959)
5:45 pm "Kings Row" (1942)
8:00 pm "On the Waterfront" (1954) - winner
10:00 pm "All the King's Men" (1949) - winner
12:00 am "Hamlet" (1948) - winner
2:45 am "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956) - winner

This time, it's 5 more seen: "Anatomy of a Murder", "On the Waterfront", "All the King's Men", "Hamlet" and "Around the World in 80 Days", so another 5 out of 11 brings my total up to 116 seen out of 301.  Up to 38.5%

THE PLOT: An adaptation of the fairy tale about a monstrous-looking prince and a young woman who fall in love.

AFTER: I'm not a huge fan of the original 1991 animated film "Beauty and the Beast", I saw it once, and didn't ever feel the need to see it again - but I was 23 then, and busy with a lot of things, obviously too old to properly enjoy a Disney film, and too young to be nostalgic about them.  The Disney Renaissance was going on then, and I was aware of it, but not really caught up in it.  So I understood the hype at the time, but I also saw myself as distanced from it.

Now I know WHY they went ahead and made a remake, because the modern remake of "The Jungle Book" did so well at the box office, and they're also now moving ahead with a similar remake of "The Lion King", and obviously it's all about money.  (But all of these drive me crazy, because even on Wikipedia the modern remakes are called "live-action versions", and nothing could be further from the truth.  Like the 2016 "Jungle Book" remake, this one is VERY heavy on the CGI, so the term "live-action" only tells part of the story, describing only part of the process.  They SHOULD be called, at all times, "live-action/CGI" and to do otherwise is inaccurate and short-sighted.)

That being said, this remake is an astonishing visual achievement.  While I could endlessly rant about how unnecessary it was to make a new version of "Beauty and the Beast", now that they have, it's a feast for the eyes, particularly on the "Be Our Guest" number, the high point of the film for sure.  It really looks like they spent $160 million to make the film and got their money's worth - now that seems like the GDP of a large European country, and it is, but considering the film took in $174 million in just the first weekend, and $504 million gross in just the U.S., I'd say that Disney probably made their money back.  So now we can look forward to more live-action/CGI versions of all of the Disney classics, probably.

Three new songs were composed for the 2017 version, it seems there was some interest in using songs that were written for the Broadway musical version of the 1991 film, but I can see the logic in writing new songs for the new film, because only new songs are eligible for Oscar nominations in the Best Original Song category.  I, on the other hand, forgot that there WAS a Broadway musical adaptation, even though it ran for 13 years, it seems like I ignored it.  Boy, DisneyCorp just keeps inventing ways to take your money while they tell you the same story again and again in different mediums, right?

I also didn't remember the wardrobe, harpsichord and hat-rack characters from the original animated film, but maybe they were in there somewhere - again, I saw the film once and that was a long time ago.  I do want to track down a list on-line of other differences between the 1991 film and this one, I'm sure that can't be hard to find.  The most obvious is making Lefou's character quite obviously gay, but I don't have a problem with that - you can't say that there weren't gay people back in 18th century France, they just didn't talk about it.  Similarly there probably weren't so many people of color in your average French palace, obviously some concessions were made to reflect the culture as it is NOW, not then.

As for the changes in Belle, they made her more of an inventor here (over-seeing the intricate watch- and clockwork of her father, but also someone who may have created the first washing machine.  While this is a welcome addition to her character - she's not just someone who reads books, she also finds practical applications for the stuff she learns from them - I'm not sure it's really a bold feminist move to just create a better way to do laundry.  Plus, her technical skills never really come into play, so why add them?  In the end she learns that there's nothing more important than being a pretty girl and redeeming a male character with love.  Is that "on message" with feminism?  I doubt it.

They changed some details about the way that the Beast's curse works, and for the most part those seem to track and make things a little easier to understand.  It seems that in the 1991 film the Beast's castle is very close to the village, yet no one there seems to be aware of it, or how to get there.  The 2017 film, on the other hand, reveals that when the Prince was turned into the Beast, a spell of forgetfulness was cast on the villagers, so they would not remember about the cursed castle or their loved ones who were turned into furniture there.  Makes more sense this way, I guess.

Also starring Emma Watson (last seen in "Noah"), Dan Stevens (last seen in "A Walk Among the Tombstones"), Luke Evans (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Josh Gad (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "Orange County"), Ian McKellen (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Emma Thompson (last seen in "Burnt"), Audra McDonald (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash") Stanley Tucci (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (last seen in "Free State of Jones") Nathan Mack, Hattie Morahan (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Rita Davies (last seen in "The Trip"), Adrian Schiller (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Gerard Horan (last seen in "Cinderella" (2015)), Haydn Gwynne, Michael Jibson (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Ray Fearon, Zoe Rainey, Clive Rowe, Thomas Padden, Tom Turner, Harriet Jones, Adam Mitchell.

RATING: 7 out of 10 white wolves

Beginners

Year 10, Day 56 - 2/25/18 - Movie #2,857

BEFORE: I'll catch up with Renée Zellweger again in a couple of days, but I found that by splitting up her films, I could fit more films into the chain - so I'm following the other path, with Ewan McGregor carrying over from "Miss Potter".  We're leaving this morning for 2 days in Atlantic City, and luckily the next two films are available on Netflix, so I can watch them on my phone and not lose a day - though I may not be able to post reviews until Tuesday.

Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 26, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", just a few days left in the countdown now, with more Best Picture nominees and winners:

6:00 am "Test Pilot" (1938)
8:15 am "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)
10:00 am "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" (1935)
12:00 pm "The Talk of the Town" (1942)
2:00 pm "Libeled Lady" (1936)
4:00 pm "Dark Victory" (1939)
6:00 pm "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958)
8:00 pm "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) - winner
11:00 pm "Mrs. Miniver" (1942) - winner
1:30 am "Grand Hotel" (1932) - winner
3:45 am "It Happened One Night" (1934) - winner

This time, it's another 8 out of 11 already seen!  This might be my best score of the month, thanks to the combination of "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "Mrs. Miniver", which I watched back-to-back in July 2016.   Also seen: "The Magnificent Ambersons", "The Talk of the Town", "Dark Victory", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Grand Hotel" and "It Happened One Night", and another 8 out of 11 brings my total up to 111 seen out of 290.  Up to 38.2%

AFTER: I recently had a reason to record the film "In & Out", with Kevin Kline (Starz was airing it, I realized I had seen the film but I didn't OWN a copy, and I needed to fill up a DVD with "The Emperor's Club", another film where the same actor plays a teacher) and that film from 1997 was all about a man in his 40's being accidentally outed in public, because somehow everyone else knew that he was gay, and somehow he didn't.  This made very little sense, because how do you not know that about yourself?  I mean, did he know and not know?  Did he know but just not tell anyone, including his fiancée?  Or did he know but keep the information on some lower subconscious level?  Anyway, as a movie made in 1997 it represented Hollywood's complete misunderstanding of the subject matter, turning the hot topic of homosexuality into a madcap slapstick comedy of sorts.

Fast-forward to 2010 and tonight's film, "Beginners" (I'm sure there were other films on this topic in-between, but work with me for a sec...).  This film presents us with an older man, in his 70's, who finally gets a chance to come out after his wife passes away.  And he knew he was gay the whole time, duh, because this makes more sense.  But since he came of age in the 1950's, which was a much different time, with different rules, he could only love another man secretly then, because of various laws, scandal and the court of public opinion.  Over the course of the film we see this man become happy and secure with his new status, and in the flashback scenes, we see him through his young son's eyes, a man keeping up pretenses, married to a woman he didn't love, a woman who mistakenly thought she could "fix" him.  

It's hard to call this a comedy, but it does have comic moments. Despite my problems with the structure (wait for it...) it's a huge leap forward in Hollywood's understanding of gay culture, and what it means for straight family members to accept, or try to accept, the lifestyles of others, even if they don't fully understand them.

But the timeline is horribly fractured, because we see this man's son, Oliver, at three different times in his life: as a young boy trying to understand his parents' relationship, as an adult dealing with his father's newfound status as a gay man, and later on, a few months after his father's death, as he starts a new relationship with a French actress.  (They meet at a costume party, while she has a bad case of laryngitis, so he doesn't even hear her talk until their second or third date, and the symbolism wasn't lost on me - the female character literally doesn't have anything important to say...).

But the constant toggling between the three timelines - it's exhausting.  And you know what I always say, this sort of structure is most likely a crutch to justify putting these scenes together, when doing so in a linear timeline would have exposed all sorts of story problems.  This is a case where I bet that they DID organize everything in the proper order, and it was excruciating to watch.  The middle part with the father celebrating his newfound freedom would have been joyous, then there would have been this depressing part, and then it would be a long, slow, uphill slog back to something joyous again.  At that point, you might as well chop up the film into little bits, throw them up in the air, and hope that they land in some sort of randomly artistic fashion.  (EDIT: According to the IMDB, the film was SHOT in chronological order, which most Hollywood films don't do.  So I'm betting that I'm right here...)

I realize this is probably semi-autobiographical, the director is Mike Mills, and his father was also a museum director, and he himself also worked as a graphic artist on album covers, like the main character.  (This is not the same Mike Mills who was in the band R.E.M., however, it seems that their IMDB credits are scrambled together somewhat, and someone should really get in there and straighten them out...).

My other complaint is that I think the film was going for a cutesy "Breakfast of Champions" sort of vibe with its tone, but instead that came off as very condescending.  "This is 2003.  This is what the sun looked like in 2003.  This is what fireworks look like."  Gee, thanks, I never would have guessed.  And then most of the graphic artist's work was so obtuse that in most cases, I just didn't get it.  What point, exactly, was made by writing "1983 - Chicken McNuggets" on a wall?  It's just nonsense, right?

Also starring Christopher Plummer (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Melanie Laurent (last seen in "By the Sea"), Goran Visnjic (last seen in "The Counselor"), Mary Page Keller (last seen in "The Negotiator"), Kai Lennox (last seen in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"), China Shavers, Melissa Tang (last seen in "A Good Day to Die Hard"), Lou Taylor Pucci (last seen in "The Music Never Stopped"), Jodi Long (last seen in "Robocop 3"), Bruce French, Jennifer Lauren and Cosmo the dog.

RATING: 4 out of 10 cans of spray paint