BEFORE: Still recovering from watching the Oscars - I kind of liked the "no host" format because that kept things moving. There's no need to have a host waste 10 minutes on a monologue, or work themself into a montage like Billy Crystal used to do, because then the show always runs long. They also got rid of the montages that explain concepts like "Hey, this is what a musical is, let's look at clips from 100 famous ones to really drive the point home." And then to have a host introduce the next presenters always seemed like a waste of time too, because as last night's show proved, a P.A.-style announcement works just as well.
I was rooting for the films I'd seen to win - which was only "Vice" and "Black Panther" in the Best Picture category - "Vice" only won for best make-up, but "Black Panther" won like 4 craft awards. The category where I'd seen the most nominees was "Best Visual Effects", since I'd seen both superhero films and the "Star Wars" knockoff, and then in Best Animated Feature I'd also seen both "Incredibles 2" and "Isle of Dogs", but those awards went to "First Man" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse". But I know one of the directors of the Spider-Man film, so I'm happy for him. Now I'm already on track to watch several of the winners and nominees during March and April, like the Spider-Man film, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", "Mary Poppins Returns", "Christopher Robin", "A Star Is Born", "The Mule" and "Green Book", plus I'm finally going to cross off "Moonlight", which won two years ago. I can't see much further than that right now, but I want to get to "BlackKklansman", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "First Man", "Ralph Breaks the Internet" and even that documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the end of 2019.
The end is in sight for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", just 6 more days to go. Tomorrow, February 26, it's "War" films during the day, "Favorite Best Actress Win: Ingrid Bergman" during primetime, and the battle for "Favorite Conrad L. Hall Western Cinematography" overnight:
3:15 am "Glory" (1989)
5:30 am "Sergeant York" (1941)
7:45 am "They Were Expendable" (1945)
10:00 am "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (1944)
12:30 pm "The Young Lions" (1958)
3:30 pm "The Dirty Dozen" (1967)
6:00 pm "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945)
8:00 pm "Gaslight" (1944)
10:15 pm "Anastasia" (1956)
12:15 am "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)
2:15 am "The Professionals" (1966)
I've seen "Glory", "Sergeant York", "The Dirty Dozen", "Gaslight", "Anastasia" and of course, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", so that's another 6 out of 11, that counts as progress. So now I'm up to 123 out of 295, which is 41.7%. I may reach my goal yet. Meg Ryan carries over today from "I.Q."
THE PLOT: Maggie's and Sam's former partners are in love; she wants revenge and he wants his lost love back, so they work together to break up the happy couple.
AFTER: Ugh, I don't know where to start with this one - it's filled to the brim with bad behavior, people doing the wrong things for the right reason, or maybe the other way around, and somehow justifying it all for the cause of love. Where, really, nobody seems to be exhibiting loving behavior at all, or doing things that should lead to them being rewarded with love, so I just don't get it.
First off, we see Sam, who's an astronomer of some ability - he can accurately predict when a star is going to explode into a supernova, just by studying its behavior for a long period of time. It's funny, last night's romantic comedy with Meg Ryan also dealt with astronomy, specifically a comet (and for some reason it didn't even bug me when a smart woman believed that her dead father would be "coming back" to her when the comet returned. Now I'm thinking that it probably should have bothered me...because that's not how comets or dead people work.)
But right off, I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on the proper use of tenses when it comes to stargazing. Because a star is so far away, it's not proper to say that the star is "about to go supernova", by using the future tense. The proper terminology is to theorize that the star already WENT supernova years ago, and the light is finally reaching us - if that star is six light-years away, then if it exploded six years ago, it would take that long for the light to reach us and for us to find out about it. When you get into these interstellar distances, then space is also time, and when you look at the stars, you're really gazing into the past.
Maybe there's a lesson to be learned about break-ups in this point, because Sam's girlfriend, Linda, is chosen to go teach at some magnet school in New York for several months (umm, I don't think this is how teaching works, either, you kind of just teach where you are, or you go where the jobs are, but you don't get the privilege of teaching at a special school for a short period, right?). Anyway while she's gone, she falls out of love with Sam and he gets the break-up note read to him by her father (umm, no, again, nobody does this, a real adult would write a break-up note directly to the person they're breaking up with). But really, the break-up is like the light from a star - by the time the news reaches Sam, it's already over, the break-up happened like two light-weeks ago, and there's nothing he can do about it.
But instead of being a reasonable adult about it, he packs up and heads off to NYC without a plan (or a place to stay, again, nobody does this either...) and then after somehow figuring out where Linda lives now (this is also very unclear) he rings the doorbell, but gets spooked and runs away before her boyfriend can answer the door. This is really where things start to break down, because you realize that the whole story is driven by people not acting like rational adults, and pretty much this is going to continue in this vein for the whole movie.
So, naturally, illogically and impossibly, he breaks in to the abandoned building across the street, and sets himself up rent-free in a room that's falling apart but yet somehow also livable, where he can set up a telescope-like lens that allows him to project an image onto a blank wall and then obsessively spy on Linda and her new beau, "Wakefield"-style (only, umm, this film came first.). No, no, no, no, no, this is not the behavior of a rational adult. And obsessively tracking all of their little behaviors in order to determine when their relationship will implode (supernova-style, I guess...) is a tell-tale sign of a demented person.
Before long, he's joined by Maggie, who's the ex-girlfriend of Linda's new boyfriend, Anton. And somehow she instinctively, magically, impossibly knows when she sees Sam going into the abandoned building that he's the ex-boyfriend of her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. (wait - no, that's correct). And somehow she knows what he's doing there, and she wants in - only she doesn't want to get back together with Anton, like Sam wants to get back with Linda, Maggie only wants to destroy his life. So they team up to spy on Linda and Anton and figure out ways to make their lives worse.
For a while, this means planting evidence that Anton is being unfaithful, like getting a street performer's monkey to douse him with perfume. Umm, I think? This was weird and unclear. Then Sam and Maggie break into their apartment (I guess they overheard talk of them going away for the weekend? Again, unclear.) in order to plant evidence of various affairs, like hiding stray panties in the couch cushions. But then they do something that doesn't make much sense, they fool around together in Linda and Anton's bed. Umm, how does THIS help the cause? Anton and Linda are going to come back from their weekend trip, and it's going to look like two strangers had sex in their bed? This won't look like Anton's been unfaithful, because he was away for the weekend WITH LINDA. Come on, this is just lazy screenwriting.
Unless, it's possible that the fooling around in the bed was unplanned, and both Sam and Maggie got caught up in the moment. Because eventually it does seem like the script is pushing those two crazy kids together, since they have a common goal, they spend a lot of time together, they get used to each other's jokes, etc. But here's the kicker - it doesn't feel like ANY of the characters deserve to be in love and happy, because they're all horrible people. At first it seems like Linda and Anton are bad people, because they broke up with Sam and Maggie, but at least they seem to be in love with each other, right? Anton is annoying, dictatorial and French, but still seems like a much less evil person than Sam, even if you assume that he was trying to marry Linda just to get his green card.
Sam and Maggie continue to do horrible things, like Sam gets a job in Anton's restaurant, and gets Maggie to bring him a bunch of cockroaches from the abandoned building, which he then releases in the restaurant on the night when a big food critic is eating there, so his entire reputation and livelihood is ruined. And Maggie hides some strawberries in his pillowcase, knowing that he's terribly allergic. These are not the actions of healthy people - Sam probably had to catch roaches for weeks and somehow store them somewhere they could be easily accessible, and that means feeding them, caring for them. This is not the act of a rational man, it requires premeditation and seems like the act of a psychopath.
First off, we see Sam, who's an astronomer of some ability - he can accurately predict when a star is going to explode into a supernova, just by studying its behavior for a long period of time. It's funny, last night's romantic comedy with Meg Ryan also dealt with astronomy, specifically a comet (and for some reason it didn't even bug me when a smart woman believed that her dead father would be "coming back" to her when the comet returned. Now I'm thinking that it probably should have bothered me...because that's not how comets or dead people work.)
But right off, I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on the proper use of tenses when it comes to stargazing. Because a star is so far away, it's not proper to say that the star is "about to go supernova", by using the future tense. The proper terminology is to theorize that the star already WENT supernova years ago, and the light is finally reaching us - if that star is six light-years away, then if it exploded six years ago, it would take that long for the light to reach us and for us to find out about it. When you get into these interstellar distances, then space is also time, and when you look at the stars, you're really gazing into the past.
Maybe there's a lesson to be learned about break-ups in this point, because Sam's girlfriend, Linda, is chosen to go teach at some magnet school in New York for several months (umm, I don't think this is how teaching works, either, you kind of just teach where you are, or you go where the jobs are, but you don't get the privilege of teaching at a special school for a short period, right?). Anyway while she's gone, she falls out of love with Sam and he gets the break-up note read to him by her father (umm, no, again, nobody does this, a real adult would write a break-up note directly to the person they're breaking up with). But really, the break-up is like the light from a star - by the time the news reaches Sam, it's already over, the break-up happened like two light-weeks ago, and there's nothing he can do about it.
But instead of being a reasonable adult about it, he packs up and heads off to NYC without a plan (or a place to stay, again, nobody does this either...) and then after somehow figuring out where Linda lives now (this is also very unclear) he rings the doorbell, but gets spooked and runs away before her boyfriend can answer the door. This is really where things start to break down, because you realize that the whole story is driven by people not acting like rational adults, and pretty much this is going to continue in this vein for the whole movie.
So, naturally, illogically and impossibly, he breaks in to the abandoned building across the street, and sets himself up rent-free in a room that's falling apart but yet somehow also livable, where he can set up a telescope-like lens that allows him to project an image onto a blank wall and then obsessively spy on Linda and her new beau, "Wakefield"-style (only, umm, this film came first.). No, no, no, no, no, this is not the behavior of a rational adult. And obsessively tracking all of their little behaviors in order to determine when their relationship will implode (supernova-style, I guess...) is a tell-tale sign of a demented person.
Before long, he's joined by Maggie, who's the ex-girlfriend of Linda's new boyfriend, Anton. And somehow she instinctively, magically, impossibly knows when she sees Sam going into the abandoned building that he's the ex-boyfriend of her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. (wait - no, that's correct). And somehow she knows what he's doing there, and she wants in - only she doesn't want to get back together with Anton, like Sam wants to get back with Linda, Maggie only wants to destroy his life. So they team up to spy on Linda and Anton and figure out ways to make their lives worse.
For a while, this means planting evidence that Anton is being unfaithful, like getting a street performer's monkey to douse him with perfume. Umm, I think? This was weird and unclear. Then Sam and Maggie break into their apartment (I guess they overheard talk of them going away for the weekend? Again, unclear.) in order to plant evidence of various affairs, like hiding stray panties in the couch cushions. But then they do something that doesn't make much sense, they fool around together in Linda and Anton's bed. Umm, how does THIS help the cause? Anton and Linda are going to come back from their weekend trip, and it's going to look like two strangers had sex in their bed? This won't look like Anton's been unfaithful, because he was away for the weekend WITH LINDA. Come on, this is just lazy screenwriting.
Unless, it's possible that the fooling around in the bed was unplanned, and both Sam and Maggie got caught up in the moment. Because eventually it does seem like the script is pushing those two crazy kids together, since they have a common goal, they spend a lot of time together, they get used to each other's jokes, etc. But here's the kicker - it doesn't feel like ANY of the characters deserve to be in love and happy, because they're all horrible people. At first it seems like Linda and Anton are bad people, because they broke up with Sam and Maggie, but at least they seem to be in love with each other, right? Anton is annoying, dictatorial and French, but still seems like a much less evil person than Sam, even if you assume that he was trying to marry Linda just to get his green card.
Sam and Maggie continue to do horrible things, like Sam gets a job in Anton's restaurant, and gets Maggie to bring him a bunch of cockroaches from the abandoned building, which he then releases in the restaurant on the night when a big food critic is eating there, so his entire reputation and livelihood is ruined. And Maggie hides some strawberries in his pillowcase, knowing that he's terribly allergic. These are not the actions of healthy people - Sam probably had to catch roaches for weeks and somehow store them somewhere they could be easily accessible, and that means feeding them, caring for them. This is not the act of a rational man, it requires premeditation and seems like the act of a psychopath.
Then there's Maggie's weird collage/art project - WTF was the point of that? It added nothing to the plot, was it just a way for her to pass the time in the abandoned building? And what kind of people put their jobs and lives on holds for weeks or months just to spy on their exes, anyway? Neither of them deserve to find love, not even with each other, until they can grow up and learn to handle their failed relationships in a more dignified manner. Because if they're always looking back, then they're just not moving forward. Spending all their time looking at the dying light of a fading thing is a pointless exercise.
Also starring Matthew Broderick (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Kelly Preston (last seen in "52 Pick-Up"), Tcheky Karyo (last seen in "The Patriot"), Maureen Stapleton (last seen in "Reds"), Nesbitt Blaisdell, Remak Ramsay, Lee Wilkof, Dominick Dunne, Larry Pine (last seen in "Maid in Manhattan"), with a cameo from Daniel Dae Kim.
RATING: 3 out of 10 hobo showers on the roof (I assure you, nobody in NYC does this...)
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