BEFORE: OK, here's more proof that February is really the cruelest month - tomorrow's not February 29, it's March 1, which means that everybody has to pay their rent or mortgage THREE days earlier than usual. How is THAT fair? There were barely even four weeks in February, so that's two pay periods (assuming you get paid every other week), where in some longer months, you might get three. Depending on your personal budget, there could be no room for error here, no cushion. For god's sake, why can't we take that last day at the end of January and call THAT February 1? We don't need two 31-day months (Dec. and Jan.) in a row, January could easily lose a day and still survive, only that rhyme won't work any more. Same goes for July and August, they both have 31 days, so we could just make one of them 30 days long, and then February could be 30 days instead of 28 and be a real, legitimate month for the first time ever. It's all arbitrary anyway, I'm not talking about changing the number of days in the year, just the number of days in February to 29 or 30 in a regular year, then 30 or 31 in a leap year. We just all have to agree on it, or just go on treating February like some weird mutant of a month, but we'd all get an extra day or two to come up with the money to pay our March rent or mortgage, who couldn't use that?
Speaking of March 1, here's the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" for tomorrow, the main topic is "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", followed by the prime-time topic "The Softer Side of Scorsese" and the head-to-head late night battle for "Best Future Prediction":
4:45 am "Flight Commander" (1930)
6:45 am "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939)
9:00 am "The Harvey Girls" (1946)
11:00 am "Grand Prix" (1966)
2:00 pm "The Narrow Margin" (1952)
3:30 pm "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957)
6:00 pm "Bullitt" (1968)
8:00 pm "Hugo" (2011)
10:15 pm "The Age of Innocence" (1993)
12:45 am "Logan's Run" (1975)
3:00 am "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
I think I've seen 7 out of these 11, which is great. I've seen "Only Angels Have Wings" (Cary Grant), "The Spirit of St. Louis", "Bullitt" (Steve McQueen chain), "Hugo", "The Age of Innocence", "Logan's Run" and of course "2001: A Space Odyssey". That brings me up to 139 seen out of 330, or 42.1%. With more science fiction ahead on Saturday I should be in good shape now.
Oh, and here are my stats for February, based on HOW I watched this month's films - how many came from cable, how many from Netflix, iTunes and from Academy screeners:
13 Movies watched on Cable (saved to DVD): How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, I Think I Love My Wife, The Meddler, The Banger Sisters, Overboard, Hello My Name Is Doris, Desperately Seeking Susan, Rumor Has It..., Thanks for Sharing, Frances Ha
5 Movies watched on Cable (not saved): Adam, Swing Shift, P.S. I Love You, Addicted to Love, You've Got Mail
5 Watched on Netflix: The Week Of, Girlfriend's Day, The Spectacular Now, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Kicking and Screaming
4 Watched on iTunes: 2 Days in New York, I Give It a Year, Peace Love & Misunderstanding, I.Q.
1 Watched on Academy screeners: The Big Sick
iTunes was up a bit from January, because I had to track down the romance films I'd planned to watch that disappeared from Netflix, and iTunes was the easiest way to do that. And the number of Academy screeners was down, because obviously I had a special focus this month, and didn't spend my time catching up on what's been in theaters for the last year. But as soon as the romance chain is over (8 days from now) I can get back on that beat.
Josh Hamilton carries over from "Kicking and Screaming".
THE PLOT: A New York woman apprentices for a dance company (though she's not really a dancer) and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as the possibility of realizing them dwindles.
AFTER: After this, I'm going to consider the Noah Baumbach oeuvre pretty much crossed-off. I mean, sure, I can seek out "Margot at the Wedding" or "Mistress America", or perhaps just wait and see if either of those happens to be airing and finds me, but I don't think I'm going to go out of my way to seek them out. After watching "While We're Young", "The Meyerowitz Stories" and "The Squid and the Whale" last year, and two more films here, I think I've got a handle on this guy. All the films really seem to be about people who can't QUITE get their shit together. And that's fine, if that's what you want to make movies about, just make sure they're good movies about that subject, and not terrible ones like "Kicking and Screaming", whatever the terms "good" and "bad" may mean to you or to others. Just try to keep the flashbacks to a minimum, and try not to waste my time, that's all I ask as a viewer.
No director sets out to make a BAD film, of course, the smaller indie ones just seem to stick to what they know, push themselves a little with each new film, but not TOO far, of course, and try to assemble a core group of actors that they like to work with again and again. At the end of the day, if you're not a big Hollywood A-list director, I think that's about the best you can do. And I still haven't cracked into mumblecore, but I think these sort of films are what I imagine mumblecore could be, or come close to what mumblecore SHOULD be, which is a lot of people talking about their lives and not really accomplishing anything, but perhaps coming close to the way that real people talk amongst themselves.
Wait, the wiki page for "mumblecore" specifically mentions the films of Greta Gerwig and the Duplass brothers, so maybe I HAVE seen some mumblecore! Yes, "Frances Ha" qualifies as a mumblecore film, according to the Wikipedia! At last, I've broached into this genre, nearly every other time I thought I was doing so, people would tell me, "Oh, no, that's not mumblecore." Well, how will I know when I find it? Friends would then say, "Oh, don't worry, you'll know." In other words, they have no idea either. But "Cyrus", "Celeste & Jesse Forever", "The Overnight" and "Adult Beginners" all qualify for this genre, so I can now prove that I've seen more mumblecore than I thought, and they don't all have to star Lena Dunham. (Then of course, there's mumble-GORE, which is the mash-up of very talky films with horror movies, but that's really a different genre.) Look, here's how you can tell you're watching a mumblecore film - if the director is an independent filmmaker who rejects and resents the use of the term, it's probably qualifies as a mumblecore film.
This film follows a central female figure and is divided up into segments based on the addresses where she lives in and around New York City. I guess that's true for a lot of people, you can chop up your life into time periods based on the number of dwellings you've lived in - then I guess my life would have 7 segments: my parents' house, the NYU dorm, a tiny apartment on the LES with a loft bed (summer 1989), a better apartment in Rego Park, a fourth-floor walk-up in the South Slope of Brooklyn overlooking the BQE, 11 years in a condo in Park Slope, and 14 years in a house in Queens. I'd like to think that my real estate has only gotten better (and more importantly, bigger) since the dorm. That's called adulting. But again, Frances can't quite seem to get everything together, whether it's the apartment thing, or the job thing, or the relationship thing. Maybe she's not failing, she's just drifting, like so many hipsters do these days.
A lot of the problems Frances encounters would seem to be self-imposed (if you ask me) because there are times when she is just too proud to admit making a mistake, or too afraid of what people think or her, or maybe she's just too eager to be liked by others, and therefore afraid of being disliked? Like when she's afraid to move in with her boyfriend, because that would mean moving OUT of the apartment she's sharing with her best friend, but then a week or so later, her best friend wants to move in with a different friend in Tribeca, so really, it's all just bad timing. A lot of the events that befall Frances are downhill from there, so I'm not sure if this is supposed to show how someone's life can spiral out of control because of one simple choice, or if her life, like anyone's, is just going to be full of a lot of ups and downs, gutters and strikes. And we all, including Frances, just have to do the best we can to take what comes our way, roll with the changes, and try to make something happen and also find our own joy and peace in the world.
It's clear that a lot of stuff HAPPENS as Frances bounces around from one living situation to another, but whether it all adds up to something that's greater than the sum of its parts, or just a set of random-ish occurrences, is best left up to the individual viewer. Maybe this is close to how some people live their hipster lives, maybe not, it's not for me to say. I'm probably too old now to be a valid judge of that. But after so many close calls or failed attempts at getting something, anything going, it seems a little disappointing for Frances to take so long to make an adjustment to her vision board. Just my personal feeling there. Never mind the people who want to know if she's ever going to find love with Benji, I want to know why she never considered finding love with Sophie. Maybe someday.
The college that Frances returns to for a while, to work as an R.A. and catering wine-pourer, is Vassar College, which was also attended by, you guessed it, Noah Baumbach. (Gerwig did not attend Vassar, she went to Barnard...) Baumbach and Gerwig are in a relationship, Gerwig wrote this film that Baumbach directed, and so on. Plus Gerwig's real parents played Frances's fictional ones here. There are connections all over this film to other famous people - that actress is the daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler, while THAT one is the daughter of Meryl Streep, and THAT one is the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, and even THAT one is the daughter of Griffin Dunne (director of "Addicted to Love") and the granddaughter of Dominick Dunne (the food critic in "Addicted to Love" who eats the bug).
Also starring Greta Gerwig (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Mickey Sumner (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Charlotte d'Amboise, Adam Driver (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"), Michael Esper (last seen in "Runner Runner"), Michael Zegen (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Grace Gummer (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Patrick Heusinger (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Maya Kazan, Justine Lupe (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Britta Phillips, Juliet Rylance, Dean Wareham (last seen in "While We're Young"), Christine Gerwig, Gordon Gerwig, Hannah Dunne, Cindy Katz, with a cameo from Peter Scanavino
RATING: 5 out of 10 Christmas songs played on a trumpet
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