BEFORE: Rosanna Arquette carries over from "Desperately Seeking Susan", from a lead role in yesterday's film to a smaller role today. That's OK - as long as they're playing in the band, it doesn't matter if they're on lead guitar or just playing tambourine. This is another one of those pesky films that WAS on Netflix when I planned this chain several months ago, but is no longer available there.
So I've got to shill out a few bucks to watch it on iTunes tonight, because that's easier than changing my plans at the last minute.
We're headed into the last 1/3 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" schedule, and tomorrow, February 21, they're off to "Exotic Locales" during the day, then in primetime there's the battle for "Favorite Foreign Language Film Winner: Fellini" and overnight the head-to-head competition for "Favorite Movie Prisoner":
5:00 am "Algiers" (1938)
7:00 am "Lady of the Tropics" (1939)
9:00 am "Miss Sadie Thompson" (1953)
11:00 am "Sayonara" (1957)
1:30 pm "The Rains Came" (1939)
3:15 pm "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (1958)
6:00 pm "Mogambo" (1953)
8:00 pm "8 1/2" (1963)
10:30 pm "La Strada" (1954)
12:30 am "Cool Hand Luke" (1967)
3:00 am "Midnight Express" (1978)
Oof, I'm only hitting for one film today, and that's "Cool Hand Luke". So another 1 out of 11 brings me to 94 seen out of 239, and I've slipped down to 39.3% seen.
THE PLOT: An uptight New York City lawyer takes her two teenagers to her hippie mother's farm
AFTER: At first, knowing this film had scrolled off of Netflix made me question whether I should continue to include it - especially after finding out that Colleen Camp made a cameo in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III", because that meant I could skip from there directly to "Rumor Has It", where she also makes a cameo. But that would also mean I would have had to drop "Desperately Seeking Susan", and also tomorrow's film. Nope, it's best to stick with the program and not make any changes at this point.
But then after I watched "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding", I'm glad I made room for it this year. The other option was to try to get to it next February, especially since they're just starting to run "Book Club" now, which also has Jane Fonda in it - but that film also has Mary Steenburgen in it, and I've excluded several films with her in it this time around, so I'll get to those all next year, along with a couple of Reese Witherspoons, and a couple of Keira Knightley films. Damn, it's impossible for me to clear the romance category, even by extending it past February and into March. I can't possibly tell if all the romance films I'm putting off are going to connect with each other then, because I don't know what other films will be available to me to fill the gaps. I'll just have to wait and see.
I'm glad I stuck with this one because there's a lot to like here - there are four different relationship stories going on at the same time, so there you go, it fits right in with this month's running theme. Though it starts out on a bummer note, with the lead character's husband asking for a divorce, things pick up when she brings her teen son and college-age daughter up to see their grandmother, who's been kept out of the family for 20 years. We find out why quite quickly, the lead, Diane, is a conservative lawyer and her mother is still living like it's the Summer of Love. Quick riddle: How do you know if somebody went to the original Woodstock concert? Don't worry, they'll be sure to mention it very soon. If everyone who claims to have been there had really been there, I think the earth would have caved in from all the excess weight on Yasgur's farm.
I've never been up to Woodstock, but I really should go sometime - and this year's the 50th anniversary of the 1969 concert, so I'd imagine that something's going to be planned for this summer to commemorate it. I avoided the 25th anniversary in 1994, and the 30th anniversary concert ended in a riot, but maybe the 50th will be a little more chill. Those classic rock fans are too old for fighting now, they can barely dance without breaking a hip. But hey, Jane Fonda looks fantastic for her age, never mind that, for any age.
Anyway, Woodstock the town seems to be a magical place, because Diane and both her children find potential love interests there without searching too hard, and with a little help from Grandma Grace. Generally, I'd suggest not taking dating advice from your grandmother, because usually that means she's two generations out of touch, but here she seems to know what she's talking about, more or less. My grandmother's only advice to me about dating was to wait until I got done with college, but I think she failed to take into account that NYU was such a great place to meet girls, like they were all over the dorm, in all of my classes, in Washington Square Park... So I really didn't take Gram's advice, and spent most of my junior year trying to connect, and finally had some success a couple months before graduating early. But that's another story.
But what's great here is that the romances are all different - there's the tentative teen romance, the college-age daughter is attracted to the local butcher (though she finds his work off-putting at first) and their mother Diane is pulled toward the local furniture-maker/amateur musician. You kind of feel like maybe everyone in the town of Woodstock is either an amateur musician or an aging hippie, or perhaps the children of all the aging hippies. I don't know, again, I've never visited so that could be true. And then there's Grandma Grace, who seems to have something going with a number of men in town who pose for her paintings, plus she runs a drum circle for the local hippie women - she's pretty open and free sexually, so who knows, she may have something going with a few women too.
Another thing I like is that none of the romances are easy, there are obstacles in each one, and that makes this feel more real, like it rings true because the Hudson family members each need to learn to let go of their emotional baggage before they can have real relationships. For Diane that means coming to terms with and forgiving her mother, letting her back in to her life and her children's lives, lifting that weight that's holding her down, also accepting that divorce isn't the end of the world, and it can be the start of a new chapter. For daughter Zoe, this means realizing that issues about eating animals and farming are more complex than just black and white, that it might be possible to butcher animals in an ethical, respectful way, and that someone can work in a butcher shop and still appreciate Walt Whitman. Also that we don't need to seek out romantic partners that share all of the same opinions, we can form relationships with people who challenge us and allow us to see things in different ways. And for son Jake, well, he just needs to connect with a girl that will let him get to second base, because those NYC girls have been giving him the cold shoulder. Stay strong, Jake, I've been there.
Jake's also an amateur filmmaker, he's got the standard film student posters on his wall, and carries his video camera around everywhere. Yes, this is a great way to break the ice with girls, as he finds out, and near the end of the film, we see the result of all of his shooting, the film he made about his time in Woodstock. Like many student films, it's all over the place, it has no real focus or point to it, but you know what, that also rings very true. Watch a few student films and you'll see what I mean. Or hey, just watch "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III" and you'll get the same feeling.
Also starring Catherine Keener (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), Jane Fonda (last seen in archive footage in "Vice"), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Elizabeth Olsen (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Nat Wolff (last seen in "The Intern"), Chace Crawford (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "The Flintstones"), Marissa O'Donnell, Joyce Van Patten (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Maddie Corman (last seen in "Adam"), Denise Burse, Poorna Jagannathan, Katharine McPhee (last seen in "The House Bunny"), Terry McKenna.
RATING: 6 out of 10 shots of tequila
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