BEFORE: After a couple of films using failed proposals as a jumping-off point, it seems I've scheduled several films about loss - that's OK, as I've said I try to be fair and feature all sides of the romance/relationship experience, and you can't really discuss romance without at least thinking about loss. Last night a man lost his blind girlfriend after 10 years together, and tonight the central character is a widower looking for love again. And I've still got "Marriage Story" waiting in the wings, I'll get to that after Valentine's Day, and there may be some other odd break-up stories left in the chain, too - who can tell, as I haven't seen them yet?
Judy Greer carries over from "Lemon".
Meanwhile, over on Turner Classic Movies, Marsha Hunt links from "None Shall Escape" to tomorrow's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 7)
7:00 am "Blossoms in the Dust" (1941) with _____________ linking to:
8:45 am "Madame Curie" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
11:00 am "Sunrise at Campobello" (1960) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 pm "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) with _____________ linking to:
3:30 pm "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" (1964) with _____________ linking to:
5:45 pm "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Interiors" (1978) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Annie Hall" (1977) with _____________ linking to:
11:45 pm "The Front" (1976) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 am "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1966) with _____________ linking to:
3:30 am "Mister Buddwing" (1966) with _____________ linking to:
5:15 am "The Red Danube" (1949)
Ah, it's good to see that TCM has dragged their programming out of the 1930's and is featuring some movies from the 1960's and 70's today. We're back in my wheelhouse, and even hitting some Woody Allen films - once you hit those all kinds of links become much easier, I know. So I've seen 6 out of these 12: "Singin' in the Rain", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", "Interiors", "Annie Hall", "The Front" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". Shout-outs to two wonderful but deceased comic actors. Up to 27 out of 82, or just under 33%
THE PLOT: A widower whose best-selling book about coping with loss turns him into a self-help guru falls for the florist at the hotel where his seminar is given, only to learn that he hasn't yet truly confronted his wife's passing.
AFTER: It turns out you can't have a romance film without conflict, either - imagine a film where a couple meets, falls in love, and then everything goes very smoothly from then on. That would be the most boring romance film ever, right? So they kick off the conflict here by having the self-help guru and the Seattle florist meet very un-cute-like, with him hitting on her and her then pretending to be deaf to get rid of him. Oh, I'd love to know just enough sign language to pull that on the subway, or get out of any conversation with a stranger that I don't want to have. I could just point to my ears and give some kind of "No" signal, I suppose, but then you never know who else knows ASL and would persist in trying to maintain the conversation that way.
The second time they meet, he hears her talking to a hotel employee, so she clearly ISN'T deaf, and he goes over to tell her off. She then follows him into the men's room to tell him off for telling her off, and hey, before you know it, they're having a conversation, which is strange because she tried so hard to avoid that. But as I've learned, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference, so if she didn't like him just a little bit, I suppose she'd just walk away, right? But when she realizes he's the big celebrity guest staying at the hotel (his cardboard cut-out is, like, everywhere) and learns about his deceased wife, I guess all that is sort of like catnip to a single woman. It may be true, but I feel like the movie using that shortcut (along with me pointing it out) sort of sells the entire gender short. Let's just say there may be women out there who wouldn't be wowed by a celebrity and also sympathetic to a widower at the same time, but Eloise isn't one of those women.
But to be fair, at first they're just "hanging out", because he's only in town for a short time, so even if they started something, it would only have to end at some point unless one of them relocated, plus neither one is sure if this relationship is really going anywhere, even though all of the signs seem promising. Looks can be deceiving, however, because it turns out that Seattle is also where his late wife's parents reside, and her father has bought a ticket to Burke's seminar, just to tell him off, and tell him to "stop lying to himself". OK, so I guess something in his story about his wife doesn't add up, or is rubbing his ex-in-laws the wrong way. (When the truth finally comes out in the end, I didn't really see Burke's "lie" as that big of a deal, but you may disagree, IDK.).
Burke's got another quirk, he doesn't take elevators, only the stairs - which would only be a problem if his hotel room was on the 40th floor, right? He may have a fear of elevators, nothing wrong with that considering that people HAVE been known to be crushed in them, stuck in them, or fall to their deaths in them - but as a personality trait in a movie, it's pretty weak sauce. (So is someone writing unusual words on hotel walls.). It's a poor substitute for character development when he finally conquers his fear in the end. But I have to call a NITPICK POINT because during the seminar, he takes a bunch of his "students" out into the noisy, crowded, dirty street in front of the hotel, then up to the hotel's roof to show them how beautiful the view is. This is to prove some lame point about how their personal problems can seem different if they just change their perspective, but if he didn't take an elevator, how did he get to the roof? Did the students have to wait for him to climb all those stairs, which could have taken like an hour? Plus, if he was too afraid to get in the elevator, then his secret would have been exposed to his students, and his reputation as a guru, the man telling them to face their own fears, would have been tarnished.
This is what Hollywood thinks happens at ALL self-help seminars - you show up at a hotel ballroom, you reveal your inner truths (when you're holding the candle of truth), and then you walk on hot coals for some reason. This might have been true in the 1980's, but isn't the hot coals thing totally played out by now? I mean, we know it's a trick, not even a "magic trick" because that would give it too much credit, but it's a trick to make people think they're capable of doing something difficult, when the truth is that the coals aren't usually that hot, and everyone has pretty tough skin on their feet thanks to evolution, so it shouldn't even be impressive any more. But no, let's keep the stupid stereotype alive, even though most seminars have probably figured out new and more exciting ways to take money from the rubes. I think now it's all about daytrading algorithms and flipping houses, no?
But you can probably guess where this all is going - after finally coming clean about the details of his wife's death, the teacher has to follow his own guidelines and face his fears, fulfill his final promise to his dead wife and make peace with his in-laws. This involves stealing a parrot from their house so he can let it free in the wild, which is about as pathetically symbolic as it sounds like it would be. He might be doing the wrong thing here, but it's for the right reasons. Unfortunately, most of the film feels like it's set on accomplishing the reverse. Because the universe doesn't OWE you happiness - you either have to create it yourself (do the work) or learn how to lower your expectations (make the best out of what you got). There's your self-help guide if you really need it. There, I just saved you from a therapy shopping session at Home Depot.
Also starring Aaron Eckhart (last seen in "The Core"), Jennifer Aniston (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Frances Conroy (last seen in "Superman: Unbound"), Martin Sheen (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Joe Anderson (last seen in "The Grey"), John Carroll Lynch (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Sasha Alexander (last seen in "Yes Man"), Clyde Kusatsu (also last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Darla Vandenbossche, Tom Pickett, Patricia Harras.
RATING: 5 out of 10 cauterized flower stems
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Walter Pidgeon, Greer Garson, Jean Hagen, Debbie Reynolds, Ed Begley, Geraldine Page, Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Angela Lansbury.
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