BEFORE: Well, I've got good news and bad news where my project is concerned. The good news is that my movie DVR has been behaving, no more endless random reboots, not in the last two days, anyway. I got a robo-call from the cable company (the one that rhymes with "Rectum", not a coincidence) telling me there was some kind of network problem in my neighborhood, and fixing that would most likely resolve my problem. I kept the appointment for today anyway, and the technician confirmed that the signal coming in to my house is now fine, and since it's not repeatedly rebooting itself, I probably wouldn't need to get a new DVR, and therefore lose the 60 movies currently stored on it, at least 25 of which are not currently running on any channels. So I can proceed with the chain without interruption, and without renting those movies from iTunes or anything.
The bad news is that I just speed-watched the Oscars, got through the whole thing in about 90 minutes, which is easy if you just watch the nominees, the winner being announced and the "In Memoriam" segment and fast forward through the acceptance speeches, the musical numbers and the incessant montages and explanations of basic things like how songs are used in movies, or what production designers do. But giving the Best Picture award to THAT film presents me with a difficult task, I don't know how I'm going to link to "Parasite" except maybe through "Okja", and that's a film I've been avoiding. But then there's no way to link out of it, so I might have to watch it as my last film of this year, or the first film next year - so giving Best Picture to a "one-linkable" film doesn't make viewing it impossible, just very difficult. I've seen every Best Picture winner from 1953 on forward, and many of the winners before that, and I haven't seen just 10 (OK, now it's 11) overall. Maybe one day when I run out of other movies I'll watch those 10 films, just to be done with them. But I'm not looking forward to it - those films are "Wings", "The Broadway Melody", "Cimarron" (1931), "Cavalcade", "The Great Ziegfeld", "The Life of Emile Zola", "How Green Was My Valley", "Going My Way", "Gentleman's Agreement" and "The Greatest Show on Earth".
Speaking of classic films, over on Turner Classic Movies, Darryl Hickman links from "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" to tomorrow's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 11)
6:15 am "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
8:30 am "It's a Great Feeling" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "Romance on the High Seas" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 pm "Julie" (1956) with _____________ linking to:
1:45 pm "Madame Bovary" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
3:45 pm "Indiscretion of an American Wife" (1954) with _____________ linking to:
5:00 pm "The Young Lions" (1958) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Peyton Place" (1957) with _____________ linking to:
11:00 pm "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952) with _____________ linking to:
1:15 am "Lust for Life" (1956) with _____________ linking to:
3:30 am "The Great Escape" (1963)
Hint: two of the linking actors were in last night's "In Memoriam" segment of the Academy Awards. Those should be easy to name. Another two films tonight that I've seen, "Lust for Life" and "The Great Escape". 39 seen out of 126 puts me just below 31%. Here's hoping there are better days ahead.
Matt Dillon carries over from "Grace of My Heart" - Illeana Douglas will be back later in the romance chain, so will Owen Wilson, but I'm not following either of them as a link, not just yet.
THE PLOT: A best man stays on as a houseguest with the newlyweds, much to the couple's annoyance.
AFTER: I found myself with so many Owen Wilson films that I decided I had to break them up - what can be crippling when you're doing linking-based movie-watching is thinking, "Oh, he's in a couple romances, but also some Father's Day-like material, how the hell am I going to connect the dots here?" That's my version of "stinking thinking", believing that there needs to be some kind of straight line between all of an actor's films, when I shouldn't even think in terms of straight lines, every path I end up taking has more twists and turns than anything else - so first I'll deal with the Owen Wilson romances, then the films with him themed for Father's Day, and then worry about the rest later. Same goes for Chris Evans, Scarlett Johannsson and others - only romance films now, then deal with the leftovers later. You never know, "The Perfect Score" could end up solving a thorny linking issue down the road, just because it has a couple big names in it. Or, I can just stick it between "Black Widow" and "Jojo Rabbit" just to get rid of it.
But this is not the worst romantic film I've seen, it's not even the worst one I've seen THIS year. Sure, there's too much slapstick - Wilson's character is always falling off a skateboard, or setting something on fire, or running his bike right into an oncoming car - his stunt double actually won the "Hardest Hit" prize at the World Stunt Awards for that. (I'm not making this up, there is something like an Oscars for movie stunts...) Good thing Dupree was wearing his helmet...
The comedy here is all motivated by the situation of having the husband's best friend (and best man at his wedding) move in to a couple's house temporarily after losing his job. Supposedly Dupree always lands on his feet and gets a new job, but he's also the kind of guy who's been sort of coasting through life, not always putting in the effort, focusing on partying and chasing girls instead of buckling down and doing the work. Eventually this sort of behavior catches up with someone, or so we'd all like to believe, but at first down-on-his-luck Dupree is a bad houseguest - sleeping nude on the couch, clogging the toilet, changing the outgoing message on the answering machine without asking first.
All of this couldn't have come at a worse time - that period right after the honeymoon where the husband and wife are first living together, the ground rules are all being established or negotiated, and Carl makes the offer for Dupree to come home and crash without checking with his wife, Molly, first. Ooooh, that's a rookie mistake. Plus Carl's boss is Molly's father, and so he's got to deal with a father-in-law who's cruel to him at times, but other times is nice, but possibly he's only nice because he's setting him up to fail, it's a bit tough to tell. Carl's father wants Carl to hyphenate his last name, and also suggests that Carl get a vasectomy for some reason. This is also a bit unclear, like what father with an adult daughter doesn't want her to have children? Unless he just hates Carl, or thinks that they won't be married for long, and doesn't want grandchildren who are going to end up with divorced parents... But everything between Carl and his father-in-law is very muddled here, maybe sometimes a man doesn't know where he stands with his in-laws, but I think for a film plot, things have to be somewhat clearer than this.
Carl's a bit of a question-mark, too - he seems to be industrious, but he also tricks Dupree into writing his wedding gift "Thank you" notes for him. He's in love with Molly, but he often goes to hang out at the bar with friends before going home, or works late and doesn't call to say he'll be late, plus he's easily tempted by Dupree to invite people over to watch football and let things get out of hand. So, is he a good husband or not? Is he into marriage as a concept, or does he just want to do his own thing? Maybe he just hasn't figured out that balance of being committed but also being able to hang out with his friends - this can be tricky, sure, especially so early on in the marriage. But there's a big difference between being a well-rounded balanced character and just being inconsistent and all over the place.
The pressures finally get to him - the dominating father-in-law, the other friend who only wants his porn collection, and the thought that Dupree (after redeeming himself, getting a new lease on life, and spending time cooking with Molly) might have his sights set on stealing Molly from him. God, Carl, the idea that a woman is her husband's property, or that married women can't have male friends, is just SO outdated. Feel free to join us in this century, OK? Carl snaps during dinner, tries to strangle Dupree, and storms out. Dupree and Molly then decide to get to the bottom of the situation, learning that Molly's father really does hate Carl for some reason, and then Dupree goes on a quest to find Carl and bring him back home.
This leads to a chase scene at Carl's office that is the most confusing of all - Dupree allows a security guard to chase him around the building, so that Carl can disrupt his father-in-law's meeting with foreign investors, just to confront him over his recent actions. Why is this necessary? Carl hasn't been fired, so why does he need help sneaking in to his own office? Why did the security guard grant access to Dupree, only to chase him down a minute later? And if this was the only security guard on duty, which doesn't make any sense, why would he leave the office entry unguarded, just to chase after Dupree, and leave the rest of the building vulnerable? This whole part of the film just didn't work, it needed to be scrapped and completely re-written. Carl says he doesn't even care about his real-estate project being taken away and re-worked (oh, but I think he does...) and I think we even need to take a step back here and think about how and why he was dating the boss' daughter in the first place. He said this wasn't to get an "in" with the company president, but so what, it's all just some giant coincidence, then? I think Carl had some upwardly mobile plan from the beginning, he just isn't being honest about it, maybe not even with himself.
But Dupree uses the "lessons" (?) he learns while evading the security guard to gain the confidence he needs to write a self-help book (?) and become a motivational speaker. I know, there a few leaps in movie logic there, and I'm not sure being a self-help guru is much better than being a slacker, but at least there's more money in it. That's Dupree for you, landing on his feet again...
Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "Masterminds"), Kate Hudson (last seen in "Marshall"), Michael Douglas (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Amanda Detmer (last seen in "Saving Silverman"), Ralph Ting, Todd Stashwick (last seen in "The Rundown"), Bill Hader (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Billy Gardell (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Pat Crawford Brown (last seen in "Stuck on You"), Sidney Liufau, with cameos from Lance Armstrong (last seen in "Icarus"), Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Joe Russo (also last seen in "Avengers: Endgame") and archive footage of Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "The Children's Hour"), Gregory Peck (last seen in "Roman Holiday").
RATING: 5 out of 10 fishing trips
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Irving Bacon, Jack Carson, Doris Day, Louis Jourdan, Jennifer Jones, Montgomery Clift, Hope Lange, Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas and James Donald.
No comments:
Post a Comment