Not Another Teen Movie

Year 14, Day 78 - 3/19/22 - Movie #4,080

BEFORE: Eric Christian Olsen carries over from "The Last Kiss" - it's funny, because my wife and I were just talking about him the other day, because she's watching the show "Community" for the first time (I watched it when it aired and TRIED to get her to watch it then...) and I spotted him as a minor character in one episode she was watching.  "But who IS that?" she said, and I said, "Come ON, he played one of the German guys in "Beerfest"!"  And she said, "OK, if you say so..."  I often forget that not everybody shares my obsessive fascination with character actors, and figuring out where I've seen them before.  For me, every day is a trip through the IMDB to look at several actors' filmographies, a never-ending curiosity about how many times I've seen that person before in movies, and which movies they were.  Other people fill up their lives with different, but perhaps equally as insignificant, things, I guess. 

I guess I've got my work cut out for me later today, because this film has a BIG cast. But first, here's the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, March 20, featuring Best Actress winners:

6:45 am "Morning Glory" (1933)

8:00 am "Jezebel" (1938)

10:00 am "Johnny Belinda" (1948)

11:40 am "I Want to Live!" (1958)

2:00 pm "Mildred Pierce" (1945)

4:00 pm "The Trip to Bountiful" (1985)

6:00 pm "The Miracle Worker" (1962)

and Oscar-winning films from the 1990's and 2000's:

8:00 pm "A River Runs Through It" (1992)

10:15 pm "When We Were Kings" (1996)

12:00 am "There Will Be Blood" (2007)

3:00 am "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995)

Damn, I've only seen four of these: "The Trip to Bountiful", "A River Runs Through It", "There Will Be Blood" and "Leaving Las Vegas".  And 4 seen out of 11 means I'm only at 93 out of 220, holding on at 42.2%

THE PLOT: A send-up of all the teen movies that have accumulated in the previous two decades.

AFTER: There's a certain symmetry to watching this one tonight, now that the romance chain is over - because way back near the start of this year's chain, I watched "She's All That" on February 4, I watched "She's All That", and that's one of the main teen films parodied here. "Get Over It" was another one I watched this year, though I don't think that one got name-checked directly here, but it was definitely in the ballpark. In previous Movie Years I have watched "Can't Hardly Wait", "10 Things I Hate About You", "Pretty in Pink", "The Breakfast Club" and "Never Been Kissed", so I think slowly I've been working my way into somehow becoming the target audience for THIS film, the one that parodies all the others.  If I hadn't seen "She's All That", though, I might have missed out on many of the references, so really, this turned out to be the perfect year, the perfect TIME to watch "Not Another Teen Movie".

Now, to be fair, I haven't seen "Varsity Blues", where some of the football humor comes from, nor have I seen "Bring It On", which is the inspiration for the cheerleader jokes, and I've somehow managed to avoid the entire "American Pie" franchise, though I think I'm none the worse for wear in all these cases.  Maybe someday, someday, someday on those films - we'll see, I suppose.  But all high-school films are essentially the same, and I dare say that I've seen more than my share, maybe even more than the average person, over the last x number of years. In the same vein, now that I finally watched the "Scream" films last October, then perhaps the "Scary Movie" franchise is a possibility in the future.  Again, maybe someday.  

I guess what I'm saying is that I really needed a laugh tonight, the last few romance films just took themselves, and the topic, WAY too seriously.  What a bummer "The Last Kiss" turned out to be, and if you consider that a happy ending then perhaps you should re-define your terms.  This one's not serious at all, not one bit, and that's really refreshing after all the drama and the cheating and the navel-gazing with everybody single fretting over not being married, and every married person wondering if they'd be better off single.  With high-school students, at least nobody's worried about THAT.  This film just really wanted to turn the whole genre on its ear, and find those things that stood out from previous teen flicks and poke fun at it all, and I can really get behind that sort of thing for once.  Ensemble comedy flicks like "Movie 43" and "The Onion Movie" haven't received very high scores from me, and obviously there's a reason - they're all over the place and just generally not very funny.  

Ah, but parody, that's its own animal.  You have to REALLY understand something to properly make fun of it - the bet that somebody can turn a homely girl with glasses into prom queen.  The football quarterback who's unsure of himself.  The girl who's secretly got the hots for her step-brother - wait, was that a thing?  Oh, right, "Cruel Intentions". The older journalist who goes undercover as a high-school student, that was "Never Been Kissed" - see, I'm hip!  The hot girl who walks into the room in slow-motion as an 80's pop song plays, that's from "Can't Hardly Wait" and the teen serenading his intended girlfriend from the bleachers is straight out of "10 Things I Hate About You".  

Then there are the jokes about the casting - that teen's father also played the father in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", the principal was the same actor who played the principal in "The Breakfast Club", one kid acts more Asian than "The Karate Kid", even though he isn't, there's a weird kid with a video camera that spoofs "American Beauty", plus the angry paperboy from "Better Off Dead", and so on. The teens here all attend "John Hughes High School", where the cafeteria is called the "Anthony Michael Dining Hall" and the football team plays in "Harry Dean Stadium", and so on.  

Yeah, I guess I was just in the right frame of mind for this one - this whole genre was ripe for parodying, everything from pointing out repeatedly that there's only one token black character in the whole school, to the horny kids trying to spy on girls in their locker room.  Geez, I would have bet that tall kid was played by Paul Dano, before he became super famous, but it's NOT him, it's another actor named Sam Huntington who looks a LOT like him.  (Twinsies!) Now that I think about it, Paul Dano does mostly art-house and indie films like "Little Miss Sunshine", I should have known that a silly parody would be beneath him.  That's NOT Freddie Prinze Jr. either in the fake clip from "She's All That", though - it's a look-alike and they made the TV image look like it was getting bad reception - like we wouldn't be able to tell?  

Sure, not every joke lands - like I totally didn't know why there was an albino folk singer, or what that even was a reference to, but I guess you can't win 'em all. Same goes for the broken toilet falling through the ceiling into the class, it's just not the kind of thing that I think is funny.  Since this isn't meant to be taken seriously at all, there's no real point in complaining about the fact that the film depicted a football game, then went straight on into the prom season - when football is played in the fall, and proms takes place in May. I find this funny because I once got into an argument over the exact same structure with a noted film director who made the same mistake.  When I told him he was probably confusing "prom" with "homecoming", which DOES take place in the fall, he insisted that proms happen in the fall, and then he hunkered down, and refused to ask anyone else to confirm this, or even look it up, he was so SURE that proms take place in October in November, and I kept telling him he was WAY off base. For some reason, this exchange still bothers me, because the completed film still depicts this calendar-based mistake.

This was Chris Evans' film debut - before he was Captain America or even Human Torch, he made this little high-school parody film in 2001, that took all of the 90's teen movies to task.  Who knew?  I only put this on my list because it popped up on Netflix a couple of months ago, once again I put my faith in the universe, it didn't allow me to even consider watching this film, not until I was ready for it. Proof that my system, such as it is, actually works sometimes. 

Also starring Chyler Leigh, Chris Evans (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Jaime Pressly (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Mia Kirshner, Deon Richmond (last seen in "Scream 3"), Eric Jungmann (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Ron Lester, Cody McMains, Sam Huntington (last seen in "Sully"), Joanna Garcia (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Lacey Chabert (last seen in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"), Samm Levine (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Cerina Vincent, Beverly Polcyn (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Nectar Rose (ditto), Ed Lauter (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Samaire Armstrong, Riley Smith, Jeannette Miller, Michael Ensign (last seen in "Down With Love"), Josh Radnor (last seen in "Happythankyoumoreplease"), Joy Bisco, George Wyner (last seen in "A Serious Man"), Joy Gohring, Sean Smith (last seen in "Spanglish"), Lyman Ward, Julie Welch, James Read (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Jackie Harris Greenberg, Rob Benedict (last seen in "State of Play"), Jay Johnston, Kyle Cease (last seen in "10 Things I Hate About You"), Jim Wise (last seen in "Love Liza"), H. Jon Benjamin (last seen in "Dean"), Paul Goebel, Sean Patrick Thomas (also last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), with cameos from Molly Ringwald (last seen in "Betsy's Wedding"), Paul Gleason (last seen in "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper"), Mr. T (last heard in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs"), Melissa Joan Hart (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), the band Good Charlotte, and archive footage of Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "Lucky").

RATING: 6 out of 10 pairs of thrown panties

The Last Kiss

Year 14, Day 77 - 3/18/22 - Movie #4,079

BEFORE: Blythe Danner carries over from "The Tomorrow Man", and yep, that's three in a row for her, there's been a lot of that sort of activity this time around - but this is the END of the romance/relationship chain.  For now, of course, the topic is sort of ever-present but as a main focus, it goes back in the box until next February - unless, of course, one of the films needs to be re-purposed to keep the chain unbroken.  It's been known to happen. 

Jesus, it's been 47 films all told, this time around - it might have been shorter, if I hadn't dropped in a couple Oscar contenders to draw it out - but I felt the need to see at least a few, and they were available on streaming (or the movie screen at work), so why not?  I just hope those decisions don't come back to bite me this November when I start running out of slots.  I suppose that's a bit like a relationship, I make the best decisions I can at the time even though I can't see the possible long-term impact those decisions have.  But I try not to think about it, like if I can't link to the Christmas movie I want, I don't think I'm going to say, "Damn, if only I hadn't watched "House of Gucci" back in February..."  It's unlikely, plus I'll probably be saying, "If only I hadn't watched "House of Gucci"..." for entirely different reasons.  

The TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, March 19, puts the focus on "Best Actor" winners: 

6:15 am "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936)

7:45 am "Captains Courageous" (1937)

10:00 am "Watch on the Rhine" (1943)

12:00 pm "Lilies of the Field" (1963)

2:00 pm "Sergeant York" (1941)

4:30 pm "Gandhi" (1982)

and 1980's Oscar winners:

8:00 pm "Out of Africa" (1985)

11:00 pm "On Golden Pond" (1981)

1:00 am "Places in the Heart" (1984)

3:00 am "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988)

5:00 am "Babette's Feast" (1987)

I've seen six of these: "Lilies of the Field", "Sergeant York", "Gandhi", "Out of Africa", "On Golden Pond" and "A Fish Called Wanda". I've got "Babette's Feast" on my watch list, but it's available on HBO Max (for now) so no need to clog up my DVR with it.  Another 6 seen out of 11 brings me to 89 out of 209, also known as 42.5% - I guess I just do better on the weekends. 

THE PLOT: Michael thought he'd have a great job, still have his best friends and be in love with a beautiful girl at age 30. He loves Jenna but his life seems predictable until he meets a college girl. It seems that everybody's having relationship problems. 

AFTER: I like the fact that my last film in the chain is called "The Last Kiss", of course - but this also serves as sort of an end-cap on the topic, tying a few things together.  The relationship issues here concern four men in different relationship situations, so it covers a lot of ground, and I suppose that was the intent. Then the long-term marriage of the lead female character's parents makes for five different situations among the ensemble. There's infidelity, a fair number of love triangles, mostly it's men in transition who have lost or are about to lose their relationships because of their actions, inactions, confusion or dissatisfaction.  Yet in their hearts they probably all want to believe that the circumstances are beyond their control, which is another way of saying that none of them want to take responsibility for them.  That's a method of dealing with things, I suppose, but it doesn't really help to make sympathetic characters - how about just pathetic?  

Men are both the injured parties here, and also the ones doing the most damage, to their relationships, to others and even to themselves.  Once any form of self-doubt enters into the equation of the relation, then they tend to cut bait and run.  Is that the message here, men want to escape to Mars, and women want to stay on Venus?  Michael's about to turn 30 and he and Jenna have agreed they're not ready to get married, but then when she gets pregnant, they don't want anything to change (because nobody wants to look like they're getting married JUST because of the baby, that's so gauche) but still, secretly, perhaps everything has changed.  So when Michael meets a younger woman at a wedding who seems to be into him, he doesn't do anything to discourage her, because part of him just wants to see where that's going to lead.  Yeah, it's nowhere good - or rather, it's somewhere TOO good, because before long he's hanging out with the younger woman and lying to his wife about where he's going and who he's hanging out with.  

Michael's friend Chris is married with a young baby, and his wife is completely stressed out, because he's working and she's raising the kid, and suddenly he's not happy any more.  OK, clearly something has changed and the relationship isn't what it once was, or is this just a domino effect caused by crying babies and the inequality of one person doing all the child-raising.  Can't he work during the day and help out a little bit at home during the evenings, so his wife can get a break?  No, apparently not.  Well, better to just blow the whole relationship up then, I guess - wait, but then he'll be even more miserable, so how is that better than maybe changing a diaper once in a while?  It's not, is it?  Seriously, I don't know because I don't have kids and I've never changed a diaper - I'm sure it's no picnic, but it's got to be better than being a part-time dad and divorced person.

Their other friend, Izzy, had his girlfriend leave him, and he's still devastated by it.  It's not really clear what he did wrong to make her leave, but I have a feeling he did SOMEthing.  Or maybe not, who knows, maybe the relationship just fizzled out, and now he wants to just drive all the way to Tierra Del Fuego - and, umm, then what?  The final male friend in the foursome is Kenny, he at least seems to have life somewhat figured out, he just wants to have a lot of sex with many different women - it's a solid plan, and it seems to be working for him, if only he didn't have a friend begging him to drive to Tierra Del Fuego with him.

And then there's Anna and Stephen, Jenna's long-time married parents, only they don't have things very together, either.  Anna had an affair with a college professor a while back, and she's chosen this same momentous week to inform her husband about it.  He's stayed faithful all these years, but apparently she hasn't.  The film doesn't really get into the reasons behind this one, either, but it's another love triangle that kind of mirrors the one between Michael, Jenna and Kim, only gender-swapped.  And just maybe, Jenna can learn some kind of way to forgive Michael once she realizes that her own mother couldn't stay faithful to her father, either.  Or maybe that's asking too much, for that kind of understanding between the generations.  

Everybody's always looking for something else, I get that.  Or they want what they already have, plus just a little bit more - that's just human nature, I suppose.  Hope springs eternal that you can make your situation better - but if you over-reach, like you think you can have an affair AND keep the relationship you have, that's probably not going to work, and you'll end up destroying what you had in the first place, it's more than likely.  So why can't anybody SEE that here, and just think, "Nope, I'm satisfied with what I've got."  I guess that's the big question.  The most insight into love and romance comes from Kim, though, who says, "Sometimes relationships work, and sometimes they don't."  Wow, she must have really worked hard on THAT one - really, is that the best she's got?  Her other big insight is that marriage was created when the average person lived only to the age of 30, so perhaps it was never meant to be a long-term thing.  Wow, she's really as deep as a puddle, isn't she?  

So, I guess here, at the end of the relationship chain, it's all about endings.  Everything is going to end, every relationship, every job, everything you set out to do, it's all got an expiration date and the clock is ticking, though you may not know when things are going to end, they WILL end, one way or another.  Anyone who's in a long-term relationship has only succeeded in preventing failure for exactly that length of time. For that matter, someday the sun will go supernova and life on Earth will cease to exist - and the galaxies are merely popcorn kernels that have been spilled out of the cosmic bucket, and one day even they will be swept up into the black holes, which are the trash bins of the universe, if you think about it.  Wow, now I'm depressed again. Thanks so much, "The Last Kiss". 

Also starring Zach Braff (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jacinda Barrett (last seen in "Middle Men"), Casey Affleck (last seen in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), Rachel Bilson (last seen in "The To Do List"), Michael Weston (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), Eric Christian Olsen (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Marley Shelton (last seen in "Scream 4"), Lauren Lee Smith (last seen in "The Shape of Water"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Harold Ramis (last seen in "Orange County"), Danny Wells, David Haydn-Jones, Cindy Sampson, Mark Walker, Erika Rosenbaum, Simon Alain, Andrew Shaver (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Danette Mackay (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 RVs for sale on the lot

The Tomorrow Man

Year 14, Day 76 - 3/17/22 - Movie #4,078

BEFORE: I was out late last night, though not as late as I could have been - the event I worked ended around 9:30, but I was on tent duty, which meant that somebody had to stick around and hold down the fort while the workmen took down the press tent and the Will Call tent and the COVID testing tent.  I figure if somebody's going to earn those hours, it might as well be me - so I've fostered a reputation for taking the late shifts, the somewhat undesirable shifts, and covering shifts when somebody else suddenly can't make it. It's part of my clever plan to masquerade as a responsible adult, while making a little extra money on the side - it's working, I seemed to have fooled the people who make up the schedule.  If you say "Yes" enough times, they come to rely on you when there's a need. (Insert evil genius laugh here.)

It's St. Patrick's Day, but I've got nothing special planned, just a morning doctor's appointment because my annual physical is overdue, then the weather's pretty crappy so I plan to go back to bed when I get back home in the late morning. Catching up on some sleep is definitely first priority today, then movie, then TV.  Wait, I've got some phone calls to make to try to disconnect my parents' cable next week, so that, then TV.  Oh, and the chip on my credit card has sort of started to stop working, so cable, credit card, then TV.

Here's the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, Friday, March 18 - back to the 1970's:

8:00 am "Butterflies Are Free" (1972)

10:00 am "Travels With My Aunt" (1972)

12:00 pm "A Little Romance" (1979)

2:00 pm "California Suite" (1978)

4:00 pm "The Goodbye Girl" (1977)

6:00 pm "The Sunshine Boys" (1975)

8:00 pm "Annie Hall" (1977)

9:45 pm "Shampoo" (1975)

11:45 pm "The Sting" (1973)

2:15 am "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)

4:30 am "Shaft" (1971)

Blythe Danner carries over from "The Love Letter". She was around in the 1970's, but not in any of the movies TCM is showing today. Anyway, I've seen 8 out of 11, which for me is really good - I have not seen "Travels With My Aunt", "A Little Romance" or the original "Shaft", but I've seen the sequel/reboots. I'm up to 83 seen out of 198, which is 41.9%. The movies can't all be from the 1970's and 1980's, unfortunately. 

THE PLOT: Ed spends his life preparing for a disaster that may never come. Ronnie spends her life shopping for things she may never use. These two people will try to find love. 

AFTER: It's a cute little movie, I suppose - about as cute as one can expect with lead characters who are both damaged, but in different ways.  It turns out that a doomsday and a prepper are essentially different people, though they're both collecting too many things, it's for entirely different reasons.  A prepper believes that bad times are ahead, and it's best to be prepared for them, it's someone with low expectations or some kind of grudge with the world around them, and they believe that things are only going to get worse in the future.  A hoarder, however, may not have a reason for collecting things, or they may not even be aware of what they're doing or why, and they may have suffered through some trauma such as the death of a loved one, and this is their response, to shut down emotionally and live only for the thrill of acquiring more.  What they share in common is that more will never be enough for them, but the prepper's likely to be much more organized about it, he knows exactly how many supplies he needs for a certain length of time, and he buys and stores according to a set of rules.  It's OCD vs DCD - organized compulsive disorder vs. disorganized. 

Can these two find some kind of happiness together? I don't know, can a prepper be happy about anything, except watching the world burn and being proven right?  I really don't know much about the prepper lifestyle, but I know plenty about hoarding - my parents hated to throw anything away, and several times as an adult I've had to clean out their basement or their garage and make choices for them about what to keep and what to get rid of, because they would always choose "keep".  One time when I finally got the garage empty enough to put their car in it, I had to take a picture of that, because I doubted I would ever see that happen again, and I was right.  Now they've moved out of the house, but their stuff is all still there, and at some point in the future my sister and I are going to have to go up there, take a look at everything in that house, and make some decisions about what to do with it all. That could take months, and it's time we don't really have, we have our own lives to lead. So maybe it's better to just hire someone to clean the whole place out, after I remove a few boxes of personal stuff that I have in their basement.  I suppose this is all a problem for another day.  

In the film, Ed mistakes Ronnie for a fellow prepper because of the choices she makes in the grocery store - I'm not sure what exactly she bought that led his mind in this direction, but apparently canned tuna is big with the preppers, maybe that was it. On their dates he asks her questions about the tuna, which brand of toilet paper she buys, you know, the important stuff.  Hey, remember two years ago when everybody was stocking up on toilet paper?  I was in a grocery store when that started to happen, it was like a wave of madness that swept over the crowd, people must have seen toilet paper in someone else's cart and thought, "Oh, of course, lockdown is starting and I'm going to be at home more, so I need this."  Now that problem got solved eventually by Amazon and other home delivery services, but we still have supply chain problems that are persisting, so we're still not back to normal yet, maybe we'll never get back to the old normal and we'll have to settle for the new normal. Look, I know it's not over yet, but most of New York State is colored green on the map now, that's much better than red, and we're planning a drive up to Massachusetts, maybe even Atlantic City next month. 

When you've lived for any length of time under adverse conditions, it can be tough to try to enjoy yourself again.  Whatever coping mechanisms you put in place were there for a reason, to help you get through a day and on to the next one, but if they're in place for too long then you may come to depend on them, and you may not feel like you can live without them.  That's certainly the case for our lead characters today - they do what they do because they've been doing that, and it's kept them focused on something besides the inevitable end that awaits us all. But then you meet a fellow "traveler" on Spaceship Earth and maybe you see things from a different perspective, or you have to explain yourself to that person and maybe things don't make the same sense any more than they used to.  Times change, our circumstances change and then we have to change with them or we get left behind.  

Look, it sucks to be on the "wrong side of 60", as it's described in this movie.  Hell, it sucks to be on the wrong side of 50, I can confirm that - but Ronnie, the optimist declares "There's no wrong side of 60!" and maybe she's also correct.  You're as old as you are, so you might as well make the best out of whatever age that is.  You can waste a day if you want to sleep a bit in the afternoon or you're not up to leaving the house today, just don't waste too many days, or you might waste all of them. And don't spend your time stockpiling food that you're not going to eat, there's no point in that - or, is there? I watched a similar plot-line unfold during a season of "Joe Pera Talks With You", where Joe dated a fellow teacher who turned out to be a prepper.  Me, I'm for eating all of the food I buy, because I simply hate to throw anything away, even if it's spoiled.  If it's moldy, I know I'm saving my own life by throwing that food away, but I still feel bad about it.  Hoarding is for comic books, movies and collectibles, not for food, but I realize this is a policy that I may regret when the zombie apocalypse starts to happen. 

Also starring John Lithgow (last seen in "Bombshell"), Derek Cecil (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Katie Aselton (last seen in "Father Figures"), Sophie Thatcher, Eve Harlow (last seen in "Instant Family"), Wendy Makkena (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Isabelle Boni, Jeff Moon, Tyler Aser.

RATING: 5 out of 10 cans of Campbell's soup

The Love Letter

Year 14, Day 75 - 3/16/22 - Movie #4,077

BEFORE: Jack Black carries over from "Margot at the Wedding", he's got an uncredited cameo here as a fisherman, but cameos count, too - as long as I spot him in the film, I'll be fine and the chain will remain unbroken. 

Tomorrow's line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming moves back, er, forward to showcase the 1960's winners:  

6:00 am "Closely Watched Trains" (1967)

8:00 am "The Shop on Main Street" (1965)

10:15 am "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961)

12:00 pm "Z" (1969)

2:15 pm "Two Women" (1960)

4:00 pm "The Facts of Life" (1960)

6:00 pm "Cactus Flower" (1969)

8:00 pm "The Music Man" (1962)

10:15 pm "Oliver!" (1968)

1:30 am "Camelot" (1967)

4:45 am "How the West Was Won" (1962)

Ah, thank God for musicals, maybe I can make up some ground - but I've only seen another five of these, thanks again to that Ingmar Bergman marathon from last January.  I've seen "Through a Glass Darkly", plus "Cactus Flower", "The Music Man", "Oliver!" and "Camelot" - I was made to watch most of the classic musicals from the 1960's when I was a kid. Another 5 seen out of these 11 brings my total to 75 seen out of 187, or 40.1%.  Back over the hump, and the 1970's are coming around again...

THE PLOT: The life of a provincial town becomes stormy after the appearance of an anonymous love letter. 

AFTER: This romance film from the before-times - 1999, to be exact, so pre-Millennium even, maybe hasn't aged all that well. It's too cutesy and charming by half - a relic from a more innocent time, perhaps - pre-pandemic, pre-Trump, even pre-9/11.  God, were we ever this naive?  Were we so simple that we thought love is the answer to all our problems, literally "All You Need Is Love"?  Way back when we weren't worrying about climate change, or the plastic in the ocean, or the imminent collapse of Social Security, and we were only mildly scared senseless by the Y2K bug?  Surely President Gore will fix all those other problems, especially the global warming, right?  He what?  Lost?  It was a TIE, and he still lost?  And WHO decided the election?  That just wasn't right.

I'm getting off track - this film is set in a quaint fictional Massachusetts coastal town (think Gloucester or Rockport or Manchester-by-the-Sea, where this was filmed) that's thrown into romantic chaos by a found letter from one anonymous person to another.  What's hard to believe, though, is that over the course of the film, FIVE different people will find this letter, and mistakenly think that this anonymous someone wrote it for THEM - so everyone in this town is love-struck, desperate and quite self-centered, it seems.  Who does this?  The kind of person who sees an unlabeled Christmas present and just opens it, assuming it must be for them?  The kind of person who parks in the handicapped spot, just because it's closer to the mall entrance?  Or the kind of person who touches all the candies in the assortment, so nobody else gets any?  This doesn't jibe with the quaint New England towns I'm familiar with, where people are, for the most part, quite civil, often charitable and always good-natured. You know, the kind of town that has an independently run bookstore and a general store that sells penny candy.  The kind of town where the postman knows everybody, and if a letter is mis-addressed, they know where it's REALLY supposed to go.

Helen is the owner of that independently-run bookstore, and I get it, she's divorced and bitter, and hasn't been in a relationship for quite some time - BUT, there's George, the local fire chief, who took her to prom way back when, then lived in New York City for a while, and he's recently divorced himself, so maybe there's a chance... Ah, but there's this pesky love letter that she finds, mixed in with the mail, and she mistakenly believes it's addressed to her, and came from her younger employee, Johnny.  Johnny also finds the letter, not long after that, and mistakenly assumes it's addressed to HIM, and came from Helen.  So there's that - and they can't discuss it openly, of course, so they just kind of fall together based on two wrong pretenses, and this keeps Johnny from getting together with Jennifer, who also works at the bookstore, is also athletic like Johnny, and is closer to him in age.  It seems like a no-brainer to posit that Johnny and Jennifer might have gotten together, if not for the confusion over the letter.  

Then the letter gets found AGAIN, this time by Janet, the assistant manager of the bookstore, and SHE assumes it was addressed to HER, and that it came from George.  Even though George never showed romantic interest in her before, but he's generally nice to everyone, so why not him and Janet?  Helen's got to break the bad news to Janet that the letter wasn't written for her, and it puts a strain on their friendship.  Meanwhile Helen slowly starts to figure out that Johnny didn't write the letter, but by that point they've developed a physical attraction and a full-on relationship is blossoming, so Helen's got to figure out if this is what she really wants, to be in a relationship with this younger man that could keep him from returning to school in the fall and finding his own path.  This quaint New England town seems rather hard to leave if you've stayed there too long, apparently.  

Meanwhile, Helen's mother and grandmother, who left town a year ago and have been traveling around the world, finally return home, and Helen's mother drops a personal bombshell that's possibly related to the letter.  I won't spoil it here, but it's something that would have been much more shocking in 1999 than now, because we're more accepting of certain lifestyles now, you might say they're the law of the land now, thanks to a few court cases.  Again, it feels like maybe this film hasn't aged all that well - it was made so long ago that Ellen Degeneres was still playing STRAIGHT women, because, well, what other choice of roles did she have?  People just weren't making movies back then with gay women in them, or maybe there were a few indie films that played off this theme, but they were shocking and hard-core and most middle Americans didn't have a handle on the whole lesbian thing yet.  Massachusetts, of course, has always been pretty liberal, remember that it was the first state to allow gay marriage, back in 2003 - there's your bit of trivia for the day.  (Vermont was the first state to legislate gay marriage a few years later, but Massachusetts was the first to declare it legal based on a court ruling.)

My NITPICK POINT tonight concerns the contents of this letter - if you're going to tell me that one person after another feels something passionate after reading an anonymous letter, man, that better be some letter, like pure poetry.  That better be some Emily Dickinson or Elizabeth Barrett Browning material, or something as romantic as a Shakespeare sonnet.  But "Did I graze a knee?" or "I think of you when I peel an orange..."  Sorry, that just doesn't cut it, I'm not seeing the attractions portrayed developing from those lines.  They just don't measure up with "How do I love thee, let me count the ways..." or "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"  

Look, I don't care, if you want to fall in love with a younger man, go for it.  If you want to throw yourself at the local fire chief, then by all means, move on that.  But let's be realistic, a relationship has a better chance of working out if the two of you have something in common, shared goals, shared experiences, similar likes and dislikes - you don't have to like all the same things, but it helps if you HATE a couple of the same things.  Maybe your jobs are similar, and you can talk about that, or sharing town gossip, that's always good - but your relationship just can't be based off on ONE letter that you're not even sure that person really wrote.  That's not a solid foundation, it's like built on a house of cards - because when that initial attraction and sense of amazement fades, you'd better have something you share to fall back on, I'm just saying. Almost everything seen here is so darn simplistic that it's also quite unbelievable. 

Also starring Kate Capshaw (last seen in "Spielberg"), Blythe Danner (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Ellen DeGeneres (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Julianne Nicholson (last seen in "One True Thing"), Tom Everett Scott (last seen in "The Last Word"), Tom Selleck (last seen in "Quigley Down Under"), Gloria Stuart, Bill Buell (last seen in "The Box"), Alice Drummond (last seen in "Walking and Talking"), Erik Jensen, Geraldine McEwan (last seen in "Vanity Fair"), Margaret Ann Brady, Jessica Capshaw, Patrick Donnelly, with archive footage of Buster Keaton. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 books on coping with divorce

Margot at the Wedding

Year 14, Day 74 - 3/15/22 - Movie #4,076

BEFORE: Nicole Kidman carries over from "Being the Ricardos", that's three in a row - but last year I watched SIX Nicole Kidman films (not all in a row) so three's not really such a big deal, is it? Now the end of the romance/relationship chain is truly in sight, I've got just three left after this one. I really can't wait to watch some action movies again - I may even reward myself with a trip to the movie theater to watch "The Batman", I already see a way I can work that one in, I just hope it's still playing in early April. 

(Yes, John Turturro is in tonight's film, and also in "The Batman".  But that's not how I want to get there, I want to finish the romance chain first.  There may very well be some romance between Batman and Catwoman, but I'm discounting that. Trust me, I've got another way to get there.  By the same token, I could watch "Belfast" after this one, linking there via Ciaran Hinds - but I've got not outro there either, I think it's better to stay the course and complete the plan I have on deck, which I know gets me at least to Easter, thematically.)

We're halfway through March, and halfway through TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, here's the line-up for tomorrow, March 16, featuring winners from the 1950's:

5:45 am "The Plymouth Adventure" (1952)

7:45 am "The Great Caruso" (1951)

9:45 am "Interrupted Melody" (1955)

11:45 am "Julius Caesar" (1953)

2:00 pm "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)
4:00 pm "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956)

6:00 pm "Annie Get Your Gun" (1950)

8:00 pm "Marty" (1955)

9:45 pm "Born Yesterday" (1950)

11:45 pm "Some Like It Hot" (1959)

2:00 am "Mon Oncle" (1958)

4:15 am "Rashomon" (1950)

Damn, only five of these, and I thought I'd do a lot better as they cover the later decades. "Born Yesterday" has been on my watch list for a LONG time, I just can't seem to link that far back any more - so maybe someday. But I have seen "Julius Caesar", "Somebody Up There Likes Me", "Annie Get Your Gun", "Marty" and of course, "Some Like It Hot". With 70 seen out of 176, I'm holding fast at 39.7% seen. 

THE PLOT: Margot and her son Claude decide to visit her sister, Pauline, after she announces that she is marrying less-than-impressive Malcolm. In short order, the storm the sisters create leaves behind a mess of thrashed relationships and exposed family secrets. 

AFTER: This one was directed by Noah Baumbach, I went on a bit of a Baumbach tear these last couple of years, after "Marriage Story" I sought out "The Squid and the Whale" and "Frances Ha", now after tonight I think I've seen every well-known Baumbach-directed movie, but there are still two minor ones I haven't seen, "Mistress America" and "Mr. Jealousy".  I think I'm good, though, having covered "Greenberg" and "The Meyerowitz Stories" and even his first film "Kicking and Screaming" (the one about college students, not the Will Ferrell soccer comedy).

I remember that "The Squid and the Whale" was a very personal film, and it was semi-autobiographical, based partially on the break-up of Baumbach's parents.  So with these auteurs like Baumbach, Cameron Crowe and Wes Anderson (among others) I'm always left to wonder whether these stories originated in their own personal lives - and if so, which character is the stand-in for the writer/director in question?  There are some very specific events taking place here, like the teen boy who spies on the gay neighbors, one of whom has Bell's Palsy.  Why is any of that in this film, unless it really happened to somebody?  And I know that Baumbach used to be married to Jennifer Jason Leigh, who stars in the film, so that alone gets my suspicious mind working. But they were married for five years, and so they don't really resemble any of the married couples seen in this film, so now I'm a bit lost. 

You know what, I'm a bit lost, anyway, like with the overall intent of this film - I watched the whole damn thing and then afterwards I was sort of hard-pressed to state what it actually was ABOUT.  Margot brings her son out to Long Island for the wedding of her sister, Pauline, but Margot doesn't really care for her sister's fiancé, obviously she thinks that her sister could do better.  But you're not supposed to SAY those things, even if you're thinking them.  Margot's a bit of a tough nut to crack, she's obviously very close to her son, but you can't spell "smother" without "mother", I always say - and I should know.  She's apparently raised him non-traditionally, he's got longish hair and he's never been taught to swim (I never learned, myself...). Margot is also an author and she's having some kind of an affair with Dick, another writer, one who interviews her during her book signings.  Wait, is that legal?  

She's clearly at a crossroads, she doesn't know whether to stay with her husband (son's father) or somehow move forward with the other author, who is also married. But is Margot just projecting her own dissatisfaction with marriage on to her sister, or is her concern coming more from a genuine place?  As it turns out, her presence at the wedding is rather disruptive, but there are so many weird things that happen here, from the croquet game to Margot climbing a tree and not being able to climb back down, that it's rather hard to find a coherent through-line that connects all these random events. 

Meanwhile, Pauline is upset that her sister Margot has published novels featuring thinly-veiled stories about their family, especially Pauline herself.  This feels sort of straight out of a Woody Allen film, I think this was a plot point in "Hannah and Her Sisters", after Dianne Wiest's character, Holly, wrote stories that came a little too close to things occurring in Hannah's marriage. If you're going to steal, steal from the best, I suppose.  Other things take place that lead Pauline to fight with Margot, Malcolm to fight with Pauline, and then Dick to fight with Malcolm. Yeah, OK, it gets a bit complicated. Somewhere in the midst of all this, Claude's father visits and tries to reconcile with Margot, even though they both agreed that they needed to spend some time apart. Umm, I think.  

By the end of things, after way too many reversals on every point, Margot decides that she needs to spend more time with her sister, because that reconciliation plan hasn't worked out so good, maybe it needs another try.  So she puts Claude on a bus to Vermont, to go live with his father, but then, of course, doubts her choices.  Well, every character here is at LEAST neurotic enough to be in a Woody Allen movie, so there's that.  But I think this one still qualifies as a bit of a head-scratcher - whenever it goes into too much detail about something, from somebody losing their dog to a character having an accident in their pants, there's that feeling of "Why is THAT in the movie, unless it really happened to somebody?"

My main NITPICK POINT tonight concerns Margot and Claude on the train, going out to the wedding on Long Island.  If they were coming from Manhattan, they would take the Long Island Rail Road - but come on, I recognize the interior of a pre-Acela Amtrak train when I see one.  Those big metal sliding doors with that big square "Push to Open" button?  That's an Amtrak.  MAYBE they're taking the train down from Vermont to New York, but it sure seems like they're on their way to L.I. - anyway, they'd have to switch from an Amtrak Northeast Corridor train to the L.I.R.R. to get out there - there's just no place to get off an Amtrak where you can also get on a ferry for Shelter Island. 

Also starring Jennifer Jason Leigh (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Jack Black (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), John Turturro (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"), Zane Pais, Flora Cross (last seen in "Bee Season"), Seth Barrish (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Matthew Arkin, Brian Kelley, Michael Cullen (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Enid Graham (last seen in "The Rewrite"), Halley Feiffer (last seen in "You Can Count on Me"), Sophie Nyweide, Justin Roth, Ashlie Atkinson (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 hand-made bracelets

Being the Ricardos

Year 14, Day 73 - 3/14/22 - Movie #4,075

BEFORE: Nicole Kidman carries over from "How to Talk to Girls at Parties", I said I was going to take any opportunity to drop in another Oscar-nominated film - I already had two films queued up with Ms. Kidman in them, that was always part of the plan, so why not just squeeze this one in between the other two, make it three-in-a-row, and at the same time greatly increase my chances of seeing some of the other nominated performances, possibly even see an Oscar-winning performance BEFORE it wins?  A quick look through the nominations tells me that in most categories, after today I will have seen at least one, possibly two of the nominees.  Best Picture - 2 out of 10, Best Director - 1 out of 5, Best Actor - 2 out of 5, Best Actress - 1 out of 5, Best Supporting Actor - 3 out of 5, Best Supporting Actress - 1 out of 5, Best Original Screenplay - 0, Best Adapted Screenplay - 2 out of 5.

Then in the second tier, my record's not so good - Best Animated Feature, Best International Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short, Best Live Action Short and Best Animated Short, I've seen nothing, nada, goose eggs.  Ah, but then in the technical categories, my record's a little better, Best Sound - 2 out of 5, Best Production Design - 2 out of 5, Best Cinematography - 2 out of 5, Best Makeup and Hair - 3 out of 5, Best Costume Design - 1 out of 5, Best Film Editing - 1 out of 5, and Best Visual Effects - I'll be at 4 out of 5 as soon as I watch "Free Guy" next week.

To be clear, all I've seen are "Dune", "The Power of the Dog", and now THIS one in the major categories, also "House of Gucci", "Coming 2 America", "Shang-Chi" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in the technicals. But with just 7 or 8 films watched (plus "The French Dispatch", I still can't believe it got ZERO noms), I've now got a dog in (almost) every fight - and I did this by only watching the movies I wanted to see, so I'm good with that.  I'll get to all the others - "Licorice Pizza", "Belfast", "Nightmare Alley", "West Side Story", "CODA", "Don't Look Up", "King Richard", "The Lost Daughter", "The Eyes of Tammy Faye", "Encanto", "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" and "Tick...Tick...Boom" as soon as I can - I would say that four of those are coming up in my April chain for sure, but others on that list aren't even available on streaming yet - whether that's a winning or losing strategy is kind of to be determined, I think. 

And here's the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, March 15: 

6:15 am "Lady Be Good" (1941)

8:15 am "Strike Up the Band" (1940)

10:15 am "Easter Parade" (1948)

12:00 pm "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947)

1:45 pm "Little Women" (1949)

4:00 pm "Pride and Prejudice" (1940)

6:00 pm "The Stratton Story" (1949)

8:00 pm "National Velvet" (1944)

10:15 pm "Hamlet" (1948)

1:00 am "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)

3:15 am "Anchors Aweigh" (1945)

Ha ha, I'm claiming four films tonight, thanks to past marathons of Fred Astaire and Cary Grant films - I've seen "Easter Parade", "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer", "Hamlet" (the Olivier one), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" - I thought I'd seen "Anchors Aweigh", but I think I'm confusing it with "On the Town". Whoops.  Another 4 out of 11 brings me to 65 seen out of 164, or 39.6%.

THE PLOT: Follows Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as they face one crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage. 

AFTER: I think I'm still on solid ground putting this one into the tail end of the "romance" / "relationship" chain, because at the heart of the story is the marriage of Lucy and Desi (I also just added the new documentary about them to my Summer Docs & Concert series, of course it fit in somewhere, so this topic will be covered TWICE this calendar year). I'm going to have to count the days left in March, though - there's an extra Ryan Reynolds film I want to add next week, too - I just need to leave enough room for the Nicolas Cage films, but if it gets tight I can drop one of the one that I was going to have to rent from iTunes, it's not that big a deal.  The chain always has to be a LITTLE flexible on these matters, if I'm going to get to my Easter film on time.

I did work at a screening of this film, but I wasn't able to watch it there - I only peeked my head in a couple of time because I just wanted to see how close the two leads ended up resembling Lucy and Desi, and I think they both oddly passed this test. Now the film is on Amazon Prime, so I watched it at home, just about three months after passing up watching it on a movie screen.  I kind of dig how quickly movies are getting onto streaming these days, it's saving me some money and time - or perhaps it only FEELS like it's saving me money and time, but it's really not.

Just me? 

Anyway, the good news I have to report is that the casting for this biopic was SPOT ON - it's good news because there are like 100 more biopics coming our way, after this one and "Respect" and "Spencer" and the one about Jonathon Larson and the one about Venus & Serena Williams' father, and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye", we've only seen the tip of that iceberg.  There are a couple due soon about Elvis, expect films about KISS and Ozzy Osbourne and my personal favorite, "Weird Al" Yankovic.  If that's not your thing, others are coming that will focus on Peggy Lee, Dusty Springfield, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Madonna, Marianne Faithfull, Bob Marley, Cher and the Bee Gees.  By this time next year, it's possible that 50% of all Hollywood films being released will be biopics. OK, maybe that estimate is a bit high.  But Nicole Kidman nails the LOOK and the VOICE of Lucille Ball, so things are looking up.  Javier Bardem is, OK, fine as Desi Arnaz - but come on, J.K. Simmons as William "Fred Mertz" Frawley?  It's the role he was BORN to play.  Not really, but I guess he sort of aged into it - anyway, he really kind of disappears into the role as the irascible, aging, frequently drunk and eternally pissed-off actor.  He already won an Oscar for "Whiplash", but a second one's not out of the question.  However, he's up against TWO actors from "The Power of the Dog" and also the deaf actor from "CODA", who's gaining momentum from the SAG Awards and BAFTAs. (I maintain that he should have been nominated for J. Jonah Jameson in "Spider-Man: No Way Home", but maybe that's just me.)

This film directed by Aaron Sorkin starts out with an intent to focus on a particularly crucial week in the life of Lucy and Desi - SPOILERS AHEAD if you haven't seen this film, or "I Love Lucy" before.  It's basically the week that the tabloids call Lucille Ball out for once being a member of the Communist Party, and that was a pretty big thing back in the 1950's.  Sen. McCarthy?  The Red Scare? Anybody remember?  Careers were ruined, lives were ruined if actors didn't swear loyalty oaths to the U.S. and publicly denounce the rising threat of Communism, which I get it, but the whole idea seems to go against little things like freedom of speech, freedom of thought and the right to vote however you choose, things that were kind of guaranteed by the Constitution.  Why did we even HAVE a Communist Party in the U.S. if nobody was allowed to vote for it, and everybody who joined it got into trouble?  That sounds a bit like entrapment to me.  "Hey, come on, it's election time, here's a ballot and a pen, vote for any candidate you want...only NOT THAT ONE!  Geez, now you're in trouble..."

Lucy DID join the Communist Party, something about doing it to please the man who raised her, or something - the excuse seems really flimsy, but apparently she never went to one meeting or rally or campaigned for any candidate.  Then again, she did have RED hair, so she must have been a godless Commie!  I guess maybe it was one of those crazy fads from the 1920s like wearing fur coats or flagpole sitting or swallowing goldfish - yes, people did that, it was a weird time. She only joined the Communist Party because it was cool, didn't she?  I knew it.  Also, in the same week, Lucy found out she was pregnant (for the second time) and she and Desi made the decision to work that into the plot of the show, even though the network censors wouldn't let them even use the WORD "pregnant" on TV, or for that matter, show a married couple sleeping in the same bed.  CBS was a family network, after all, they couldn't show women being pregnant or giving birth, only wasn't that the technical definition of "family"?  Where did TV audiences think that babies came from? Oh, right, from the stork? WTAF?

And on top of all that, it was also the week (supposedly) where the tabloids also reported that Desi had been seen around town with other women, and though he claimed to his wife that the stories weren't true, that the media was making something out of nothing, and that all those times he came home late or didn't come home at all, he was playing cards with friends, or sleeping on his boat.  I think we all can kind of figure out where this is heading - yeah, it's also the week where Lucy started to figure out that maybe the tabloids were on to something, and that her husband had something going on the side.  Yes, this was the 1950's, and there were different rules for husbands as there were for wives - I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm just saying that's kind of how things were. Celebrity husbands, especially, weren't really expected to be faithful - with all the gossip and all the divorces over the years, I'm not sure that any celebrity husbands ever were. I'm sure a few Hollywood wives cheated, too, but come on, Hollywood husbands were just the worst.  

Wow, that does sound like a busy week!  And if the film had just stuck to that week, they might have really had a tale to tell - but (unfortunately, in my opinion) the director just couldn't stick to the plan, Sorkin couldn't resist flashing back to that time that Lucy and Desi met while working on an RKO picture, and also that time when they first slept together, and all those times they met up in the Hollywood Hills when he was coming home from playing at the club, and she was heading over to the movie studio, and they passed like two ships in the night. Very romantic, yes, but those events DID NOT HAPPEN during the week in question - and so we're dealing with excessive time-jumping here, plus the film lines up a certain set of parameters by stating that it's only going to focus on one very momentous week, and then it starts breaking the very rules it just laid out, and showing us events from several years before the "I Love Lucy" show was even created.  How the hell is anybody supposed to follow this, when the scenes are all out of order?

Look, I allowed this for Sorkin's last film, "The Trial of the Chicago 7", because while the film focused mainly on the TRIAL (it's, umm, right there in the title) the film did have to flash back to show us the events surrounding the violence at the Democratic National Convention, which is what the trial was all about.  But that's a cheat, it's all too seductive, and once a director gets a taste for bending the space-time continuum backwards or folding it in on itself, he's going to want to do it again and again.  Then what you end up with is a big random mess like this story, with no temporal focus, and it's all over the place - or is that "all over the time"?  Jesus, man, just start the story in the beginning, put the middle in the middle and end it where you want to end it, it's NOT complicated!  The plot synopsis on Wikipedia has all the events in the proper order, why doesn't the MOVIE?

Another problem is that on this very momentous week, the episode is being filmed is called "Fred and Ethel Fight".  Really? I'll admit I don't know all the episodes of "I Love Lucy", it was a bit before my time, but why not the episode where she's working in a chocolate factory?  Or the one where she drinks too much vitamin supplement and can't pronounce the name of the product in the commercial?  Why not the one where she's stomping grapes in Italy (though they did find a way to work that one in, via Lucy's imagination in a flash-forward - but that's cheating.  Seriously, the movie spends about 20% of its time on Lucy trying to work out better blocking for a scene where Ricky comes home and plays "peek-a-boo" with her, and she pretends to not know who he is?  Really?  Who cares about this?  We're supposed to deduce from THIS that Lucy was some kind of comic genius, a brilliant stager and physical comic?  This seems like one of the lamer moments from the sit-com, a total throwaway action, and it's just not worthy of being the focus of so much of "Being the Ricardos".  

NITPICK POINT: There was an orchestra in the studio for every episode of "I Love Lucy"?  Was it there to entertain the live studio audience during the breaks, like on a modern talk show?  Or to play the theme song to start the show?  Either way, it seems a bit weird, like an additional expense that wasn't required, or perhaps a hold-over from when they used to record shows on the radio with a full orchestra or swing band. You're telling me that Desi Arnaz, the pioneer of the three-camera studio set-up, the man who figured out how to build a studio set-up that would display adjacent sets with all the rooms in a fake house and STILL have room for the audience on the sound stage, the man who initiated the change from grainy kinescopes to shooting TV on better-looking film, THAT GUY never figured out that you didn't have to record the show's opening theme for every episode?  That you could just record the theme ONCE and then never have to pay for the orchestra again?  I find that very hard to believe - every producer is ALWAYS looking for ways to cut costs, and if there was a way to shoot an episode without paying 27 guys in white dinner jackets top dollar to tune their instruments and work for 5 minutes for a full day's pay, it's that producer's JOB to find it.  Plus, a recording would be more reliable, it always sounds the SAME, there would be no missed notes from the band or out-of-tune trumpets, which is always a possibility.

OK, maybe that was Desi's band, and they were all his friends and mates, and he was all about getting them paid for working each episode, and maybe they entertained the audience between set-ups, I don't know.  But I'd think that at some point a network executive would have stepped in and said, "Why do we have a full orchestra on stand-by all the time?  Why can't we just play a couple records?"

NITPICK POINT #2: The big "problem" of Lucille Ball being a member of the Communist Party is solved here by Desi just explaining the conundrum to one studio audience - which doesn't really seem like a solution, because there are maybe 100 people in that live audience, and millions more at home who watch the show on TV and didn't get to hear Desi's speech.  Millions more who got their news from the newspapers, and same problem, they didn't get to hear Desi's explanation, either.  Were they counting on each member of the audience to go home, tell their families that it was all a wacky misunderstanding, and then ask those family members to help spread the word?  Also, Desi holds up a telephone to the microphone to get the audience to hear a testimonial from J. Edgar Hoover, to prove that Lucy was cleared by the H.U.A.C. several months earlier - that's the proof?  Even in the 1950's, I would expect that people would realize that ANYBODY could be on the other end of that phone line, anybody could CLAIM to be the head of the FBI, and it could have just been some guy imitating Hoover.  Right?  Or were people still so enthralled by this new telephone device that the prank call hadn't been invented yet?  Hey, if you're J. Edgar Hoover, what are you wearing RIGHT NOW, tell the truth!

I'd still like to think that somebody could win an Oscar for this film, but I can't really say for sure. Anyway, all three nominated actors already HAVE Oscars, so if they don't win, they'll still be OK. I haven't read any articles handicapping the races, and that's kind of by intent, but also because I've been so busy.  I think I'm just going to go with what I've seen, except I'll watch "Free Guy" next week, then call it a day.  

Also starring Javier Bardem (last seen in "Dune"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Nina Arianda (last seen in "Lucky Them"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Happythankyoumoreplease"), Alia Shawkat (last seen in "The Runaways"), Jake Lacy (last seen in "Their Finest"), Clark Gregg (last seen in "In Good Company"), Nelson Franklin (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Jeff Holman (last seen in "Love & Mercy"), Jonah Platt, Christopher Denham (last seen in "Money Monster"), Brian Howe (last seen in "Return to Me"), Ron Perkins (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), John Rubinstein (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Linda Lavin (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Ronny Cox (last seen in "Deliverance"), Baize Buzan, Matt Cook, Josh Bednarsky, Dana Lyn Baron, Dan Sachoff, Max Silvestri, Peter Onorati, Lawrence Novikoff, Rick Batalla, Melinda Sullivan (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), and the voice of John Funk. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 cigarette brands sponsoring TV shows (yeah...)

How to Talk to Girls at Parties

Year 14, Day 72 - 3/13/22 - Movie #4,074

BEFORE: I worked a 13-hour shift yesterday at the New York International Children's Film Festival, and it was quite busy there - the time actually seems to move must faster when we're busy, with both screens at the theater showing films, and seven shows total during the day, we were never more than a half-hour from a theater either seating, or letting out, so there was almost always something to do. By contrast, working a screening of "Licorice Pizza" or "House of Gucci" with very low attendance, like 2 or 3 people, would feel longer by comparison than a 13-hour day. That's an odd phenomenon to note - but last summer working at AMC as an usher, I was usually never more than 15 or 20 minutes from a theater letting out and needing to be swept, so the shifts there would similarly seem to fly by.  My day started at 8 am and I got home around 10:15, completely tired - so I wasn't really in any shape to watch a movie, but I still persisted, figuring that if I fell asleep, that would be because I really needed to, and that wouldn't necessarily be a reflection on the movie.  I made it through, but then slept for like 10 hours, which was really 11 on the clock, thanks to the stupidity of starting Daylight Savings Time again.  Really?  Don't we deserve a freakin' break from this after two years of pandemic?  We finally get our lives back, and now they want me to lose an HOUR of that?  That's a raw deal. Anyway, Joanna Scanlan carries over from "How to Build a Girl". 

TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" goes back on the 1920's and 1930's beat for Monday, March 14, but I was expecting this, now that I figured out their pattern. I probably won't do all that well here:

3:45 am "Lost Horizon" (1937)

6:00 am "A Free Soul" (1931)

7:45 am "The Sin of Madelon Claudet" (1931)
9:15 am "The Divorcee" (1930)

10:45 am "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934)

12:30 pm "The Dark Angel" (1935)

2:30 pm "Wuthering Heights" (1939)

4:30 pm "Dangerous" (1935)

6:00 pm "Dodsworth" (1936)

8:00 pm "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)

10:30 pm "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)

1:00 am "The Informer" (1935)

2:45 am "Disraeli" (1929)

4:15 am "The Jazz Singer" (1927)

Yeah, I can only claim two films here, "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Two out of 14 is not anything to be proud of, and with 61 seen out of 153, I've fallen back down behind 40%, only JUST - 39.8%.

THE PLOT: An alien touring the galaxy breaks away from her group and meets two young inhabitants of the most dangerous place in the universe: the London suburb of Croydon.

AFTER: OK, mea culpa - I should have read a little further into the synopsis for this one, and now I've gone ahead and accidentally progammed a little sci-fi movie, based on a short story written by Neil Gaiman, here at the tail end of my romance chain.  Based on the title I just thought it might be a quaint little coming-of-age story, something like "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", and instead it's more like "The Watch" or "The World's End" or "The Day the Earth Stood Still", only it's still a low-budget comedy.  Yes, two characters do have romantic feelings for each other, essentially that's a relationship, so it qualifies, just barely.  But it still feels a bit weird to put this one here - I've already planned it as a link, so I can't change it without affecting the rest of March's plan. 

I'm stuck with it now, let's try to make the best of it - this is a romance set in the U.K. punk music scene of the 1970's, specifically 1977, which was the Queen's jubilee year, her 25th anniversary celebration of her coronation. (Weirdly, 2022 is also a jubilee year for her, it's her 70th anniversary right now - so, umm, platinum?  We're 45 years removed from 1977, a year I fondly remember, and now I just feel old. OK, older.). But it's just a romance between a British teen and a girl from out of town - like, WAY out of town.  Women are from Venus, isn't that how the book title goes?  Just like many romances, the lovers come from different worlds, but that's usually a metaphor, it's just very literal in this story. 

Enn and his two mates spend their time kicking around the pubs, getting into trouble and going to see punk music shows, hitting on the girls they know there from school. They stumble on a group of people with very strange ways, who wear what appears to be futuristic fashion, and then Enn falls for Zan, who appears to know very little about human culture.  Actually, she seems to know a LOT, it just feels like she's making it all up, or just agreeing with everything Enn and his friends say, and they're just too naive to know the difference.  She takes them back to meet the rest of her clan, the people she's "on tour" with, and those people are even weirder than her, they engage in bizarre rituals, but Enn & company just think that they're part of some weird cult. Or maybe fashion designers - actually this is a bit of clever because in the 1970's some musicians or fashion models wore such outrageous things that they might as well have been mistaken for aliens, of course I'm thinking about David Bowie, but other answers are possible. 

It's just too bad that the story doesn't really GO anywhere, Enn and Zan hang out, they perform a song on stage together in some kind of mind-meld fashion, and Enn's friend has some freaky three-way sex (I think?) with an alien couple. Nicole Kidman plays the manager of the local punk music venue, and for her to NOT be one of the aliens, well that just seems like a lost opportunity there.  Instead she's a normal human who just dresses a little funny, and she's a momager to a rising punk music star.  How and why is she like the most boring character in the whole film?  

All of the conversations between the humans and the (suspected) aliens all have to have these weird double-meanings, because the film doesn't really want to tip its hand too soon, even though it's pretty clear what's going on - but the human characters need some time to figure it all out and deal with it, I guess.  Good to know that if the aliens are here, they're probably here for our Earth music, and I would guess maybe our movies too, but if they're hanging out in the U.K. then they didn't come for the food.  Or maybe they did, who am I to judge, if they want to eat black pudding, spotted dick, haggis and welsh rarebit - there's maybe a lot of British food that could pass for alien fare.  

The theme of the short story this is based on was that the punk scene was all about expressing one's individuality, while the aliens are big on conformity - they dress the same in various colored robes which make them part of various "colonies" and there's a hierarchy based on "parent-teacher" relationship, but when the child outgrows the PT, then there's a whole ritual about it, and, well, it's not for the faint of heart.  They also multiply by some kind of whole-body cellular division, so I guess sex isn't part of the equation, but instead - twinsies!  But it feels like the movie doesn't really deliver the same sort of message that the short story did, instead it circles around a few times but ultimately doesn't really go anywhere - what's the point?  

The aliens didn't really have consistent "powers" either - there was some kind of body-swapping or body-snatching going on, they called it "riding", as if they could project their consciousness into humans.  But then are they just floating consciousnesses, using some kind of astral projection, or do they also have real bodies of their own?  Did they travel here in a spaceship or did they just think their way here?  This was more than a little confusing, nothing really got explained, and the peek at the rituals taking place in their Croydon estate only made things worse.  There's so much I didn't understand here - usually I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman's work, but this just confused me.  

I liked "American Gods" as a mini-series, but it just went on too long - it should have been one season, but they tried to stretch it into three.  I liked "Good Omens" also, which told its story properly in one season, and now somehow a sequel season is in development.  And of course I'll watch "The Sandman" on Netflix when it eventually airs, but I worry it will fall prey to the same narrative mistakes, as in not answering any questions and ending everything with a cliff-hanger so you'll have to tune in again for the next season.  "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" seems to suffer from the opposite problem, though, it was too short, and they just didn't explain enough about what was going on. 

Also starring Elle Fanning (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Alex Sharp (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Birth"), Ruth Wilson (last heard in "Locke"), Matt Lucas (last seen in "In Secret"), A.J. Lewis, Ethan Lawrence, Edward Petherbridge (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Tom Brooke (last seen in "The Dresser" (2015)), Martin Tomlinson, Alice Sanders, Lara Peake, Jessica Plummer, Marina Bye (last seen in "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool"), Elarica Johnson (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Joey Ansah (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Stewart Lockwood, Jed Shardlow, Jumayn Hunter, Eloise Smyth, Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "A Good Woman"), Paul Bell, Rory Nolan, Hebe Beardsall (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Kaitlyn Akinpelumi, Taylor Jay-Davies, Eddie-Joe Robinson, Shawn Yang, Jodie O'Neill, James Puddephatt (last seen in "RocknRolla") and archive footage of Queen Elizabeth.

RATING: 3 out of 10 tomatoes that grew by the sewer pipe