BEFORE: Wednesday is once again "Masked Singer" night in our house, and things get VERY competitive. My wife knows more about music, especially pop or disco acts who might be from the 70's or 80's and are just the type of act that would appear on the show BUT I'm very good at spotting voices, like I can always tell you which actor that is doing the voice-over in a commercial, whether it's Jon Hamm for Cadillac or Donald Sutherland for orange juice. We're kind of at a level playing field when it comes to guessing the contestants on "Masked Singer", because we both love solving puzzles, she's got the musical knowledge, and I'm a great guesser when it comes to trivia and pop culture. They disguise the singers' speaking voices, if they didn't do that, I'd win our little game hands down, probably.
About two years ago I had a very vivid dream about the show, and I remembered it when I woke up and jotted down notes - in my dream there was a singer disguised as a polar bear, and he sang the song "C'mon Everybody" by Eddie Cochran, I think - and was revealed to be Bono from U2 under the mask. A very specific dream - but we all know the show features mostly B-list talent and a few C-listers, someone as famous as Bono wouldn't need to appear on a silly TV show.
So, before tonight's show, I had the movie "Across the Universe" on TV, while I was scrolling through the cable listings - and I asked my wife to name the singer who was covering "I Am the Walrus", which of course was Bono. And I jokingly said, "Remember that dream I had about Bono being on Masked Singer where he was dressed as a polar bear? It could happen tonight..." I was totally kidding around, but then the show started, and they announced that the second act performing was...THE POLAR BEAR! Jeez, I thought, my dream is coming true, I have the power to predict the future! And my wife was astonished, she also thought I had the power of prophecy, for a brief moment. The Polar Bear was dressed in a winter jacket, and he had on those big sunglasses that skiers might wear, but you know who else wears giant sunglasses like that? Bono from U2! So we were both convinced that somehow my dream had become reality...again, for just a brief minute. The first thing they said about the singer wearing the polar bear costume was that he was from New York City, not Ireland, so there went my dream and my power to foretell the future. I won't say who was revealed as the Polar Bear, just that it wasn't Bono from U2. I was so close, and yet so far.
Ethan Hawke carries over from "Maggie's Plan", and here are the other links that will get me to the end of March: Chris O'Dowd, Andie MacDowell, Toni Collette, Michael Vartan, Will Arnett, Josh Duhamel, Ginnifer Goodwin, John Krasinski, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mike Birbiglia, Shailene Woodley, Kyra Sedgwick, Maika Monroe, Leslie Mann, Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson and Willem Dafoe. Ciaran Hinds, like Bono, is Irish, so that's going to help on St. Patrick's Day, and then I guess you can probably see I'm going to get to "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" this month, also Guillermo Del Toro's "Pinocchio" and "Nightmare Alley". Should be fun!
EDIT: The TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for March 1, added here after the fact, is:
6:00 am "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)
7:30 am "Life With Father" (1947)
9:30 am "East of Eden" (1955)
11:30 am "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944)
1:30 pm "I Remember Mama" (1948)
3:45 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)
3:45 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)
6:15 pm "Father of the Bride" (1950)
8:00 pm "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)
10:00 pm "The African Queen" (1951)
12:00 am "The Man Who Would Be King" (1975)
2:15 am "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935)
4:30 am "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)
The themes for the day are "Family Ties" (first 7 films) and "Adventure" (last 5 films). Damn, I don't like the "theme" years, I much prefer when TCM does proper actor linking like I do. Anyway, I feel like I can only claim 8 of these 12 films, I'm not counting "Life with Father", "I Remember Mama", "Auntie Mame" or "Mighty Joe Young" though I may have seen parts of those. Still, 8 out of 12 is not bad, I'm starting off at 67% seen. (Yeah, I'm rounding up, deal with it.)
THE PLOT: Annie, the long-suffering girlfriend of Duncan, has an unlikely transatlantic romance with once revered, now faded singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe, who also happens to be the subject of Duncan's musical obsession.
AFTER: Today's "Love Tip" is that you don't have to like all the same things that your spouse or life partner does - but, as Patton Oswalt pointed out, you do have to HATE some of the same things for it to work out. So whatever your hobby or pastime is, if it's comic books or Legos or painting or stamp collecting, then if your partner isn't really into it, it's OK. In fact it's really OK, because that means you can get some time for yourself once in a while, just go and work on your hobby or your collection and let them pursue their own interests. Do NOT, repeat, DO NOT keep talking about your hobby or pastime with them so much that they realize how obsessed you are with that thing - because that just highlights that it's a thing you care very much about that the two of you do not both like. Eventually, that's one more thing that's driving the two of you apart, rather than bringing you closer together. After you paint or build Lego Death Star or write your blog or make your artisanal hot sauce, then go do something together with your partner that you both like - this way everyone is happy, and THAT THING is not coming between you.
Duncan is a guy who just doesn't get this - in addition to being a film studies professor, he's obsessed with the music of rocker Tucker Crowe, who has not been seen in public for decades. He records YouTube videos about Tucker's music, he connects with other fans all over the globe via chat rooms and message boards, and of course he's keen to review any unearthed music, which happens when someone from a record company sends him a stripped-down, unplugged version of Crowe's seminal album "Juliet", titled "Juliet, Naked". So, if you were hoping for some kind of soft-core version of a Shakespeare story here, you're going to be disappointed. Also, why would you want to see that?
Annie, Duncan's long-term girlfriend, gets the mail that day, and for some reason, she listens to the disc first, which Duncan sees as a giant betrayal when he gets home. He's got a point, the package WAS addressed to him, and Tucker Crowe is kind of his thing, you know? I can see why he's upset, if my wife watched a new "Star Wars" movie or TV series before I did, I don't know if I could handle that. This is why we still have a few shows we watch TOGETHER when they first air, like "The Masked Singer", "Top Chef" and "Hell's Kitchen". (She's given up on "Chopped" and "Survivor" but I still watch those on my own time.). Anyway, Duncan loses his mind and yells at Annie - he's brought back around after listening to "Juliet, Naked" because it's so damn beautiful, apparently, but the damage is done.
Annie posts a negative review on Duncan's web-site, to balance his positive one, and I feel like this is also a very passive-aggressive relationship no-no. If my wife and I disagreed about a movie, like if she loved "The Menu" and I hated it, that's OK, but I would hope she wouldn't jump on my blog and tear my review to shreds - because it's all about respecting the other person's opinion, and if that fails, then allowing them to be "wrong" when you know you're "right". Wait, that's not really the same thing, but maybe the end result is the same.
Annie and Tucker connect, share their stories and their hopes and dreams and later on, when Tucker is about to become a grandfather for the first time, he makes plans to visit his daughter in London - so he and Annie make plans to get together. Well, the only thing worse for Duncan than seeing his ex dating her star crush would be for him to see her dating HIS star crush. So you can imagine what he's going to do when he finds out about it, he's going to lose his damn mind.
Annie does kind of get more than she bargained for, much like Maggie in last night's film. What is it about dating characters played by Ethan Hawke? Maggie got saddled with co-parenting duties for two extra kids that weren't even hers, and here Annie finds out that Tucker's got not one but THREE ex-wives and at least four kids, most of whom have never met each other. This kind of feels like it could ring true, like how many kids does Mick Jagger have, and how many times has Paul McCartney been married? Does this all just come with the territory when you date a famous rock star? Is this comforting somehow, knowing that fame doesn't prevent people from having as many failed relationships and personal problems as regular people do?
That's my take-away, anyway. Perhaps it's more notable that celebrities have second chances, as well as third and fourth ones, but don't we all?
Also starring Rose Byrne (last seen in "Irresistible"), Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "The Starling"), Azhy Robertson (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Lily Brazier, Ayoola Smart, Lily Newmark (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Denise Gough (last seen in "Colette"), Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "Lost in London"), Megan Dodds (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Alex Clatworthy (last seen in "Darkest Hour"), Phil Davis (last seen in "Hampstead"), Ko Iwagami, Enzo Cilenti (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Florence Keith-Roach (last seen in "Philomena"), Fehinti Balogun (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Thomas Gray, Brodie Petrie, Cal Petrie, Nina Sosanya (last seen in "Red Joan"), Matt King (last seen in "Dolittle"), Georgina Bevan, Johanna Thea, the voice of Emma Paetz with a cameo from Jimmy O. Yang (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"),
RATING: 6 out of 10 empty cardboard boxes
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