Eulogy

Year 15, Day 313 - 11/11/23 - Movie #4,586

BEFORE: Glenne Headly carries over from "The Namesake" for the fourth and final time this year. I'll follow another link tomorrow that will get me one step closer to Thanksgiving movies, and there are THREE of them in the plan this year.  Speaking of Thanksgiving, we made our restaurant reservation today - this is the first time in many years we won't be having holiday dinner with my parents - the last two years we drove up to Massachusetts and brought a turkey dinner to them at their assisted living facility, but now they've moved down to North Carolina to live with my sister.  (I stand corrected, in 2020 we couldn't get together because of the pandemic.)

But before that, we used to meet my parents in Connecticut at a carefully chosen (by me) neutral location that was halfway between Boston and NYC.  Or I think a couple times they drove all the way down and we took them out to dinner in Queens.  Westport, Simsbury, New Haven, I learned about a lot of great restaurants in Connecticut that served on Turkey Day between 2013 and 2019.  (This was preceded, of course, by a few years going to Thanksgiving at my brother-in-law's wife's family's house out on Long Island, but that's another whole story...)

Now, suddenly, the holiday is open to us again - and our first thought was Atlantic City.  Some of the hotel rooms are cheap that week, I guess most people go and eat with family and don't think about going to a casino buffet.  Hey, if most people zig, I don't mind zagging.  But going through some of the casino web-sites, I didn't see many Thanksgiving promotions, maybe they haven't posted them yet, only one casino's restaurants had Thanksgiving menus, and they just seemed kind of bland.  Great, for $40 or $50 you can get a prix-fixe dinner, but the main course is turkey, duh, of course - but I like to have more options than that.  So then we thought, there are casinos in Connecticut, too, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, but same problem, either the restaurants aren't doing anything special, or they just haven't posted those promotions yet.  

But we were out on Long Island today so my wife could buy smokes, and we decided to check out this new German restaurant in Stony Brook, called Schnitzels.  It was great - and it got us thinking about Long Island again, so I did a search on Thanksgiving dinners on Long Island, and it seemed to be a very short list - this didn't make sense, because there are hundreds of restaurants on Long Island, and I would think most of them would be serving something on Thanksgiving, it's a big restaurant holiday!  Maybe I was going about this all wrong, maybe we just had to pick a great restaurant and eat whatever they're serving that day, instead of seeking out the BEST possible Thanksgiving dinner, which is most likely just going to be (yawn), turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes with pumpkin or apple pie for dessert.  

Well, I happened upon a buffet lunch that's taking place on the "Gold Coast" in a very upscale place. I don't want to tip our hand because I don't want the place to be super crowded, but we bought 2 tickets in advance.  We're going to have to dress up, but since the place is super swanky I'm going to feel like the Great Gatsby this Thanksgiving.  AND it's a buffet, AND there are lots of choices beyond turkey, so yeah, it's maybe a little expensive, but we deserve it, right?  We've both been working hard and we should treat ourselves.  It is America's favorite holiday centered around eating, more than the 4th of July or even the Super Bowl.  Yeah, sure, Christmas is up there too, but Thanksgiving is ALL about the food, so in under two weeks I'll be reporting all the details here of our top secret super-fabulous Thanksgiving Long Island mansion experience. Can't wait. 

THE PLOT: A black comedy that follows three generations of a family, who come together for the funeral of the patriarch - unveiling a litany of family secrets and covert relationships.

AFTER: I'm aware that it's Veteran's Day weekend, and not just because there was a parade out in the Shirley/Mastic area that held us up in traffic for a while today.  Really, we just caught the tail end, if we had left the house any earlier it could have been a lot worse.  Unfortunately there's no movie tie-in for me this time around, I think in the past I've tried to work in a war movie here in tribute to the soldiers and sailors of World War II, but that wasn't possible this time around.  Yes, this is about a funeral and veterans have funerals, but it's unclear if the deceased character in this movie was a vet.  Would've been nice, but it didn't work out, at least I tried.

Instead the character has a lot of secrets, some of which don't come to light until the funeral, and then the reading of the will, in which the deceased patriarch really opens up, and those revelations explain a lot, including why he could never seem to remember his own children's names, and why he was always traveling so much.  I guess he was a traveling salesman, or at least that's what he told everyone.  His children also have a fair number of secrets, and there's a lot of family dysfunction, and we can assume that much of it comes from the interactions with their father, or the lack thereof.  Is that fair?  

But really, the movie is about the survivors, the man's four messed-up children and THEIR children, also his widow (their mother) who is so distraught by his death that she tries to kill herself three times over the course of the film.  That, um, well, that shouldn't be funny.  If you think that IS funny, then maybe this film is right up your alley, but I didn't see the humor in that.  For that matter, I didn't see the humor in three of the siblings making fun of their sister because she's gay. Was that OK, back in 2004?  I don't think so - I don't think that was EVER OK, so why is that seen again and again in this movie?  Sure, things have changed a lot in the last two decades, gay marriage became the law of the land in 2015, as it was in many states before that. Wow, has it only been eight years?  I guess it's been longer in Massachusetts and California, but still, that's a major legal change that happened not too long ago.

Of course, it's not OK to be homophobic, but one sibling is REALLY homophobic.  There's an explanation given, and it's what you might imagine - she leans that way herself, and she's been hiding that fact for years, and she's married with three kids but slept with women in the past.  Ah, so it's transference, she hates that part of herself that is also gay, or she hates her sister because her sister gets to be openly gay, and she doesn't.  Or something like that.  You know what, it's still not OK, is it?  Homophobia that comes from a closeted person because they're closeted or jealous or self-hating or embarrassed is still wrong wrong wrong, and I don't think a character should get a pass here, not even one living in 2004.  Sorry, try again. 

The gay character's brothers aren't much better, they make jokes about her relationship too, and one brother hides in her bedroom because he thinks he'll be able to watch her have sex with her girlfriend.  Nope, that's not OK either.  And that character's sons are super-curious about lesbians, so they want to know everything about how it works, and they want to rub her feet or something.  Nope, also not OK.  Look, maybe it's because I just had to watch the annual anti-discrimination and anti-harassment videos for work, but none of this is OK, except that Lucy gets to date whoever she wants and marry whoever she wants and her family has no right to belittle her about it or make fun of it or ask if they can watch.  Full stop. 

There are plenty of other neuroses and problems to go around, beyond the suicidal mother and the family not being OK with Lucy's gay relationship.  Alice never stops talking and bossing people around, to the point where her husband can't form a coherent sentence, he only stutters and makes "Umm" noises, and her three children don't talk at all.  That's also very messed up, how is this considered a comedy?  Alice is also distinctly a "Karen" even though they didn't have that term back then.  Daniel is a former child star who was famous for being in a peanut butter commercial, and now he makes cameo appearances in adult films, and he can't help feeling he messed up ONE audition somewhere along the way, and ruined his career as a result.  Skip is a lawyer who's terrible at lawyering, and he's just as horny and improperly funny as his two teen boys, who have been screwed up ever since their mother left them.  Um, sure, a man can raise two teenage sons, but it's assumed here that he would also do a terrible job of it.  

Kate, who is Daniel's daughter and therefore the granddaughter of the deceased, is tasked with writing the eulogy, but has trouble doing so because she feels she didn't really get to know her grandfather.  OK, so then why is it her job to do this, then?  And why are her father, uncle and aunts similarly clueless about what she should say?  Did nobody get to know this man at all, and if so, why does he even need a eulogy at all?  Since he wanted a Viking funeral on a burning boat, it sounds like he really didn't care much for the process of dying, anyway, or was he just weird?  Every character in this whole film is weird, though, so I can't help but wonder if any of this is based on personal experience or a real-world messed up family.  That would explain a lot, I suppose, but then that would also lead to a few more questions than answers. 

The bigger problem, though, is that none of this is FUNNY.  None, not a bit.  People trying to commit suicide isn't funny, people mourning isn't really funny, and messed-up people talking about how messed-up they are isn't particularly funny either.  It's also not funny how there are SO MANY deceased actors in the cast - people who died years after the film was released, but such a large percentage of the cast is now no longer alive, one could start to wonder if there was some kind of Hollywood curse involved, like with the "Poltergeist" movies.  Kelly Preston died in 2020, Glenne Headly in 2017, Rene Aubergenois in 2019, Rip Torn also in 2019, Piper Laurie died just last month, Rance Howard in 2017, even the character actors - Micole Mercurio in 2016, Michael Chapman in 2020, Claudette Nevins too, and Denise Dowse, my link to tomorrow's film, died in 2022.  

Look, I know over time everyone's life expectancy is the same, and sometimes I can't watch movies from the 1930's or 1940's without thinking that everyone in those movies is deceased.  But this movie isn't even 20 years old, half the cast shouldn't be gone.  Sure, some of them were getting on in years, even when this film was made, but that's not the point, because some of those people were only in their 50's or 60's, and people are living longer these days, aren't they?  Well, I guess only some of them. It's all a bit sad, isn't it?  And not funny at all. 

If I had known how not funny this movie was, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it.  But I guess I couldn't possibly have known in advance.  Why does Hollywood feel the need to make movies like this, and "Death at a Funeral", does someone out there feel that comedy needs to be mined from tragedy?  Or the problem with funerals is that there's not enough madcap slapstick?  There are other, better ways to improve funerals without trying in vain to make them funny.  Why not promote turning people into useful compost or showing their remains being turned into beautiful diamonds, rather than just reveal all their dirty little secrets before you blow them up?  Just wondering. 

Also starring Zooey Deschanel (last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), Hank Azaria (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Famke Janssen (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Kelly Preston (last seen in "Addicted to Love"), Ray Romano (last seen in "Paddleton"), Debra Winger (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Jesse Bradford (last seen in "Swimfan"), Piper Laurie (last seen in "De Palma"), Rip Torn (last seen in "Coma"), Rance Howard (last seen in "Fearless"), Paget Brewster (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2"), Eric Pierpoint (last seen in "Holes"), Sherman Howard (last seen in "Ricochet"), René Auberjonois (last heard in "Tarzan & Jane"), Mark Harelik (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Denise Dowse (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Claudette Nevins, Curtis Garcia, Keith Garcia, Matthew Feder, Allisyn Ashley Arm, Jordan Moen, Michael Panes (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Michael Chapman (last seen in "House of D"), Vincent Castellanos (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Brian Posehn (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Natasha Sheridan, Micole Mercurio (last seen in "2 Days in the Valley"), Lisa Maris, Lana Antonova (last seen in "Spotlight"), Sara Botsford (last seen in "Legal Eagles"), John Lafayette.

RATING: 3 out of 10 take-out lobsters

The Namesake

Year 15, Day 310 - 11/8/23 - Movie #4,585

BEFORE: Glenne Headly carries over again from "2 Days in the Valley".  It's Glenne Headly week here at the Movie Year, she's in all three films on the docket.  Too bad she's not around to appreciate it, she passed away in 2017.  This is becoming something of a problem here at our main office, too many actors are not available to help do promotion because they're no longer alive.  Like for yesterday's film, Danny Aiello died in 2019, Paul Mazursky died in 2014, Louise Fletcher in 2022, and Lawrence Tierney back in 2002.  No wonder why our publicity department couldn't arrange any interviews...  

Maybe for today's film I can get in touch with Irrfan Khan. What? He died in 2020? Just my luck...

Honestly, I've got no tie-in today, it's not National Hindu Appreciation Month or any kind of Indian national holiday - instead it's Tara Reid's birthday and the anniversary of Alex Trebek dying, which helps me out not at all.  But maybe if I can get through two episodes of "The Amazing Race" today the teams will be racing through India - that's the best I can do.

THE PLOT: American-born Gogol, the son of Indian immigrants, wants to fit in among his fellow New Yorkers, despite his family's unwillingness to let go of their traditional ways. 

AFTER: Yeah, I'm kind of floundering tonight because I have no frame of reference, I've never been to India and I don't know many (any) people from India, we get Indian take-out food once in a while but really, I'm pretty clueless about their culture. (Man, that garlic naan, though, when it's made right, really good...). I've never seen "Monsoon Wedding" or Mira Nair's other big early hit, "Mississippi Masala", but I watched ONE of her other films earlier this year, and that was "The Reluctant Fundamentalist".  (You remember, the film that explained how America's racism after 9/11 just turned Pakistani-Americans into fundamentalist terror leaders, so really, it's all our fault.). 

It's a different world with different rules, and just one generation ago, arranged marriages were still quite common, though I imagine there are probably a lot fewer today, especially among Americans of Indian descent.  I was listening the other day as a co-worker described how his grandfather had two previous relationships and families, in other words, he left two families and then settled down for a third time.  I could only say that nobody ever really understands their grandparents, why they did crazy things like leaving Europe to move to America, or why they married people they didn't really care for, or why they married somebody they cared for, fell out of love and stayed married to them anyway.  My grandparents hated each other by the time I knew them, but never split up, slept in separate bedrooms, and stayed together until one of them died - and I can't really decide if that's normal or if it's somehow crazier than breaking up - but people back then considered divorce some kind of failure, and these days it's much more common.  Now it's hard to find someone in their 60s who WASN'T married two or three times, and had valid reasons for ending things when they did.  

But yeah, it must also be weird to grow up in India and then get married to a person you barely know and move to New York City to be with them and raise a family, leaving your family behind, halfway around the world.  It must be weird to not know anybody in your new city except your spouse, and be completely focused on having two kids and raising them and only concerned with feeding the family and doing the laundry.  That's very alien to me as well, laundry shouldn't be the focus of your day, laundry should be done in the early hours of the weekend, so you probably fall asleep during the wash cycle and forget to put your clothes in the dryer until you need them to get dressed the next morning, only they're still soaking wet and then you have to wait until halfway through the dryer cycle to be able to put them on and then rush off to work, hoping they dry enough during your commute so you don't feel soggy all day.

I've never had kids so I can't really relate here to the struggles of watching them grow up in a new city or country that means they'll have experiences that are very different from my own.  But sure, it happens all the time.  Unless of course you choose to live close to your family and where you grew up, which is another choice.  Hey, we're all just making everything up as we go along, and everybody's life eventually just becomes a reflection of the sum of their choices over time.  When do you pull that trigger and change jobs, or move to another city, or sell your house and go live in a rented trailer somewhere, I don't know, that's up to you, isn't it?  I can only think about when I'm going to make some lifestyle changes, and I'm terrible at making changes - I've been in the same house for 19 years now, been at the same job for 30 years, so sure, I realize I'm set in my ways, or stuck or stalled or whatever you want to call it.  Somehow I feel like everything has changed over time, and also nothing has changed, if those can both be possible.

Gogol also has to struggle with his identity, because he was born in New York but his parents came from India - and they want to follow both the old ways and the new American ways, trying for some kind of balance between the two.  But Gogol is American first, it seems - naturally he rejects anything to do with the old country, but then when he's a teenager his parents take him there, and viewing the Taj Mahal changes his life, and he decides he wants to study architecture.  His father also named him after the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, which causes a lot of name-based bullying, enough to get him to change his name to Nikhil for a while, because it sounds more professional, and also "Nick" is a very American-sounding name. (Literally, a "Nick"-name.)

There is a reason that his father named him after Gogol, not just because that was his favorite author - but it takes the majority of the movie for the reason to be revealed, honestly it takes so long that by the time they told me, I no longer cared.  It's just not good enough of a reason for his father to NOT tell him straight-away, that's all.  But I think maybe I'm being too nitpicky here, because there probably is some universal appeal here - isn't everyone curious about why they were named what they were named?  Isn't everyone's story an immigrant story, if you go back far enough?  Im really trying to connect with this film, but I'm not sure it's working.   

Also starring Kal Penn (last seen in "The Layover"), Tabu (last seen in "Life of Pi"), Irrfan Khan (last seen in "Puzzle"), Jacinda Barrett (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Zuleikha Robinson (last seen in "The Merchant of Venice" (2004)), Brooke Smith (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Sahira Nair, Jagannath Guha, Ruma Guha Thakurta, Sukanya, Tanushree Shankar, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Tamal Roy Choudhury, Dhruv Mookerji, Supriya Choudhury, Stuart Rudin (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Heather MacRae (last seen in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask"), Michael Countryman (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Kousik Bhowal, Rupak Ginn (last seen in "The High Note"), Soham Chatterjee, Gargi Mukherjee, Pallavi Shah, Jhumpa Lahiri, Linus Roache (last seen in "The Gathering Storm"), Josh Grisetti, Justin Rosini, Dan McCabe, Bobby Steggert, B.C. Parikh, Sibani Biswas, Kharaj Mukherjee, Daniel Gerroll (last seen in "Touched With Fire"), Amy Wright (last seen in "Miss Firecracker"), Jo Yang (last seen in "The Squid and the Whale"), Gretchen Egolf (last seen in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"), Baylen Thomas (last seen in "The Beaver"), Jeb Brown, Jessica Blank, Mia Yoo, Benjamin Bauman, Sebastian Roché (last seen in "6 Underground"), Maximiliano Hernandez (last seen in "Warrior"), Partha Chatterjee, Marcus Collins. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 summers spent in Calcutta

2 Days in the Valley

Year 15, Day 310 - 11/6/23 - Movie #4,584

BEFORE: I'm falling behind again because November is another busy month - and it will be until Thanksgiving week, I think.  Saturday I worked a guild screening of a film called "American Fiction" - yeah, it's awards nomination time again, so notices about Academy screenings are filling up my boss's e-mail, and that also means more shifts at the theater, for films that THINK they have a chance at qualifying for awards.  They can't ALL be right, but I have to believe that the process might work for some films.  I want to think that the real films worthy of nomination don't need to have so many screenings, they just have to be great, but I know that's not the way it works. Even the biggest or most likely Oscar contenders still have to hold these screenings in order to get the maximum number of voter eyeballs on their films for consideration.  So that means both the worthy and the unworthy have to go through this same process, and a "worthy". film that doesn't hold a lot of screenings might not get the nomination it deserves, and by extension, a "non-worthy" film could hold more screenings than needed and also qualify for awards.  And no film can really coast, they all have to go through this - so it's probably a mad scramble every year to book up every theater in town and everybody's trying to out-screen their competition.  I worked a number of "Licorice Pizza" screenings two years ago, and now other films are trying the same tactic - screen, screen, screen.  

Sunday we went out for a nice steakhouse early dinner, to celebrate our anniversary, which was a few days before, but we certainly didn't want to go out on a Friday night and compete for a table with everyone else going out on Friday night.  Nope, 4 pm on a Sunday is the smarter move, because we practically had the place to ourselves - why don't more people do this, eat at unusual times and get better and faster service?  It's worth upending your schedule just a bit so you're not competing with everyone in town who's trying to eat dinner at 6 or 7 pm.  Jeez, think outside the box - or don't, because we liked eating in a nearly-empty restaurant and maybe let's keep it that way.  If we're the only older people going out to dinner at 4 pm, that works fine for us.

Tonight (Monday) I have to work a premiere screening of a new comedy from the Please Don't Destroy writing team from SNL. The film's probably not great, but who knows, it comes out on Peacock later in the week, which is the "Cocaine Bear" release strategy.  Maybe I'll see a few VIPs, but those SAG rules are still in place that prevent actors from attending and promoting union-made work, so who knows.  All I know is I have to stay there until about midnight because somebody needs to supervise the workers taking down the press tent. 

Glenne Headly carries over from "Just Getting Started". 

THE PLOT: 48 hours of intersecting lives and crimes in Los Angeles. 

AFTER: I wish I had a word for films that I tried to watch 10 or 20 years ago and I couldn't get through, the film was just not doing it for me and I bailed - or I was busy and couldn't finish the movie, or tired and I fell asleep, or whatever.  This is one of those films - or maybe I just watched it for the nude scenes, I'm not sure - which meant I would have fast-forwarded through most of the film, and I have no idea about the main plot.  Yeah, that's probably what happened here, I just focused on a few scenes with Charlize Theron and didn't care about the rest of the film.  Mea culpa. Can you blame me?  There just can't be many more films like that out there, I've taken care of so many of them, and tried the second time to figure out the plot and pay attention to everything else that the film might have to offer, beyond the nudity.  

Well, honestly, I don't even know if I should have bothered with this one, it's a freakin' mess.  There are several different messed-up plotlines going on, and then they're all kind of brought together and forced to intersect with each other, but it's just not done in a believable way.  Which seems sad, somebody crafted this intricate crazy thing, and then it doesn't end up making sense or being meaningful in any way.  Do I want to watch a plotline about an Emmy-winning TV director who can't get hired in Hollywood any more, and also his wife is dead and also he's getting kicked out of the apartment he's crashing in, and also he wants to kill himself?  No, that story is not appealing at all, but I have to watch it to get through this.  

There's also a former Olympic athlete (ice-skating? track? curling? it's unclear...) who's sleeping with her ex-husband because she's apparently out of relationship options, and that's kind of sad also.  Then there's a British art dealer who's suffering from kidney stones (although we don't know this at first, and it's very confusing why he's getting out of his car and writing in pain) and some car thief outside a gay club helps him get home, but also steals his wallet. And there are two policemen on the vice squad, trying in vain to close down a massage parlor in the Valley.  The younger cop is ambitious and wants to work bigger crime cases, and the veteran cop is getting penalized for his erratic behavior and about to get kicked off the force because there are so many complaints about him.  How could these stories POSSIBLY be connected? 

Well, it gets worse before it gets better.  A couple of hitmen arrive on the scene to interrogate the athlete's ex-husband, they drug her so she'll sleep through this process, they ask him some weird questions about the woman he slept with, who was working for the Koreans, then they give him a minute to answer their questions, or they'll kill him.  But they kill him anyway, so did he answer the questions right or wrong?  It just doesn't seem to matter. 

The hitman in charge then tries to kill his associate, and the movie sort of splits in two - the lead hitman goes on to interact with the athlete and also the attractive girl named Helga, who's not as dead as she looked in the photograph he had.  And we start to get the feeling that the murder of the ex-husband might have been a murder-for-hire, arranged by his ex-wife.  It happens, right?  Meanwhile the lesser and older of the hitmen survives the car explosion, and has to try to get back to civilization by holding that art dealer and his assistant hostage, and also he's afraid of dogs for some reason, so naturally he keeps encountering them, when he just wants a change of clothes and maybe some pasta so he can get on with his life.  Wait, what?  

Meanwhile (if that means anything) the suicidal TV director meets a woman in the cemetery, they bond because they've both lost people, and he decides he wants her to have his dog, who's going to need a home after he kills himself.  But then she's going to give the dog to her brother, and invites him along - yeah, the brother turns out to be that art director with the kidney stones, who's being held hostage by the lesser hitman.  WOW, they really forced these people together, you can see the hand of the writer trying to prove to us that everybody is connected somehow.

Also meanwhile, the younger vice squad cop starts to suspect that the Olympic athlete had something to do with her husband's murder, so he goes back to the crime scene, where he encounters the other hitman, who was there to collect his money before the cops could find it - but the vice squad cop doesn't know that the guy he finds there is really the hitman and not a cop himself, so yeah, another very contrived confusion over somebody's identity.  Another case where the writer had to bend the plot over backwards to get these two people in the same room at the same time.  

In the end, what does this film end up being ABOUT?  A murder-for-hire?  A cop trying to move out of the vice squad?  A second-rate hired hit-man who's afraid of dogs?  It's all of those things, but also none of those things, and if someone tries to be about too many things, then the film just ends up being about nothing.  It's the "Seinfeld" of crime films, only not that, because "Seinfeld" was funny and entertaining.  

Look, I'm all for coincidence, and finding the connections between characters and trying to make use of them, but this film makes it feel like only 10 or 12 people live in Los Angeles, and I know that's just not the case.  There's a woman at that steakhouse in Brooklyn who's sort of related to my wife, they both have aunts who are married to each other, but in the end that just doesn't seem like it's a very big deal, it's just how the world works. It wouldn't be worth making a movie about, in other words, we're just friendly to her when we go and eat dinner.  

Bottom line, this film couldn't decide if it wanted to be the next "Pulp Fiction" or the next "Short Cuts", and it ended up being neither, just a mess. 

Also starring Danny Aiello (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Greg Cruttwell, Jeff Daniels (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Teri Hatcher (last seen in "The Big Picture"), Peter Horton (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Marsha Mason (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Paul Mazursky (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), James Spader (last seen in "The Watcher"), Eric Stoltz (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Charlize Theron (last seen in "Sweet November"), Keith Carradine (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Louise Fletcher (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Austin Pendleton (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Kathleen Luong, Michael Jai White (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Cress Williams (last seen in "Never Been Kissed"), Lawrence Tierney (last seen in "Arthur"), Micole Mercurio (last seen in "The Grifters"), Ada Maris (last seen in "About Last Night").

RATING: 3 out of 10 golf balls hitting the house