Ira & Abby

Year 16, Day 75 - 3/15/24 - Movie #4,675

BEFORE: Maddie Corman carries over from "Begin Again", and this is it, the LAST film in my romance chain for 2024, which I started on February 1. That was 44 days ago, and this themed section of the chain was 43 films that were (mostly) relevant to this topic.  Sure, films about love and relationships are all around, and they may pop up again later this year, like in a film related to Mother's Day or if I have a really tough linking jam to get out of - it's not a hard and fast rule that ALL films about relationships need to be watched in February or the first half of March, because there are some films that just don't link to others well, so for those it's catch-as-catch-can. Me, I'm just happy to watch a movie about anything else right now, and knowing that "Oppenheimer" is on the horizon is a big help. 

Watching 43 films about love and relationship IN A ROW is for sure not medically recommended, I see the world right now through rosy-colored glasses and care must be taken to not let that affect my own relationship, because life's very often not like the movies, or the flip-side of that is that rom-com movies may not be an accurate representation of real-life love.  As always, your mileage may vary.  

I've had my eye on birthdays, every night there seem to be people in each cast with March birthdays, but they never seem to quite match up right.  Maybe I should just do the whole month at once, it would be easier. Happy Birthday to Lake Bell from "Man Up" (March 24), Paul Reiser from "I Do...Until I Don't" (March 30), Harley Cross from "Stanley & Iris" (March 31), Mykelti Williamson from "Waiting to Exhale" (March 4), Leon from "Waiting to Exhale" (March 8), Sharon Stone from "Beauty" and "All I Wish" (March 10), Alfred Lutter from "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (March 21), Valerie Curtin from the same film (March 31), Jon Hamm from "Nostalgia" (March 10), Catherine Keener from "Nostalgia" and "Begin Again" (March 26), Mikey Madison from "Nostalgia" (March 25), Arye Gross from "Nostalgia" (March 17), Keira Knightley from "Begin Again" (March 26), Adam Levine from "Begin Again" (March 18), and TODAY, March 15 is the birthday of Frances Conroy, who's in today's movie, so a special SHOUT-out to her!  But also, Malachy McCourt is in this film, and he died four days ago, on March 11 - so you've got to take the bad with the good, I guess. 

THE PLOT: A hastily married couple quickly devolve into a life of affairs, meddling parents, and therapy.  

AFTER: Well, since it's the last film in the 2024 romance chain, let's go over what we've learned in the past 44 days, OK?  Surely there MUST be some over-arching takeaways that we can all share, so much insight into the state of relationships today and by extension, the human condition. 

LESSON 1: Don't get married in Vegas ("Think Like a Man Too"), don't have your bachelor party in Vegas ("You People"), and for that matter, don't have a destination wedding on a beautiful island ("Shotgun Wedding").  Your guests will hate you, and your wedding will be ruined by pirates, strippers or both.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  For that matter, don't have a bachelor party at all ("A Guy Thing") because there's a non-zero chance that you'll wake up in bed with one of the dancers who may turn out to be your fiancée's cousin.  Then again, maybe at your bachelor party you will form a better relationship with one of the dancers then you have with your fiancée ("The Wedding Ringer") but come on, that's a real longshot. 

LESSON 2: Any time spent pursuing the hot, seemingly unattainable person at your school or work or whatever is wasted effort, because even if you take them to the carnival and make progress in wooing them, you will eventually realized that the more perfect partner was/is your best friend, who's been right there for you, all along, only you weren't thinking of them that way, were you? ("Whatever It Takes", "Your Place or Mine", "Boys and Girls", "LOL")

LESSON 3: If you're widowed or divorced, your life is not over. Life will give you a second chance or even a third ("I Could Never Be Your Woman", "Moonlight and Valentino", "Stanley & Iris") only you must try to date a different sort of person, or you'll just end up back where you were ("Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore").  

LESSON 4: Marriage is a social construct, and perhaps an outdated concept, if you believe filmmakers ("I Do...Until I Don't) and perhaps it's time to re-think it, only people are still getting married, it still seems to be quite popular.  You can also get back together with your ex, it might not be too late ("Begin Again") or even your anonymous sperm donor ("Made in America"), stranger things have happened. 

LESSON 5: Sometimes the best thing to do is just act on impulse, like who's to say how long two people need to spend together before they get married or commit to something?  It could be as little as a day ("Man Up") or you could just marry someone from the crowd at your concert ("Marry Me") - the reasoning being, half of marriages end in divorce anyway, so what's the big deal if you don't look before you leap, you can always just get a do-over, right? 

A lot of that plays into the themes explored in "Ira & Abby", where the two main characters meet when Ira (recently cut free from his therapist for not making progress) tries to join a gym, and instead falls for the sales agent for the gym, who, after spending just a few short hours with him, proposes that they have sex and get married, in some order.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Seriously, though, they make a cute couple, and when you know, you know, you don't really need to overthink it, because maybe it's time to just GO FOR IT, whatever that "IT" turns out to be.  Just maybe make a call and break up with your on-again, off-again, long-time girlfriend of nine years before the wedding. 

There will be time for second thoughts (and third, and fourth...) later - but perhaps if you don't act on impulse and faith, then nothing will ever happen.  Neither Ira or Abby could possibly have seen so many moves ahead in this game of relationships, what twists and turns their quickie relationship would take.  Meeting your fiancées parents is a big step, but you know what, get it over with, rip off that band-aid, come on, the clock's ticking.  If you guys aren't compatible or your families don't get along, isn't it best to find that out early?  

The problem here is, the couple's families get along a little TOO well - to the point where HIS mother starts having an affair with HER father, and that has a domino effect that throws THREE relationships into question.  Also, it doesn't help that Abby had been married one (or two...) times before, and neglected to tell Ira that before they tied the knot.  It shouldn't matter, no, not at all, but then again, it's a lie of omission and surely there must be a REASON that nobody mentioned this.  And there is...

Suddenly Ira is unsure of his relationship with Abby (Gee, and they had such a great three weeks together...) and they get an annulment, and then he's back in therapy, trying to figure out what it all means.  Surprise, it's got everything to do with his overbearing mother and his doormat father, because the mistakes our parents made in their relationship have a tendency to come back and haunt the next generation.  That's just the way it is, and the fact that Ira's parents are BOTH analysts (not therapists, there's a difference, apparently) might also have something to do with it.  Ira doesn't just have emotional baggage, he's got the full matching luggage set. 

Things get really out of control during a roundtable meeting with Ira, Abby, their four parents, and an additional six therapists - it seems like that opera mentioned in "Amadeus" when Mozart keeps wanting to add more and more characters on stage, all singing at the same time.  What happens when you get 12 people in a room to work out all of these relationship issues, and 9 of them are therapists or analysts?  It's a very comic moment, but also there's a lot to unpack in terms of psychology and the way adult humans interact with each other, and why they can't help having affairs when the road gets a little rocky or they feel old and unattractive.  Sure, it may not be the BEST approach, but at least it feels good for a time.  

Good news, Ira and Abby get re-married, to each other, but then that's not the end of the story, either, they've still got some jealousy issues and self-confidence issues to work out.  Oh, well, back to therapy, I guess.  It's too bad, because as the characters said during their first day together, they learned more about each other and their feelings on relationships in ONE DAY then most people do in four years of dating someone.  Maybe it's not worth taking a leap of faith into a new relationship if you're going to spend the next few years second-guessing yourself.  Except you're going to do that anyway, aren't you?  So then maybe just going for it is the best plan after all. At least you'll be having sex regularly and a permanent date every Saturday night and on holidays. 

LESSON #6: I saw Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern in successive movies ("Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and "Nostalgia") and tonight's film had Jennifer Westfeldt starring with her then-partner Jon Hamm in a supporting role (playing, ironically, one of her ex-husbands).  Westfeldt and Hamm were together for 18 years, but split up in 2015.  Sometimes I wonder, if the famous and beautiful people can't make things work out, what chance do the rest of us really have?  Or am I looking at things from the wrong angle?  

Also starring Chris Messina (last seen in "Devil"), Jennifer Westfeldt (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Frances Conroy (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Judith Light (last seen in "The Menu"), Jason Alexander (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Robert Klein (last seen in "The Back-Up Plan"), Fred Willard (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), David Margulies (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Kali Rocha (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Brad Bellamy, Marylouise Burke (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Michael McGrath (last seen in "The Interpreter"), Malachy McCourt (last seen in "Green Card"), Ramon Rodriguez (last seen in "The One and Only Ivan"), Ed Blank, Matthew del Negro (last seen in "Wind River"), Chris Parnell (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Asa Somers, Peter Hirsch, Ilana Levine (last seen in "Failure to Launch"), Darrell Hammond (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Donna Murphy (last seen in "The Astronaut's Wife"), Modi, Ken Barnett (last seen in "People Like Us"), Gregory Jbara (last seen in "Broken City"), Robert Bagnell (last seen in "We Were Soldiers")

with cameos from Joe Buck (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Kevin Sussman (last seen in "Made of Honor"), BD Wong (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion")

and archive footage of Richard Burton (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Ron Howard (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Robert Preston (last seen in "Narrowsburg"), James Stewart (last seen in "De Palma") and Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom")

RATING: 7 out of 10 marriage couseling sessions with Dr. Saperstein

Begin Again

Year 16, Day 74 - 3/14/24 - Movie #4,674

BEFORE: Trying to get back into my groove, but that would require catching up on sleep, and for some reason I scheduled my annual physical/check-up today, since I was due in the city at 5:30 pm anyway, to manage a screening of "Dune: Part Two". So I figured I'd get my check-up at 1 pm, and if anything was really wrong with me I would have time to get it checked, if not I could go out to lunch at Sarge's Deli and then hit the comic-book shop before making my way to the theater.  I still had to get up at 10 am, shower and get dressed before leaving the house, so really with just two things on my calendar I managed to fill up the whole day, and therefore I had no time at home to catch up on any TV, like this week's "Survivor" episode.  Well, at least I'll have Saturday - no, wait, that's when we're getting our taxes done - OK, at least I'll have half of Saturday to catch up on some TV. 

Catherine Keener carries over from "Nostalgia" and just one more romance-based film left in this year's chain after this one. 

THE PLOT: A chance encounter between a down-and-out music business executive and a young singer/songwriter new to Manhattan turns into a promising collaboration between the two talents. 

AFTER: It's a very sneaky romance-based film, like some maybe wouldn't consider this a romance at all, because the two main characters are together because they're working together on making an album, and they both have relationship problems. Music producer Dan is separated from his wife and doesn't have much of a relationship with his teenage daughter, while Gretta has recently broken up with her musician/singer boyfriend, only we don't know that about her at first, but it's why she's in NYC and why she's single.  

The two meet by chance when Dan goes to an open mic night where Gretta performs her song, and (because he's drunk) he can HEAR how that song needs to be produced - even though she's performing solo on acoustic guitar, Dan imagines the drums, the violin and the piano playing themselves, and he knows exactly how he would mix it so it would be a hit - probably my favorite scene in the film with the animated instruments playing themselves.  Now Dan just needs to persuade HER to let him produce the song.  Oh, and wouldn't you know it, he just got fired from the record company that he co-founded, so he's kind of looking for the next big breaking artist to produce so he can work his way back into the biz.  

They need each other, even if Gretta doesn't believe it at first, Dan somehow has enough self-confidence for the two of them.  Gretta has strong opinions, however, about how songs need to sound and she doesn't like it when they sound all over-produced.  OK, Dan can work with that, what about recording all the songs live, with the city's ambient sound, in different locations around New York, like on a rooftop near the Empire State building or in an alley near a schoolyard, or while riding on paddle-boats in Central Park?  Hey, whatever works, I guess, and if there are sirens in the background or traffic noises, all the better - who needs to record in a studio, anyway, who needs their music to sound all polished and professional?  

Surprisingly, the film never tries to get Dan and Gretta together, romantically - perhaps that would have been a mistake, or perhaps that would have followed the standard rom-com formula just a bit too closely, it's hard to say.  But I like the restraint, we've all been conditioned by these fateful chance encounters to think that they're going to solve the romantic problems of the main characters, but what if they're just not right for each other, or not into each other for some reason, or maybe they made a choice to keep things professional if they're going to be working together on this album.  It would be a conflict of interest, anyway, if Dan pitched her demo to the record company AND he was also sleeping with her - so maybe it's for the best that the film never went in that direction. 

But working together on the album does, of course, help to solve most of their other problems - Gretta's going to get royalties from the song she wrote for her ex-boyfriend, anyway, so maybe that factors into her decision to sell her own album on the web for $1 per download.  Hey, it's the internet age, maybe all music SHOULD be free, or close to it, anyway the real money is in touring and t-shirt sales, not albums like in the old days.  It's possible that the Rolling Stones made more money over the last 20 years from t-shirts than from albums, so at the end of the day, are they musicians who sell music, or just t-shirt salesmen?  If you're hoping that Gretta will get back together with her ex, Dave Kohl, well, the movie doesn't specifically say that they DON'T get back together - so it's possible, it's just not likely, because now Gretta has more self-confidence and she doesn't mind being on her own.  Getting back with Dave might be seen as a step backwards where personal growth is concerned. 

Dan seems to get back with his wife, though, and that's fine - having a job again and also spending more time with his daughter are all positive things.  But there's still the new age of record company business to deal with, are we just going to keep giving away music or are we still looking for a way to monetize digital music, in an age when Gen Z can just find the music they wanted posted somewhere on the web and download it for nothing?  When was the last time you saw CDs for sale in a store somewhere, anyway?  I think for me it was about a year ago in a mall on Long Island, we saw CDs for sale at an F.Y.E. and vinyl albums (!) for sale at a Newbury Comics.  I don't think I've bought a vinyl record since ZZ Top's "Afterburner".  

The film is pretty well put-together, though - and the songs all seem well-made, I'll have to check those out as music files maybe and see if I want to download any of them.  I'd give this a "7" for the most part, maybe that just comes from the relief of knowing that the romance chain is coming to an end and I can move on to other things.  However, I may have to take a point off for containing too much James Corden, I'm just not a fan.  This film was directed by John Carney, who also directed "Once" and "Sing Street", and I'm a big fan of the latter, though I don't think a lot of people have seen it. 

Also starring Keira Knightley (last seen in "Colette"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Adam Levine (last seen in "The Clapper"), Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "The Homesman"), James Corden (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), CeeLo Green (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania"), Yasiin Bey (last seen in "Life of Crime") Rob Morrow (last seen in "Adam"), Maddie Corman (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Aya Cash (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Jennifer Li Jackson (last seen in "American Dreamz"), Marco Assante (last seen in "Matchstick Men"), Mary Catherine Garrison (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), Ian Brodsky, Shannon Walsh, David Abeles, Kena Onyenjekwe, Harvey Morris, Terry Lewis, Jimmy Palumbo (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Simon Delaney (last seen in "This Must Be the Place"), Danielle Brisebois, Keen Ruffalo, Melissa Maria Gonzalez, Nicholas Daniel Gonzalez, David Pendleton, Nicole Neuman (last seen "The Disappearance of Eleanor RIgbyL Them"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 subway stations

Nostalgia

Year 16, Day 73 - 3/13/24 - Movie #4,673

BEFORE: Ellen Burstyn carries over from "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore". and I've just got to get back into a normal sleeping rhythm.  I know, I know, why start now?  But I stayed up late while we were in Atlantic City, watching some TV shows on my phone and desperately trying to clear some shows off of my DVR, it's been filling up faster than usual lately because suddenly all of my shows are finally back on the air - "Masked Singer", "Survivor", "The Amazing Race", 3 different "Law & Order" series, and now a third late-night show every day, "After Midnight", and I'm falling further and further behind.  There are like 5 eps of "Shark Tank" and 3 of "CSI" that are taking up space, but I can't seem to make any progress, because as soon as I watch "The Daily Show" and Colbert and Meyers each night, it's time to start on my movie.

I'd say I could catch up this weekend, but Saturday we're getting our taxes done and Sunday I'm working at the NY International Children's Film Festival, so there goes that idea.  I've been staying up until 4 am just so I can clear another show or two from the board, but I just can't keep up, it's all coming in too fast.  This is why I watched the Oscars on Hulu in the hotel room, just so I could remotely clear a four-hour Oscars broadcast from the DVR.  Before you know it, there will be 27 episodes of "Chopped" stored up again, and 12 episodes of "Bar Rescue", which is now a very low-priority show for me. I wish somebody would cancel it so I could stop. I know, I know...

THE PLOT: A mosaic of stories about love and loss, exploring our relationship to the objects, artifacts and memories that shape our lives. 

AFTER: Well, this is a real bummer of a movie - I know how it ended up on my romance list, but it's just not one, not by any stretch of the imagination.  I don't find someone pining for their dead spouse as very romantic, not when in "Moonlight & Valentino" and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" the widowed people managed to get on with their lives and love again - sure, not right away, but eventually.  You know we're in the tail end of my romance chain (just two more to go!) when I find myself watching a movie about dead spouses and divorced people. 

(Speaking of which, it's a bit odd that Diane Ladd played Flo in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", which was yesterday's film, and her ex-husband, Bruce Dern, turns up in the next movie today.  Well, I enjoy little coincidences like that, for sure.)

The real plot of this movie centers around the fact that when someone dies, the people who loved that person have to decide what to do with all their stuff.  And sometimes people put that off for years, other times people fight over the stuff, and then other times people just throw it all away or donate it to a Goodwill store.  That's really not much of a plot to build a movie around, is it?  Nope, didn't think so.  

But the stories are interconnecting - the guy that checks out the insurance claims when people file after an accident moves from place to place and story to story, and then the guy who Helen sells her dead husband's baseball to is seen in the next story, finally getting around to clearing out his parents' old house, and going through stuff with his sister, when tragedy strikes his sister's family.  In the case of the young girl, her parents come to realize that she was the family photographer and in charge of the computer that held all their music, so without her there, they can't seem to figure out how to find her favorites songs or gather pictures of her for the funeral because they can't unlock her phone.  Sorry, boomers, but you might have to ask for help with these fancy tech devices, maybe go to a library and look it up on the internet, or maybe just ask somebody under the age of 25?

The really most tedious part of all is the scene where Helen sells that autographed baseball, and the conversation between her and Will, the sports memorabilia dealer, is about ten times longer than it needs to be - they keep going over the SAME points over and over, over-explaining the process of selling something to a dealer.  What's funny to me is that the dealer doesn't see the need to verify Ted Williams' autograph, he KNOWS that it's real because people who sell signed items that have been in their family for decades "rarely" forge the signatures.  Then he ends up over-paying Helen for the autograph that he's "sure" is authentic.  I can almost guarantee that this is NOT the way most baseball memorabilia sales go - I think you're much more likely to have a dealer offer below market rate for a signed baseball, just because the seller doesn't have a C.O.A. and therefore she can't prove that the signature is authentic - then he'll turn around and sell it to a collector for top dollar, because he's going to create a phony hologram authentifying  certificate, or doctor up a photo of Ted Williams signing THIS ball, or more likely seal it in plastic so the next buyer can't really get a good look at it, and then double the price.

But that's it, that's the movie - people die, and then their families have to go through their old photo albums, record albums, clothes and all that junk up in the attic and decide what to do with it.  Geez, if I'd known that was all there was to see here I probably would have skipped it. I know that someday I'm going to have to go through everything in my parents' old house in Massachusetts, and I'm not looking forward to it - there's hardly anything collectible there, we stupidly lost pieces from our old board games and jigsaw puzzles, and who needs a giant pile of VHS tapes.  BUT there is a large pile of old National Geographic magazines, those might be worth something, but my mother's cookbooks, probably not.  The greatest thing of value in the house might be my mom's piano, and a large collection of sheet music - the trick would be finding someone for whom those things might have some value. 

Also starring Jon Hamm (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Catherine Keener (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), John Ortiz (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Nick Offerman (last heard in "Sing 2"), James Le Gros (last seen in "The Myth of Fingerprints"), Amber Tamblyn (last seen in "127 Hours"), Patton Oswalt (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Annalise Basso (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), Mikey Madison (last seen in "Monster"), Jennifer Mudge (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Chris Marquette (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Joanna Going (last seen in "The Tree of Life"), Shinelle Azoroh (last seen in "Don't Let Go"), Romy Rosemont (last seen in "Whatever It Takes"), Hugo Armstrong (last seen in "Lucky"), Beth Grant (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Arye Gross (last seen in "Gone in 60 Seconds"), Lindsey Kraft (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Ashlyn Faith Williams, Bella Pellington.

RATING: 3 out of 10 jazz records (first printings, hopefully)

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Year 16, Day 72 - 3/12/24 - Movie #4,672

BEFORE: After 48 hours in Atlantic City, I'm back home and I only missed one movie-watching day, because I was able to watch this movie on Netflix while traveling.  This one was suggested by the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" programming, I saw that it would be airing on TCM and so I recorded it, knowing exactly where it could fit into the romance chain - but now I can delete it and cross another classic movie (from 1974!) off the list. 

While in Atlantic City, we stayed at the Tropicana, and I don't think we stayed there before on any of our many trips there - and we stay from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning, because that ends up being cheaper than staying Friday through Sunday like most people do.  Room rates are better, but unfortunately many restaurants in the casinos close on Mondays and Tuesdays, but we were lucky that our favorite buffet at the Borgata stays open on Monday mornings in case the weekend's departing guests want to eat one more meal.  Sunday night we had dinner at the new Hell's Kitchen restaurant at Caesar's, and I have to imagine that we were lucky enough to get a table just because most people were watching the Oscars broadcast. 

The last time we were in A.C. was June 2022, and the city was still recovering from the pandemic, so many of the restaurants we'd come to know over the years were closed, there was an entire upscale mall out on a pier that was deserted (except for a candy store at the Boardwalk level) so the empty Apple Store and closed fancy restaurants like Buddokan made the place look like a ghost town.  Well, things are better, and the city seems to have recovered because they're back to making money, any way they can.  We parked in Harrah's lot after breakfast at the Borgata, and though it only cost us $5 to park at the Borgata, Harrah's charged us $20 on the way out, and although they said the rates were posted, it must have been on a very small sign, because we sure didn't see it on the way in.  But at that point, they're basically holding your car hostage, you can't drive it out of there unless you pay the $20, which seems like highway robbery.  

Our dining choices on Monday night were very limited, since it was still pre-season anything that was even open on the Boardwalk, like the BierGarten, closed up at 4 pm.  There was a new BBQ restaurant at the Tropicana but it seemed way too expensive - they had a late-night combo meal discount that started at 11 pm, but who wants to wait until then for dinner, and also since the restaurant closed at 10 pm, I didn't see how it was possible to order after that.  So, yeah, thanks for offering discounted food after the restaurant closes - were they selling their leftovers at that point?  No thanks.  So our choices were either deli sandwiches, eating at Hooters, or some place called Chickie & Pete's that served mostly seafood (which my wife doesn't eat) but also burgers and chicken sandwiches or fries, so we chose that over Hooters.  

Also yesterday I watched the Oscars on Hulu, which took a day to post the telecast, but hey, no commercials, so I whipped through the whole thing in about 90 minutes, since I just watched the comedy bits and the award presentations, and I skipped over the acceptance speeches and also the musical performances, and that saved a lot of time.  Also I skipped those tedious montages that over explain what stunt-work is or how a musical score is written.  We know all this, because we're movie fans that already know how films are made!  

Anyway, I've got plans to watch "Oppenheimer" ASAP - should be in the first few days of April,  and I'm putting "Barbie" and "Poor Things" on the watch list, all the other films I'l have to get to whenever I can, as they start streaming I'll add them.  I think the only nominated films that I had already seen were "Maestro" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and the Indiana Jones film that got a couple technical nominations.  Oh, and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", which was nominated for visual effects - but nothing that I had seen won anything, so I kind of struck out this year.  That's OK, it happens, and I'll spend the next few months watching these films that were (allegedly) better than the ones I happened to catch, and I'll go from there. 

Tonight's film is also really connected to this year's nominations, since it was directed by Martin Scorsese, who was nominated for "Killers of the Flower Moon", and has Jodie Foster in it, she was nominated for "Nyad", but neither won. 

THE PLOT: A recently widowed woman is on the road with her precocious young son, determined to make a new life for herself as a singer. 

AFTER: When I was a kid I watched the TV sit-com "Alice" without ever really learning about where it came from - what did I know about Martin Scorsese movies?  The show ran from 1976 to 1985 and of course I had no clue, in the same way I watched "M*A*S*H" around the same time without knowing much about the Korean War.  But it seems that some TV executive really loved this movie and wanted to turn it into a weekly comedy, only they didn't want to focus on the relationship ups and downs of a single mother, they only wanted to focus on what happened in the diner, the waitresses and the cook and the weird clientele - in a way that show was "Cheers" before we had "Cheers", only instead of a Boston bar it was set in an Arizona diner.  Gee, I can't imagine why Martin Scorsese didn't want to direct that - apparently there's a whole book written about how the movie got turned into a TV show, and what got changed in that process, but I'd hoped all of that would sort of be front-and-center on Wikipedia, I'm not curious enough to buy a book.

The movie's about the diner, sure, but not to the same extent - in the movie the focus is squarely on Alice, and her life after her abusive husband dies in a trucking accident. She's got no money left after paying for the funeral, so she and her son pack everything into the station wagon and leave New Mexico heading for a better life in Monterey, where she once worked as a singer. But their first stop is in Phoenix, Arizona, where she does find some work as a singer in a piano bar.  She's constantly hit on by the men who frequent the bar, and she turns them all down except for a man named Ben, but then learns that not only is Ben married with a sick child, but he's also been abusive to his wife, and Alice really has found herself right back in a situation similar to the one she was in before, so she packs up the station wagon again and moves on.

She only gets as far as Tucson, where she looks for a job again so they'll have money to complete the journey to California. She takes that job at Mel & Ruby's Diner (which was the template for the famous Mel's Diner in the TV show) alongside waitresses Flo & Vera.  Flo is the sassy Southern one and Vera is the quiet and incompetent one.  Hey, I had breakfast at a diner this morning, what a coincidence. Alice develops feelings for one of the customers at the diner, a divorced horse rancher named David, however as they spend more time together she also realizes that David has a short temper where her son is concerned, and it appears that Alice does really have a "type", doesn't it?  But let's face it, her son is very annoying and would probably get under anyone's skin eventually.  Also, this was a different time, back when adults were still allowed to discipline kids with physical violence if they felt the situation called for it, so Alice does decide to stay in Tucson and move in with David at his ranch. Hey, it's not for me to judge. 

Is this the greatest movie romance?  Not by any means - but at least Alice ends up in a mostly positive relationship and she's learned that she has to put her safety first and also keep her singing aspirations alive, and all of that is important.  It's actually one of the better relationship lessons in this year's chain, along with "never plan a bachelor party or wedding in Las Vegas".

Also starring Alfred Lutter (last seen in "Love and Death"), Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "De Palma"), Lane Bradbury, Diane Ladd (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Valerie Curtin (last seen in "Best Friends"), Lelia Goldoni (last seen in "The Italian Job" (1969)), Vic Tayback (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Jodie Foster (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Billy Green Bush (last seen in "The River"), Harry Northup (last seen in "Beloved"), Mia Bendixsen, Marty Brinton, Dean Casper, Murray Moston (last seen in "The Front"), with cameos from Laura Dern (last seen in "Sheryl"), Martin Scorsese (last seen in "De Palma") with archive footage of Johnny Carson (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Mott the Hoople records

All I Wish

Year 16, Day 70 - 3/10/24 - Movie #4,671

BEFORE: Sharon Stone carries over from "Beauty" and this year's Oscars ceremony airs tonight, but I won't be able to watch since I'm in Atlantic City, and on vacation - if we watch any TV tonight it will be the new episodes of "Tournament of Champions" on Food Network, that takes priority because it's a show we watch together - so I'll have to watch the Oscars telecast when I get back home.  

I'm late posting, but here's the final line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 31: 

Best Picture Nominees:

8:30 am "A Farewell to Arms" (1932)

10:00 am "Dark Victory" (1939)

12:00 pm "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958)

2:00 pm "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)

4:00 pm "Gone with the Wind" (1939)

Best Picture Winners:

8:00 pm "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)

11:15 pm "Wings" (1927)

1:45 am "You Can't Take It with You" (1938)

4:00 am "The Broadway Melody" (1929)

It's the final 9 films, and I think I've seen another 6 of them today - all of the films except for "A Farewell to Arms" (though I watched the 1957 remake), "Wings" and "The Broadway Melody". This brings me to 147 seen out of 350, which is 42%, my final score.  I suppose I've done better in previous years but I'm just happy that I finished over 40%.

This year's Oscars airs tonight, but I won't be able to watch since I'm in Atlantic City, and on vacation - if we watch any TV tonight it will be the new episodes of "Tournament of Champions" on Food Network, that takes priority because it's a show we watch together - so I'll have to watch the Oscars telecast when I get back home.  

(EDIT: March 10 is also Sharon Stone's birthday, which I failed to realize, maybe because I was traveling and I was in a rush.  Anyway, a special belated Birthday SHOUT-out to her.)

THE PLOT: An aspiring fashion designer struggles to find success and love. The story cuts into her life once a year, on the same date: her birthday.

AFTER: I'm going to go a little easy on this one today, I think, because well, I don't have as much time as usual to get into what might be wrong with it.  Also, I'm happy to see that Sharon Stone is still working - although I think I saw something on "60 Minutes" about her focusing on painting in the last couple of years - and I think I can say I've never seen a story told in this format, where the story keeps jumping ahead in one-year increments.  There's some cleverness there, the idea's got some merit if you wanted to check in on, say, a family on successive Christmases, or a couple on New Year's Eve, again and again.  Something tells me those stories would tend to get tedious, but here we're charting a woman's personal growth and relationship status and wouldn't you know it, all the big important moments we need to see to track that end up happening on her birthday.  

We first meet Senna on her 45th (?) birthday, and she's a serial dater of mostly younger men, though the relationships don't seem to last long, and she's working for a fashion house as some kind of buyer, but she longs to be a clothing designer with her own line or her own store.  It seems that maybe she knows where she wants to be, but doesn't know how to get there, or perhaps she lacks the drive or the motivation, it's a bit tough to day.  After all, we only have one day each year to learn about her and where she is in life.  There are some consistencies, of course, like her mother always calls her very early on her birthday, and then they usually also have lunch together that day.  

I think on the second year we see, perhaps, her friend Darla sets her up by inviting Adam, a visiting lawyer she knows from Boston, to Senna's birthday party,  It does not go well, because he doesn't like being set-up either, so he arrives late and meets Senna at the bar without knowing who she is - so he accidentally says some terrible things that he assumes to be true about Senna.  But he is very apologetic, and on the following birthday he tries to make it up to her, even though he's with another woman, there are party mishaps that occur which maybe start to indicate that these two people belong together.  However, they have very different attitudes about relationships at first, Senna believes in the concept of soulmates, while Adam beleves that with six billion people in the world, surely he's a good match for at least five of them, so that's a case for serial monogamy, I guess. Adam also believes in marriage as a concept, but Senna is determined to never get married and continue playing the field, but remember, doing this has also left her unfulfilled to some degree. 

Yeah, so they end up in a situationship by the next birthday, since Adam's no longer seeing that other woman, and Senna learns that he's not as predictable as he seems to be, he did kiss her spontaneously on the previous birthday, and sure, he's easy on the eyes.  Fast-forward another year and they're in a full-fledged relationship, for once she doesn't wake up in bed alone on her special day.  However, there are more twists and turns to come, as she spots a ring case in his gym bag, and makes an assumption that he's going to propose, however bear in mind that she did not OPEN the ring case, and it possibly contains something else.  Unfortunately, the damage is done and by this point the woman who swore she'd never get marriage had already wrapped her brain around a proposal, so now Adam's got to go in to damage control mode, and either find a way out of the situation, or just lean into it and move ahead with a proposal.

Across the board, there are communication errors that maybe should never have happened, and therefore as a result they tend to feel like contrivances, but really, the whole film is rather contrived because remember, everything that drives the plot forward or represents where the characters stand RIGHT NOW has to squeezed into the events of only one day per year.  So there's a fair amount of manipulation here, and coming up with justifications for why certain characters see fit to change their opinions on things, making it seem at times that people change their attitudes very quickly, on a whim, to bring about these changes.  

And it's an on-again, off-again relationship for Senna and Adam over the course of these five (or is it six?) years, and her career rises and falls, too, she opens her own boutique, but doesn't manage her money very well, borrows money from her mother, but then, well you'll just have to watch it and ride out all the changes in Senna's life and Adam's comings and goings.  Will these crazy kids realize that they need to be together, or will their petty differences and imagined conflicts keep them apart?  

There are a lot of rom-coms made about women trying to balance relationships and careers when they're in their twenties or thirties, but I don't think I've seen one that focused on a woman in her late forties or early fifties, not in this way at least.  Probably not the best decision to make for a successful box office, as this film earned less than $200,000 - but it took some cojones to make it, for sure.  You're bound to get sick of hearing the "Happy Birthday" song, don't say I didn't warn you.  I know my goal now is to always get through my birthday without hearing the song, I've bribed my co-workers with doughnuts if they agree to not sing - sure, we can still have cake and candles, just please don't sing the damn song.  The song is something of a reminder on how dangerous birthdays really are - I've heard that having too many of them is bad for your health, after all. 

Also starring Tony Goldwyn (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "The Calling"), Famke Janssen (last seen in "Eulogy"), Liza Lapira (last seen in "Domino"), Erica Ash, Caitlin FitzGerald (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot"), Gilles Marini, Jason Gibson, Leonor Varela (last seen in "Alpha"), Yvonne Jung, D.G. Guyer, Ryan Lochte, Matthew Broussard (last seen in "Here Today"), Jose Navarro, Parvesh Cheena (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), David Atkinson (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Selah Victor (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Zach Lutsky, Tom Paolino (last seen in "The Purge: Election Year"), Kailen Jude, Harry Zinn.

RATING: 6 out of 10 items from the gumball machine