Somewhere in Queens

Year 16, Day 167 - 6/15/24 - Movie #4,756 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #4

BEFORE: OK, I've made it to Father's Day weekend, and I've got two films left on the topic, should cover Saturday and Sunday.  The plan came together, I got here on schedule and I only had to jettison two films from the chain - "Speed Racer" and "Super Mario Bros."  Look, at the end it came down to "Unfrosted" or "Super Mario Bros." and I think I made the right call - "Unfrosted" had way more linking opportunities, so logic dictates I should have saved it for later, because all things being equal, it will be easier to circle back to.  BUT it was on topic, the main character was a family man who worked for Kellogg's, and it seemed more like the kind of film I'd enjoy.  "Bros" would be off-topic, it's not Brother's Day weekend, after all.  There are big stars in both of these abandoned movies, I will try to circle back for both of them.  I should still have some slots available in August and September, after accounting for docs and horror films, I just don' t know for sure how many.  And if not, there's always next year. 

Sebastian Maniscalco carries over from "Unfrosted".  And an advance Birthday SHOUT-out to Laurie Metcalf - officially it's tomorrow, June 16 so I'm a day early.  Maybe that's a sign I should have delayed this by one day and landed this film right on Father's Day itself.

THE PLOT: Leo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family.  When their son "Sticks" finds success on his high-school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to get him a college scholarship. 

AFTER: Something that "Unfrosted" and "Somewhere in Queens" have in common, they are both directorial debuts for their lead actors, who both had long-running TV sitcoms - Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano.  

But I prioritized this one for Father's Day weekend for several reasons, one is that it links to tomorrow's Father's Day movie, obviously, but also because it ALSO played at the theater where I work, as part of the Tuesday night film appreciation class, mostly attended by senior citizens. And yes, I managed that screening, checked in the attendees and probably also ran mikes during the Q&A afterwards. I don't remember for sure if there was a panel afterwards, or who was on it, but I know it wasn't Ray Romano, I would have remembered that.  "Wish", "Wonka", "Somewhere in Queens" and tomorrow's film all played at the theater for one reason or another, it's just a bit weird that four films that did that all wound up in the same Movie Week for me.  But I guess if a film plays at the theater then I'm more aware of it, more likely to put it on the list, and even more likely to get around to watching it, so maybe it's not really that weird at all.

The plot of this film is somewhat in line with "I Love My Dad", only that Patton Oswalt film really took the same concept to the extreme, with a father catfishing his own son.  Here Leo Russo does something similar, after his son's girlfriend breaks up with him, he notices how depressed his son has become, to the point where he doesn't even want to play basketball, a sport that he's very good at, and he's even got a chance at a basketball scholarship at Drexel University.  So Leo convinces Dani, his son's ex, to pretend to get back together with him, just for a few weeks so he won't be depressed and then maybe he'll start practicing again, and then once he gets the basketball scholarship, she can break up with him again.  It's, well, it's not a good idea, but it does manage to achieve the results that Leo wanted, in that Sticks does start practicing again, but it's not coming from a genuine place, and then we have to wonder if Leo is really doing this for his son, or because he enjoys being the father of a successful player and potential star college athlete.  

At one point, he even offers to buy Dani a car, in exchange for getting back together with her son, so that she can drive across country during the summer, and this seems to be a life goal of hers.  She turns down the car, because, well, what would that make her, in the end?  It's a little too close to prostitution, or something, having her ex-boyfriend's father pay her to date him. 

Things get more complicated when Leo's wife, Angela, sees Dani in the mall shopping with another man and kissing him, and she's convinced that Dani is cheating on Sticks.  Of course Angela is unaware of her husband's arrangement with Dani, so what else is she supposed to think?  

Meanwhile, Leo is having work problems, he's employed by his own father in the family construction business, however his younger brother has surpassed him and become a foreman, while Leo has not.  So there are some complicated family dynamics here, perhaps, or it could be that Leo is just incapable of succeeding, or afraid of success, or something. His wife is a cancer survivor, so perhaps her medical issues got in the way?  It's tough to say, but it seems like Leo's endured a lot over the years, and maybe it's logical that he wants his son to succeed at basketball just a bit too much, also he'd love for his son to escape being sucked into the family business.  Not that this justifies Leo's actions, but it possibly does explain them.  

I know a few things about this world, not just because I live in Queens, NY, but my wife is of Italian descent and I've been to many functions - marriages, funerals - with her extended family.  For a while we celebrated Thanksgiving with my brother-in-law's Sicilian family on Long Island, but that marriage ended so we're back down to just one Italian family and their occasional celebrations.  Also I was trying to figure out where they filmed the basketball scenes in this movie, because even though the team was the Glendale Cougars, I was willing to bet they didn't shoot in Glendale, Queens, and I was right.  A little Googling revealed that the basketball scenes were filmed at Christ the King, which is a parochial private school in Queens, and we happen to know a married couple, friends of my brother-in-law, who teach there. 

Anyway, it's a complicated but perhaps very realistic portrayal of fatherhood, warts and all, like Leo is tempted to have an affair with an attractive woman who's having work done on her house, and then there's this whole situation with his son's girlfriend that oof, just doesn't feel right at times, even though Leo had good intentions, it's hard to justify this fake girlfriend arrangement. 

Also starring Ray Romano (last seen in "Eulogy"), Laurie Metcalf (last seen in "Georgia Rule"), Jacob Ward, Sadie Stanley, Tony Lo Bianco (last seen in "The Seven-Ups"), Jennifer Esposito (last seen in "Welcome to Collinwood"), Jon Manfrellotti (last seen in "Welcome to Mooseport"), Dierdre Friel (last seen in "Second Act"), Katie Kreisler (last seen in "Melinda and Melinda"), Jennifer Simard (last seen in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas"), Danny Garcia, Erik Griffin (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Franco Maicas, Adam Kaplan, June Gable (last seen in "Maestro"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Seth Barrish (last seen in "Love After Love"), Geoffrey Owens (last seen in "Fatale"), Dario Vazquez, David St. Louis, Caryn Richman, Kevin Qian, Marshall Davis Jones, Matt Romano, Joe Romano, Christina Catechis, James Ciccone (last seen in "Worth"), Frank Santorelli, Lauren Biazzo, Amanda Corday, Lucas Owen, J.C. MacKenzie (last seen in "American Fiction"), Bill Canning, Joe Caniano, Steve Garfanti, Jackson Pace, Harry Freedman, Joseph Petraglia, Karen Lynn Gorney (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Sam Massaro (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Manuel Santiago, Elizabeth Yu

RATING: 6 out of 10 quotes from the movie "Rocky". 

Unfrosted

Year 16, Day 166 - 6/14/24 - Movie #4,755

BEFORE: Hugh Grant carries over from "Wonka".  I was kind of joking last week about some kind of virtual "Reno 911!" reunion, but look, this film has cameos from Cedric Yarbrough and Kyle Dunnigan (who played Trudy's boyfriend, Craig) so I guess I manifested that, because it came true, really the only people missing are Niecy Nash and Joe LoTruglio, but LoTruglio was really only on the last couple of seasons.  Based on the huge cast list below, however, this is also something of a reunion of the casts of "Seinfeld", "SNL" and "Mad Men". 

THE PLOT: In 1963 Michigan, business rivals Kellogg's and Post compete to create a pastry that could change breakfast forever. 

AFTER: Tonight's film is about the creation of a new food, the Pop-Tart.  Well, it was new at one time, as everything once was.  There's so much work left to be done in the creation of new food shapes and flavor combinations, and I promise you that I have done extensive work in this arena by traveling to state fairs in the last few years and discovering things like fried stuffed chicken wings, deep-fried clam chowder, and brisket and waffle balls on a stick.  I swear, I made none of these up. Last month I had a BBQ pork and mac &  cheese egg roll in North Carolina, because this is important research that needs to continue.  

Last night I working at the theater and debating whether to have Popeye's or pizza again, when a quick Yelp search revealed that two blocks away there was a burger restaurant that serves an unusual menu item, the burgerrito.  Yes, it's a mash-up of a burger and a burrito - two burger patties, cheese, fries, bacon and avocado wrapped up in a tortilla.  I'm not going to say it was the greatest thing I ever tasted, but it was also very far from the worst.  Would have again, but I allowed myself to make two alterations to the menu items, first I asked to get tater tots inside instead of fries - a probable improvement - and also I requested no chipotle honey sauce, a definite improvement.  Who puts THAT on a burgerito, when the obvious correct sauce should be thousand island dressing?  No need to thank me, I'm willing to sacrifice my body for the cause of food research and improving the world, one food order at a time. 

It's only a bit weird because I had the "burgerrito" on my vision board, basically a list of mashed-up food items based only on wordplay, I have no idea if any of these are feasible in the real world, but I wrote a huge list of them on my phone, like "egg pho yung" and "matzoh-rella sticks" (or "mozza-ball soup", whichever) and "dumpling-uini" and "cole slaw-py joes".  From "pork chop suey" to "Philly cheesecake", "clam-burger" to "sour cream cheese", "cocoa-cola" to "pasta-rami", "ramen-istrone soup" and the still completely imaginary "sashimi-changa", in my opinion the world of mash-up foods is almost completely unexplored to date.  Oh, sure, I've had potachos, who hasn't?  Or a barbe-Cuban sandwich, ho hum.  And everyone's tried a fa-waffle, right?  People, we've only scratched the surface of weird mashed-up food, we've got to DIG DEEP and keep creating, keep saying "yes" to weird flavor combinations and if it doesn't already exist as a mash-up, for God's sake, mash it up!

Which brings me back to a time when there were NO Pop-Tarts, all people had to eat for breakfast were eggs and bacon, which caused people to die of heart disease in their 30's, and sugary cereals, which caused people to die of diabetes in their 40's.  Before the 1960's, the world of breakfast cereal was even worse, because in the 1950's people ate things like unflavored oatmeal, non-frosted flakes (really, they were just called "flakes") and raisin bran, only without the raisins.  But it was a different time, and people just didn't know that life could be better, and that food was supposed to, you know, taste good.  OK, maybe America's youth weren't addicted to sugar, but they also didn't have enough energy to get through the day, and that's why they allowed kids to take naps in school.  Suddenly there was Frosted Flakes and Sugar Smacks and Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch, and BOOM, whole new ball game.  Suddenly kids had the energy to make it through the school day, play little league in the afternoon, and then watch TV and stay up late to do their homework, with NO NAP needed.  Game changer.

Once the rival cereal companies Post and Kellogg's cracked the code, and got kids hooked on sugary cereals, they turned their attention to pastries.  How could they package a fruit-filled pastry in a way that would get them into boxes on store shelves, and get some of the money that was going to corner bakeries to come their way?  Really, it's the same dilemma that Amazon faced when they drove small bookstores out of business, by making their delivery system more convenient, I mean who wants to shop at a grocery store and THEN a bakery, making two trips, you're a busy homemaker without much time on your hands, we can cut your shopping time in half, just buy your pastries in the same aisle as the cereal and heat them up in your toaster at home!  And there's fruit inside (sort of), so they HAVE to be nutritious, right?  Why let your kid leave the house with a messy real apple when they can have apple-flavored goo inside a portable pastry envelope?  Then the kids are on their way to school and you can listen to soap operas on the radio and work on your drinking habit!  

The film relates the very untrue story of the research and development of toaster pastries, and it plays out much like an extended episode of "Drunk History", where it doesn't really matter if the facts are right, as long as it's funny, which is much more important.  That's the job of a movie, to entertain, not provide a boring history lesson.  Is there really a "Bowl & Spoon" awards for the cereal industry?  Who knows?  More importantly, who cares?  Bob Cabana relates the story of the creation of Pop-Tarts to a young boy in a diner, how he was inspired by two kids who were dumpster diving, and how some of the greatest minds in marketing were thrown together in the Kellogg's lab to crack the code on this new product.  

But, by creating a new product that can be toasted and served without milk, Bob accidentally draws the anger of Big Dairy, which is a giant cabal, or at least one powerful dairy farmer with an army of sneaky and sarcastic milkmen who KNOW where you live.  Meanwhile, Marjorie Post travels to Moscow to secure Russian sugar rights from Nikita Krushchev, because Kellogg's had signed an agreement with El Sucre, the noted Puerto Rican warlord who controlled 99% of the Caribbean sugar market.  Also meanwhile, Thurl Ravenscroft, the Shakespearean actor who also provide the voice for Tony the Tiger, feels that the cereal mascots will soon be obsolete, so he leads Snap, Crackle and Pop, along with all the others, in a mascot strike that looks just a bit too much like the U.S. Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021.  I wish this film didn't have to go that far, but I guess maybe somebody had to?

Again this is a WAY over-the-top fictional retelling of what really happened in the breakfast food marketplace in the 1960's.  Here is what's real - the Post Company did invent a way to keep foods partially dehydrated and wrapped in foil to prevent spoiling, and at first this process was used for packaging dog food, under the brand name Gaines Burgers.  The Post Company also realized they could use this same technique to package breakfast pastries, which they called Country Squares, and they were planning exciting flavors like strawberry, blueberry, and brown sugar cinnamon.  BUT they announced the product while it was still in development, and that gave Kellogg's time to come up with Pop-Tarts, using a similar packaging technique.  Pop-Tarts came out in more exciting flavors, like Frosted strawberry, Frosted blueberry, and Frosted brown sugar & cinnamon. See the difference?  But Pop-Tarts came to the market FIRST, and who even remembers the second man to walk on the moon?  Buzz somebody...

This is also true: Thurl Ravenscroft was a real person, and was really the voice of Tony the Tiger for years.  But you may know him better as the bass singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in the classic TV holiday special (Boris Karloff narrated the show, but he wasn't a great singer...).  Also, Marjorie Post of Post Cereals was a real businesswoman and feminist who also built a resort in Florida called Mar-a-Lago.  When she died it was bequeathed to the National Park Service, thinking it could serve as a sort of "winter White House", which turned out to be very prophetic.  Congress returned the property to the Post Foundation in 1981 and Donald Trump bought it in 1985, later using it for its intended purpose when he was President.  Huh.

(BTW, read the story on Wikipedia about HOW Trump bought Mar-a-Lago, I won't get into it here, but it's SO typically Trump...)

The rest is all speculation and comedy, it's all quite ridiculous, but maybe the story about the creation of toaster pastries needed to be more ridiculous overall.  There are visual references and Easter Eggs for everything from Norman Rockwell to "Mad Men" to "The Godfather", and you may never look at Tom Carvel, Jack LaLanne or Chef Boyardee the same way again.

Also starring Jerry Seinfeld (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Back-Up Plan"), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Amy Schumer (last seen in "Bros"), Max Greenfield (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Cyrano"), Christian Slater (last seen in "Murder in the First"), Bill Burr (also last seen in 'Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Cedric the Entertainer (ditto), James Marsden (last seen in "Disenchanted"), Jack McBrayer (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Thomas Lennon (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Bobby Moynihan (last seen in "Clerks III"), Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Sarah Cooper, Mikey Day (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Kyle Mooney (last seen in "Brigsby Bear"), Drew Tarver (last seen in "Other People"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Felix Solis (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Maria Bakalova (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Dean Norris (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Kyle Dunnigan (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Sebastian Maniscalco (last seen in "The Irishman"), Beck Bennett (last heard in "The Mitchells vs. the Machines"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "The Bubble"), Patrick Warburton (last seen in "Scream 3"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), John Slattery (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), Rachael Harris (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Nelson Franklin (last seen in "You People"), Aparna Nancherla (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Andy Daly (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Earthquake (last heard in "Barnyard"), Sasheer Zamata (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), George Wallace (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Ronny Chieng (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Darrell Hammond (also last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Dan Levy (last seen in "Admission"), John Forest (last seen in "Life Partners"), Sarah Burns (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Cedric Yarbrough (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Jeff Lewis, Alex Edelman, Eleanor Sweeney, Bailey Sheetz, Isaac Bae, Chris Rickett, Catherine Last, Kue Lawrence (last seen in "Resistance"), Ken Narasaki, Gregory Burke, Thomas Silcott, Morgan West, Shane Carpenter, Will Allan, Michael Joseph Pierce, Winter Bassett, Jessica Seinfeld, Mark Kwak, Susan Elle, Tad Griffith (last seen in "The Boy Next Door"), Bette Bentley, Keyshawn Chisholm, Bonnie Mercado and the voice of Spike Feresten.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Univac punch cards

Wonka

Year 16, Day 165 - 6/13/24 - Movie #4,754

BEFORE: Natasha Rothwell carries over from "Wish". Last night's film and tonight's film share a few other things in common, they both have one-word titles that begin with "W", they're both about working toward your dreams, and they both played at the theater where I work during calendar year 2023.  I can't recall if they were guild screenings or what, but I definitely managed both screenings and was unable to watch the films.  I just put them on the list, and so it took me about 6 to 8 months to get to both of them.

Right now I'm pulling extra shifts at the theater because it's a venue for the Tribeca Film Festival - I was only supposed to work 3 days of the 12-day event, but then I got assigned to the load-in night and also covered two shifts for a sick co-worker, so before it's over I'll have worked 6 days at the festival, and some of these were LONG shifts, so I'm pretty exhausted now.  I fell asleep during "Wish" the other night, and it's not even a 90-minute movie.  I've been getting home at 11 pm some nights, and then after Late Show and Late Night monologues I'll start a movie, and, well, if it doesn't hold my interest I'm probably going to fall asleep in the recliner.  

Wednesday morning I slept in a bit, got to my other job at noon instead of 11 am, and so I was a bit fresher when it came time to watch "Wonka", I made it through the whole film, then passed out shortly after it was over.  Well, by Sunday the festival will be over, and my schedule's going to lighten up, so I'll catch up on sleep next week. Maybe I can still maintain my movie schedule until Father's Day.  

THE PLOT: With dreams of opening up a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers. 

AFTER: Some might say this was an unnecessary prequel to "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (the 1971 movie) or to the remake, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005).  Either way, it hardly matters - but do you think Timothee Chalamet looks more like Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp?  Oddly, I think he looks like some combination of the two, meaning he could grow to resemble either one as he ages. Hmmm.  But was this necessary?  About as necessary as that film they made with James Franco as the young Wizard of Oz, and this similarly tells Wonka's back-story, bringing him to eventual fame as a chocolatier, only to become a hermit later and run that contest with the golden tickets that we all know about. 

But I'll go out on a limb here and say that this backstory IS necessary, because we need to know how and why Willy Wonka became so weird, so messed-up that he would invite five kids into his usually off-limits chocolate factory and then torture four of them horribly, so they'd get burned up in the chocolate room or turned into a giant blueberry that needed to be juiced, or shrunk down to the size of a few TV pixels.  Sure, the kids were all brats with bad habits who needed to be taught life lessons, but what gave Willy Wonka the right to torture them?  More to the point, who hurt HIM when he was young?

Well, just about everyone, with a couple exceptions.  The main villains here are the three members of the chocolate cartel - Slugworth, Prodnose and Fickelgruber.  Slugworth was mentioned in the previous two movies, the other ones might be new characters.  These evil men have banded together to stockpile delicious chocolate, and release it in watered-down versions to the public at sky-high prices.  And when Wonka hits the scene selling, well, much better choccies, the cartel members sic the local constables on him and try to drive him out of town.  

But Wonka also learns hard lessons when he first hits town with seven silver coins to his name, as soon as he gets off the ship and reaches the middle of town there's a boy shining his shoes, and people in the market are charging him for merchandise he "broke", so there go some of his coins. Then there's a starving mother in need of food, and he gives her a few coins because he's a good person, and his last coin falls through a hole in his pocket and down a drain. Well, that went fast.  He ends up seeking lodging at a combination laundry & inn, they won't charge him rent until the following day, so he'll have a chance to raise some money - but they also make him sign a contract with a ton of fine print, and the next day he's in deep for phony fees and mini-bar charges, to the tune of thousands.  So, like several other poor souls, he's forced to work in the laundry, day after day until his "debt" is paid off.  It's a valuable life lesson, the world is full of people trying to screw you out of your money.  Someday, when he's got his chocolate shop running, he'll get payback and teach all of the bad people something...

He remains optimistic, somehow, with the help of Noodle, a poor girl who also works in the laundry, and she helps him sneak out during the day so he can sell his chocolate and make enough money to both get free of the laundry and also open his dream chocolate shop (well, come on, we know someday he has a whole factory, so it's kind of "Rogue One" inevitable that his mission will ultimately succeed....).  

There's still the cartel to deal with, however, and also the police that they control.  Plus Wonka says there's a little orange man with green hair who sneaks into his room at night and steals all of his chocolate, so that's a problem, each morning he has nothing to sell.  If only he could catch the Oompa... I mean, the little orange man, he could maybe reason with him and get him to stop stealing the chocolate.  Noodle, meanwhile, is convinced that Willy himself is stress-eating the sweet treats at night, therefore he doesn't really WANT to succeed.  But nothing could be further from the truth, Wonka needs to fulfill his mission, because he thinks it will bring his dead mother back. Umm, OK, sure, there's a lot to unpack there. 

Plenty of shout-outs to the original 1971 film - there's a message on gold paper inside a chocolate bar, there's a contract with a ton of fine print, and of course the pre-cursor to the giant river of chocolate.  Which is all fine, because it means that this all properly fits in with and sets up the original film.  And the songs here hint at the songs there. It's fine, it's all fine. 

Also starring Timothée Chalamet (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key (last heard in "Pinocchio" (2022)), Paterson Joseph (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Matt Lucas (last seen in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"), Mathew Baynton (last seen in "Hereafter"), Sally Hawkins (last seen in "Spencer"), Rowan Atkinson (last seen in "Scooby-Doo"), Jim Carter (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Olivia Colman (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Hugh Grant (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Rich Fulcher (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Rakhee Thakrar, Tom Davis (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (ditto), Tim Fitzhigham (ditto), Simon Farnaby (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Charlotte Ritchie, Ellie White, Freya Parker (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Sophie Winkleman, Murray McArthur (last seen in "The Northman"), Tracy Ifeachor, Isy Suttie, Phil Wang, Colin O'Brien, Gustave Die, Paul G. Raymond, Bertie Caplan, Matilda Tucker, Rufus Jones (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Susie Fairfax, Ian Bartholomew, Lola Shepelev, Michael Abubakar (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Justin Edwards (last seen in "The Trip to Greece"), Marina Bye (last seen in "Breathe"), Jane Bertish, Dominic Coleman (last seen in "Stuart: A Life Backwards"), Alison Pargeter (last seen in "Calendar Girls")

RATING: 8 out of 10 edible baskets

Wish

Year 16, Day 164 - 6/12/24 - Movie #4,753

BEFORE: I have this one on my list because I worked at a screening of it last year - but I didn't really like what I saw of the film during the screening, particularly what was in the end credits.  Sure, it's Disney Corp's anniversary year, 100 years of making animated films, so the closing credits for "Wish" have characters from "Snow White", "Pinocchio", "Peter Pan", etc. in them.  But by placing THIS film on a list with THOSE classics implies that this film is of the same caliber, and well, that remains to be seen.  You can no longer say that JUST because something is a Disney film that it's going to be great - I think they're largely resting on their laurels at this point, and the last few films just haven't met the standards of the classic films from the 1950's and 1960's. Just saying. 

Harvey Guillén carries over from "Blue Beetle".  Let me be clear tonight, I'm watching this one JUST to clear it off the list, and because it's going to allow me to connect to my Father's Day films in a couple of days.  

THE PLOT: A young girl named Asha wishes on a star and gets more than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her. 

AFTER: Yeah, this film is really terrible.  The story is all muddled, the motivations of the characters are all screwed-up, and the plot is driven by people wishing for things, and having their wishes turned into tangible bubbles that are then handed over to the King of Rosas, whose name is Magnifico, and he grants the wish of one lucky citizen every month or so.  But this means that the majority of the wishes he stores for them do NOT get granted, and as a side-effect of this process, most people end up forgetting about what they wished for, because they've handed over their wish bubble.  So most of Rosas' citizens live in the shadow of the castle, waiting hopefully for their wish to be granted, and they mostly wait in vain.

Ugh, it's so unnecessarily confusing.  What does Magnifico get by keeping the wishes for himself, away from the wishers?  Do they grant him power, or is he just doing this to control the populace, and keep them from making their lives better in ways that don't benefit the common good, or more likely, the King's definition of the common good?   Damn, there's ALMOST a metaphor here for our modern form of government, except for the whole king thing.  How many people in the U.S. are prevented from pursuing their life goals because they can't afford to do so, or they need more education or training that they're not eligible for, or because it's just not profitable for them to pursue that career in music, or art, or poetry, for example?  

Well, for that matter now I'm wondering if this movie is some kind of Trump allegory, because Magnifico does seem rather vain and pompous and overly full of himself.  Or maybe Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who's been feuding with Disney on a number of issues concerning free speech, Pride Day at Disney and such.  Really, the king here could be a symbol for any number of conservative politicians who don't want the people to have the right to love who they want, live how they want and have control over their own careers and bodies.  Right?  Just me?  But even if I consider "Wish" some kind of veiled anti-Trump statement, that really doesn't make it very entertaining.  

Plus, I'm kind of over the whole "When You Wish Upon a Star" thing, even if you believe in that sort of nonsense, the "Puss in Boots" sequel did a much better job of showing how a falling star would cause a ruckus in a storybook/fairy-tale land. Go watch that one instead of this one, I say.  Besides, we all know that even the closest stars are millions of miles away from our solar system, so there's no way they could have any effect on our hopes and dreams today, some of those stars you see in the sky might have already burned out, and you're seeing their light from years ago, any particular star might not even be there any more.  Sorry. People wished on stars when they didn't know what they were, and there's not even such thing as a "falling star" at all, I mean we have meteorites that fall to Earth, but those aren't stars at all, so if we're making a movie for kids, they need to learn for the sake of science that a star simply can not fall to Earth.  Why continue the charade if the science doesn't back this up? 

Anyway, you know what's better than wishing on a star?  Coming up with a solid plan to bring that thing about that you're wishing for, doing a little research, getting the education or training you need to move your life in that direction, or practicing that musical instrument for hours and days and weeks until you ARE one of the world's top theremin players, or whatever.  Do the work, put in the time, don't just wish on a star and go back to doing other things, that's not a recipe for success, and we shouldn't let kids think that it is.  If you want to be a poet or a stand-up comic or a dog walker, that's fine, but take steps to prepare for moving in that direction and then DO IT.  

Maybe you'll find out later there's a down-side to being a poet or a stand-up comic or a dog walker, but that's OK, you can change your mind later if you learn that career isn't for you, and then you can come up with a new plan.  You can have five, six, seven careers during your whole life, it's OK, but let's leave the stars out of your vision board, OK?  Because the stars are millions of miles away and they don't care about you or your dreams, they're not even sentient, despite what some goofy cartoon says. 

Anyway, the Star is a character here, and it seems like it can grant wishes, like it makes a goat able to talk and it makes some mushrooms sing or something (smoke that weed when the movie starts and it should JUST kick in at the right time...) but then for some reason the Star stops granting wishes, and the movie goes back to trying to free the wishes from the king's tower, because, well, there's just no other place for the story to GO, it seems.  So while Asha is running from Magnifico and distracting him, her group of ethnically diverse and bi-racial and plus-size and for some reason handi-capable friends are busy freeing the wishes.  It's to no avail, however, because the King had used his black magics to disguise the ex-friend Simon as himself, all so he could defend the wishes and also capture the star.  

So all is lost, except then the entire populace of Rosas rises up together and I don't know, group sings some magic song that breaks his staff and weakens Magnifico's powers, but it's all very fuzzy and stuff and it's really hard to tell what the new magic rules are in this kingdom by this point.  We know we need some kind of happy ending, so that's the way the magic works, all of a sudden?  It's all just so lame, and like I figured, it's just not on a par with "Snow White" and "Pinocchio" and "Peter Pan".  The older Disney films just had more clearly defined parameters about how magic works, maybe? 

There are a ton of Disney Easter eggs here, like Asha has seven friends who have attributes that call to mind the seven dwarves from "Snow White", and Saba strums "When You Wish Upon a Star" on his lute, a deer character is nicknamed "Bambi" and the fireworks form a giant Mickey Mouse silhouette in the sky - but all that is window-dressing, there's just no way this film stands on its own with such a weak and fuzzy story.  And Asha's grandfather is celebrating his 100th birthday, just like the Disney Studio - but when does the Disney Studio get tired of sucking its own dick?  Never, apparently.

Also starring the voices of Ariana DeBose (last seen in "West Side Story" (2021)), Chris Pine (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Alan Tudyk (last seen in "Tell"), Angelique Cabral (last seen in "How it Ends"), Victor Garber (last seen in "You Again"), Natasha Rothwell (last seen in "Like a Boss"), Jennifer Kumiyama (last seen in "The Sessions"), Niko Vargas, Evan Peters (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Ramy Youssef (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Jon Rudnitsky (last seen in "Set It Up"), Della Saba (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Keone Young (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2"), Lucas Sigler, Holland Watkins, Woody Buck, Efé, Nicole Lynn Evans, Heather Matarazzo (last seen in "Scream 3"), Nasim Pedrad (last seen in "Aladdin" (2019))

RATING: 3 out of 10 violent talking rabbits?

Blue Beetle

Year 16, Day 163 - 6/11/24 - Movie #4,752

BEFORE:  Susan Sarandon carries over from "The Company You Keep".  And I'm where I wanted to be, back on superhero movies, but getting here via Susan Sarandon is a bit weird, kind of like getting to "The Marvels" via Zawe Ashton or getting to "Barbie" via Helen Mirren.  Sure, it counts, but it's far from the most obvious choice and I feel like I'm sneaking in some back door.  I'm not going to worry about it, except for the fact that I could have maybe fit "Speed Racer" in-between, though I don't have a slot for it.  I'm on a race to Father's Day, so something has to be cut loose, and it looks like that will be "Speed Racer" along with "Super Mario Bros."  Those are the breaks, but both movies have big casts, I can probably circle back for one or both later on.

5 movies until Father's Day and the end of the Tribeca Film Festival, 9 movies until the start of the Doc Block. 147 movies until Christmas?

THE PLOT: An alien scarab chooses Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the recent college grad with a suit of armor that's capable of extraordinary powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle. 

AFTER: Well, I don't know if I'm suffering from superhero movie burn-out, or maybe the whole industry is. When you get down to making movies about Blue Beetle and Madame Web, I think you're basically scraping the bottom of the barrel. Just me? There's definitely a pecking order among the DC superheroes, but once you make the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman movies, where do you go.  Well, Aquaman was a good choice and I LOVE the second Suicide Squad film, but really, what's left?  Flash seemed like a one-and-done, given all the controversy around Ezra Miller, and they worked Dr. Fate and Hawkman into the Black Adam movie, and that was a good way to cross them off, and the "Shazam" films were all right, but I don't hear anyone out there calling for a Zatanna movie or a Cyborg film.  Bringing back Green Lantern wouldn't be the worst idea, but it would have to be done right.  So I'm on hold until James Gunn tells me what he's got planned. 

This was the 17th film in the DC Extended Universe, the first one was "Man of Steel" and the last was "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom", and I managed to see them all - plus I've got ZERO superhero films on my main list, and just "Madame Web" on the back-up list.  It's essentially a dead category until Marvel comes out with something new like "Blade" or "Thunderbolts", and really, I'm not holding my breath.  Wait, I guess the next one is going to be "Deadpool & Wolverine" in July.  We'll see, the genre is due for a large break, I think, while I catch up on other things, time-travel movies and docs and horror films.  It's going to be OK.  

If this is the end for the DCEU for me, it's going out with a whimper, this film barely pushed the needle for me at all, it was all just such basic stuff - evil corporation making controllable super-soldiers, teen find mysterious alien object that gives him an intelligent armored suit that's sort of like the Iron Man armor, but also sort of like the Venom symbiote.  Look, I know who Blue Beetle is, because I've been reading "Justice League" trades ever since three comic reboots ago, let's say I started in 1996, but the Ted Kord Blue Beetle was a member just before that, starting in 1986 with the Justice League International series.  Still, I know who Ted Kord is, frequent partner of Booster Gold, but DC kind of killed him off in the 2005 series "Infinite Crisis".  That's when he got replaced by this Jaime Reyes character, essentially the equivalent of the Miles Morales Spider-Man - same M.O. but cooler and designed to appeal to a new, younger audience. 

As of the latest DC comics reboot "Rebirth", Ted Kord is now essentially what he is in this movie, a guy who USED to be Blue Beetle, USED to be dead but is now alive again because reality changed, and Jaime Reyes is still the new Blue Beetle after the "Flashpoint" storyline, but his last solo book was cancelled in 2013.  I guess they thought maybe this film would make him hot again, and they're still waiting?  Seems about right. That means the movie is showing us the best of the comic's storylines from about 5-10 years ago, only changing it around a bit to better suit a one-off movie and not a never-ending monthly series.  

The scarab is an alien artifact that bestows the armor to a human, but they kept saying that the Scarab "chose" Jaime.  I'm not sure about this, it seems more like Jenny Kord was using him to hide the scarab (in a burger box) but she told him to NOT open it.  But it's his family who told him to open the box, at which point the scarab fused to him, so really, it's all his family's fault, if he hadn't opened the box, he'd still be a normal college kid.  But then there's a neat tie-in between the alien armor and the O.M.A.C. (One-Man Army Corps) from other DC comics.  Sure, why not get another storyline going in there, the OMACs are probably better than whatever weird villains the Blue Beetle usually faces in his own books. 

Another neat tie-in for Father's Day, which is now just five days away.  Jaime's father, who has worked very hard and sacrificed many things for his family over the years, is injured by an attack from Carapax (OMAC) and I think has a heart attack. This distraction unfortunately allows Blue Beetle to be captured, but then during his imprisonment he has a vision of his father, and we learn that having a family doesn't make a superhero weaker, instead it inspires them to be stronger.  This is a semi-reversal of the typical back-story of most DC superheroes like Batman and Superman who are inspired and tortured by their dead parents. 

One thing I could do, if I really wanted to keep going with superhero films, is catch up all the animated DC-based movies that are available on HBO Max.  There are a LOT of them, and it would be a lot of work for me to track them all down, figure out the cast lists and determine the best order to watch them all in.  Let me think about this, it's really a someday/maybe plan if I should run out of other movies, which of course doesn't seem likely to happen. 

Also starring Xolo Maridueña, Belissa Escobedo, Adriana Barraza (last seen in "Spanglish"), Damián Alcazar (last seen in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian"), Elpidia Carrillo (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Bruna Marquezine, Raoul Max Trujillo (last seen in "Blood Father"), George Lopez (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Harvey Guillén (last heard in "Strays"), Jorge Jimenez, Eyra Aguero Joubert, Gabriella Ortiz, Modesto Lacen, Oshun Ramirez, Bobby McGruther, Carlos Ponce (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Isabella Aparicio, Yuli Zorrilla and the voice of Becky G, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Spanish stop-motion cartoons

The Company You Keep

Year 16, Day 162 - 6/10/24 - Movie #4,751

BEFORE: Last night was my second full day working at the Tribeca Film Festival - I'm not counting the load-in day, which was really just baby-sitting the theater for five hours.  No, I've had two full shifts there, and yesterday's was a full 12 hours, because it was a weekend day.  I've got two more scheduled, one tomorrow and one on Father's Day, I don't mind because I'm not within driving distance from my father, and perhaps my co-workers are, so by all means, go and enjoy the day, I'll be at the theater working.  

Yesterday's screenings included "The Knife", with Melissa Leo and indie-super producer Mark Duplass on the Q&A panel, "America's Burning", a documentary about the political schism in America, narrated by Michael Douglas, "It Was All a Dream", a documentary about the early days of hip-hop, and "Lake George", a crime drama with Carrie Coon, who also showed up for the Q&A panel after.  Nothing I really wanted to see, but that's fine because I was too busy to sit and watch them anyway, I was busy managing the theater, counting heads and directing traffic.  

There are a few films in the festival that I would be interested in seeing in the future, like "Brats", a doc about the 1980's Brat Pack movie stars, and "Casa Bonita, Mi Amor!" which is about the creators of "South Park" buying a Mexican restaurant in Colorado and restoring it to the legendary theme park status it had in an episode of their show.  But those films aren't playing at the venue where I work, so I'll have to catch up with them down the road.  They may not fit into my chain, anyway, unless I pick up some more doc ideas from the DocNYC festival in October. 

Stephen Root carries over again from "Paint". 

THE PLOT: After a journalist discovers his identity, a former Weather Underground activist goes on the run. 

AFTER: Well, I feel really ripped off by this one, because it's a crime movie where the crime took place decades ago, and we never get to see it, not even in flashbacks, and it's an action movie where there's very little action - so it's more like an "inaction" movie.  

There are two main characters, the reporter who exposes the identity of this 1970's activist who's been hiding in plain sight, but under a false name, in upstate New York for decades.  Here the movie encounters the same problem faced by classic films like "All the President's Men" and "Spotlight", which is that the job of reporting is just not very cinematic.  It involves interviewing people, making phone calls and looking through newspapers on microfiche at the library which is all so very... excuse me, I just dozed off for a bit just thinking about all that.  It's just not visual, it's not exciting, and that leads to not being interesting.  There were two many characters in this film to begin with, but when Albany reporter Ben Shepard finds an old photo in a newspaper of the young Osbornes and Sloans winning a fishing contest, I was thinking, "Who's Osborne?  Who's Sloan?  Who cares?"

The other lead character is Jim Grant - but that's not his real name, he's a lawyer, widower and single father but he USED to be an activist for the Weather Underground, a group that was so opposed to the Vietnam War and other U.S. policies that they carried out acts of terrorism in the U.S. by means of protest, and during a bank robbery of theirs a guard was killed, and it turns out there's no statute of limitations on murder, so the police and feds have at this point in been looking for the Weather Underground people since that event in 1980, so 31 years in hiding.  

So when W.U. activist Sharon Solarz gets arrested in upstate New York, presumably after driving in from Canada to get cheap gas, Jim Grant leaves his daughter with a trusted friend and drives off before anyone can figure out that Sharon didn't call him to be her lawyer, she was calling him to warn him.  This up-and-coming Albany reporter wonders why Jim Grant didn't take her case, and eventually puts the pieces together, revealing to the world that Jim Grant, lawyer, is really Nick Sloan, former activist/terrorist.  Meanwhile, the police want to know why the reporter printed the story in the newspaper BEFORE cluing them in, which gave Sloan a heads-up.  Rookie mistake, because if Shepard had called the police first, he could have had TWO headlines, one being "Weather Underground Activist Found" and "Weather Underground Activist Arrested".  You could have sold twice as many newspapers, you dope. 

At this point you'd think the movie would kick into higher gear, but it never really does, it just becomes "Robert Redford Drives Across America", which I probably would watch if it were a documentary of an actor on a scenic quest across the country, showing us his favorite haunts in each city.  But it's not that at all, he's trying to visit and warn the other members of the activist group, who are also hiding from the law - but the big problem is that the feds are tracking Sloan, so really, all he's doing is telling the government where all the W.U. former members are hiding.  That's pretty stupid if you think about it.

Nick leaves his daughter in New York City, with his brother, I think.  Yes, he cares so much for his daughter that he leaves her behind, which doesn't make much sense, either, why not bring her along?  She could learn a lot from driving across the country with her father, plus they just look like any normal father-daughter pair, and it's a little less suspicious than a guy checking into motels by himself, just saying.  But from there it's on to Milwaukee, where an associate runs a lumber yard, then to a college where another former associate is now a history professor. He's looking for someone named Mimi, and the professor points him in the direction of Big Sur, California, where she "imports" marijuana by boat - wouldn't it be easier just to grow it in California? 

Meanwhile, the reporter goes to Michigan to investigate the original bank robbery, and also speak with the detective who investigated it back in 1980, this is also very boring and just talky-talky, except he manages to flirt with that cop's daughter when the cop doesn't seem to want to help.  The reporter somehow learns that Mimi is the person who can exonerate Nick Sloan, by proving he wasn't present at the bank robbery, they had just borrowed his car as a getaway vehicle or something.  But he learns about a cabin on an Upper Peninsula island that's pretty close to Canada, and decides to check it out. 

Also meanwhile, Nick Sloan doesn't find Mimi in Big Sur, but then figures out where she's going, and then heads BACK across the country to that same place in Michigan, where all the secrets are revealed.  The "big reveal" is just another nothing-burger, and the reporter and the FBI and the guy who runs the grocery store all turn up in the same place, and Sloan is arrested, but it's all for show because again, he wasn't really there in the first place.  But couldn't somebody have just pointed that out at the start, and made all these cross-country trips unnecessary?  I mean, come on, we all have cell phones now, why couldn't everybody just CALL each other and work this out?  I guess that would have been even less cinematic, though, but at least it would have been shorter.  Because, you know, the FBI and the NSA are listening to all of our phone calls, so why aren't they solving more of the crimes that people are talking about on their phones?  

Well, at least we all learned that the 1970's were a very different time, and that yesterday's activists were so much cooler than today's, all that people today know how to do is camp out in tents and form drum circles, and that's just not getting it done. And they're protesting what?  The Israel-Gaza War?  Jeez, at least protest for civil rights or gay rights or freedom to read any book you want or love who you want or have an abortion if you want.  Something that will impact the lives of Americans right now, here at home, or else you might as well just go back to class. 

Also starring Robert Redford (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Shia LaBeouf (last seen in "Disturbia"), Julie Christie (last seen in "The Bookshop"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"), Nick Nolte (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "Irresistible"), Terrence Howard (last seen in "Term Life"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Anna Kendrick (last seen in "Stowaway"), Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "Calvary"), Brit Marling (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Sam Elliott (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot"), Jackie Evancho, Matthew Kimbrough (last seen in "Biloxi Blues"), Lochlyn Munro (last seen in "A Guy Thing"), Hiro Kanagawa (last seen in "Needle in a Timestack"), Andrew Airlie (last seen in "Fear"), Lane Edwards (last seen in "The Shack"), Kenneth Miller (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden"), Susan Hogan (last seen in "Narrow Margin"), Gabrielle Rose (last seen in "Catch and Release"), David Milchard, Erin Simms, David James Lewis, Jon Johnson, Bethany Brown (last seen in "The Mountain Between Us"), Kelly-Ruth Mercier, Keegan Connor Tracy (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Fred Henderson (ditto), Isaiah Adam, Gabriela Reynoso, Marsha Regis, John Shaw, John Sopher, Bernie Yao, Bruce Dawson (last seen in "Fifty Shades of Grey"), Andrea Brooks, Jackson Warris (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Dale Wolfe (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Clay St. Thomas (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Barry Bowman, Dan Gerrity (last seen in "The Spirit"), Donna Lysell (last seen in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"), Jason Blue, G. Michael Gray, Ed Huber, Jennifer Bradley, Lexie Huber, Jessica Williams (last seen in "People Places Things")

RATING: 4 out of 10 gas station clerks

Paint

Year 16, Day 161 - 6/9/24 - Movie #4,750

BEFORE: Here we go, I'm halfway through Movie Year 16 after I watch this one.  It's been a wild one for sure, very unpredictable - let's just say that a lot of this year's films feel exactly like the movies one might watch after watching more important movies for 15 years straight. But for once I'm in June when I hit the halfway point instead of May, this way I feel like I'm more on point to have open slots to work with in December, instead of running out of room for movies in mid-November.  And now just one week until Father's Day, I wasn't sure I could maintain a movie per day during the Tribeca Festival but so far I'm doing all right.  

There's been something of a "Reno 911!" reunion here at the Movie Year, Wednesday I watched "Balls of Fury" with Thomas Lennon ("Jim Dangle") and Kerri Kenney ("Trudy Wiegel") in it and the film was directed by Robert Ben Garant (aka "Travis Junior"), then yesterday's film had the voices of Mary Birdsong ("Deputy Kimball") and Carlos Alazraqui ("Garcia"), and today Wendi McLendon-Covey ("Clementine Johnson") makes an appearance.  Last Tuesday of course was "I Love My Dad" with Patton Oswalt, and he was a frequent guest on that show, if I remember right.  Toby Huss, too, and he was in two movies this week. Now I'm keeping my eyes out for Niecy Nash and Cedric Yarbrough...

Stephen Root carries over from "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe".  So I'm not even going to program anything past July 31, which should be the end of the Doc Bloc.  But at some point I'll be interested in figuring out October, then I'll know how many slots to set aside for August, and how many will be left for November and December. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed" (Movie #4,204)

THE PLOT: Carl Nargle, Vermont's #1 public television painter, is convinced he has it all: a signature perm, custom van, and fans hanging on his every stroke - until a younger, better artist steals everything (and everyone) Carl loves.  

AFTER: First off, this film is not DIRECTLY based on the life of Bob Ross - except that it seems to be based on a fictionalized version of that, only with the events that some screenwriter imagines happened to him.  

Much like Beavis & Butt-Head, painter Carl Nargle seems like a throwback to a simpler time, he uses a rotary phone, doesn't know what Uber is, has a fold-out bed in his tricked-out van, and he still smokes a pipe even though most rational people have found a way over the years to break their smoking habits.  They never SAY what year these fictional events take place, but it sure feels like Carl's keeping the Super 70's alive during the late Big 80's, perhaps.  He's had some form of romance with nearly every woman working at the Burlington, VT PBS affiliate, perhaps because he came from the era of free love and didn't get the memo that those days are over, and women don't exist just to fawn over him and his paintings. Or perhaps he's got what I call "artist brain" and just thinks that all of those women are lucky to have shared moments with him in the back of his van.  When we first meet Carl, the new female intern at the station is still awestruck to be in his presence, and the other staffers are sure that tonight's the night when Carl takes her to dinner, gives her a painting, and a ride in the van. 

But in many ways Carl is also a dinosaur, and we know what happens to them, don't we?  They eventually get replaced by mammals after the meteorite hits, and they die out or get stuck in a giant tar pit.  If you don't evolve with the times, and turn into a bird or an alligator, it's kind of inevitable.  The programming on PBS depends on its viewers, and they tend to skew older, too, so I imagine that public broadcasting is always running out of money, and that's probably only gotten worse now that everyone can watch any movie or TV show they want for free, somewhere on the internet. 

I watched the documentary on the real Bob Ross - who was missing part of his left index finger, due to a carpentry accident.  Also, he had served as a master sergeant and drill instructor at an Air Force base in Alaska, and he'd vowed to never raise his voice again once out of the military. Ross was working as a bartender when he discovered a show called "The Magic of Oil Painting" hosted by Bill Alexander and his thick German accent. (I watched that show, too, when I came home from junior high early...). Ross became a traveling salesman for Bill Alexander's art supply company, then struck out on his own after learning Alexander's "wet-on-wet" painting techniques.  Ross worked with the PBS stations in Fall Church, VA and then Muncie, Indiana to record episodes for his "Joy of Painting" show that were then syndicated, while he turned his own art supply business into a $10 million company. 

Bob Ross also painted THREE of every landscape scene, one made before the show that he used as a reference, a second made during the show, and a third, more detailed painting that would appear in his instructional books. So he made over 30,000 paintings in his lifetime, and they were in high demand, some selling for over $10,000.  Ross was also married three times and had two children.  NONE of the facts about Bob Ross in these last two paragraphs also apply to Carl Nargle, so you see that this is NOT a direct bio-pic in any way, though it's quite obvious that the inspiration for Carl is the "spirit" of Bob Ross, or the way that someone imagined him to be.  

Now, if Carl Nargle had a successful business in selling his painting and other art supplies, then we wouldn't really feel sympathy for him, would we?  So instead Carl is a struggling painter trying to survive on a public TV star's meager salary, and it's not so much that he's a failure, but it's more like he's afraid of great success.  His secret goal is to make a painting of Mount Mansfield that's so good it can be part of the Burlington Museum of Art, however in two decades of painting Carl's never even inquired with the museum as to whether they'd be interested in accepting one or more of his landscapes with that very same mountain.  Well, you just can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped, I guess. 

You can watch the "Happy Accidents" doc if you want to learn about Bob Ross' death and the fighting over his company between his family and the Kowalskis, there's no reason to get into it here because it doesn't apply to Carl Nargle one bit.  But the good news is that Bob Ross's paintings are still out there, many were sold and many are in storage somewhere, and the Smithsonian acquired four of them and displayed one in 2021. As to the fate of Carl Nargle, you'll have to watch "Paint" to learn that.  Carl is essentially replaced as the host of "Paint" on Burlington PBS by Ambrosia, a younger, more energetic but less talented woman who at least knows how to paint something other than the area around a specific Vermont mountain.  We may never know why Carl didn't paint the portrait of that PBS donor, maybe he could only paint landscapes and not faces, that's my theory.  

Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "Marry Me"), Michaela Watkins (last seen in "The Back-Up Plan"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Ciara Renée, Lucy Freyer, Lusia Strus (last heard in "Soul"), Michael Pemberton (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Denny Dillon (last seen in "Bruised"), Evander Duck Jr. (last seen in "The Report"), Ryan Czerwonko, Elisabeth Henry (last seen in "What Happened, Miss Simone?"), Paul Kosopod, Sonia Darmei Lopes, Aidan T.K. Baker (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Rob Figueroa (last seen in "Seven Pounds"), Vin Craig, Joel Leffert, Elizabeth Loyacano, Lynda Suarez, Sarah Baker (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Brit McAdams, Sylvia Fletcher, Ryan Gaul (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Noa Graham, Crystal Tweed, Dina Washington, Colin J. Sweeney, Kristin Hensley, Scott Beehner (last seen in "Bombshell"), Jennifer Smedley. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 newspapers stolen from people's mailboxes