BEFORE: All right, this is the last movie of January, so we've got some business to take care of. First off, here are the format totals for the first month of 2025. One thing that might go away soon is the "Watched on cable but not saved to DVD", because I have a new DVR that allows me to dub a movie off of every channel (every one I've tried so far) so I have been under limitations for years, thinking that HBO and Cinemax ran some kind of signal that wouldn't allow me to make a copy for my home library of their movies, and now it appears that I might have been mistaken, perhaps I just had a glitchy DVR? Anyway, the gloves are off and I'm taping movies pretty much around the clock now, there are no limits to what I can add to my collection. Umm, as long as the movie runs on cable, that is so actually there is one, one limit.
9 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Joker: Folie à Deux, The Yards, Civil War, The Drop, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Ambulance, Game 6
2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Zone of Interest, Dune: Part Two
6 watched on Netflix: Sun Dogs, Lou, Queenpins, Will & Harper, Reptile, Pain Hustlers
6 watched on Amazon Prime: American Dreamer, Brothers, The Creator, To Leslie, The Bikeriders, The Burial
2 watched on Hulu: Anatomy of a Fall, The Lost King
2 watched on Hulu: Anatomy of a Fall, The Lost King
2 watched on Disney+: Inside Out 2, Elemental
1 watched on Peacock: Despicable Me 4
1 watched on Tubi: Proxima
2 watched on a random site: Fly Me to the Moon, Dark Waters
31 TOTAL
31 TOTAL
I'll get to the February links tomorrow, a full month of romance movies starts then. But this year I don't want to miss out on Turner Classic Movies' (hmm, I wonder if I can dub movies off their channel again?) annual "31 Days of Oscar" programming, I want to keep track from the start of my viewing progress. Last year I counted 147 out of their 350 films as SEEN, which is 42%, not bad, but maybe I can do better this time. Also last year I added one TCM film on the fly, "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", which got neatly worked in to my romance programming, I doubt I can be that lucky again, but we'll see. It's a bit of an odd split format this year, during daytime hours they're highlighting nominees in a particular Oscar category, and then the evening/overnight films are devoted to a particular subject matter. Tomorrow, day 1, for example, features:
Best Picture Winners and Nominees:
6:00 am "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937)
8:00 am "The Broadway Melody of 1936" (1936)
9:45 am "The Great Dictator" (1940)
12:00 pm "Sounder" (1972)
2:00 pm "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954)
4:00 pm "12 Angry Men" (1957)
6:00 pm "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)
Oscar Worthy Actors:
8:00 pm "All About Eve" (1995)
10:30 pm "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)
12:30 am "A Star Is Born" (1937)
2:30 am "The Goodbye Girl" (1977)
4:30 am "Morning Glory" (1933)
This is the CORRECTED schedule, I accidentally printed Day 2's schedule for Day 1. My bad. I've seen "The Great Dictator", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "12 Angry Men", "In the Heat of the Night", "All About Eve", "Singin' in the Rain" and "The Goodbye Girl", so that's 7 out of 12, a better start than I first thought, I'm already at 58% seen but that percentage will probably go down from there.
Catherine O'Hara carries over from "Pain Hustlers", and one more thing before I move on, right now Allison Janney is in the lead for most appearances in 2025, with four appearances. Six actors have 3 appearances - Steve Coogan, Peter Dinklage, Karl Glusman, Tom Hardy, Sandra Hüller and Catherine O'Hara. But it's also VERY early for this, I'm going to try to loop back around to Ms. O'Hara in "The Wild Robot" because I'm such a fan, and I'll try to work in another Tom Hardy film if they start streaming the last "Venom" film somewhere.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Birdman" (Movie #1,921)
THE PLOT: Combining real and fictional events, this movie centers around the historic 1986 World Series and a day in the life of a playwright who skips opening night of his own play to watch the momentous game.
AFTER: I know, it seems like I'm being very seasonally inappropriate here, the World Series takes place in October (umm, when I'm busy with horror movies) and plus it's 9 days until Super Bowl (and Puppy Bowl) Sunday. Ah, but isn't February 1 the start of spring training? That was always "pitchers and catchers" day to report, unless something has changed. So maybe I'm right on the money, or the chain knows what it's doing. Really, I just picked the film because it's got Griffin Dunne in it, and he's in the first romance film in this year's chain. But let's go with the "spring training" angle, even though winter's only almost half over.
I also can't not notice the similarities to "Birdman", with Michael Keaton as an eccentric playwright who's divorced (or about to be) because he was unfaithful, and he's got a teenage daughter who's sassy and eccentric and figuring out who she wants to sleep with. AND the playwright has an issue with a theater critic who's known for tearing apart his productions in reviews. Really, the only thing missing here is the costumed super-hero voice in his head, and the only thing missing THERE is the focus on the baseball game. Other than that, very similar films, only "Game 6" came first and "Birdman" won Best Picture. You could do a lot worse than making a double feature here, compare and contrast, and I might be overdue for a re-watch on "Birdman" myself.
I remember the night of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series myself, I had just moved to NYC to attend film school at NYU the month before, and I had adopted the Mets as my new team because my roommate was a hardcore fan - but I was raised as a Red Sox fan by my grandfather in suburban Massachusetts, so now I was torn when the two teams ended up in the World Series. Really, I was good either way, because both teams had a reputation for being sad sacks, also-rans, but at least the Mets had won a World Series 20 years ago, not 70. So I also let myself believe that the Red Sox might finally break "The Curse of the Bambino", but then again, they'd never won a Series within my lifetime, so why expect that to change? I got to know the Mets team members a little better, everyone from Gary Carter to Ron Darling to Daryl Strawberry and Bobby Ojeda, still there were two sets of lovable losers, only one was about to have their losing streak come to an end.
It felt like everything stopped in New York once the World Series started, it was all that everyone could talk about, think about, you had to plan where you were going to watch the next game based on who had the bigger TV and the best reception. My dorm had cable, but only in the common room downstairs, we sure couldn't afford it as freshman students. But you could also walk by a bar or any P.C. Richards electronic store if you were really in a fix, every TV in every store was also tuned to the games. Much like Nicky Rogan in this film, I was behind enemy lines, living in Mets territory but secretly rooting for the Red Sox, yet knowing how much heartbreak had come down that road in the past, I'll admit it was easier to cheer for the Mets, at least in public.
I only had my classes at NYU to worry about, Nicky's life here is much more complicated, with a wife who's talking to a prominent divorce lawyer, a daughter who's willing to attend the opening night of his play BUT not bring a date, and this theater critic who attends Broadway openings in disguise, much like restaurant critics allegedly do. In the day leading up to his play's opening night, Nicky's got to visit his father, get a haircut (on that same block), also help his older actor with worsening dementia remember his most crucial line, then meet up with his wife and his girlfriend, not necessarily in that order. Numerous cab rides across town, back and forth, that really will eat up your whole day, because none of those cabs seem to be MOVING, they're all just stuck in traffic and really, wouldn't it be easier to just walk or take the subway? Plus every time he's in a cab he points out that he used to drive a cab himself, and then the conversation starts with the driver and I think most of the time he never gets around to telling the cabbie where his destination is. Anyway, those exploding steam pipes bursting up from the ground have a way of cutting his cab rides short - remember to hold your breath as you run away!
Nicky decides to NOT go to his own opening night, because Game 6, where the Red Sox were up three games to two and they COULD HAVE won it all. "This could be it..." was a line in Nicky's play, but he also heard his dining companions (a lady he met in a cab and her son, who mistook him for a gangster, not a playwright) say it to be encouraging. "This could be it...", the moment the Red Sox strike out Mookie Wilson in the 10th inning and win the Series.
Funny story, it was NOT it. Mookie bunted or hit a slow ground ball up the first base line, and the ball ended up going between Bill Buckner's legs, Mookie made it to first base and Ray Knight scored from second, the Mets won Game 6 to tie the series at three games each, forcing a seventh game, which they also won. The Red Sox did not break the Curse until 2004, and that time I was rooting for Boston all the way, and I vividly remember the night it happened, because I had just sold my condo in Park Slope and received a six-figure check, which I had to turn around and use to buy our house in Queens. But for the moment I had a very large bank account, my wife and I went to sit on a bench in Prospect Park and I noted a series of very unlikely events, which included the money, the Red Sox winning the series, and also there was a lunar eclipse. It was all a bit freaky, but that night it felt like anything, everything was possible.
It's an illusion, of course, we lead ourselves to believe that if our favorite team wins a championship that our being fans maybe had something to do with it, or that it's a sign that things are going well with the universe, or perhaps that better times are ahead. It feels great, but it's a false idolatry, the truth is that our actions don't impact the game, and we shouldn't let the game impact our feelings. Something to keep in mind as Super Bowl season approaches, like every other event, one team's going to win, one's going to lose. One city's fans are going to be happy, the other's, not so much. Eagles fans in Philadelphia recently celebrated their team's victory that put them INTO the Super Bowl by gathering in the streets, and climbing poles for some reason. The police had even greased the poles to make them harder to climb but still, fans persisted, some fell from great heights to the street and possibly got injured, and come on, people, I know you love your team but it's just not worth it.
Your life may be going well, or things may be falling apart. At the same time, your sports team may be on top, or already done for the season. These two things are (and should be) independent of each other - and it's not uncommon for part of your life to be going well and part of your life to be in disarray, it happens. Just try to not connect too many dots, I guess. Nicky Rogan makes that mistake, and it sends him into a form of sports madness, watching the Red Sox lose Game 6 actually gives him the great idea to track down that theater critic with a GUN and ask why he traditionally tears his plays to pieces in his reviews. Little does Nicky know that the critic hooked up with his daughter after the play, and they're both back at the critic's secret apartment. I won't spoil what happens when Nicky tracks them down, because it's not really something you can see coming.
Before I sign off tonight, I want to mention a NYC legend, seen in this film and many others - "Radio Man", aka Craig Castaldo. He's a former (?) homeless guy who's been a fixture on the movie set scene for years, he's made cameos in films like "The Irishman", "The Departed", "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days", and a couple Sandler films, "Mr. Deeds" and "Little Nicky", among many others. I think the guy just had a knack for finding movie sets, maybe because he was always outside or riding around on his bike (with a big boombox in the basket, hence the nickname). His cameo credits go back to at least 1998, and he is still around, I've seen him twice outside the theater while working outdoor shifts during red-carpet premieres. One might have been the premiere of the film "IF", which he is also in. But he's not doing so well, I saw him outside the premiere of "A Complete Unknown" in December and he seemed to be in his own head-space, muttering to himself, which for all I know is totally normal for him. But I said, "Hey, Radio Man" and I didn't even get a wave from him, so I'm not sure how much longer he'll be around. You can also see him on Instagram, posing with Adrien Brody and Schwarzenegger and Johnny Depp, so at least he's got somebody doing social media for him.
Directed by: Michael Hoffman (director of "The Emperor's Club")
Also starring Michael Keaton (last seen in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Stan Lee"), Ari Graynor (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Bebe Neuwirth (last seen in "Green Card"), Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Touched with Fire"), Shalom Harlow (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Nadia Dajani (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Harris Yulin (last seen in "Norman"), Roger Rees (last seen in "Sly"), Tom Aldredge (last seen in "Rounders"), Lillias White (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Amir Ali Said (last seen in "Inside Man"), Rock Kohli (last seen in "13"), John Tormey (last seen in "The Yards"), Frank Ciornei (last seen in "Mr. Popper's Penguins"), Uzi Parnes, Neal Jones (last seen in "In America"), Arnie Burton (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Patrick J. Ssenjovu (last seen in "The Interpreter"), Harry Bugin (last seen in "The Hudsucker Proxy"), Bobby Steggert (last seen in "The Namesake"), Ken Barnett (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Wade Mylius (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys"), Eric Zuckerman (last seen in "When In Rome"), Craig "Radio Man" Castaldo (last seen in "IF"), Bern Cohen, Elli, Christopher Jon Gombos, Gary Lee Mahmoud, Chike Mendez, Loukas Papas, Tony Torn, with the voices of David Guion, Vin Scully, and archive footage of Roger Clemens, Mookie Wilson, Gary Carter et al.
RATING: 6 out of 10 bottles of champagne (left unopened in the Red Sox locker room)
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