BEFORE: OK, as promised, here are the actor links that are going to get me through February: Cobie Smulders, Cullen Moss, Amanda Seyfried, Oliver Platt, Heather Graham, Sally Field, James Caan, Christopher Lloyd, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Elena Kampouris, Lainie Kazan, Jennifer Lopez, Kari Matchett, Sally Hawkins, Asa Butterfield, Ken Jeong, Allison Janney, Ennis Esmer, Mackenzie Davis, Josh Pais, Sue Jean Kim, Kyle Bornhemier, Anna Camp, Heather Graham (again), Damon Wayans Jr. The romance chain's going to spill into March a bit, but I'll deal with that when we get there. Griffin Dunne carries over from "Game 6".
And here's the schedule for February 2, Day 2 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar programming:
Best Picture Winners and Nominees:
6:00 am "Smilin' Through" (1932)
7:45 am "Four Daughters" (1938)
9:30 am "All This, and Heaven Too" (1940)
12:00 pm "A Passage to India" (1984)
3:00 pm "Tom Jones" (1963)
5:15 pm "Oliver!" (1968)
Oscar Worthy Teachers:
8:00 pm "Mr. Holland's Opus" (1995)
10:30 pm "The Miracle Worker" (1962)
12:30 am "The Paper Chase" (1973)
2:30 am "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1939)
4:30 am "Rachel, Rachel" (1968)
Yeah, I printed this one yesterday, on Day 1, so I went back and corrected yesterday's post. Again, I've seen four of these, "A Passage to India", "Tom Jones", "Oliver!", and "Mr. Holland's Opus". I watched the remake of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", but that hardly counts, and "The Miracle Worker", I'm not sure about it, but I think I probably watched the 1979 remake when I was a kid, with Patty Duke playing Annie Sullivan, not Helen Keller.
Another 4 out of these 11 added to yesterdays 7 out of 12 now brings me to 11 out of 23, I've already fallen to 47.8%, we'll see what the future schedule brings.
THE PLOT: A rock musician enrolls in college after she breaks up with her boyfriend and her band falls apart.
AFTER: There's just not a lot going ON in today's film, but I think that's fine for my schedule, you've just got to ease into these romance movies, like it's a cold swimming pool. You don't want to just jump into the deep end, like start with "The Notebook" or "How to Deal", that would be too jarring. Yesterday's film had a playwright who had both a wife and a girlfriend, but that was not really the focus of the film, it was just the situation he happened to be in. Similarly tonight, we've got a woman who just broke up with her boyfriend AND her band, so she's lost in several ways, everything she knew is different now, and she has to figure out who she's going to be. Hey, it happens, people go away, jobs go away, you can take some time for yourself but then you have to start rebuilding things at some point. We've all been there, and we all may be there again.
Joanne's the lead singer for the Filthy Dukes and her band has decided that their crowds have become a bit too small, the venues a bit too minor, and there's no point in continuing. They happen to be in the U.K. at the time, and Joanne happens to be in a situationship with their road manager, so yeah, a bit awkward. So she goes to a pub near where her friend Sara lives and waits for her to bike by. Sara lives in a caravan (what we call a trailer in the U.S.) and they have a night together where they get drunk and talk about their hopes and dreams and maybe future plans, in the morning Joanne realizes they've signed up for university to study marine biology, or at least that was the plan they came up with. Well, at least there's a plan...
It's not really clear if they OFFICIALLY enroll, or if Sara just talks to the guy in charge of admissions and housing and gets them set up. Joanne had met that guy, Pete, the previous night in the pub and they had an awkward conversation because he wasn't sure if she really was that rock singer from America, and then Joanne made fun of his "trainers" (sneakers, I think.)
The problem is, the movie doesn't really GO anywhere from there, Joanne and Sara move into university housing, they drink every night, they don't seem to go to any classes, and Joanne keeps trying to hook up with Pete, but also manages to keep him at arm's length at the same time. Can that really work, an American rock star and a regular guy from the U.K.? She's famous, or at least semi-famous, and he's just a guy who works for the school. Stranger things have happened, sure, but where's the attraction? What do they have in common? Is this just another situationship because this guy is nearby?
I think the movie acknowledges its own problems, because we see Joanne have a zoom call with her father in Seattle, and he relates the story of how he met her (now-late) mother, and it's very romantic, it puts Joanne's meet-cute with Pete to shame. So again, WHY is she with Pete? Does she not feel she can do any better, because she's going through some stuff? Her tour manager ex also keeps showing up and he wants to get back together, but that doesn't seem to appeal to Joanne, who just wants to party and sleep around for a while, maybe get into songwriting, but she sure doesn't want to go to any university classes, so she'll probably leave this exciting non-study of marine biology at some point, but where to? Back to Seattle to live near or with her father? Or on the road performing her old hits as a solo act? It's all so up in the air - I don't mean to rush you, Joanne, but please pick something, anything.
The other big problem here, I think, is that this movie was shot in just five days and was all improvised, so there really should have been some plot points to anchor the story, because instead it just kind of drifts along, not really focused on moving in any specific direction. But it's OK for my purposes today, because this topic is just getting started and I'm sure we'll be ramping up very soon.
Directed by: Jamie Adams
Also starring Cobie Smulders (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Richard Elis, Jessica Hynes (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Emily Atack, Holli Dempsey, Daisy Haggard (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Abbie Murphy, Laura Patch, Ian Smith, Mandeep Dhillon (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Tara Lee (last seen in "Jimi: All Is by My Side"), Craig Russell, Noel Clarke (last seen in "Mute"), Neil Fox, Kingsley Marshall.
RATING: 4 out of 10 bottles of Peroni beer (empties)
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