BEFORE: It's my day off at home, so I've got time to burn some DVDs and do a little grocery shopping (just milk and cheese, no eggs, who can afford them?) and re-schedule my dentist appointment for next Monday because there's a "Twin Peaks" themed event at the Brooklyn Brewery that I want to go to (who drinks beer on a Monday?) and also, we're getting our taxes done on Saturday, I know we're very early but we're going away in March for 5 days, so better to get it done now. Anyway, if I can buy cat food today then we're clear on Saturday after the tax return, that's when we like to go to IHOP and celebrate another successful year of our mutually beneficial economic relationship (who calls their marriage this?).
This one's a no-brainer, Asa Butterfield carries over from "A Brilliant Young Mind". Here's the line-up for Friday, 2/21, Day 21 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":
Best Costume Winners and Nominees:
8:30 am "Gate of Hell" (1954)
10:15 am "Les Girls" (1957)
12:15 pm "The Adventures of Don Juan" (1948)
2:15 pm "The Night of the Iguana" (1964)
4:15 pm "Indiscretion of an American Wife" (1954)
5:30 pm "8 1/2" (1963)
Oscar Worthy Comic Relief:
8:00 pm "The Circus" (1928)
9:30 pm "Born Yesterday" (1950)
11:30 pm "Some Like It Hot" (1959)
1:45 am "My Favorite Year" (1982)
3:30 am "Ninotchka" (1939)
I was at 97 seen out of 232, and I've seen only 3 out of Friday's 11: "The Night of the Iguana", "Some Like It Hot" and "My Favorite Year". I keep meaning to watch "Born Yesterday" and "8 1/2" but I never seem to get around to them. SO now 100 seen out of 243 takes me to 41.1%.
FOLLOW UP TO: "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" (Movie #4,809)
THE PLOT: A hypochondriac working as an airport baggage handler is forced to confront his fears when a British teenager with a terminal illness enlists him to help carry out her eccentric bucket list.
AFTER: I'm suffering from some advanced form of burn-out, because all I really want to do on my day off is burn those DVDs and play phone games, however I know all about phone addiction and brain rot, so I didn't allow myself to even START that today until I took care of those other things. And the universe helped, because just after I said that I needed to call the dentist to re-schedule, the dentist's office called ME and asked me to confirm, which gave me the opportunity to re-schedule without making the call. I manifested that, somehow, or more likely my subconscious knew that if it's four days before the appointment and I haven't confirmed, I'm going to get a call. Then I was kind of back in control of things, because I knew that if I didn't go get groceries, we (and our cats) would be short on food, eventually. But it's getting harder to tell which things I am in control of and which things the universe is in charge of. Maybe everything is some combination of both, like the sailboat metaphor where you can't change the wind's direction, but you can change your sails to take better advantage of it. I can't control things like which movies run on cable, but I can make myself aware of what's on cable and what's on streaming, and plan accordingly.
Maybe there's some relationship advice hidden in there somewhere, you can't really control who you meet out in the world, but you can get out there and try to meet MORE people, and thus increase your odds of finding that lid for your pot. You can't make another person like you or love you, but you can be positive and be yourself and try to at least appear confident, and thus similarly increase your odds. Control the things that you can control, and then hope that the rest of the things fall into place, and appreciate it when they do and try to understand it when they don't. Because there's always the unexpected things happening, which you can't even anticipate just because of their very nature as unexpected things. You can date somebody but you can't foresee how long they'll be interested in you, how long you both will live, whether one of you will want to move away or just need something or someone different in their lives. Health is a whole other variable in that equation, and even though I'm pretty burned out on this as a topic (already "death of a spouse or family member" is proving to be a major topic this year, and we're only in February.)
So yeah, I'm burned out on the whole romance genre, but I'm specifically burned out on the people in relationships in bad health, aka the dead spouse or dying teen movies. In addition to "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", there's "The Fault in Our Stars", "A Walk to Remember", "Sweet November", those are the ones I've seen, though there are a few more. Then there are romances where someone else dies, like "Life as a House" or "The Last Song", and more where someone from an adult couple dies, like "Moonlight and Valentino", and I just don't know if screenwriters are just trying to find balance by placing love and death in the same movie, or if this is just the way life is and movies reflect that, or if everything's just random and movies are just trying to show it all. I guess I just have to take these films as they come and try to deal with everything they're throwing at me, but really I just want to get off this whole romance topic, eventually if not now.
Calvin here is a young man in his twenties who's a hypochondriac, and keeps a journal of all of his symptoms that goes back years. His doctor, who believes him to be in good health overall, suggests that he go to a support group for people with cancer, just to gain some perspective. I don't think a doctor would really do this, because that seems kind of deceptive, maybe even belittling of the disease somehow, but here it's what causes confusion when he meets Skye, who really DOES have cancer, and she yanks his chain but also befriends him and then enlists him to help her complete her bucket list. But instead of things like "travel" and "make peace with people" it's got things on it like shoplifting and losing her virginity. Yeah, she's a bit of a wild one, but maybe that's what Calvin needs in his boring life. Later he admits that Skye both terrifies and excites him.
He works at an airport, and he's got a thing for a flight attendant, only he can never work up the nerve to talk to her. But Skye helps him break the ice, however she also mentions to Izzy that she met Calvin in a cancer support group, so naturally Izzy thinks that Calvin has cancer, when he does not. Ha ha, what a hilarious misunderstanding, only it's not, really. Izzy is more upset that he didn't correct the misconception when he had the chance, which is really the same as a lie in her eyes. The reason for Calvin's fear of death and his obsession with thinking he's sick is somehow related to the death of his twin sister, there was a car accident when they were 8 and Calvin's mother has never really mentally recovered from it. Calvin also hasn't celebrated his birthday since, because it would only remind his mother about the daughter she lost.
It's really one big bummer of a film, I'm not going to say it has a happy ending, because it obviously doesn't, and part of me just doesn't understand, I mean I know not every movie can be a "feel-good" movie, because that wouldn't represent the ups and downs of life, I just think it's odd to set out to make a movie that is so maudlin by design, Calvin's always either depressed or having a panic attack, because he hasn't yet learned that life has these ups and downs and you have to try to keep an even keel somehow, or else learn to accept the things you can't change or control. I guess maybe you have to go through these great pains before you can learn to deal with them.
This film was shot in and around Kingston, NY, which is a place that I've been - I've been to a number of places in upstate NY, like Cooperstown and Lake George and Monroe and New City and when I was a kid, we drove all around the state and stopped in Rochester and Niagara Falls (visited Lake George + Niagara twice, once as a kid and once as an adult). I'm pretty sure I also visited West Point on a junior high class trip. A couple of years ago my wife and I explored the Monticello area, which also included Bethel, Narrowsburg and Callicoon. But it was back in 2012 when we visited some of her family friends who were staying in a trailer park near Kingston, we also toured Rhinebeck on that same trip. Had some great meals, visited the Culinary Institute of America, and hit some antique stores and a big flea market in a parking lot. These days I tend to stay away from that whole area because I know my ex-wife lives up near there somewhere and I don't really want to run into her.
Now I'm kind of glad I added that extra Sally Field film, because it put "A Brilliant Young Mind" into slot 4,950 - if tonight's film had ended up there it would have been something of a bummer. But I need to start looking ahead to Big Movie 5,000 - because I'm just 49 movies away. What do I even choose for that film? What film could possibly live up to such a nice, big, round number? Should I even try to influence that, or just let it be? It's kind of the same conundrum as above, do I want to try to manifest something for that special occasion? I can't control how GOOD any movie is going to be, it's always something of a toss-up. I've only programmed through St. Patrick's Day right now, which will be Movie #4,978 I think, so I don't know what happens after that, or even what I want to happen after that. Plus we're taking a 5-day vacation in late March, so I can't quite see past that right now. Easter's not until April 20, so that's too far off, I'll just have to pick an Easter movie that's somehow got marijuana in it and then see how I can connect to it, before I'll even have a hint about what will be Big Movie 5,000.
Also starring Maisie Williams (last seen in "The New Mutants"), Nina Dobrev (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Ken Jeong (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Tyler Hoechlin (last seen in "Palm Springs"), David Koechner (last seen in "Yours, Mine & Ours"), Peyton List (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Tituss Burgess (last seen in "Respect"), Sonya Walger (last seen in "The Gambler"), Margot Bingham, Colin Moss, Briana Venskus (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Ron Simons (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Angel Valle Jr., L. Steven Taylor, Francesca Noel, Ann Osmond (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Ken Tsukada, Crystal Tweed (last seen in "Paint"), Terri Gittens, Megan Peters, Vickie Russell, Morgan Larson, Rabbi Joseph Kolakowski, Obada Adnan.
RATING: 5 out of 10 brightly colored wigs
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