Places in the Heart

Year 17, Day 39 - 2/8/25 - Movie #4,939

BEFORE: Sally Field carries over again from "Spoiler Alert", and I'm taking it as a sign from the universe, or at least the Classic Movie-verse that my interests have aligned with the Turner Classic Movies "31 Days of Oscar" programming.  The Sally Field part of my chain was set up to be here long before I knew that TCM would be playing "Places in the Heart" today. This is the film for which Ms. Field won her second Best Actress Oscar, the first was for "Norma Rae" in 1979, and I've been trying to link to that one for years. (Sure, I could just drop that one in here, too, but is that really a romance film, or primarily just a film about unionizing? It feels like cheating to include that one, too.). 

I'm going to watch this one on Tubi, but remember it's airing TONIGHT at 8 pm on TCM. I did this last year with "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", which synched up nicely with my February programming, I was already scheduled to watch two films connected by Ellen Burstyn and it just slid right on in-between. But what's playing tomorrow on TCM?  Here's the line-up for Sunday, 2/9, Day 9 of 31 Days of Oscar:

Best Picture Winners and Nominees:

6:45 am "One Foot in Heaven" (1941)

8:45 am "The Good Earth" (1937)

11:15 am "Lady for a Day" (1933)

1:00 pm "Libeled Lady" (1936)

2:45 pm "Gigi" (1958)

5:00 pm "My Fair Lady" (1964)

Oscar Worthy Lawyers: 

8:00 pm "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) 

10:15 pm "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957)

12:30 am "Inherit the Wind" (1960)

2:45 am "Trial" (1955)

4:45 am "A Free Soul" (1931)

I was at 37 seen out of 94, and I've seen another 5 out of today's 11: "Gigi", "My Fair Lady", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Witness for the Prosecution" and "Inherit the Wind" SO now 42 seen out of 105 is a dead-on 40%.

THE PLOT: In north Texas in the 1930's, a widow with two small children tries to save her small 40-acre farm with the help of a blind boarder and an itinerant black handyman. 

AFTER: OK, I'm good with this choice because there's a LITTLE bit of romance in the subject matter of this film. Sally Field's character, Edna Spalding, only has a little quality time with her husband at the start before his sheriff job turns her into a widow, but there's a sub-plot with a love triangle for three other characters, one of whom is Edna's sister. It's an affair between two married  (not to each other) people so I guess that makes it a quadrangle?  The two couples are close, they go to community dances and play cards together, so yeah, they were kind of asking for it, naturally one person from one couple's going to fool around with someone from the other couple, that's just human nature, right? 

But there's other stuff here about the Ku Klux Klan, and a handyman who's got experience picking cotton, which is going to come in really useful if Edna's going to try to raise enough money to keep her house and land.  So there you go, I found the film that exists at the intersection of romance, Black History month, and Oscar season. It may be the perfect February film!  Of course, it's the bad parts of Black History, with the KKK and the lynchings and such. Oh, well, I'll try to do a follow-up later in the year with the heroes of the Civil Rights movement, as per usual. 

Tonight we're looking back at a much simpler time in U.S. History. A time when a dozen eggs cost a nickel, President Roosevelt had a plan to fix the economy, but it would take a World War to finally do that, and also Ed Harris had hair. People traveled from town to town by hopping on a boxcar and then begging for food once they got there, because there were simply NO jobs to be found anywhere. Sure, you could make money by farming, but it was nearly impossible to scrape together $13 so you could buy a few bags of seeds, but even then, where would you plant them?  How would you even get the horses or mules you needed to pull the plow?  And then what if it doesn't rain? Then you're really sunk. Look, I don't know farming, all I know is animation production - but I do know what it's like to work for a company that is deep in debt and has no spare money. So to me this is like a director who could make a new animated short and sell it, only he can't afford the paper to draw on, or that box of colored pencils. But you have to take that leap and put those supplies on your credit card, otherwise you'll never make the next film and get it out there on the festival circuit.  

I wish I could have learned more about the complicated love triangle here - I guess one woman is the local teacher and the other is Edna's sister, who runs a beauty salon out of her house. Because in those days you didn't need a storefront, a business license, disability insurance, and promotions on social media, you only needed a sign hung outside your house. But who is Wayne, the man caught between Margaret and Viola? What does he do for a living, when he's not bouncing between these two women, who seem to be friends with each other, but they're breaking the girl code if Viola's sleeping with Margaret's husband and keeping that from her.  How did they get into this situation, exactly? Is there a way out of this that doesn't destroy their friendship? Probably not. Is Viola seriously trying to upgrade from her husband to Wayne? Can she pull off the swap, leaving her husband for Margaret? Nah, it probably doesn't work that way - everybody just wants to keep what they have, plus have something else on the side. Well, it was the Depression, I guess you had to grab any little happiness you could find, even if it was with somebody else's spouse. 

There's really no time to get into this, because we have to follow Edna's struggle to buy cotton seed, learn how to write a check, and take in a blind boarder who is the banker's brother-in-law, so that she can raise enough money to make the mortgage payment on her farm since she doesn't have her dead husband's sheriff income. (NITPICK POINT: They didn't have pensions back then? Death benefits?) It's really hard to tell what the banker's motivation is, because sometimes he seems to be on Edna's side and other times, not so much. (Did he REALLY suggest that she sell her house and get her family to raise one of her kids?) Maybe he just really wants to pawn off his blind brother-in-law on somebody else. And what's the deal with that guy, Mr. Will? He earns his money by making brooms and caned chairs, listening to audio books on his gramophone, and generally trying to keep to himself. Or, maybe he's a pervert pretending to be blind, just so he can walk into a room when Edna's taking a bath and get a good look. It's hard to say, but that seems a bit of a stretch. 

There's really no time to get into any of this, because a tornado attacks the town and levels most of the houses.  Well, it is north Texas, and that's pretty close to Oklahoma, which is noted for its tornadoes. Everybody seems to know what to do when a tornado strikes, however many of them are dead wrong. Living in your car certainly proves to be a bad idea, and one theory says to open all your windows and lie down on the floor, because if the wind doesn't go through the house, it's going to blow down the house. This also feels like terrible advice, I think maybe that house is coming down no matter what, whether the windows are open or closed. I wonder if families used to argue about this back in the day - but the only really safe place is the storm cellar, as we all know from watching "The Wizard of Oz".  

Edna and her kids, plus Mr. Will and Moses all make it to the storm cellar, and their house is one of the few left standing - while this is the last straw for Viola, she wants to move away to someplace with fewer tornadoes, because this is going to keep happening again and again, and the town will always be poor because it's always recovering. Well, she's not wrong. But Edna has a chance to get her cotton picked if she can somehow hire 10 more people as temp workers, which will increase her costs, but there's a bigger payoff - if she can produce the first bale of cotton in the county, there's a $100 bonus.  A bit of a contrivance, perhaps, and it's a wonder that the bank can afford to keep this tradition going, what with the Depression and all. But hey, whatever makes your crop profitable and gets the bank off your back is fair game.  So even if you end up with sore knees and torn-up fingers, you got to keep your house and your land, that's a pretty big deal.

The only last problem is that the Klan doesn't really like the fact that a black man had some success growing cotton, and he didn't have the common decency to be a slave while he did it. He had the nerve to get paid for his efforts!  So they come around to pay him a visit and explain why they can't let him get ahead and be successful, but he's saved by blind Mr. Will, who somehow knows where Edna's dead husband's gun is, and has a system for navigating his way out to the barn, where Moses is getting beaten.  Also, his uncanny ear for voices enables him to identify the six Klansmen, they're all people he's made brooms for, or something.  Why these Klansmen don't just kill Mr. Will, who can identify them all, is a bit harder to understand, maybe they just won't kill a white guy and it's as simple as that.  

There's a weird cop-out ending, because really, how do you end a film like this?  We see a church service and everyone's there, even the people who moved out of town or died or something. Most likely this is a metaphor for how we'll all be together again in that great big Dustbowl, Depression-era town in the sky someday, but it's still a bit odd. But with the similarly weird endings of "Safe Haven" and "Spoiler Alert" where death is concerned, this kind of fits right in with other recent films. It couldn't possibly be that we die and then nothing happens after that, right?  

Directed by: Robert Benton (director of "Feast of Love")

Also starring Lindsay Crouse (last seen in "Mr. Brooks"), Ed Harris (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), Amy Madigan (last seen in "Antlers"), John Malkovich (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Danny Glover (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Yankton Hatten, Gennie James, Lane Smith (last seen in "Frances"), Terry O'Quinn (last seen in "Primal Fear"), Bert Remsen (last seen in "Miss Firecracker"), Ray Baker (last seen in "Sweet November"), Jay Patterson (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Toni Hudson, De'voreaux White, Jerry Haynes (last seen in "Sweet Dreams"), Lou Hancock (last seen in "The Grifters"), Shelby Brammer (last seen in "Kramer vs. Kramer"), Norma Young, Bill Thurman (last seen in "The Sugarland Express"), Jim Gough, Cliff Bruner, Arthur Pugh, Matthew Posey (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven" (2016)), Shanna Shrum, Lynn D. Lasswell Jr., Paul Goodwin, Connie Grandell, and the voice of William J. Welch.

RATING: 6 out of 10 verses of "Cotton Eye Joe" (see, kids, that song's been around a LONG long time...)

Spoiler Alert

Year 17, Day 38 - 2/7/25 - Movie #4,938

BEFORE: Sally Field carries over from "Say It Isn't So", and I have to apologize for the tonal whiplash here - I realize I'm going from a silly, stupid, gross-out comedy about a guy maybe sleeping with his sister to a dramatic, thought-provoking film about gay relationships and dealing with a serious illness. Well, we're looking at all aspects of all types of romance stories, it can sometimes be a very broad spectrum. What can I say?  Mea culpa - one film delighted coming up with the term "fagnostic" for someone who hasn't decided if they're gay or not, I'll just let you guess which film that was. It wasn't me, I'm just the messenger here. 

A quick recap of the line-up for Saturday, 2/8, Day 8 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar event:

Best Picture Winners and Nominees:

6:15 am "Flirtation Walk" (1934)

8:15 am "Here Comes the Navy" (1934)

10:00 am "Captain Blood" (1935)

12:15 pm "Cabin in the Sky" (1943)

2:15 pm "Cimarron" (1931)

2:30 pm "How the West Was Won" (1962)

5:30 pm "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)

Oscar Worthy Moms: 

8:00 pm "Places in the Heart" (1984) starring SALLY FIELD!  YES! 

10:00 pm "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (2017)

12:15 am "Imitation of Life" (1959)

2:30 am "Mildred Pierce" (1945)

4:30 am "Mrs. Miniver" (1942)

I was at 31 seen out of 82, and I've seen 5 out of today's 12: "Captain Blood", "All Quiet on the Western Front", "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", "Mildred Pierce" and "Mrs. Miniver" BUT if I want to drop in "Places in the Heart", this movie from 1984 with Sally Field in it, that would be SIX instead of five. I'm not sure it's a romance per se, but, well, the title sounds like it is. Let me think about it, I was going to drop in "Murphy's Romance" tomorrow but maybe I can squeeze in both. 37 seen out of 94 would take me back up to 39.3%

THE PLOT: The story of Michael Ausiello and Kit Cowan's relationship, which takes a tragic turn when Cowan is diagnosed with terminal cancer. 

AFTER: Since this film is based on a true story, here's a true story of my own: since taking the job at the movie theater three years ago, I've had the occasion, several times, to work behind-the-scenes at a film festival called NewFest, which, yup, specializes in highlighting queer stories. So yeah, I've managed some lobby parties where there were drag queens. The theater also hosted the red-carpet premiere of the film "Fire Island", which I haven't been able to watch yet, but that film had the single LARGEST attendance I've seen at the theater, and they filled the BIG theater up TWICE. So you can put your head in the sand and try to tell yourself there's not a big market for gay movies, and you would be 100% wrong. Oh, yeah, there's the director of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", he came up to me and asked a question - dude, I'm not even gay, and I recognized John Cameron Mitchell.

Earlier this year at NewFest there was a screening of a film called "High Tide", and after it a Q&A panel with the cast, which included Bill Irwin. Most of my co-workers at the theater didn't know who that even was, I had to show them the video for "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and explain that he's the guy in it who isn't Bobby McFerrin or Robin Williams. But hell, I know the guy from the FX show "Legion" and a dozen other things. Anyway he took the opportunity on the stage to thank the gay community for accepting him in this movie, and he apparently learned a lot from being in the movie, because he was raised to be a bit homophobic, and he's trying to do better. This was met with awkward silence from a large crowd of gay people, and man, I was thinking, "Yeah, maybe read the room before you declare yourself to be a homophobe, just a thought."  But now this kind of makes no sense, because Bill Irwin was in THIS film that came out two years earlier, in which he plays the father of a gay man who seems pretty OK with his son's orientation. (sorry, sexual identity, orientation was my generation's term.)

The point of the film here, and I know this may sound shocking to some people, is that gay relationships are a lot like straight relationships, at least in the important ways. There was a time that nobody thought this way, that some junk science told us there was something inherently different about gay people, that they were somehow biologically incapable of forming monogamous relationships, that they just aren't wired that way. Well, the truth is that there are a lot of straight people who are ALSO not wired that way, or else they're just not good at being faithful to their spouses. This goes double for famous people and Republicans, I think, because it turns out that men (maybe women too, but especially men) are only as faithful as their situations allow them to be.  Given the opportunity to cheat, some people will, some people won't, gay, straight, bi, doesn't matter (and famous people have fans, therefore, more opportunities, more likely to cheat.). The non-famous people, without so many temptations, find it a little easier, maybe - nobody to cheat WITH, therefore no cheating.  

And there may be a discrepancy in any couple - one may be more likely to stray than the other. One person may have more experiences than the other, because there are introverts and extroverts in this world, there's no one way to be, maybe it's a sliding scale. You can be someone likely to cheat and be married to someone who isn't, yeah, that means there may be something to deal with there in the future. That brings us to the case of Michael, a writer for TV Guide who has a large collection of Smurfs memorabilia, and Kit, a photographer who travels around the world and enjoys nightclubs and has never had a steady boyfriend, never needed one before. You can kind of read between the lines here and figure out which one is the introvert and which one's the extrovert, from there it doesn't take a lot to figure out who's better at being faithful. 

Again, it's not a gay or straight thing, all couples go through this, after that honeymoon period ends, a few years later they could settle into that routine where they're basically just roommates, the sex-citement is gone, and then they have to make some decisions - stick together and lead a happy, satisfying but mostly celibate life with a long-term partner, or burn that to the ground and go out and party, dump Mr. Right for Mr. Right Now.  Well, gay people, you wanted the right to get married, and you got it, now a few other things are naturally going to come along with that. Gay divorce is one, and the possibility of being in a loving but sex-free marriage is another.  Again, don't blame me, I'm just the messenger. 

Michael and Kit have 12 years together before they're in therapy together and their sex life deteriorates, Michael's drinking too much and Kit's smoking too much weed, and they're both watching too much TV, only not the same shows. Yep, that sounds like a marriage. Michael also suspects that Kit's having an affair with his co-worker, Sebastian, and when Kit admits it, then Kit moves out for a while until they can sort this whole thing out. But that's when he starts feeling sick, and when he's diagnosed with cancer, they reconcile and Kit moves back in with Michael.  During Kit's various treatments they do decide to get married for real, in the legal sense, but come on, they were already married in every other possible sense of the word. They were right on the same track as any straight couple together for that long - no sex life together, couples counseling, affair with the co-worker, spending time apart. At that point Michael's like a woman whose boyfriend is going off to World War II, he might as well just get married for the death benefits. 

Oops, spoiler alert. Well, at least it's right there in the title, and the film kind of starts with the ending, so I'm not really giving anything away here. 

Directed by: Michael Showalter (director of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye")

Also starring Jim Parsons (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Ben Aldridge (last seen in "Knock at the Cabin"), Josh Pais (last seen in "Year of the Dog"), Allegra Heart, Jeffery Self (last seen in "The High Note"), Braxton Fannin, Brody Caines, Tara Summers (last seen in "Driven"), Corey Saucier, Megan Irminger, Nikki M. James (last seen in "All Is Bright"), Sadie Scott, Eleni Yiovas, Bill Irwin (last seen in "Rustin"), Jason Gotay, Nhumi Threadgill (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), David Marshall Grant (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Antoni Porokowski, Supriya Ganesh, Winslow Bright (last seen in "Dumb Money"), Lori Hammel (last seen in "Puzzle"), Erica Cho (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Grace Porter, Kate Pittard, Eric Elizaga, Seth Barrish (last seen in "Somewhere in Queens"), Shunori Ramanathan (last seen in "Worth"), Christine Renee Miller, Paco Lozano,  Claudia Hill, Ashley Marie Arnold, Ken Holmes with archive footage of RuPaul (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Keri Russell (last seen in "Dark Skies").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Christmas cards

Say It Isn't So

Year 17, Day 37 - 2/6/25 - Movie #4,937

BEFORE: Today's film is another one that was on my always-crashing DVR, so I lost access to it when I upgraded my equipment.  Really, I think the cable company (you know the one) should have designed the DVRs better, so that if something went wrong with the equipment, they could swap out the drive to a new box, or have some way to download those files and then upload them to the new box.  They're just files on a drive, after all, and I paid for them, so I should still have access to them. But that's just not where we find ourselves, is it?  All that money being spent on working out how to send people to Mars, and I can't keep the movies I downloaded to my DVR.  Yes, it's all about me. 

Heather Graham carries over from "Hope Springs" (2003). I will make, umm, an alternate method of watching this film tonight, just so I can cross it off my list and maintain the chain. I take no pleasure in doing this, except for the joy that comes from crossing the title out with a pen. 

Let's check what's happening tomorrow, 2/7, Day 7 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar line-up:

Best Original Song Winners and Nominees:

7:15 am "Blues in the Night" (1941)

8:45 am "Gold Diggers of 1935" (1935)

10:30 am "Born to Dance" (1936)

12:30 pm "Cabin in the Sky" (1943)

2:15 pm "Strike Up the Band" (1940)

4:30 pm "The Harvey Girls" (1946)

6:15 pm "Calamity Jane" (1953)

Oscar Worthy Patients: 

8:00 pm "Three Faces of Eve" (1957)

10:00 pm "Love Story" (1970)

12:00 am "Amour" (2012)

2:15 am "Interrupted Melody" (1955)

4:15 am "Camille" (1936)

I was at 31 seen out of 70, and I've seen NONE out of today's 12? Yeah, that's not good. I can't believe I never watched "Love Story", I should probably do something about that. And "Three Faces of Eve" is another classic, now I wish I'd recorded "Rachel, Rachel" so I could do a Joanne Woodward double-feature on a DVD. I should really get out ahead of this thing - but you know, TCM just keeps running the same movies over and over again, so there will be other chances in the future.  Anyway now I'm at 31 seen out of 82, so I'm way down at 37%.

THE PLOT: Jo and Gilly date, but then find out that they're brother and sister.  Jo moves away, but then Gilly finds out that he's not Jo's brother and also that Jo's getting married. Can he stop the wedding in time? 

AFTER: Well, maybe the DVR crashing was a sign, maybe it was the universe trying to tell me to not watch the films I had on it, especially this one. I should have listened.  Although this is not a film directed by one the Farrelly brothers, they're listed as producers, and clearly this film was made to cash in on the success of "There's Something About Mary", which was released three years earlier. It feels like one of their films, because the film is all about a desirable young woman, and portraying several people pursuing her like she's a piece of property, and meanwhile everyone else is doing unfunny things that were clearly MEANT to be funny, but also meant to find fun in disgusting things like pooping and ejaculation. Sorry if that makes this film feels unappealing, but in many ways it is.  

The main topic is incest, or at least perceived incest, and really, there's a fine line between ALMOST incest and actual incest, right?  I mean, there's that feeling you get when you first meet someone and you feel right at home, very comfortable with them, and then you find out that you're actually long-lost siblings, and everything kind of makes sense for the first time in your life.  Ha ha, but you already slept together, so you didn't really know what the situation was, and now you've slept with a family member.  Hilarious, right?  Eh, maybe not so much as they intended.  Ha ha, but it was all one big misunderstanding.  Is it funny yet?  Well, no, but by all means, keep trying, just beat that dead horse until you can't beat it any more.  

There's a whole list of things in this film that just are NOT funny, but they tried to make them funny.  Roadkill animals - not funny.  Animal shelters - not funny (though the current sitcom "Animal Control" is at least watchable). DNA tests to confirm parentage - not funny, because if you need to rely on these, that means there's a serious situation of some kind.  People with bad haircuts - this SHOULD be funny, but then there's an ear sliced off, which is just not funny.  Anything used as a plot point in a David Lynch film can't be funny.  Getting your arm stuck inside a cow, this also feels like it SHOULD be funny, but then the cow looks so damn fake, and the sound effect is so disgusting that again, not funny.  

Oh, the list goes on and on - candid nude polaroids, stealing a woman's panties for self-pleasure, people having strokes and not being able to talk without one of those voice-box things, someone putting pubic hair on his face to disguise himself with a fake beard - none of this is funny.  Poor Richard Jenkins, who had to play Jo's father, who had a stroke.  He had to spend most of the movie pretending he couldn't move or talk, and it's just sad, even when he swears, it's not funny.  How badly do you have to write a movie so that somebody dropping F-bombs and calling people "jerk-offs" isn't remotely funny?  Comedy is all about tone, and the tone here is all screwed up.  They're trying too hard, maybe that's the problem.  

Also, poor Orlando Jones, who's another genuinely funny guy, and he's got to play this weird pilot character with a very strange accent, and he's got two artificial legs (also, not funny, there's really no humor to be found in disabiliities, I don't know who told the screenwriter otherwise) and also he's supposed to be either high or falling asleep 90% of the time.  I guess he did the best he could with that character, but really, it was a lost cause. Everything here is sad or pathetic or exploitative in some way.  And some of it didn't age well - like Jo is set to marry a marijuana farmer in Oregon, and he's an evil guy who runs the town and cheats on her, also treats her like an object that he needs to own and be in control of.  Sure, marijuana might have been illegal then and legal now, but painting all weed farmers with the same brush doesn't really get us anywhere, I'm guessing most of them are just decent, hardworking growers who just want to run their business the right way, and not also control the police department in their area. But I'm not really an expert on this, either. 

So yeah, really more misses than hits tonight, the whole film kind of makes you feel like you need to take a shower afterwards, I guess this was considered ground-breaking somehow because it tried to find comedy in people with disabilities, people falsely accusing someone of being a sex offender, people appearing like they're going to commit suicide, and one guy who's somehow in love with a car?  That's all low-hanging fruit, however, and the harder they tried to make me think all of that is funny, the more unfunny it all became.  Yesterday's film found comedy in a small-town's historical festival, a corrupt mayor, and people having hotel sex, and I don't know, that all felt more wholesome, somehow?  This one just kind of stands out as being borderline offensive, and worse, that was all done on purpose. No points for trying to push the envelope of comedy here, sorry. 

I can't even take this seriously, not even a bit - I mean, a guy has sex with a cat, who's hidden under the blankets?  And he doesn't know that it's a cat, he thinks it's his girlfriend?  Really?  He can't tell the difference between a 10 pound cat, and a full-sized human, just because it's under a blanket?  I don't even want to get into the mechanics of this, because it's not only disgusting, it doesn't make any sense on any level. So the gag doesn't work at all, how did it not get cut? 

Well, my romance chain can only really go UP from here...

Directed by: J.B. Rogers (assistant director of "Blockers")

Also starring Chris Klein (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Orlando Jones (last seen in "House of D"), Sally Field (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Dear John"), John Rothman (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Jack Plotnick (last seen in "Down with Love"), Eddie Cibrian, Mark Pellegrino (last seen in "The Hunted"), Brent Hinkley (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Henry Cho, Richard Riehle (last seen in "Prelude to a Kiss"), Brent Briscoe (last seen in "The Minus Man"), Ezra Buzzington (last seen in "Secretary"), Julie White (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), David L. Lander (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Lin Shaye (last seen in "Cellular"), Barrow Davis-Tolot, C. Ernst Harth (last seen in "American Dreamer"), Courtney Peldon (last seen in "The Ice Storm"), Matthew Peters, Sarah Silverman (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Greg Kean (last seen in "Black Christmas"), Alejandro Abellan, Martin Morales (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Dolores Drake (also carrying over from "Hope Springs" (2003)), Jackie Flynn (last seen in "Movie 43"), Zahf Paroo (last seen in "A Guy Thing"), Colin Foo (ditto), Jordan Weller (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters"), Danny Murphy (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Christopher R. Sumpton, Austin Stark, Alicia Calvo, Charlene Harns, with a cameo from Suzanne Somers (last seen in "Serial Mom"). 

RATING: 2 out of 10 patients in a therapy session at the mental hospital

Hope Springs (2003)

Year 17, Day 36 - 2/5/25 - Movie #4,936

BEFORE: I was out late working at a screening of "Nosferatu", pretty chill for a vampire movie, but hey, it was a Tuesday in February, that's not peak vampire-movie watching season, at least not for me. The cast didn't bother to show up, probably because zero of them got Oscar noms, so why would they?  Instead there was a Q&A after with the director, Robert Eggers, and a bunch of hair, make-up and costume design people, so OK, we know where that movie's Oscar chances really are. I couldn't watch any of the movie except for the last minute, so I know how it ends, but hey, I really already did, so it didn't matter.  Anyway that movie links easily to "Renfield" via Nicholas Hoult, so let me just save that information for October and catch up with it then. It's romance season, dammit, not horror movie season!

Oliver Platt carries over from "Letters to Juliet". 

Here's tomorrow's schedule for 2/6, Day 6 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar line-up:

Best Cinematography Winners and Nominees:

7:15 am "The Great Waltz" (1938)

9:15 am "Strangers on a Train" (1951)

11:15 am "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)

1:30 pm "Gypsy" (1962)

4:00 pm "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952)

6:00 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)

Oscar Worthy Seafarers: 

8:00 pm "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935)

10:30 pm "Captains Courageous" (1937)

12:45 am "Ship of Fools" (1965)

3:30 am "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" (1964)

5:45 am "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)

I was at 26 seen out of 59, and I've seen 5 out of today's 11: "Strangers on a Train", "Gypsy", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "The Old Man and the Sea".   So that's 31 seen out of 70, and I'm holding at 44%.

THE PLOT: A brokenhearted artist travels to Hope, Vermont, hoping to get on with his life.  He starts by drawing faces there. He befriends the cute Mandy. But then his scheming ex shows up and wants him back.

AFTER: This is one of those movies that I lost when I had to give up my old DVD like three weeks ago. There were about 46 movies on that drive that weren't running on any cable channels any more, but I'm going to carry on with my February chain as if nothing went wrong, because every movie is streaming SOMEWHERE, even if it's not legally. Plus I don't want to scrap the whole February chain that I worked so hard on, and it's still a solid chain, it's just missing a few pieces right now. I'll track them all down and then add those movies to the list of things I've seen, but don't have digital copies of, they may come around again, or PBS might show this one on a dull Saturday night, who knows?  It's got that kind of indie feel to it. 

I did have an opportunity to drop this one, Richard Jenkins is something of a staple in romance movies, so I could have dropped today's movie and gone straight from "Dear John" to tomorrow's film BUT that would mean I'd have to drop "Letters to Juliet" too, and I've skipped it several times already. Nope, that's no good, I have to WATCH movies to get them off the list, there's no other answer, and this is my year for catching up with all the films that I've dropped before.  "Ambulance", "The Drop", "The Creator", and coming up, "Kiss My Goodbye" and I think the record-holder for being re-scheduled, "Men, Women & Children". I'll explain why when we get there. I don't care if the remains of the romance chain can't be reassembled into something coherent for next year when I'm done with the topic in March, that's a problem for 2026.

Anyway, "Hope Springs" is a really, really simple romance film. I'm not saying it's a good or bad one (but I'm leaning toward bad) however it is very simple. Create three characters and make a love triangle with one at the focus, who has to decide between the other two.  Introduce a bit of confusion or miscommunication which leads that person to reconsider their current relationship and seek out the "other", then you basically just have to kill time until their choice gets made at the end. It's not the formula for EVERY damn romance film, but it kind of is. That's close to being EVERY comedy about love, in a nutshell. 

Here we have Colin, a caricature artist from the U.K., he flies to the U.S. and gets intentionally lost in Hope, Vermont, where he starts making caricature portraits of the local residents.  Why?  Good question - he fled the U.K. because he found out his fiancée, Vera, was getting married to another man.  Later we learn this was just a trick on her part, she set up a fake wedding to force Colin to propose, or at least fight for her, or something.  I guess she didn't get the memo, proper British men would never do that, they'd just take the bad news (think Basil Fawlty or any other John Cleese character here) and go on with their lives. Chin up, keep calm and carry on, and, umm, why not fly to America for a bit?

When Colin's feeling jet-lagged, the hotel manager sends over a nurse, Mandy, who normally takes care of elderly residents in a group home. But Mandy is young and pretty and free-spirited, and Colin enjoys her company, they do all kind of fun things together, a few even with their clothes on, and he starts to see how moving on from Vera could have its benefits. 

But Vera shows up to try to get Colin back - though they never really say how she knew where to look for him, and the U.S. is a big country, after all.  But she finds him using her radar or sense of smell and reveals there's no wedding, no other man in her life, she just did that to prove a point.  OK, point received, now please go away, because Colin's got this thing going with Mandy and it seems to be working out OK.  There's this weird sub-plot where the Mayor of Hope has faked the back-story of the town for some reason, and is leading Vera to believe her Welsh ancestor founded the town, OK, but WHY?  How does this benefit the mayor, to have Vera show up and be the "Queen of Hope" at their annual town festival?  It makes no sense. 

Colin does a great portrait of the town's mayor, and in exchange he gets to reveal to Vera that there's no family connection between her and the founder of the town, I think maybe he was trying to get even with her for her making up that fake wedding, but he doesn't really enjoy breaking the news to her, so that whole plot diversion is really just pointless and a big dud.  If it doesn't make sense, please, cut it out from the film or replace it with something else!  Anyway, Colin eventually makes his choice between Mandy and Vera and really, it could have gone either way, both women are beautiful and in the habit of taking their clothes off for him, so really, how could he lose?  Just pick either the old one or the new one so I can get on with my life, thanks. 

See, I told you watching all these romance films in a row was no good for me, mentally.  I'm already OVER this common love triangle stuff.  Maybe this film just seems very simple because I watched two complex Nicholas Sparks films earlier this week, that's all. But still, this is really basic, basic stuff, and all the added things are just distractions that go nowhere. 

Directed by: Mark Herman

Also starring Colin Firth (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Heather Graham (last seen in "Scream 4"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Frank Collison (last seen in "The Hero"), Mary Black (last seen in "The Layover"), Ken Kramer (last seen in "Antlers"), Chad Faust, Tony Alcantar, Bethoe Shirkoff (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Alan Giles, Dolores Drake (last seen in "The Professor"), Howard Storey, June B. Wilde (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Susan Bonham, Kathryn Kirkpatrick (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Andrew Keilty, William Joseph Firth (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby").

 

RATING: 4 out of 10 rubbers (he meant "erasers", but he's British)

Letters to Juliet

Year 17, Day 35 - 2/4/25 - Movie #4,935

BEFORE: I really don't recommend that anyone else do what I do, and watch 30+ romance-based movies beginning on February 1. That will mess with your mind, I promise you. I have a co-worker who just got out of a relationship, and she asked me what I've been watching lately, and I was almost afraid to tell her. But no matter what your romance situation is right now, it doesn't matter, PLEASE don't try this at home, because you may get a different perspective on life by watching too many Hollywood movies about love, and real life is just not like the movies, nor should it be. Maybe Hollywood movies about love should be more like real life, and OK, maybe that's what Nicholas Sparks films are about, how you have to take the bad with the good, the crazy ex-cop husband that comes with the cute girl, or the separation that comes from the soldier dating the college girl. Anyway, please don't take my process as an endorsement for following suit, I'm a professional and I've built up a tolerance for romance films over the years. 

Amanda Seyfried carries over from "Dear John". 

Here's tomorrow's schedule for Day 5 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar line-up:

Best Original Story Winners and Nominees:

7:15 am "The Doorway to Hell" (1930)

8:45 am "One Way Passage" (1932)

10:00 am "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934)

11: 45 am "Action in the North Atlantic" (1943)

2:00 pm "The Stratton Story" (1949)

4:00 pm "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955)

6:15 pm "The Brave One" (1956)

Oscar Worthy Royals: 

8:00 pm "Mrs. Brown" (1997)

10:00 pm "The Lion in Winter" (1968)

12:30 am "The Madness of King George" (1994)

2:20 am "Marie Antoinette" (1938)

5:15 am "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933)

I was at 22 seen out of 47, and I've seen 4 out of today's 12 ("Mrs. Brown", "The Lion in Winter", "The Madness of King George" and "The Private Life of Henry VIII").  So that's 26 seen out of 59, and I'm down again to 44%.  Look, it's clear that TCM just doesn't WANT people watching their channel during the day, that's when they're programming all the older and shittier movies. Sure, tune in tomorrow at 8 pm and enjoy prime time, but under no circumstances should you take the day off and enjoy movies while the sun is shining, because they're just not worth it. 

THE PLOT: Sophie travels to Verona, where she finds an old unanswered letter asking for love advice. She answers it, and when the recipient shows up along with her grumpy grandson, they head off to find the old lost love while a young love sparks. 

AFTER: Tonight's movie was one of those left stranded after last year's romance chain, maybe even the last two romance chains.  I'm glad to be finally clearing it off the docket, third time's the charm...

This is a real thing, Italian people do write letters to the fictional Juliet (of "Romeo and..." fame) with questions about romance issues, and there are really women who collect those letters and write letters of advice back. I'm not exactly sure WHY this takes place in Verona, I mean, sure, that's where Shakespeare's play was set, but there was NO real Juliet, was there?  I guess Billy Shakes didn't really create the story, it's been around forever, but he made the definitive version. In England, not Italy.  And even if Juliet WAS real, she'd be long dead, so why do people keep writing letters to her?  Don't they have any friends they can talk to for love advice?  Can't you just post your love questions on Reddit or something? 

And even if Juliet WAS real and even if she could answer your letter, would you really want her to?  Her go-to move was to take a sleeping potion that would mimic death, and then she didn't tell anybody she did this, so her family put her in the crypt. Then Romeo saw her there and (spoiler alert) drinks real poison because he can't live without her.  When Juliet wakes up and sees that Romeo is dead she (spoiler alert again) stabs herself and dies.  This is not someone who should be dispensing advice about how to fix your relationship, that's all I'm saying.  Wouldn't her solution to how to deal with a snoring husband be something like, "Well, first you get a sleeping potion from the apothecary..." and likely that would be her answer to everything, right? 

Teenage girls need to learn to deal with their own romance problems, without bothering fictional characters from the 16th century. They're kind of busy being not real or dead.  But still, they keep littering the walls of Verona with questions about their problems.  In today's film, Sophie is a fact-checker for the New Yorker magazine, but she yearns to be a real writer, unfortunately she's got nothing interesting to write about - until she takes a pre-honeymoon with her chef boyfriend and accidentally learns about the Secretaries of Juliet, who answer all those letters from people seeking advice. It's a team of four Italian ladies, one is married, one is older, one consoles the heartbroken, they kind of divide up the work.  Now here's where Sophie could have just written a nice article about these ladies that everyone would enjoy, end of story, roll the credits, thanks for coming.  But the movie doesn't stop there, two more things need to be settled. 

The first is that Sophie finds a letter that was hidden in the wall, and it's maybe 50 years old, from an English woman who visited Italy and fell in love with a farmhand, then left for home without warning and felt very guilty about it.  Sophie gets permission to answer the letter, not knowing if this woman is even still alive, advising her to return to Italy and track down her boyfriend, Lorenzo, from long ago.  NITPICK POINT: I don't know how fast mail travels across Europe, but here in the U.S. it takes probably four or five days for mail to go from the East Coast to the West Coast. So I suspect that by the time the letter gets from Italy to the U.K., Sophie's pre-honeymoon would be over and realistically, she should be headed back to the U.S.

But that's not the case, the older woman IS still alive and she turns up in Verona like two days later, somehow, with her grandson as her companion.  They somehow meet up with the Secretaries of Juliet, and learn that Sophie wrote the letter of advice, and now Sophie wants to join them on their quest to find Lorenzo Bartolini somewhere in Italy, maybe.  The only trouble is that there are like 75 people in Italy with that name, and they're spread out all over the place.  Again, Sophie should be headed back to America by now, but she sticks around to drive all over, from one city to the other, looking for this guy who may not even be alive any more. It's far-fetched, to say the least. 

However, this dovetails neatly with the fact that Sophie's fiancé has been pretty much ignoring her from the start, meeting with his cheese vendor or going to a wine auction or getting a tour of this bakery or that, even learning pasta recipes from the chef who cooks for the Secretaries of Juliet.  Do I really have to paint you a picture, here?  He's on a vacation with his soon-to-be-wife and he wants to do everything else but spend time with her.  This relationship, if I can even call it that, is doomed from the start.  If we've learned anything so far in this romance chain, it's that you should NOT go to war and ignore your girlfriend if she looks like Amanda Seyfried.  Also, you should NOT go to a wine auction and ignore your girlfriend if she looks like Amanda Seyfried. I can't stress this enough, it's very important, because she WILL find another boyfriend who is close by who will eventually put her needs first and realize she's the one, and that's how these things go.  Well, I guess if you can't be with the one you love, then love the one you're with. Happy almost Valentine's Day, I guess? 

The rest you can probably predict, whether Claire finds her Lorenzo, and whether Sophie will give her chef boyfriend the heave-ho and try to make things work out with Charlie instead. Jeez, they just had to throw one last bit of confusion/misunderstanding in at the end, because why should ANYTHING be easy in these movies?  Life is a continual struggle, I guess, but not everything needs to be THIS hard.  Whatever, I guess - just don't put Romeo and Juliet out there as a successful love story, because it's not.  Look where a little miscommunication got them, it ruined everything, keep that in mind. 

Directed by: Gary Winick (director of "13 Going on 30", "Bride Wars")

Also starring Christopher Egan (last seen in "Eragon"), Vanessa Redgrave (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Franco Nero (last seen in "Camelot"), Gael Garcia Bernal (last seen in "Rosewater"), Luisa Ranieri, Marina Massironi (last heard in "Luca"), Lidia Biondi (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Remo Remotti (ditto), Milena Vukotic (last seen in "A Good Woman"), Oliver Platt (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Daniel Baldock, Stefano Guerrini, Ashley Lilley (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Fabio Testi, Luisa De Santis, Marcia DeBonis (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Giordano Formenti, Paolo Arvedi, Dario Conti, Angelo Infanti (last seen in "The Black Stallion Returns"), Giacomo Piperno, Sara Armentano, Benito Deotto, Marcello Catania, Silvana Bosi (last seen in "The American"), Elio Veller, Sandro Dori (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Adriano Guerri, Robbie Neigeborn, Hilary Edson, Gabriele Manfredi.

RATING: 5 out of 10 hotel rooms all over Italy (man, this must have turned into one expensive trip!)

Dear John

Year 17, Day 34 - 2/3/25 - Movie #4,934

BEFORE: Cullen Moss carries over from "Safe Haven", it kind of makes sense that somebody would appear in two films based on Nicholas Sparks books, because they all seem to be filmed in the Carolinas, right?  Just me?  So they probably hire a bunch of local actors, or they draw from a pool of actors who are willing to make the trip there.  Look, I've grown to love the Carolinas over the past couple years, now that my parents live down there with my sister.  I get it, there's great BBQ and seafood and state fairs, what's not to love?  Plus there are like three Waffle Houses in every big city, and lots of Cracker Barrel restaurants, too. Throw in a craft brewery or a German restaurant and I'm good for a week, even though it takes two days to drive down there and two to drive back. 

Let's take a peek at tomorrow's schedule for Day 4 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar line-up, and then get on with the crab boil - I mean, the movie. 

Best Original Screenplay Winners and Nominees:

6:00 am "In Which We Serve" (1942)

8:00 am "Foreign Correspondent" (1940)

10:15 am "The North Star" (1943)

12:15 pm "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947)

2:00 pm "Designing Woman" (1957)

4:00 pm "Adam's Rib" (1949)

6:00 pm "The Band Wagon" (1953)

Oscar Worthy Eccentrics: 

8:00 pm "Harvey" (1950)

10:00 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)

12:30 am "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936)

2:45 am "Being There" (1979)

5:00 am "Travels with My Aunt" (1972)

Finally, a day where I've seen MOST of the movies, I believe I've seen 7 of these, because one's a Hitchcock film ("Foreign Correspndent"), one has Cary Grant in it ("The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer") and one has Tracy and Hepburn ("Adam's Rib"), and I've watched marathon chains on all those topics.  Oh, and Fred Astaire in "The Band Wagon", I saw that one, and a clip of it was in the latest Joker movie, too.  Eccentrics is a weird category, but I've seen "Harvey", "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (and the Sandler remake) and "Being There".  

Another 7 seen out of 12 means now I'm at 22 seen out of 47, I'm up to 46.8%. I peeked ahead at the schedule, TCM's going to get to Oscar-Worthy Lovers on Valentine's Day, and also Oscar-Worthy Prostitutes the day before. With me doing romance-based films all month long, I'm sure our topics will mesh together at some point. 

THE PLOT: A soldier falls for a conservative college student while he's home on leave. 

AFTER: Well, I did cut those two Channing Tatum movies in January, so I hope this helps to make up for it, to some small degree.  Tatum would be leading the pack with four appearances right now if I hadn't cut them - but hey, I could circle back to "Stop-Loss" for Veteran's Day, so he could still qualify for the year-end countdown, or I could work in that new film "Blink Twice", that everyone's talking about. I also have "Coach Carter" and "Havoc" on my list, if I circle back to him later this year, that's potentially four more. 

This is another film based on a Nicholas Sparks book, so by now I know things just aren't going to be easy tonight, like "The Last Song" was about a high-school girl falling in love, but also her dad had a terminal illness and also she had to save some sea turtles hatching on the beach, you know, because North Carolina.  Oh, and everyone thinks her father burned down the local church, so she's also got to save his reputation while he's in town, but SURPRISE it was all just a big misunderstanding in the end. 

In tonight's film John Tyree is a soldier on leave, visiting his father in this idyllic North Carolina beach town for a few weeks, and he jumps off the pier to rescue a stranger's bag that she dropped in the ocean, and because he's got a faster response time than the dude she was with, he wins her over, despite the fact that he's a rather sullen dude who seems incapable of expressing his emotions.  Heck, I'm not even sure he HAS emotions, he just always carries himself like he's at attention or something, so yeah, I believe the character is in the military, the strong but silent type who was raised to bury his feelings deep down.  He brings Savannah home to meet his father, who's obsessed with coin collecting and making lasagna, it seems.  Savannah realizes that John's Dad is autistic or something, because she has a close friend with an autistic son, but John does NOT appreciate her trying to diagnose his dad.  Sure, the guy has a simplistic weekly menu, but who cares if Saturday is always meat loaf night, as long as the meat loaf is GOOD, then shut up and enjoy it. (I was raised in a Massachusetts house where Saturday night was always franks and beans, no exceptions unless it was Christmas or a family party. That didn't mean my father was autistic, he was also raised in a house where that was the ritual.)

Clearly John and Savannah come from two different worlds, they go to a party at her family's house and it's a bunch of white, upper-middle class socialites, most of whom want to thank John for his service. They're probably all just glad that Savannah brought home a white boyfriend, he might not be rich but, well, you know, at least he's the right race.  They've only got a short time together before he gets deployed again and she goes to college, so they try to make the most of it, and agree to write letters to each other via the APO, which forwards the mail to U.S. soldiers overseas, no matter where they're deployed, they get their mail, eventually.  

The plan is for John to finish his tour of duty and then head back home, so the two lovers will meet up again in person in about a year, with perhaps the occasional visit home to, umm, reconnect and have lasagna on Sunday night with John's Dad. But then 9/11 happens, and all leaves are cancelled, and it's kind of assumed that anyone in the military's going to re-up or re-enlist, and in fact there's a whole wave of people joining the military to protect the country in a time of crisis, so sure, John COULD end his military service as planned, but he feels obligated to extend it. 

Things go south for John and Savannah when they just can't seem to get on the same page, their communication skills are lacking, and because they can't really talk about the future together, as a result of that, they may not have one. He can't bring himself to quit the army JUST because he's in love, and she can't quite bring herself to tell him to quit, that he's done his time and so the old plan's no longer good, one year apart turns into three.  Sure, there were other options, they could have gotten married, or they could have had, you know, an actual conversation about a plan or a plan to make a plan, but instead they keep writing letters and then one day the letters slow down and, well, let's just say there's a reason the film has the title that it has. 

Time passes, and John thinks he might just be a career soldier, but eventually there are no more assignments, and the military decides that John's services are no longer required. So he heads back home to check on his father (yeah, his condition's not really good) and then Savannah.  You know, see if that ship has really sailed off for good.  No spoilers here, but it's not like spending more and more time apart was going to be the thing that somehow brought them back together.  Well, at least John was the bigger man about things, he sells off his father's coin collection to the most honest dealer he can find, and uses the money for a really good cause. Sometimes that's really the best you can do. 

Directed by: Lasse Hallstrom (director of "Safe Haven")

Also starring Channing Tatum (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Jennifer's Body"), Richard Jenkins (last heard in "IF"), Henry Thomas (last seen in "Fire in the Sky"), D.J. Cotrona (last seen in 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Gavin McCulley, Jose Lucena Jr., Keith Robinson (last seen in "Get on Up"), Scott Porter (last seen in "Speed Racer"), Leslea Fisher (last seen in "The Notebook"), William Howard, David Andrews (last seen in "A Walk to Remember"), Mary Rachel Quinn (last seen in "Triple 9"), R. Braeden Reed, Luke Benward (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Tom Stearns (last seen in "American Gangster"), Michael Harding (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Brett Rice (last seen in "Sex Drive"), David Dwyer (last seen in "Fled"), Anthony Osment, Jim Wenthe, Matt Blue, Maxx Hennard, Jay Phillips (last seen in "Semi-Pro"), Steven Patrick O'Connor, Jessica M. Lucas (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Teresa Smith, Bryce Hogarth, Amanda Garsys, Shelley Reid, Cenk Otay, Russell A. Turner, Mary Fischer. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 houses built for Habitat for Humanity

Safe Haven

Year 17, Day 33 - 2/2/25 - Movie #4,933

BEFORE: OK, Day 2 of the February Romance chain, now we're getting somewhere, with a film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel.  Sparks is like the Stephen King of romance books, by that I mean he's very prolific and well-respected, plus he's sold a TON of books over the year, maybe a few tons. Last year I watched "A Walk to Remember" and "The Last Song", those are two of his stories, and over the years I've also watched "The Notebook", "Nights in Rodanthe", and "Message in a Bottle", that last one was back before I even started blogging. At this point I should probably try to get to them all, that's been my approach with horror stories based on Stephen King novels, like it's not even a question, just put it on the list and try to link to it. I'm going to get to two more this year, today's film and tomorrow's, and I've put "The Best of Me" on my list, and well, maybe next year. I'll think about "The Longest Ride" because I do like to be a completist on things like this. Cobie Smulders carries over from "Alright Now". 

Tomorrow is February 3 already, and once we hit the Super Bowl and Valentine's Day, time's going to fly and St. Patrick's Day and spring will be here before you know it. But before all that, here's the TCM 31 Days of Oscar line-up for tomorrow: 

Best Art Direction Winners and Nominees:

6:15 am "The Merry Widow" (1934)

8:00 am "Pride and Prejudice" (1940)

10:00 am "Little Women" (1949)

12:15 pm "Young Bess" (1953)

2:15 pm "Kismet" (1944)

4:00 pm "Brigadoon" (1954)

6:00 pm "Annie Get Your Gun" (1950)

Oscar Worthy Criminals: 

8:00 pm "The Sting" (1973)

10:15 pm "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)

12:15 am "Double Indemnity" (1944)

2:15 am "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950)

4:15 am "Algiers" (1938)

Yesterday I was at 11 out of 23, now out of these 12 I've only seen another 4, again it's the ones airing in prime time, from "Annie Get Your Gun" to "Double Indemnity".  I watched "Kismet", but I saw the 1950's remake, and this is the original - and I'm ashamed to say I never got around to watching "Brigadoon". I don't know how my mother let me move away from home without making sure that happened, she made me watch all the other major musicals.  So now I'm at 15 seen out of 35, which is another drop to 42.8%, I'm not going to beat last year's score at this rate. 

THE PLOT: A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina, where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her. 

AFTER: See, this is what you come to a Nicholas Sparks love story for - somebody's in TROUBLE, it's not just a meet-cute.  Like, if Katie took the bus from Boston to Atlanta and decided to get off in North Carolina and start her new life because it's a beautiful town, and the people are very friendly and accepting and there's this CUTE guy who sold her coffee at the general store, that would be one thing, fine for a Hallmark or Lifetime movie, they could fill up a two-hour block with that story plus commercials.  But Katie's on the RUN from the Boston P.D., there's a cop who's very determined to find out where she's headed, after he lost track of which bus she was getting on. He stopped a lot of them, but not the right one.  OK, so there's a back-story, like what crime did she commit and is she going to be able to hide out in Southport, provided she never gets a phone installed and pays for her utilities in cash and doesn't open a bank account?  

The hunky guy, Alex, has two young kids and her helpful boss points out that his wife passed away from cancer last year, but he's bounding back. OK, second story, dead wife, in recovery, this part practically writes itself, they're not on the same page at first because he's hurting and she's hiding out, neither one wants to get too close to the other, but come on, it's like some powerful love magnetism juju going on here, or he's the magnet and she's the iron filings, this is going to happen if she takes the job at the cafe next door to his store.  AND she's already friends with his daughter, so there's not that awkward getting-to-know-you period between her and the kids, though Alex's son is at that weird age, so he might take a little longer.  Plus the kids both miss their MOM, still, jeezus. Proceed with caution, but that doesn't mean don't proceed at all. 

Alex has to decide if he's willing to take Katie to any of the same places he went with his wife, and finally he feels that's OK - but he and one of the local cops are in charge of putting together the annual July 4 fireworks show, the only thing that could get in the way of his relationship with Katie is seeing her wanted poster in the police station when he's hanging out with his cop buddy.  So guess what...

Katie comes clean, but it's not what he thinks - the cop put out an APB for her, listing her as being charged with murder, and the film throws a red herring or two here for us, because she has a flashback of holding a knife in that house where the crime occurred - but surely there must be some more rational explanation for what took place that night. And there is, and it's a bit far-fetched, but it does make sense in the rear-view.  Katie had an abusive husband, and he's a cop, and after she left him he made it his mission to find her, and bring her back, or make sure nobody else can have her, whichever.  The only thing holding him back is NOT knowing where she got off the bus, somewhere between Boston and Atlanta. 

So while Katie's ex harasses the neighbor who helped Katie escape, Katie and Alex do manage to talk this out and figure out a way forward,  Alex vows to protect her, no matter what, unless he's distracted by something loud and colorful at the moment.  And they can go back to having their day-trips to the beach or fishing trips in the canoe, as long as he can convince her to not hop back on the bus for another little city to hide out in.  Well, they've got some time before the parallel storylines converge, anyway.  

I'd score this one higher if the story didn't pull a fast one near the ending, I don't want to say here what it is because it's a spoiler, but if I mentioned two other specific movies that used a similar twist, well, then you'd know exactly what kind of shenanigans are taking place here.  It's been done before, and done better in those other movies, and that sort of thing has no place in a romance movie, if you ask me. Then again, a movie I'm planning to watch in about a week kind of pulls the same trick, but it's more honest and open about it from the beginning, I think.  I will say no more about it, but I still don't approve of it from a narrative standpoint. There should have been a better way of getting this information across, that's all. 

NITPICK POINT: The Boston cop asks the ticket clerk at the bus station where someone could go from Atlanta.  Dude, EVERYwhere!  Does he not know how buses work? How stupid is this question?  Bus terminals, airports, train stations, they're all connected, man!  You can go from any station to any other station if you've got enough time and enough money!

Well, it turns out that there are really 11 movies made from Nicholas Sparks novels, and I'm not as far ahead as I thought I was.  After tomorrow I will have seen seven of them, so I've got to get cracking on the other four one of these Februarys.  Let me work on getting to "The Longest Ride" and "The Best of Me" next time around, and then I'll think about the last two. 

Directed by: Lasse Hallstrom (director of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen")

Also starring Julianne Hough (last seen in "Burlesque"), Josh Duhamel (last seen in "Bandit"), David Lyons (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Mimi Kirkland, Noah Lomax, Irene Ziegler (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Robin Mullins (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Red West (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Juan Carlos Piedrahita (last seen in "CBGB"), Cullen Moss (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Mike Pniewski (last seen in "Reptile"), Jon Kohler (last seen in "Freejack"), Tim Parati (last seen in "The Program"), Giulia Pagano, Jasper Grey (last seen in "Movie 43"), Tora Hallström, Wendy Wilmot, Ric Reitz (last seen in "Willy's Wonderland"), Nick Basta (last seen in "Harriet"), Mary DeFlavio, James Nalitz, Jan Hartsell (last seen in "Are You Here"), Martin Coleman Bowen, Cameron Penrose, Ora Ogden, Jody Harker, Daniel Cochran Donovan, Jerad Swain, Ryan T. Boldt, Dyer Scott Lumpkin, George Dawe, Charles Laughon

RATING: 6 out of 10 paint color samples