BEFORE: Back in circulation today as I'm working at the NY International Children's Film Festival, which has booked the theater. Just four screenings so not as long a shift as last Saturday was, and I'll have one more next weekend. Gotta keep busy and keep the money coming in. Amy Adams carries over from "Drop Dead Gorgeous".
Here's the TCM line-up for tomorrow, Day 24 of "31 Days of Oscar", the theme for Sunday, March 8 will be "Oscar Goes to New York":
6:00 am "Speedy" (1928)
7:30 am "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934)
9:15 am "On the Town" (1949)
11:00 am "Guys and Dolls" (1955)
1:45 pm "The Apartment" (1960)
4:00 pm "The Goodbye Girl (1977)
4:00 pm "The Goodbye Girl (1977)
6:00 pm "Barefoot in the Park" (1967)
8:00 pm "Moonstruck" (1987)
8:00 pm "Moonstruck" (1987)
10:00 pm "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986)
12:00 am "Arthur" (1981)
2:00 am "Midnight Cowboy" (1969)
4:00 am "Klute" (1971)
With just one week left in the programming, this could be my last chance to clean up - I haven't seen the first two films, but I think I've seen ALL of the rest. That's 10 out of 12! So that brings me up to 116 seen out of 270, which is just shy of 43%. That's a bit improvement over yesterday.
THE PLOT: A process server tries to serve papers to an elusive female target.
AFTER: You know, I've been on Instagram (in addition to "X") for about six months now, and I'm following all of these accounts like "Roll for Sandwich" or "Roll for Soda", "Roll for Ribs" and "Roll for Cookie" (the people who run those last two are a couple, I guess after they share the ribs they share a cookie) and all of these accounts use D&D dice of different shapes to determine the good (or bad) elements of their sandwich, ribs preparation, whatever, and they will eat or drink whatever the dice tell them too. Damn, I wish I'd come up with "Roll for Movie" myself, if I do that now it will look like I'm a total copycat. But it could work, you just divide all of the movies on the watchlist into 8 categories (comedy, drama, sci-fi, documentary, romance, horror, Christmas and classic?) and then within the romance category you'd have it broken down by dating films, mismatched lovers thrown together, love triangles, etc.
I met one person who appears in this movie, animator Mike Judge, who has an uncredited role as a motel owner. He came to San Diego Comic-Con one year and did a panel with my boss and one other animator, and signed autographs in our booth for about 5 minutes before he got bored. Someone who I ALMOST met was Matthew Perry, we were trying to get him to do a voice in an animated feature called "Hair High" (recently released on Blu-Ray) and his agent wanted to see the script, we sent it along and his handlers told him not to take the role for some reason. I'm still not sure if he was supposed to do the voice of the wimpy nerd who rode a scooter or the football hero who was dating the cheerleader, I suppose that doesn't matter now.
I'm leaning toward a 3-film tribute to Matthew Perry here, which would also mark the third appearance of Zac Efron, so they'll both appear in the year-end countdown. But then that means no skip days between now and St. Patrick's Day, I think I was counting on at least one day off just in case I got busy. But in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say, let's keep watching movies until the wheels fall off the wagon, whatever that means. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
At least tonight's film is funny, sort of in a "Midnight Run" kind of way, where two people have to go on a crazy road-trip and there's a sort of deadline they have to beat if they're going to do the thing, plus they're an impossibly mis-matched pair but through the wacky experiences they share they're bound to fall in love, or at least become fast friends. Thank God for clichés or no movie would ever get written, right?
Much of the comedy in the film comes from various "fish out of water" scenarios - Elizabeth Hurley's character has a British accent, and she's in America, so that's one. She's married to a guy from Texas who has a cattle ranch, so there's an opportunity for the New York process server, played by Matthew Perry, to go to Texas and to also be out of place. Then Vincent Pastore plays an Italian guy from New York (ooh, a double) who ends up in Texas by way of Florida, Maine and other places - he's a giant fish out of water no matter where he goes!
But I don't know if most people would even know what a process server DOES. I thought it was mostly for people being sued, and OK, I guess a divorce is technically a lawsuit, so occasionally they have to deliver divorce papers to people who may not want them. And divorce laws vary from state to state, so it matters whether Sara's husband divorces her in Texas or New York, which gives Joe, the process server, a bit of an idea, if he can have HER file divorce against HIM according to the laws of New York, she could get half of their shared fortune, but if HIS papers get filed against her according to the laws of Texas, she could get nothing. So she decides to hire Joe, who seems to know an awful lot about this sort of thing, and offers to pay him a million dollars out of what she then collects in the divorce. For Joe, who has secretly always wanted his own vineyard and to become a vintner, it's a rare opportunity.
Still, NITPICK POINT, can you BUY a vineyard for a million dollars? It seems like a vineyard may cost more than that, if you talking about land, buildings, the grape vines, farming equipment, legal fees, then the cost of all those barrels and bottles and people to plant and pick the grapes for you. And then you might suck at being a vintner or it might not rain that year, and you've lost the whole million. Just saying. Better to not get involved in the first place, leave it to the pros. You can buy a lot of WINE for a million dollars, and that could be a better investment, plus it would definitely be less work and probably you'd be happier in the long run.
It's a bit ironic that Matthew Perry plays a guy who ultimately wants to make wine, when he had a long-standing problem with alcoholism and drugs. Reportedly the production of this film was shut down for two months while he went through rehab. But let's try to get back to the comedy, because part of it comes just from people stepping in cow pies and sticking their hands up a bull's ass to massage his prostate while they're trying to collect bull semen. Good times, and it all came from Joe pretending to be a vet while people on that cattle ranch were trying to find him and kill him. But really we don't know if this is how bull semen collection really works, or for that matter, how process servers work or divorce laws or anything else, really. The laws of this rom-com universe work however they need to work to make things funny. So, umm, then why aren't they very funny?
And come on, we all know the formula by now, right? Sara and Joe have nothing in common, but they're going to spend time together because they're forced to work together, so you just know that's the basis for falling in love, at least in a movie. Whereas in real life probably no process server ever fell in love with a client or had to fly with them around the country or drive a rental car around Texas just to try and get some revenge on her soon-to-be-ex husband. So of course it's not realistic at all, would you want to watch a movie about people who fall in love in a very real and natural and boring way?
Directed by Reginald Hudlin (Director of "Boomerang" and "The Ladies Man")
Also starring Matthew Perry (last seen in "The Kid"), Elizabeth Hurley (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Bruce Campbell (last heard in "18 1/2"), Vincent Pastore (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Cedric the Entertainer (last seen in "Luther: Never Too Much"), Terry Crews (last seen in "Sly"), Jerry Stiller (last seen in '"I Am Divine"), Marshall Bell (last seen in 'The Bling Ring"), Joe Viterelli (last seen in "Eraser"), Derek Southers (last seen in "Planet Terror"), Robin McGee (last seen in "Butter"), Brent Duncan, Eli Jacques, John Wayne Shafer, Vince Cecere (last seen in "The Crew"), Tony Longo (last seen in "The Eraser"), Roderick Watson, Georgia Foy, Marie Miranda, Alaina Huffman, Heather Hunt, Melinda Renna (last seen in "Dr. T & the Women"), Libby Villari (ditto), Maria Arita, Mary Lyons, Jim Wilkey (last seen in "Holes"), Hal Rawley, Coati Mundi (last seen in "Species"), Julio Cesar Cedillo (last seen in "Being Rose"), Andrew Wilson (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Ouida White, Paul Schulte, Kelley Saunders, Paul Fujimoto (last seen in "Rising Sun"), Cheryl Toma Sanders, Don Pirl, Wally Welch, (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon") Toby Metcalf (last seen in "Bernie"), Ramsey Williams, Mirelly Taylor, Amanda Denton, David Scott Heck (last seen in "The New Guy"), Nikki Ziering with a cameo from Mike Judge (last seen in "Animation Outlaws")
RATING: 4 out of 10 cars crushed by monster trucks
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