A Very Murray Christmas

Year 12, Day 359 - 12/24/20 - Movie #3,700

BEFORE: OK, last film of the year, so there's a lot of set-up I've got to do here.  But first, a look at what I'm also binge-ing right before Christmas.  FOX ran two episodes of a short-lived show called "The Moodys" this past Sunday, but not the other four, which is a questionable programming choice AND probably a warning sign as well.  Six episodes ran in December 2019, and I'm guessing nobody watched it, because there were no more after that.  BUT, it's about a messed-up family in the days leading up to Christmas, and it's got Denis Leary and Jay Baruchel in it, so I tracked down the rest of the episodes on Hulu.  I watched two last night and I'll probably finish off the series tonight.  It's just OK, it's no comedic "This Is Us", for sure, but now I'm 2/3 done with it so I might as well put it out of my misery, and it's seasonally appropriate.

Also last night, after midnight I watched a 3-part mini-series version of "A Christmas Carol" on FX.  This took 3 1/2 hours to watch, so I crashed around 4 a.m., but I'm usually down for any version of Dickens' classic short story (especially "Scrooge" with Albert Finney). Man, this one was DARK - I think the BBC produced this one and FX bought the U.S. rights and aired it in December 2019.  It's peppered with modern-day curse words, and feels more like a Gothic horror film than a Christmas tale - and as you might imagine, in order to turn a short story into a 3 1/2 hour miniseries they had to add a lot of stuff, mostly in the "Christmas Past" section.  In this version, young Ebenezer has to stay at boarding school during Christmas break, not because his abusive father doesn't want him to come home, but because his abusive father worked out a deal for Ebenezer to get free tuition, provided the headmaster gets to molest him over the holidays.  OK, maybe that explains why Scrooge doesn't care to celebrate Christmas.  Then, as an adult, Scrooge agrees to pay for Tiny Tim's operation provided that Mrs. Cratchit comes to his house on Christmas in an "Indecent Proposal" sort of situation.  That's messed up.  He doesn't force himself on Bob Crachit's wife, but he COULD have, and just the fact that she came over to his house and undressed meant that he proved his point about how low people are willing to degrade themselves for money.  What a dick move.

I may watch a couple other versions of "A Christmas Carol" later today, since it is Christmas Eve, and after my 300th film for the year, I'm closing up the Movie Year workshop once again until January 1.  But the main lessons we need to take away from ANY version of Dickens' classic tale are that we need to look back fondly on the good moments of the past, learn from the mistakes of that past, take comfort in the presence of others in the here and now, and if necessary, make changes in our actions and our attitude in order to make the future better.  All of that strikes a chord, perhaps now more than ever.  

But for right now, it's a time for celebration - not in the usual way, as normally I would be driving up to Massachusetts today, stopping at a Connecticut casino for a buffet lunch, playing the slots for a bit, and then arriving at my parents' house for a feast of Chinese food, followed by a Christmas Day full of roast turkey, unwrapping presents and shared desserts.  Absolutely none of that is possible this year, but we've tentatively planned to go visit my parents in late January, so Christmas isn't really cancelled, just postponed.  Today we brought two boxes of COVID emergency meals that were mistakenly left on our front porch over to a community food drop-off, because we're not exactly short on food in the house, and tomorrow we'll cook a Christmas lasagna and try to have a good time.  

Both Rashida Jones AND Jason Schwartzman carry over from "Klaus".  And quite a few of today's stars are making their third appearance for the year, so they'll all qualify for my year-end wrap-up, which I probably should start working on, because there will be a LOT to cover.  Starting with the fact that the chain went unbroken again, from "Whale Rider" on January 1 to today, there were NO BREAKS in the chain, for the second year in a row!  I might be getting good at this linking thing, after all. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Always at the Carlyle" (Movie #3,349)

THE PLOT: Bill Murray worries that no one will show up for his TV show due to a terrible snowstorm in New York City. 

AFTER: OK, first I have to have a small internal debate about whether this constitutes a "movie".  What is a movie, exactly?  Netflix refers to this as a "holiday special", but it's not a TV special, or is it?  It's airing on my TV, does that make it a TV show instead of a movie?  I've watched very short movies before, like under an hour, and counted those as movies, so what should I do?  Generally the only hard and fast rule is that TV series and TV mini-series are not allowed here - certainly I didn't count the 3-hour "A Christmas Carol" because that was a 3-part mini-series, even if the episodes were all edited together to resemble a very long film.  BUT I counted the 1990 two-part mini-series "It" as one movie.  So I just don't know.  But Wikipedia lists this as "a 2015 American Christmas musical comedy film", so I'm going to stand behind that - this is a movie.  A short movie, but a movie.  

It's also very easy to think of this as some kind of extension to "Lost in Translation", since it's directed by Sofia Coppola and centers on Bill Murray hanging around in a hotel, feeling depressed and disconnected from society.  But it's not set in Tokyo, it's good old NYC on Christmas Eve, and the hotel is the infamous Carlyle, as portrayed in the documentary I watched last year with its own little celebrity-based subculture.  Bill's scheduled to perform a holiday show in the famous Bemelman's Bar that will be simulcast on TV via satellite, only a terrible blizzard has shut down the city, so there are no subways, no buses, no trains, and most importantly, no fans coming to the show.  Is it really a Christmas show with no audience?  The show's producers think so, they can just run footage of celebrities attending other events, and they believe that the TV audience won't be able to tell the difference.  So that's the plan, the show must go on, except that two minutes in to the broadcast, a power outage shuts everything down.  

This may have been filmed in 2015, but doesn't that sound a lot like 2020?  It's almost a perfect metaphor for the pandemic - so many things have gone wrong this year, and that's terrible, but sometimes there's a tiny silver lining to a disaster, and it means that the pressure's off.  You're stuck at home for weeks on end, and if you still have a job maybe you've figured out a way to work from home.  There's less pressure to dress up, taking showers or getting haircuts becomes somewhat optional, and forget job-hunting, because nobody's hiring right now anyway.  Circle the wagons, hunker down, put on something comfortable and start binge-ing "Game of Thrones" or "The Queen's Gambit" and don't leave the house until 70% of random strangers have been vaccinated - so, when is that, April? May? JUNE?

Back to Bill Murray - the forced cancellation of the Christmas special means that he gets to hang out at the Carlyle until the snowstorm is over, and thankfully he's got musical director Paul Shaffer (this was shortly after Letterman's CBS show folded) and a bunch of celebrity guests with him.  PLUS the chefs at the Carlyle are concerned that the food might spoil without refrigeration, so they're down to cook it all, just to be on the safe side, PLUS there's a well-stocked bar, PLUS there's wedding cake from a celebration that went south.  The point here is that when all seems lost, and there's tragedy taking place all around you, one thing you can do is just take stock of what you've got on hand, and celebrate anyway.  Why not?  The band still played while the Titanic sank, and I'm sure some doomed society types were drinking cocktails the whole time. 

And so this movie is proud to present to you - 

BILL MURRAY'S TIPS FOR SURVIVING CHRISTMAS EVE (during a city-crippling snowstorm, however tips also applicable to a pandemic, contested election season and/or zombie apocalypse):

1. DRINK. This is super-important, I can't stress this enough.  It's early in the day still, so I'm on mulled cider and I'm about to have my first coffee, but I plan to transition to eggnog (the kind with rum in it, and I may add some extra) before dinner-time, and then I've got one bottle left of Heartland Brewery's Old Red Nose Ale, 2017 vintage, down in the basement beer fridge.  I may just have to crack that one open tonight, or perhaps tomorrow.  I bought three bottles last December after dining at their 34th St. brewpub, only to find out on my way out the door that the restaurant would be closing within weeks, and the city-wide chain was reducing from its former glory of four locations to just one in Times Square.  It seemed like a horrible business decision to me at the time, but considering that almost ALL NYC restaurants shut down in April, in retrospect I'm wondering if Heartland Brewery didn't make the right move.  It's almost like they had a crystal ball and foresaw the collapse of the restaurant industry.  

Anyway, get your drink on now, umm, unless you're an alcoholic or a tee-totaller, in which case this is probably not the best time to backslide.  But if you're a drinking person like I am, you'd best get on top of this.  In a few hours you could pass out like Bill Murray, and then you can have a vision of being in your own high-concept holiday special, singing duets with George Clooney and Miley Cyrus.  

2. SING - Holiday music has played a big part in my life these last few decades.  I started with a mix-tape in 1991, that first one had all the classics, as I define them, from Leon Redbone's "Frosty the Snowman" to Stevie Nicks's "Silent Night", Whitney Houston's "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and Bob Seger's "The Little Drummer Boy".  Every year there was a different theme, from jazz to soul to novelty songs, or 70's acts, 80's acts, a cappella groups.  One year it was only songs from former "American Idol" contestants, but mostly I've see-sawed back and forth between classic rock and alternative acts as the theme, because that's just where I've found the most material that speaks to me.  Initially these went out to just a few friends and family members, but then I began giving them to current and former co-workers, ex-college roommates and then amicable postal clerks if I had some left over.  

This year's mix was a real challenge - what was even appropriate?  And I wondered if people would even WANT me to mail them out this year, or if people would even be in the holiday mood this time around.  If ever there's a year to take a pass or call a mulligan or opt out of the "usual" holiday routine, this is probably it.  But then I thought I COULD put something together, maybe choose the right songs and make a nod to the pandemic in a fashion, without addressing it directly.  I heard Train's song "Shake Up Christmas" and thought, "Man, that's just GOT to be my opener."  I spent about a week in October listening to potential tracks (I'll admit, mostly songs that didn't make the cut two years ago...) and it came together rather quickly after that.  Some alt-acts are my top producers, as I bought holiday albums about a decade ago from Sister Hazel, Reverend Horton Heat and Relient K, and I STILL find songs on them that I haven't used and are just right on point for my purposes. I found tracks from a couple of edgier albums from Weezer and Bad Religion that really lit the mix up, then it was just a matter of filling in some of the gaps.

It didn't feel like the right time for "Deck the Halls" or "Jingle Bell Rock", or even "Winter Wonderland" - they just felt too HAPPY, but I thought "Sleigh Ride" and "Let it Snow" could work.  I always have a "nativity" section with "Silent Night", "O Holy Night" and then whatever else I can find that fits in with those, like Sixpence None the Richer's "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and Bad Religion's "What Child Is This?"  Instead of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", I included Relient K's "Santa Claus is Thumbing to Town", in which the elves burn down Santa's workshop and the sleigh's broken, so he has to hitchhike all around the world in just one night - that seemed like 2020 in a nutshell to me.  After that, it was just a matter of finding versions of "Silver Bells" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas" that seemed to fit, and I was nearly done. (I noticed that lyrics like "I'll be home for Christmas...if only in my dreams" took on a new meaning when viewed through the eyes of the pandemic and travel bans.)

Umm, except for two things, one song that my wife felt was much too slow and depressing, and Pilate's cover of "Fairytale of New York", a song first recorded by The Pogues.  It's got some salty language in it, spoken by a husband and wife as characters from the 1940's (?) having an argument on Christmas.  The wife sings, "You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy faggot" and of course, these days we all try to be more sensitive, so this language tends to spark some controversy.  I do send my CD out to friends, some of whom have kids, so although I hate censorship, I figured it was better to err on the side of caution.  And I can't go to everyone's house to explain that the singers are playing characters from a less enlightened time, so therefore the offensive words are being used perhaps ironically, plus the BBC doesn't censor these words when they play the song, so although I COULD defend the use of offensive language, I didn't have the proper labels available before mailing.  So that song was out.  A last-minute re-listen of Sia's Christmas album, purchased two years ago, supplied two substitute songs, and then I was comfortable with the mix.  Check my Twitter feed (@Honky275) and scroll back to Dec. 1 if you want to hear all of this year's songs presented in advent calendar format.  

Bill Murray & company also perform the song "Fairytale of New York", with the lead vocals bouncing between him, Jenny Lewis and David Johansen.  Notably, they skipped the verse with the potentially offensive words, which is one way to get around the problem, only I can't edit the songs for my mix.  I'm guessing this was at the request of Mr. Johansen (aka Buster Poindexter) as some of his best friends are probably scumbags and/or maggots.  But I digress.  They also included the duet "Baby, It's Cold Outside", but remember, this was filmed in 2015, which was a year or two before this song got banned from the airwaves for being just a bit too rapey.  I think the #metoo movement essentially killed this song, right? 

3. HANG OUT WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY - and it certainly helps if you've got a suite at the Carlyle, and Mr. Paul Shaffer is on hand when you get snowed in.  He probably knows absolutely everybody.  Also, the failed wedding at the hotel means that there's both a singing bride (Rashida Jones) and a singing, drumming groom (Jason Schwartzman) mucking about, plus a house lounge singer (Maya Rudolph) and a bartender (Johansen) to help keep things festive.  It's also quite convenient that singer Jenny Lewis moonlights as a waitress, and that the entirety of the Carlyle's restaurant staff is comprised of the band Phoenix, and they all brought their instruments with them to work - they must have had a gig later.  Phoenix performs "Alone on Christmas Day", and I think I may have to consider that song for inclusion on a future X-mas mix.  

4. TAKE IT ALL IN STRIDE - again, make the best of it, wherever you are and whatever you have on hand.  I spent a few days by myself, post-Christmas, in New York one year when trying to fly between Boston and Cleveland for New Year's Day.  The snow was so bad that I couldn't get to Cleveland, the plane had to land in New York and even after taking a bus from LaGuardia to JFK, I couldn't get out of town.  Most passengers were then stranded in an unfamiliar city and had to hunker down at an airport hotel, but I just went back to my apartment in Brooklyn and decided to try again in a couple days.  My wife (at the time) was already in Cleveland, I just had to call and revise the timetable.  I think that's the way it went down, it was so long ago... It's the holidays, and things are going to go right and things are going to go wrong, just relax and try to have a good time, and hopefully next year all our troubles will be miles away.  Yeah, right.

Think about the good times you had in Christmas Past - all those years where you could travel, and visit family, and the gift exchanges, and those giant holiday meals.  Those all still happened, you can look at photos from previous years, which I think I'll do tonight. Every Christmas back to 2005 is posted on my Flickr account, so maybe some reminiscing is in order.  I also remember that in 2014 (?) my BFF Andy scored a couple tickets to the last "Late Show with David Letterman" Christmas show, which meant that we saw, LIVE, the last time that Jay Thomas knocked a meatball off a Christmas tree with a football, Paul Shaffer did his impression of Cher singing "O Holy Night" on her own Christmas special, and most importantly, Darlene Love performed "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" on stage - with extra horns, a string section and plenty of back-up singers.  That was one for the books.  

5. DISPENSE SAGE ADVICE - Murray's been divorced twice, and been in several long-running feuds, so I'm not sure he's the best person to write a relationship guide.  But here he manages to re-unite the Bride and the Groom, by asking them to recall the exact moment, the feeling, when they first knew they were in love with each other.  Then just SING that to the other person and re-connect.  OK, whatever works, but many people find that couples counseling is also productive.  But hey, what else can you expect from America's most eccentric part-time character actor?  

I've also heard that Murray does not have a manager or an agent, and only works when he wants to, since he doesn't have to.  Getting in touch with him to hire him is also a process shrouded in mystery, apparently you have to dial a personal phone number and leave a voice-mail, but then how do you GET that number, if he doesn't have an agent?  Then I think you have to take a ferry up the Hudson, and set off a flare gun at a particular point between Dobbs Ferry and Tarrytown, and just hope that he sees the signal and responds.  Or you could just be Jim Jarmusch, but I think that sounds even harder to do, honestly.  

Well, that's it for regulation play in the Year of Our Lord 2020.  I didn't even get to all the Bill Murray films on my list, like "City of Ember", "The Limits of Control", "On the Rocks" and a documentary called "Bill Murray Stories", which might have given some more insight into this enigmatic man.  But hey, there's always next year.  I'll start on my year-end wrap-up post very soon, to further celebrate this very weird, very messed-up, very inconvenient and terrible and barely survivable year, and then a new season will begin on January 1, right here.  In the meantime, stay safe, don't travel, circle the wagons, start drinking heavily, and have a very Murray Christmas, a safe New Year's, a joyful Toyotathon, a merry Chrysler-mas and a happy Honda-kkah.  (Jesus, car companies, nobody's supposed to be driving anywhere, read the room, already, will ya?)

Also starring Bill Murray (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Michael Cera (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), George Clooney (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Miley Cyrus (last seen in "The Night Before"), Dimitri Dimitrov (last seen in "She's Funny That way"), David Johansen (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle), Jenny Lewis, Amy Poehler (last seen in "Are You Here"), Chris Rock (last seen in "Dolemite Is My name"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "Whitney"), Paul Shaffer (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Julie White (last seen in "Adult Beginners") and the band Phoenix, with archive footage of Johnny Depp (last seen in "Dead Man"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "The Circle"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "The Wackness"), Paul McCartney (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Charlize Theron (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "The Chumscrubber").

RATING: 6 out of 10 martinis mixed on the piano

Klaus

Year 12, Day 358 - 12/23/20 - Movie #3,699

BEFORE: If you look back almost 300 films ago, the last film I watched in 2019 was the 2017 CGI version of "The Grinch", and if I had a regret after watching that movie, it was that I realized too late that I could have linked from there to "Klaus".  Now, 300 films in a year is my arbitrary limit, sure, but if I had noticed the connection (Rashida Jones) between the two films earlier, I could have cut some middle film from a set of three somewhere in November or perhaps early December, and made room for "Klaus".  It didn't happen, it was too late, so I'm making up for it now.  What could have been film #3,300 at the end of 2019 is now film #3,699 at the end of 2020.  

That's fine, there are plenty of films that I managed to get to in 2020 that were rescheduled from 2019, just as there will be films watched in 2021 that I couldn't find room for in 2020, like "Hellboy", "New Mutants", "Bill and Ted Face the Music" and "Wonder Woman 1984".  Much of THAT next year will be fallout from the pandemic, of course, but some no doubt will be because I just plain ran out of slots.  Now, I'm also determined not to make the same mistake this year that I did last year, so please note that tomorrow's Christmas film was a last-minute addition, and like "Klaus", it sort of snuck up on me - I somehow forgot to include its cast list in my notes, so I very nearly omitted it.  But not quite, because in November I noticed the error, and I was in time to drop one film, let's say "A Million Little Pieces", in order to make room.  More on that tomorrow, but there is a certain symmetry, or perhaps rhythm, to my process. 

For now, Joan Cusack carries over from the tail end of "Instant Family".  

THE PLOT: When Smeerensburg's new postman, Jesper, befriends toymaker Klaus, their gifts melt an age-old feud and deliver a sleigh full of holiday traditions.  

AFTER: If you think about it, they really do sort of update the whole Santa Claus story every decade or so - many storytellers have taken it on, and some add to the story, while others detract.  If you go WAY back to the real Saint Nicholas and see how far removed that guy is from the fat guy in the red suit that talks to kids in shopping malls, you'll see what I mean.  To be fair, nobody really wrote anything about Saint Nicholas until hundreds of years after he died (same goes for Jesus, really) so it's honestly a blank slate.  He supposedly calmed a storm at sea, chopped down a tree possessed by a demon, spent some time in prison, and one legend even says he resurrected three children who had been chopped into pieces by a butcher.  But he was also known for his generosity, giving all his parents' wealth to the poor when they died and paying the dowries for unmarried women in order to prevent them from turning to prostitution - he would throw the coins through the window in the middle of the night, see?  He'd also put coins in shoes that were left out for him, a practice still celebrated on his feast day, December 6.

But then the legend of St. Nicholas got filtered through Dutch traditions, where he became known as Sinterklaas, depicted as an older bishop with white hair and a long beard, wearing a red bishop's robe.  He still arrives in the Netherlands on December 6 by boat, from his summer home in Spain (I swear, I'm not making this up, check Wiki if you don't believe me).  There's a big parade and some adults dress up like Sinterklaas's helper, Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete"") and they wear blackface to look like this Moor character, and they spank the naughty children in the crown with birch rods and the good children get chocolate coins thrown at them VERY HARD.  It all seems very racist, and straight out of the Middle Ages, but it still takes place today - again, Google "Zwarte Piet", I swear this is true.  

Eventually the Dutch settled in America ("even Old New York was once New Amsterdam") and some of the Dutch traditions came to America, and Sinterklaas slowly evolved into what we now know as Santa Claus, despite a push from Protestants to move the focus of Christmas away from the saint-based celebrations and back to the Christ child and the nativity.  Sinterklaas still persisted after the Revolutionary War in the Hudson Valley, and some attribute Washington Irving with a story in 1812 that had St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon.  By 1823 Clement Clarke Moore had published "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas") in the Sentinel in Troy, NY and many of the details of Santa's annual visit were firmly established.  That poem still holds up, once you explain to your kids what a nightcap, kerchief and sash are.  Illustrator Thomas Nast and "Wizard of Oz" author L. Frank Baum later weighed in with more details about Santa's look and daily routine.

From there, you can see how the depiction of Santa's workshop at the North Pole started to mirror American culture - after Henry Ford popularized the assembly line to make cars, it only made sense that elves would work on their own assembly line under Santa's guidance to make toys.  And while Coca-Cola didn't invent the concept, their ads in the 1930's certainly helped create Santa's image and mystique.  Songs like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Gene Autry in 1949, and those Rankin-Bass stop-motion TV specials in the 1960's all kept adding details to Santa's story.  The big one I remember from when I was a kid was "The Year Without a Santa Claus", which threw Heat Meiser and Snow Meiser into the mix, plus Rudolph's own special added Yukon Cornelius, Hermey the elf and all those Misfit Toys...

Fast-forward a few more decades, and more modern depictions of Santa Claus probably have him using super-computers to maintain a giant database for that nice/naughty list, or using e-mail to take toy requests from kids.  But then there's "Klaus", which takes a giant step backwards, going back to a new origin story for Santa Klaus, but also at the same time moving forwards, because this story seems quite modern, even though it's set in the past.  The lead character is Jesper, who is a postman, so that sort of sets it squarely in the 1800's, I think.  Jesper's been stationed on a remote Northern island called Smeerensburg, where everyone's so caught up in a decades-old feud between two families that nobody takes the time to write letters to each other, the kids don't even go to school so the local teacher has to work as a fishmonger instead.  But Jesper is under orders from his father to post and process at least 6,000 letters, or he'll be cut off from the family fortune.  

When Jesper finds an old woodsman living way outside the main city, and he finds that the man has a gift for carving toys, he comes up with the idea to have the local kids write letters to Mr. Klaus, requesting specific toys.  Klaus insists on delivering them in person so he can see how happy the kids become upon getting a present, but since Jesper is skinnier than him, he throws Jesper up in the air and down the chimney to deliver the toys.  And when he reaches the home of the local bully, Jesper comes up with the idea of putting coal in the bully's stocking, to encourage better behavior in the future.  

But this update for the Santa story feels sort of reverse-engineered somehow, like the screenwriter knew where he wanted it to end, and then worked it back to have a completely different beginning.  I do like that most of the connection to religion has been removed here, instead Klaus is guided by the principle of paying it forward, that if you perform acts of kindness, they'll spark others. And time spent feuding is time wasted, which I think certainly resonates in our two-party political system.  The two feuding families here are united by their war on Klaus, and if you think about it, this is what SHOULD have happened when Democrats and Republicans were presented with a common enemy, the coronavirus, only that's not how it shook down, now, is it?  

There is great sadness in Klaus' back-story, he had a wife named Lydia and they were planning for children that never came, then Lydia got sick, and, well...you know.  There's another bit at the end that your kids might not be ready for, because Klaus is just a regular human, too - or is he?  Did he perhaps achieve mythical status that kept him alive much longer than a regular person?  I did think that it was very clever that Jesper basically created the legend of Santa Claus in order to sell stamps, which rings a little close to reality, where he was created to sell Coca-Cola and, well, everything else we all give each other for Christmas.  If Santa Claus didn't already exist, somebody would have had to create him to save the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter every year. (Voltaire once said something similar about God, but I'm paraphrasing here.)

I didn't really follow some of the stuff with the Sami people, who speak a different language than the other characters.  But I'm going to go easy on today's film because the director, Sergio Pablos, was very nice to our Kickstarter campaign.  No naughty list for him this year.  The look of the film is a major selling point, at a time when nearly everything is CGI, it's great to see a studio say, "Well, it doesn't HAVE to be that way, what if animation could look more organic and traditional, hand-crafted even" - which of course, seems very appropriate for a story set back in the late 1800's or perhaps early 1900's.  

Well, there's just one film left to watch in 2020, so I'm going to go get to it.  What will it be?  HINT: It's a Christmas film, and two actors carry over from this one to that one.

Also starring the voices of Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Rashida Jones (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Father Figures"), Will Sasso (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Norm MacDonald (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Sergio Pablos, Neda Margrethe Labba, Reiulf Aleksandersen, Sara Margrethe Oksai, Kendall Joy Hall, and cameos from Sam McMurray (last seen in "Jenny's Wedding"), Dwight Schultz (last heard in "Batman: Under the Red Hood")

RATING: 7 out of 10 bird feeders

Instant Family

Year 12, Day 357 - 12/22/20 - Movie #3,698

BEFORE: Yes, I skipped another day yesterday, because I decided I wanted to finish off Season 2 of "Happy" on Netflix.  That's one more thing crossed off the list, and I had momentum, if I didn't watch those last three episodes last night then I'd have to wait for next week, and I'd lose track of the VERY weird plot.  I can sort of see why this show got cancelled after just two seasons, maybe just a few too many weird elements once they got into dead characters coming back to life, alien Teletubbies and weird latex sex orgies.  Anyway, only Season 1 was Christmas-themed, in Season 2 they did a whole Easter thing, and I'm betting they would have gone in a Halloween direction if the show continued.  Hey, some channel could probably resurrect it, the creators are probably still pitching it somewhere. 

But now I've got to get back on Christmas - I don't THINK this counts as a Christmas film, but I never really know for sure.  I only know it gets me to my last two films, which are Christmas-themed.  Octavia Spencer carries over from "Bad Santa 2".  

THE PLOT: A couple find themselves in over their heads when they foster three children. 

AFTER: The first good news here is that this CAN count as a Christmas film - the lead characters are a couple who decide to become foster parents to three Hispanic children, and that decision happens around Thanksgiving, so by the time the kids are in their house, it's close to Christmas time.  They end up buying too many presents for the kids, only to find the kids having more fun playing with the cardboard boxes the presents came in.  Umm, I think the screenwriter here was confusing kids with cats.  Do kids play with empty boxes?  I'm just not sure...

Let's face it, in many ways I'm just not qualified to comment on a film that's about parents having kids, whether those kids are biological, adopted, foster parents or whatever.  I've never been involved first-hand in any of those processes, so the whole concept is alien to me.  (I'm probably more qualified to review a film about aliens than kids.). But speaking of aliens, the other kind, this film ended up getting portrayed in some circles as pro-Trump propaganda, when it really isn't.  But perhaps it got released around the time that Trump's policies were separating immigrant children from their parents, and putting them in camps.  (Hey, how did that whole kerfuffle turn out?  Oh, yeah, not good.). Maybe I can see how pro-Trumpers fell for this film, because it suggests that the white, middle-class foster parents are much better equipped to raise these three kids than their biological, drug-using mother who has no idea who the kids' father is. (or are there several fathers?)

Taken another way, this film also possibly reads like propaganda for the whole foster care / adoption system, because it takes the time to highlight the perils and struggles of both the kids stuck in the system, and the challenges that lie ahead for any foster parents willing and able to take in troubled kids and teens.  They've got hang-ups, phobias, low self-esteem and tend to act out (umm, remind me, what's the upside again?) because the people who raised them may have abandoned them, or been unable to get their own selves together to act as proper parents, even failing again and again along the way.  But if you've never raised kids, perhaps this film also serves as a warning sign, or even a confirmation of your own life choices to not put yourself in a position where you're responsible for taking care of another human.  Really, the movie's like a mirror, therefore, and you may see what you want or need within it.  

I may have some issues with the lead characters, who flip houses for a living, and rather than have a child of their own, decided to approach starting a family with the same approach.  They essentially looked at foster care as some kind of shortcut, the kids were essentially like an abandoned house, a "fixer-upper" that they could buy, renovate, and turn into something more valuable.  Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very good approach to child-rearing - were they going to flip the kids and turn a profit?  That doesn't even make any sense.  But late in the film, when the quality of their foster care is called into question, the couple writes a legal statement that says that "They didn't know what was missing in their lives until they became foster parents".  Umm, OK, but then why DID they do it, at the time they did it?  

Upon further reflection, the husband, Pete, seems like the more rational one.  Too many times he fell into the "good cop" role when the kids needed discipline, but, hey, somebody's got to be the good cop.  The wife, Ellie, is a much more questionable character.  The opening scenes of the film suggest that she's got a rivalry going with her sister, but that's not a good enough reason to foster kids in need, just to be a "better" person than her sister.  Then, at Thanksgiving, when their family members express relief that Pete and Ellie are NOT going to be foster parents, the couple does a 180 and fosters the kids anyway, out of spite.  That's not a good enough motivation either.  We then gradually learn that Ellie is very rigid, not very forgiving, and views the relationship with the kids as a battle that needs to be won.  It takes a literal slap in the face for her to change and realize she's doing it wrong, but what if by that point the damage is already done?  

Very cagily, they put in examples of "worse" foster parents, so that we'd see how great Pete and Ellie are, by comparison.  There's even one woman who wants to be a single mother to an unwanted black child, preferably a large one with a potential football career, because she wants to re-create the movie "The Blind Side" - though she denies having seen "The Blind Side", this is clearly what she's doing.  Yeah, that's not going to work, because hating that woman doesn't make me like Ellie any better, because they can both be horrible people.  Nice try, though.  The scene where Juan says "Good night, Mommy" to Ellie, and then even though he's fallen asleep, she keeps trying to wake him up, just so she can hear him say it again.  This really drives home the point that she's only interested in being a mother for the ego boost that it gives her, which seems extremely selfish.  

I'm left to conclude that the foster care or adoption systems are not for everybody, I would support anyone who takes that leap, provided that there is a period of introspection first, to make sure that they feel both capable and that they are doing this for the right reasons.  Fostering a kid to feel better about yourself is not a recommended move, especially when you consider the potential those parents have to let down the kids after the kids prove to be more than they can handle.  But I do appreciate that this movie doesn't sugar-coat the whole process, which is one reason why I'm going to kind of give it a pass.  Plus, it is the season of giving, and it feels like this film meant well, even if it didn't quite deliver a coherent message in a clear way.  

There were also too many characters in Ellie's family, I couldn't keep them all straight, and many of them seemed like they were given no reason to be there.  Time to eliminate some characters.  Plus, her parents were played by the (formerly) young female star of "Airplane" and the (formerly) young male lead from "Caddyshack".  That just makes a movie fan feel old, when those actors are playing grandparents!

Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "The Gambler"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Isabela Moner (last heard in "The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature"), Tig Notaro (last seen in "Lucy in the Sky"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "Proof of Life"), Julie Hagerty (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Michael O'Keefe (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), Tom Segura, Gustavo Escobar, Julianna Gamiz, Allyn Rachel (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Charlie McDermott (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine"), Valente Rodriguez (last seen in "The New Guy"), Carson Holmes, Nicholas Logan, Joselin Reyes, Eve Harlow, Iliza Shlesinger, Andrea Anders (last seen in "Daddy's Home 2"), Gary Weeks (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Joan Cusack, Brittney Rentschler, Jody Thompson, Joy Jacobson (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Hampton Fluker (last seen in "The Blind Side"), Randy Havens (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Kenneth Israel (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Rosemary Dominguez, Javier Ronceros, Erika Bierman (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"), Layla Felder, John McConnell, Maureen Brennan (last seen in "I Love You Phillip Morris"), Andrene Ward-Hammond (last seen in "Just Mercy").

RATING: 5 out of 10 teddy bears from court appearances

Bad Santa 2

Year 12, Day 355 - 12/20/20 - Movie #3,697

BEFORE: I'm back from my pre-winter break, just in time to celebrate the Solstice, or perhaps Toyota-thon or Bizarro Christmas, since this is in no way anything close to a regular year.  More on the impending holidays in a bit. 

First, the good news, the Kickstarter campaign was a success, we hit our goal on the last day, with just over two hours to spare.  The momentum was rolling and we had something of a Twitter cascade among my boss's fans - and they are out there - so we ended up going OVER our goal, which was great.  Considering that we did this in the middle of a pandemic, when everyone's a bit short on cash, and even restaurants have GoFundMe pages so they can stay in business, the fact that we succeeded was a very nice surprise. We sort of hit a wall or a plateau halfway through, but we were able to pivot, offer up some more tangible physical rewards like signed books and animation art from his older short films, and I think that did the trick.  Plus there are still people out there willing to support independent film, which is great news, because it means I get to keep my job for the next year, at least, and I don't have to go back on unemployment, and I'll reassess the old career options again maybe a bit down the road.  

Mentally, I'm a wreck, because anything stressful like working a Comic-Con or a Kickstarter campaign takes its toll, and I just want to curl up in a fetal position and sleep for maybe a week straight, only I can't exactly do that, can I?  So I need to busy myself with getting that last bunch of Christmas cards out, playing phone games and watching various TV shows to take my mind off the news of the day.  I just watched the Season 2 finale of "The Mandalorian", and it was killer, eh?  No spoilers here, but get bingeing on it if you're not up to speed.  I also finished "Iron Fist" on Netflix, and then started on "Happy" which aired on Syfy a couple years back, only I didn't bother with it.  But I figured with only 18 episodes, if I watched three per night I could knock it off in a week's time, and then I'm still chipping away at the Netflix list, even if I'm not watching movies. 

I also re-watched "Bad Santa" a few nights ago, to get ready for today, and that's where I started to notice a convergence of sorts.  Patton Oswalt voices the lead animated character in "Happy", and Patton (among other notable people) was very helpful in tweeting about our Kickstarter campaign.  I've never met Patton, but I'm a big fan, and he did a voice for an animated short I worked on, "The Loneliest Stoplight".  I submitted his SAG paperwork for that film, and arranged a re-record with him via e-mail.  He came to our Comic-Con booth once, in disguise, only I was on a break at the time, of course.  Anyway, Patton starred in "Happy", and the show's first season happened to be Christmas-based, with a villain character who abducted children, and who was called Very Bad Santa.  And that brings me back around to "Bad Santa".  

The first "Bad Santa" is a holiday classic in my house, and I don't know why it took 13 years to bring out a sequel.  It was released in 2003, and caused a bit of a stir because the main character is a mall Santa who drinks heavily, robs department stores with his LP elf partner, and has a relationship with a woman who digs the whole Santa suit thing.  It struck a chord with me because I know the Santa fetish thing is real, I was working a Halloween party back in 2001, and I was dressed in a Santa suit.  Since I was monitoring the door, I didn't get much of a crack at the refreshments, but one waitress at the restaurant paid particular attention to me, and she kept bringing me food and beverages.  Now, I was about a week away from getting married for the second time, so I certainly didn't encourage any advances, and nothing came of it.  That would be like getting the football to the 1-yard line and then dropping it - but my co-workers were encouraging me to do something, since I wasn't married yet.  Mmmm, that's not the way I roll - but I just made a mental note that if I were ever single again, a Santa suit might come in handy around the holidays. You know, as an ice-breaker.  Somehow it's the ultimate fantasy for some women (maybe some men, too, I don't know...) with the whole "sit on Santa's lap" and "tell me what you want" thing going on.  I could get more vulgar here, but I won't.  Just go listen to "Santa Baby" or "Back Door Santa", or realize that part of the reason Santa's so jolly is that he knows where ALL the naughty girls live, plus he sees them when they're sleeping, and when they're awake...

Anyway, with the good news comes the bad, I had to call my parents and break the news that we would have to cancel our travel plans.  If we drive up to Massachusetts on Christmas Eve, even if we forgo the usual Foxwoods Casino stop, we'll have to stop somewhere for gas and snacks, and that means we won't be able to fully control our exposure, and THAT means I'd be exposing my parents to some level of risk, and my parents are almost 80, so if they get the COVID they're convinced they'll be checking out.  So for probably the first time in my life, I'm not traveling for Christmas, and my wife and I will just be celebrating at home.  I sent out my Christmas mix CDs, and I was feeling Christmas-ey when I put that together a month ago, but maybe less so now.  

But perhaps that will change as I close out the year - three of my last four films for 2020 are Christmas-based.  We'll start with Billy Bob Thornton carrying over from "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas" and we'll go from there.  I could have included the film "A Million Little Pieces" here, he's in that too, but then I'd have to drop the last film in the Christmas chain, and I don't want to do that now.  Four films to go to make a "perfect year", and a mistake now would also be like dropping that ball on the 1-yard line.  

I've had this one on my list for a few years now, and I think I missed it if it ran on Netflix or Amazon Prime or some other streaming format.  Planning to reach a particular Christmas movie at the start of the year is a bit like aiming at a moving target, I can only control the linking so much at a time, and in January or April I don't quite know where I'm going to be at the end of October, plus my list is ever-changing - so I've aimed at "Bad Santa 2" several times, and missed. (My process these last couple of years has been to just keep about a dozen Christmas movies on the list, and try to end with at least one or two of them.) This year I'm hitting it, and fortunately it's also available on cable, Movies on Demand, at just the right time, further proof that to everything, there is a season, turn, turn, turn.  More about this when I write my year-end wrap-up, which is coming up very soon.

THE PLOT: Fueled by cheap whiskey, greed and hatred, Willie teams up again with his angry little sidekick, Marcus, to knock off a Chicago charity on Christmas Eve. 

AFTER: Isn't this always the way?  You enjoy a movie, then when you find out there's going to be a sequel, maybe you get really excited about it, because surely if you loved one movie, you're probably going to love what comes next in the story.  Only that doesn't always happen, and there are usually warning signs that the film you did like was really a one-off, some magic combination of cast and creators managed to catch lightning in a bottle, and though the second film has elements and echoes of the first film, different personnel are involved, the new writer or director decided to take things in a different direction, and each new installment in a franchise manages to supply a set of diminishing returns.  OK, it doesn't ALWAYS happen, but I think perhaps more often than not, and that's how we ended up with so much hate for Star Wars: Episode IX.  

To be fair, it would be impossible for many reasons to re-capture the spirit of "Bad Santa".  For starters, two of the people that made that movie great were John Ritter and Bernie Mac, and they're no longer with us, and that's sad to say on both counts.  Lauren Graham decided not to (or was unable to) return as Willie Soke's Santa-loving girlfriend, and that's also a shame.  When Willie's narration near the start of the film mentions how much life is a big ball of suckage, it's true to character, but it also highlights how much is missing from the first film.  New directions are fine, but then the film tries to return to form, and Willie teams up with his old elf robbery partner, in a blatant attempt to mirror the past.  There were a hundred directions that a sequel could have gone in without going right back to the old "dress up like Santa and crack a safe" bit.  

To be fair, it's a new city, Chicago, and a new mark - a charity instead of a department store.  And I'll accept the addition of both Kathy Bates and Christina Hendricks, but it's a lot to ask them to help carry this tired same-old-story.  But hey, they got the same actor back to play "The Kid", aka Thurman Merman, and somehow he got thirteen years older and didn't change a bit - still looks and acts like a chubbier, more naive, younger Will Ferrell.  In the first film he was just a fat kid who got bullied and seemed completely clueless, since then the whole world sort of shifted and now when we say someone's on "the spectrum", we're all supposed to bend over backwards and let those people act up or be clueless or break things and not hold them accountable.  Just as Willie couldn't tell in the first film whether Thurman was stupid, naive or always messing with him, as a 21-year old, it's still impossible to get a read on Thurman, for the same reasons.  He's like a savant in some areas, but in other ways can't seem to wrap his head around how the world works, but hey, he knows how to make sandwiches, and they say if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. 

Thurman considers Willie to be his family, but in the first film he also thought Willie was Santa - umm, or did he?  I just re-watched "Bad Santa" and it's not really clear, perhaps by intention.  Did he think Willie was the real Santa at first and then figure it out?  Or did he know all along, or not know all along?  Did he figure it out and then forget?  I keep going back and forth.  Anyway, he's 21 now and still checks in with Willie in his own clueless fashion, and then later in the film somehow travels by bus from Phoenix to Chicago, just to continue being that completely clueless thorn in Willie's side.  With his grandmother deceased and his father, umm, still in jail (?) Thurman doesn't want to spend Christmas alone, of course. 

There are two kinds of families, the ones we're born into and the ones that we form ourselves, over time.  Willie Soke has problems with both kinds - linking up with his ex-partner who tried to pull a double-cross in the last film brings him to Chicago and back in contact with his mother, for the first time in decades.  There's a complicated history there, but let's just say Willie was born to a very young woman who was deep into con games and safecracking herself, and it's equally tough to get a read on her here, does she genuinely want to re-connect with her estranged son, or does she just need his help to pull off the big heist, since she's older and can't hear the tumblers on a safe lining up any more?  Either way, it's an uneasy alliance triangle between Bad Santa, Bad Elf, and Bad Santa's Mother/Mrs. Claus.  Any Tarantino fan should be able to see the Mexican standoff coming as they rob a charity before the corrupt philanthropist in charge can do the same.  (If you steal money from bad people, that's not a bad thing, right?  Or is it?)

Fans of the first film know that Willie can't stay sober for long, for that matter he can't stay away from plus-size women and a particular sex position.  Well, at least he's consistent.  Marcus is supposed to be the brains of the operation, but he can't be trusted, not by a long-shot.  At least with Willie's mom, Sunny Soke, the audience has no frame of reference, so at least that can keep us guessing.  So this is clearly set in the same universe as the first film, where nearly everyone is corrupt or some kind of addict or is selfish in some way, and yes, that applies to every child who sits on Santa's lap and tells him what they want for Christmas.  If you ask me, and I know you didn't, if we're looking for answers about why this world is the way it is, how we ended up with the "ME" generation and Instagram influencers and a bunch of entitled millennials who think the world owes them everything, we need to look at the whole Santa Claus thing differently.  Parents still bring their kids to visit Santa (OK, this year it's all virtual, but work with me here) or write letters (now e-mails, I suppose) to Santa to put in requests for Christmas gifts.  And parents maintain the illusion that Santa will then visit and bring them what they want.

It's gone on for decades now, and maybe this concept should got the way of things like Prohibition, slavery and riding horses - because it's created an overwhelming mass of children who think that at Christmas time, they're going to get something for nothing, and that's just not how the world works.  And children who expect something for nothing become adults who expect something for nothing, and that's where we find ourselves, with an appalling lack of people who donate their time, money or services to noble causes.  How different would the world be if parents told their kids that Santa would only bring them something special not just because they behaved or weren't "naughty", but only if they went above and beyond to do something charitable for others?  If a parent feels that they HAVE to give their kids something for Christmas, because their parents did the same, then it's a never-ending cycle of rewards, often given out to undeserving people.  Kids need to learn that hard work and dedication brings success, not just putting their hands out to a fat guy in a red suit.  You want something from Santa Claus?  OK, kid, tell me what you did this year that really made the world better, had a positive impact, and just staying out of trouble or getting good grades doesn't qualify.  Those kids with gumption, the ones that run events that raise money for charity, or who speak out against gun violence or climate change, THOSE are the kids that should get presents from Santa.  Raise that bar and let's find the kids who are willing to rise to the challenge.  

I'm getting off track here, let me try to get back to the film.  You could say that Willie's had a hard time at life, but hey, at least he looks good - I think Billy Bob might have gone all macrobiotic or super-vegetarian or something.  He doesn't look a thing like that guy who starred in "Sling Blade" back in the day.  Kathy Bates, on the other hand, looks like 10 miles of bad road, but I'm not sure if that's her or just her character, who may have led a rough life.  I still have many questions, like why did it take somebody 13 years to make a sequel?  It's not anything like a record, but most movie franchises prefer to strike while the iron is hot.  Were there problems at Miramax from the whole Weinstein thing, or did Terry Zwigoff, the first film's director, have some kind of option that eventually expired?  I'm going to go read up on the back-story of "Bad Santa 2" and try to figure it all out.  Ah, it seems that the sequel was in development hell for six years, and that started in 2009, six years after the release of the original film.  Many writers and many rewrites later, that's how you end up with something that's this "by the numbers", with so many beats that are common to every other heist film.

It's not QUITE as bad as "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" when it comes to just duplicating the events of the previous film, but it's pretty darn close.  It's sad that Willie never learned any lessons from the events of the first film, and that the main message here seems to be that "Life sucks a big giant dick".  The only upside is that he eventually decides to earn an honest living (everybody deserves a few second chances, and there will always be work for people willing to mop floors), but how long will that last?  Probably just until another group of rotating writers manages to cobble together a "Bad Santa 3".  

Also starring Kathy Bates (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Tony Cox (last heard in "Strange Magic"), Christina Hendricks (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Brett Kelly (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat"), Ryan Hansen (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Jenny Zigrino, Jeff Skowron (last seen in "The Good Shepherd"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Mike Starr (last seen in "Cat's Eye"), Ranae Lee, Kevin Fyfe (last seen in "War Machine"), Tyrone Benskin (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Christopher Tyson, Marc-André Boulanger. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 AA meetings

winter break update

Year 12, Day 347 - 12/12/20 

I have not watched a new movie in nearly a month, and that's an odd feeling.  I've kept my nights full by binge-watching "What We Do in the Shadows" on Hulu, then "Portlandia" on Netflix, and now I'm close to finishing "Iron Fist", the last of the previous run of Marvel Comics shows, in preparation for the next round of Marvel shows that are (eventually) coming to Disney+.  I wish I could say I've been out Christmas shopping, or even online Christmas shopping, but I just can't seem to get that together.  Who even knows if there's going to be a Christmas get-together at this point, because the second wave of the COVID pandemic has hit (second in NYC, third in other areas of the country) and we're all basically housebound again, indoor dining's going to close down again next week, so it's take-out or go grocery shopping once again.  I did manage to get some Christmas cards & mix CDs mailed out, and I'll work on more today.

I did a couple of re-watches, like last night I re-watched "The Last Waltz", even though it wasn't THAT long ago that I did my music doc chain, but I found it was available on EPIX on Demand, but in July I had paid to rent it on iTunes.  Oh, well, now I can burn it to DVD, along with the 2019 Woodstock documentary that played on PBS about a month ago.  "The Last Waltz" still holds up, and it's even better when I allow myself to fast-forward over the performances of Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Neil Diamond.  The version of "The Weight" with the Staples Singers is so glorious I found myself tearing up.  I stand by my rating of an "8" and I wish someone would make a Hollywood fictionalized version of the history of The Band, with Pedro Pascal (or Paul Rudd) as Rick Danko and Adam Sandler making a cameo as Bob Dylan.  I probably said this before. 

The other thing keeping me busy is running a Kickstarter campaign, which is a round-the-clock affair.  I have tasks to do on my off-days, even on the weekends, plus then there's checking the campaign obsessively to see if anyone new has pledged in the last fifteen minutes.  Getting the word out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is another all-day, every day affair.  And I rarely, if ever, promote my own projects here on the blog, nor do I ever feature any advertising or monetization of any kind. (Not that I wouldn't if I could, it just has never been offered to me as a possibility.). But I would like to appeal to my tens of long-time readers, assuming they're out there, to consider supporting this project.  

Look at it this way, if the campaign succeeds, then I'm sure to be employed for the next year, and then I can for sure keep providing the type of commentary and obscure actor linking that you've come to expect.  And I'm at the point where I need to get the word out on every possible venue, and take every possible road to create further awareness, because with under a week to go, I'd be remiss if I didn't try absolutely everything to move that needle.  So, if you can visit the campaign at the link below and consider donating and helping to spread the word, I'd greatly appreciate it.  Plus, you'd be helping out an independent animator and keeping him in business and creating his own art his way.  The campaign is at:

KickstartSlide.com

Much obliged, and since the campaign ends on December 17, I'll be back here shortly after that with my review of "Bad Santa 2", then I'll wrap up the year with more Christmas movies.  The timing of the campaign is really helpful, it filled up my time off from movies, and it's ending (ideally successfully) a week before Christmas.  

ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas

Year 12, Day 324 - 11/19/20 - Movie #3,696

BEFORE: This film is going to wrap up November, with Billy Bob Thornton carrying over from "Dead Man", and you can probably guess what Christmas film I'll be watching when I come back in December.  I had a bit of a dilemma here, because suddenly at the end of the year, with only a few slots left, came a sudden influx of films, including "Mr. North", which is now postponed, and also "A Million Little Pieces", another film with Billy Bob Thornton that looks somewhat interesting.  Then I found a third Christmas movie that could easily get tacked on to the end, after the second Christmas movie.  So something had to give, and it came down to either THIS rock documentary, or "A Million Little Pieces".  

Neither one fit thematically, but this one gets the edge because it's a music doc that didn't link to any of the other music docs on the list (at least not according to the IMDB, there's always uncredited archive footage, usually of the Beatles or the Stones) and I can probably link to "A Million Little Pieces" some other way.  This film HAD to go between two Billy Bob Thornton films in order to be included, so there you go.  PLUS I can't really say that I've covered the music documentary category from "A to Z" unless there's a Z in there somewhere, right?  Oh, and ZZ Top was my favorite band for a number of years, let's say from 1983 to 1996.  More on that later.   

THE PLOT: The story of how three oddball teenage bluesmen became one of the biggest, most beloved bands on the planet. 

AFTER: Well, I was right, there were some notable musicians appearing in archive footage, and that would have been enough to link this film to my earlier chain of rockumentaries, but there was no way to know that without watching the film, was there?  This could have been the link between "Sound City" and "Muscle Shoals", two very different docs about famous sound studios.  But that's neither here nor there - how the heck was I supposed to know that ZZ Top once opened up for Jimi Hendrix or went to play in Hawaii with the Rolling Stones?  Oh, right, I'm a fan, but I never heard those stories from the early days of the band before.  

Maybe I should have known - every single U.S. band that came up in the 1960's or 1970's traces its roots back to Elvis Presley, and every single British band that came up in the 1960's traces its roots back to the Beatles.  (Unless it's a U.S. band inspired by the Beatles, or a British band inspired by Elvis.).  Ah, but ZZ Top really has the roots of its sound in the old blues style, so that means we have to go back to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf - and this explains the connection to the Stones, Hendrix and (more tangentially) Led Zeppelin and Cream, they all covered or ripped off the old blues progressions.  Have you noticed there are very few documentaries made about Led Zeppelin?  That's because they can't really do a deep dive into the creation of their hit songs without pointing out that they blatantly STOLE everything from blues records, just changing the names of the songs and failing to credit the songwriters.  For all the popularity of Zeppelin, there's just no original work there to take pride in.  But I digress.

This documentary instead gets more concerned with the three burning questions on everyone's minds - which are 1) "What's up with the beards?", 2) "Are the beards real?" and 3) Why doesn't the drummer, whose last name is Beard, have a beard?"  Well, all of these questions have an answer, and it's basically the same answer.  The band famously went out on its first tour as a headlining act, on the "Texas Worldwide Tour" that lasted from 1976 to 1977, criss-crossing the whole U.S. from one end to the other.  The tour famously included a Texas-shaped stage with a live buffalo, live steer, live rattlesnakes and a few buzzards that were really looking forward to the drummer dying from exhaustion so they could eat him.  It was some weird mix of rock music and a live touring zoo that has yet to be replicated - and when it was over, the band members needed a break, which started as a 90-day break and then lasted over two years.  When the band got back together, they found that they had all neglected to shave during the break, and decided to roll with it, except that the drummer's beard was nowhere near as long as the beards of the other two, so he promptly shaved it off to not look like a poser.  End of mystery - except keeping the beards going forward added a sense of mystery, with a long beard and some (cheap) sunglasses, the two guitarists became characters of a sort, no longer looking like themselves (and after you've seen their pre-beard faces, you may agree that this was an improvement.)

But it's HOW these three different men spent their two-year break, and the money they earned from that worldwide tour, that is the most edifying.  Guitarist Billy Gibbons went walk-about, hanging out in Europe with punks in 1976, traveling to India and seeking the advice of mystics, and so on,  Bassist Dusty Hill took a job at a Texas airport as a baggage handler named "Joe", taking advantage of the anonymity granted him by growing a beard, plus being a bass player.  And drummer Frank Beard went to Jamaica and spent all that tour money on drugs.  There's something brutally honest about that, like a street beggar who holds up a sign that says, "Who am I kidding, I need a beer!"  The guy liked heroin, what more is there to say?  

Eventually the band came back together, the drummer went to rehab, and they started making new music to follow-up their early hits "Tush" and "La Grange" with a more studio-based sound that suddenly started to sell albums - their 1979 "Deguello" album went platinum thanks to songs like "Cheap Sunglasses" and their cover of the old Sam & Dave hit "I Thank You", and they slowly found themselves moving a bit away from the blues and closer to mainstream rock and roll.  Then of course, when MTV became a thing, they were perfectly positioned after getting out of their old contract and moving to Warner Bros., whose goal was to conquer the world through three-minute music videos.  Who can forget the triple threat of the music videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs", which all featured the band acting as mystical, ghost-like advisers helping the downtrodden normal American slaves transcend their slavish, work-a-day lives through the combination of a hot car and scantily-clad women?  And don't forget those fuzzy guitars that they could somehow spin on their belt buckles.  If ever a band was in the right place at the right time, it was ZZ Top - the first year of MTV was like Elvis shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan show mixed with the Beatles appearing in "A Hard Day's Night", mixed with Miley Cyrus swinging nekkid on a giant wrecking ball.  

I was right there with them, I'd stay up late to watch "Friday Night Videos" (my parents didn't have cable, so no MTV) to see if "Sharp Dressed Man" would beat out Def Leppard's "Photograph" for video of the week, and there was nothing more meaningful in my life at the time.  I HAD to buy the "Eliminator" album, because these guys were just too cool for school, and I'd put on the headphones way too loud and mock-drum along with every track.  Plus I new every second of their videos, and just when to pause them, if you know what I mean.  I bought myself a shiny "ZZ" keychain and dreamed of the day that the band would pull up to my job in a 1933 Ford hot rod filled with three lingerie-wearing women who would whisk me away and rock my world.  But, that never happened.  Wait, music videos weren't reality?  Still, a young teen could dream, right?  

It appears that ZZ Top sold me (and millions of others) a bill of goods that they couldn't deliver on.  But they're hardly the only ones.  If I go out and buy a new suit, new shoes, silk suit, black tie, you're saying that EVERY GIRL will be crazy about me, if I'm a "Sharp Dressed Man"?  I guess I didn't read the disclaimer saying that your actual mileage may vary, and perhaps not EVERY girl will be crazy about you, because come on, you're not in the band, are you?  And where is this elusive woman who not only has legs, but clearly knows how to use them?  (You mean, walking?  Or are we talking about something else here?). Damn, but that's really a stupid song at the end of the day - but somehow, for a while, it was the center of my universe.  

Later on, while in college, since ZZ Top wasn't putting out new records fast enough for me, I searched record stores for their earlier, some would say more interesting, albums in the popular cassette format.  Eventually I got them all, from 1971's cleverly-named "ZZ Top's First Album" to 1981's "El Loco".  I even went to see them in concert just once, at Madison Square Garden in NYC, this must have been in June 1994, the "Antenna" tour, when they were still very cool in my eyes - even though there were no live animals on the stage, at least there were "moving sidewalks" (also the name of Billy Gibbons' first band...).  I didn't know there were so many rednecks in the NYC area, but they sure came out!  I think my first wife "came out" shortly thereafter, and maybe I should partially blame the hot women on stage making out with each other.  

Slowly I found myself drifting away from ZZ Top as a fan, though I still cherished those early albums - look, things happened, I got busy and my life shifted around, and I found other bands to listen to and fill the gap. Hey, we'll always have 1983, right?  And 1985, 1990 and 1994?  Also, it's kind of the band's fault, too, because just before "Antenna", which was an OK album, they left Warner Bros. and signed one of those multi-album, decade-long contracts with RCA for a PILE of money, which they'd get no matter what happened.  At that point, what incentive does a band have to, you know, make good music?  Sure enough, the "Rhythmeen" album in 1996 totally sucked - go ahead, name one song from that album that's even as good as "Velcro Fly".  You can't do it, because there were no good songs, and the first job of a band is to record good songs.  Same thing with "XXX" in 1999 - who can even remember the failed songs "Poke Chop Sandwich", "Crucifixx-a-Flat" and "Dreadmonboogaloo", besides me?  Nobody.  I bought "Mescalero" in 2003 out of respect for their past, but the damage was done, and there was no going back.  

Notably, this documentary comes to a close right after "Eliminator" in 1983, which cemented the band's iconic status, but there's not even any mention of the follow-up album, "Afterburner", which is at least half as good as "Eliminator", I think everybody can agree with that.  "Sleeping Bag" was a hit, and "Rough Boy" was like the greatest ballad ever, but they never wanted to be a ballad-singing band, did they?  It's the law of diminishing returns at that point, because "Recyler" was probably only half as good as "Afterburner", but at least it had "Doubleback", which notably appeared (as the band did) in the movie "Back to the Future III".  

So we have to face reality here - ZZ Top had some good times, they got to travel around the world, open up for Hendrix and the Stones, but they were essentially a blues cover band that somehow found a way to catch lightning in a bottle for a few years, thanks to MTV, Warner Bros., Ford motor company and some hot music-video babes attracting thousands of over-sexed teen boys.  By the same token, The Beatles were a skiffle band who similarly caught lightning in a bottle thanks to Ed Sullivan, Richard Lester, the JFK assassination, George Martin and Paul McCartney attracting thousands of under-sexed teen girls.  The difference is, the Beatles had the good sense to break up and do their own thing, but ZZ Top are somehow still together, playing the same blues songs that they did 50 years ago.  The body is dead, but the brain just hasn't accepted it yet.  The songs from "Eliminator" are like the original "Star Wars: A New Hope", they've worn a groove in my brain so deep that I can listen to them, but I can't HEAR them any more, I'm kind of immune.  I had to walk away from them for years just to get them back.  

They win the title of longest band without any line-up changes by default, only because they've had the same three guys playing together for 50 years, and though the Stones have been around longer, Brian Jones died, Bill Wyman left and Ronnie Wood came on board.  Longer band history, but not the same line-up.  But in my book, ZZ Top hasn't produced anything half-GOOD since 1994, and I think that needs to be taken into account.  And I say this as a FAN, who just wants their more recent music to be, you know, better.  I'm that guy who was driving through Texas two years ago who made my wife pull over just so I could get a photo of the highway sign for La Grange.  

A couple notable things - ZZ Top served up a bit of karma on Jimi Hendrix, who famously played two songs from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in concert, before that album was released, because he knew that a couple of the Beatles were in his audience.  ZZ Top opened for Hendrix and somehow had to play "Foxy Lady" and "Purple Haze" to round out their set, when they noticed Hendrix watching from off-stage.  Surprisingly, he wasn't upset, he just said, "I like you guys, you got a lot of nerve."  

They also relate the story here about how the band first came together, with Dusty Hill in the Dallas-based band The Warlocks with his brother, and Frank Beard playing in another band, then moving over to join the Warlocks.  It's hardly a "Ringo-replaces-Pete-Best" moment, but I guess every line-up has to come from somewhere.  Then Frank Beard met up with Billy Gibbons after two members of Moving Sidewalks got drafted, and then two more people dropped out of the trio that was left behind, one taking a gig composing music for "Mork & Mindy".  Then when Frank says to Billy, "Hey, I know a bassist named Dusty", it's extremely anti-climactic when you compare that to, say, Lennon meeting McCartney at that garden party.  

And I'm out - have a happy and a safe Thanksgiving, and I'll meet you back here in about a month to celebrate Christmas.  Got to get my annual mix CD put together.  

Also starring Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard, Josh Homme (last seen in "Sound City"), Terry Manning, Country Winston Marshall, Steve Miller, Howard Bloom, Ralph Fisher, Tim Newman, Dan Auerbach, with archive footage of Elvis Presley (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Mick Jagger (ditto), Keith Richards (ditto), B.B. King, Muddy Waters (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Howlin' Wolf (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), Janis Joplin, James Brown (last seen in "The New Guy"), Roky Erickson, Randy Newman, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Bill Ham, Mark Goodman, Col. Tom Parker. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 beer drinkers and/or hell raisers

Dead Man

Year 12, Day 322 - 11/17/20 - Movie #3,695

BEFORE: So the initial plan was to stop after "Seraphim Falls" and save the rest of this year's films for December, but that meant stopping right between two "revisionist Westerns", or so I'm being told, so I've decided to keep the thematic momentum going, and now I'll watch two films this week, then put the blog on pause for a month.  But we are still very, very close to Christmas movies - I think the Lifetime channel is already running them - just like we're very, very close to a new President, and not one but two effective vaccines.  Better days are ahead, we have to believe that, or else we're in danger of losing what little hope we have left.  

Michael Wincott carries over from "Seraphim Falls" - there was an alternate plan if I'd watched "Mr. North", and it involved Anjelica Huston and Robert Mitchum, but there are so few slots left in 2020 that this plan is off the table now - and several films are now being shoehorned into slots in 2021, much like the release schedules of all of the major studios right now, I'll wager. 

THE PLOT: On the run after murdering a man, accountant William Blake encounters a strange aboriginal American man named Nobody, who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world. 

AFTER: And so it came to pass that in the closing days of the weirdest movie year ever, and in many ways the weirdest year ever overall, that I found a way to squeeze in three films directed by Jim Jarmusch, two of them off-beat horror films and one alternative/revisionist Western.  And that's all OK, everything happens for a reason, every film somehow gets watched at the right time.  This one's been in the back of my mind for YEARS, for example, without actually appearing on any of my lists, largely because it hasn't been seen on cable - not by me, anyway.  If any channel ever ran this, I missed it - or I wasn't yet curious enough about it for its presence to register.  A few months back I noticed it on IMDB.TV, which is a free service screening films (I don't think with ads, like Tubi, but I'm not sure...) and the IMDB web-site is connected to Amazon, so that means it could have appeared on Amazon Prime soon after.   But instead it ended up on HBO Max, which is a NEW streaming service that I automatically get now because I pay for HBO every month.  The streaming wars give, and the streaming wars will eventually take away - right now, they're still in "giving" mode.  So this now becomes the very first film I've watched on HBO Max, beating out "An American Pickle", and all the other films on my HBO Max playlist, which are all also available through the DVR, for now.  

And I know this film came to me, eventually, at just the right time, because it shares some DNA with "Seraphim Falls", beyond the fact that they're both revisionist Westerns.  Both are stories about a man on the run, accused of murder (rightly or wrongly) and pursued by a group of several men who are just as likely to kill each other as they are to kill him.  In both films, the lead character encounters a Native American who seems to have a mystical connection, and who (either literally or symbolically) serves the function of ushering him into the afterlife.  Both films dispose of characters quite liberally, sometimes introducing characters JUST to kill them, it seems (Hey, the Old West was a rough place, for sure...) and both films feature, at one point, someone attempting to remove a bullet with a very large knife.  

(The other option was to put this film in between the other two Jim Jarmusch films, though it wouldn't have fit thematically in the horror chain.  But since Jim Jarmusch tends to use some actors more than once, it shared two actors (Steve Buscemi and Iggy Pop) with "The Dead Don't Die", and another actor, John Hurt, with "Only Lovers Left Alive".  But I didn't realize that at the time, because both of those films linked to each other via Tilda Swinton.  Instead, this film goes HERE, and allows me to connect to Christmas movies.  See what I mean?  Every film gets watched at just the right time.) 

In the end, I don't know what's weirder, that Jarmusch directed a vampire film, a zombie film, or a Western.  They all seem like they're way out of his NYC-indie comfort zone, so good for him, I'm glad he hasn't limited himself to just one genre or one style.  It's good for a director to challenge himself, stretch those muscles, and he didn't just keep making "Down by Law" or "Coffee and Cigarettes" again and again.  That being said, there's so much Jarmusch-y like dialogue in this one, in between all the horse riding and gun shooting, that is.  It starts like one of those "fish out of water" stories, where Depp plays William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, wearing a very unfortunate plaid suit, traveling by train from Cleveland out West (the state is unnamed, but the train crosses the desert, and the film ends in a redwood forest?  Perhaps in the Pacific Northwest?)

By the time he gets there, the job has been filled by someone else - that's the 1800's for you, travel took a long time, and so did communication.  Did William send a confirmation telegram?  It's unclear, but hey, lesson learned.  It took him a month to settle his affairs in Cleveland, buy a suit, pack and then take a probably weeks-long train ride to the frontier town of Machine.  Anyway, he's left stranded and jobless in a new (and very filthy) town, decorated with a lot of skulls and bones.  The death motif is everywhere from the start, plus the film is called "Dead Man", after all.  And thus we see a big difference between this film and the other two Jim Jarmusch films I watched in October - those were about zombies and vampires, creatures who die, but then somehow keep on living.  Today's film is more about a guy who's technically alive, but in many ways he's doomed.  Actions taken at the start of the film seal his fate, in some ways he's already dead, but just doesn't know it yet.  

This gets further punctuated when he meets a young woman outside the saloon (where he's spent his last bit of money on a small bottle of alcohol).  After forming a connection and sleeping with her, her old boyfriend returns to her, and he's not happy to find her in bed with someone else.  Gunfire is exchanged, and somehow two parts of the love triangle end up dead, with William Blake leaving the scene.  But he's now got a bullet lodged close to his heart, so that clock starts ticking.  This is where the Native American mystic enters the scene, and he can't remove the bullet, so instead he starts the long journey of delivering William Blake to the place where the sea meets the sky, and preparing him for the transition to the next world.  

However, the man Blake shot happened to be the son of the owner of metal works, the place that offered Blake a job, but couldn't wait long enough for him to arrive, and filled the position with another accountant.  I'd say this seems a bit contrived, but there are probably only a few dozen people in that frontier town, and so of course everybody's probably connected to each other in some way.  You can't shoot somebody in an Old West town without then having to deal with that guy's brother, or father, or some relative tracking you down for vengeance, right?  So old man Dickinson hires the three meanest, nastiest bounty-hunting killers he can find, and sends them after Blake.  Meanwhile he also puts out a reward the legal way, so every marshal in the county also ends up on Blake's trail.  

Then, things get weird.  Umm, that is, weirder.  Nobody takes peyote and goes off on a vision quest, Blake gets hungry and starts to have visions of his own, but also develops skills that help him defeat all the unsavory types that are tracking him, trying to kill him, or just take the tobacco that they think he might have. (Well, it is a Jarmusch film, in the end, I wonder if everybody seeking tobacco is some kind of callback to characters bumming smokes in "Coffee & Cigarettes"...). A lot of people get killed along the way, some of them accidentally, but this film never really falls into the comedy patterns of, say, a Coen Brothers film, or "A Million Ways to Die in the West".  I'd hate to see something like this go the slapstick route, after all, instead Jarmusch did a good job of maintaining the quite serious tone, while peppering the film with comic characters, like Iggy Pop wearing a frontier dress (cannot un-see).  Was the implication that he served as the pseudo-girlfriend for the two trappers he was traveling with?  

As the film wore on, I do admit that I couldn't take some things seriously - part of that was due to the too-modern attitudes of some of the characters, like a trading post missionary who's obviously racially biased against Native Americans, who themselves seemed keenly aware that the missionary's blankets were dangerous due to smallpox (I doubt that in real-life anyone on the frontier made the connection at the time).  Other elements were a bit distracting, like a trapper named Benmont Tench, and I know that's the name of a musician from Tom Petty's band, the Heartbreakers.  But apart from that, this was a solid piece of filmmaking that may have flown under most people's radar for far too long - I know that was the case for me. 

It's been quite a while since I made any progress on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", bu this film is on that list - and so is "The Cabin in the Woods", which I watched in October.  (Films scroll off this list all the time, to make room for newer ones...). So updating my progress, this takes me up to 430 seen from that list.  I may be able to get to five more in January, if my plan holds out - that's if I watch four films directed by Ingmar Bergman, plus a fifth film, "Muriel's Wedding".  But January feels like a long way off, I've got to get through a whole month of down-time and then the Christmas movies first. 

Also starring Johnny Depp (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Gary Farmer (last seen in "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"), Crispin Glover (last seen in "River's Edge"), Robert Mitchum (last seen in "The Grass Is Greener"), John Hurt (last seen in "Only Lovers Left Alive"), Mili Avital (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Gabriel Byrne (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Lance Henriksen (last heard in "Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins"), Eugene Byrd (last seen in "8 Mile"), Iggy Pop (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Billy Bob Thornton (last seen in "Faster"), Jared Harris (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Alfred Molina (last heard in "Frozen II"), Jimmie Ray Weeks, Mark Bringelson, John North, Gibby Haynes, Michelle Thrush, with a cameo from Steve Buscemi (also last seen in "The Dead Don't Die")

RATING: 6 out of 10 totem poles