Christmas North of Nashville

If you get a chance, watch Christmas North of Nashville on the Great American Family network.  It has the typical plot of the big-city woman who comes home for Christmas -- but in this case, the hometown is Owensboro, Kentucky -- I mean, Madisonville.

1978: What's on TV Wednesday Nights?

It honestly had never occurred to me until my year-by-year nostalgia slog at the HP just how hard I fell in love with newsrooms and newspeople through TV shows like Eight Is Enough and Lou Grant in the wake of Watergate and All the President's Men. In fact, I think Eight Is Enough might've been the most formative for me of all of the newspaper art of the 1970s. 

I really, really dug Dick Van Patten's Tom Bradford, an editor with a secretary and lots of professional respect--but a guy who ultimately seems to spend most of his time and emotional energy hanging out with with his wife, children and friends. Also, he's forever playing football or tennis or some sport. I see now that this dude was a total hero for me. I watched Eight Is Enough regularly when it was on; I skipped a lot of class in my first year or two at Western watching daytime reruns of the show on one of the two channels I could tune in on my dorm-room portable TV, and my wife and I even now and then put on an episode on Tubi (she liked/likes it, too).

So, Eight Is Enough Season 3 is my solid Wednesday-nights TV79 opener.

I don't know that I ever actually loved The Jeffersons, but I did come to love George, Louise and all of their family and friends, as I can't imagine that there's an episode that I haven't seen at least some of. So Jeffersons Season 5 is a likely SelectaVision situation for me at some point later in the evening.

The new shows? Meh.

I think it makes total sense that NBC in 1978 would take a flier on Dick Clark as ringmaster of an SNL for squares, but, in hindsight, it sure seems clear that the Ed Sullivan era was just solidly passed.

I watched a lot of the Vega$ pilot movie, and I found it surprisingly compelling. Still, I never watched that show when I was a kid; it's just not the kind of fun I'm usually looking for from TV. I'm not holding space for it.

Of course, 1978 me will give the new Channel 12 sitcom, In the Beginning, a go. It's clear CBS had high hopes for this Norman Lear sendup of Going My Way. Here is a very entertaining reel of promos that the network put together, apparently, for affiliates or advertisers or some B2B audience, and In the Beginning ("a different kind of comedy with impact for on both children and adults") is introduced as a big-tent Social Gospel meditation:

That back end of TV79 Wednesdays ultimately looks like movie territory for me, however. Here's what most grabbed me from the borrowed-from-box-office summary that TV Guide compiled for the new season:

• Airport '77
• Bad News Bears
• Black Sunday (just for the football parts)
• Blume in Love
• Fun with Dick and Jane
• Gone with the Wind
• Harry and Tonto
• Lady Sings the Blues
• Mother, Jugs and Speed
• Network
• Norman, Is That You?
• Orca
• Prisoner of Second Avenue
• Rocky
• Two-Minute Warning (again, football parts)

IMDB and the 21st Century

According to IMDB, here are the ten highest rated movies of the 21st Century (which began in 2001):

1.  The Dark Knight (2008):  9.0 (3d highest movie of all time)

2.  The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King (2003):  9.0 (6th highest movie of all time)

3.  The Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring (2001):  8.9 (9th highest movie of all time)

4.  The Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers (2002):  8.8 (12th highest movie of all time)

5.  Inception (2010):  8.8 (14th highest movie of all time)

6.  Interstellar (2014):  8.7 (18th highest movie of all time)

7.  City of God (2002):  8.6 (26th highest movie of all time)

8.  Spirited Away (2001): 8.6 (31st highest movie of all time)

9.  The Pianist (2002):  8.5 (32d highest movie of all time)

10.  Parasite (2019):  8.5 (34th highest movie of all time)

Last week, The New York Times picked Parasite as the best movie of the 21st century so far.

IMDB and Star Wars

Here is the current IMDB ranking for each of the nine parts of the Star Wars movie universe:

Episode I (The Phantom Menace) (1999):  6.5

Episode II (Attack of the Clones) (2002):  6.6

Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) (2005):  7.6

Episode IV (A New Hope) (1977):  8.6 (29th highest of all time)

Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back) (1980):  8.7 (15th highest of all time)

Episode VI (Return of the Jedi) (1983):  8.3 (92d highest of all time)

Episode VII (The Force Awakens) (2015):  7.7

Episode VIII (The Last Jedi) (2017):  6.9

Episode IX (The Rise of Skywalker) (2019):  6.4

I should mention one more standalone movie:

Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story (2016):  7.8

I did not see Episodes VIII or IX, but I saw all the others, and I think the folks at IMDB got the others (including Rogue One) almost exactly right.  (I would raise Rogue One to 8.0, and I would lower The Force Awakens to 7.3.  The others I'd keep the same.

Oscar Thread

I'm not going to watch the Oscars, and I didn't watch any of the movies this year.  But they are on tonight, and if I read about anything worth commenting on, I'll put it here.

Oscars Update

I think it was real. But then I thought Andy Kaufman/Jerry Lawler was real, too.

CODA really was good.

1982

Spoiler alert: Love does, in fact, turn Kenny Rogers around in this movie from 1982.

Adult Language

 I'd be so proud of myself if I ever wrote even a little bit of something that 804 people liked on YouTube.

Movie Review: Despicable Me 2

My daughter's elementary school last night hosted a movie night in its gym—they showed Despicable Me 2 on the gym wall, and kids splayed sleeping bags out in the floor. They served pizza slices, popcorn and soft drinks for 50 cents or a buck or two each. The kids were just ecstatic to be together on a Friday night, at school and without the responsibility to accomplish anything. There were a few times that a couple of the kids got a little rough or a little loud, but, for the most part, everybody and everything was fine.  

My wife and I sat on a blanket at the back of the gym, using the assistive-light widgets on our smartphones to read stuff we had each brought. For example, I learned last night that, right before the 1969 season, Vince Lombardi and the Redskins picked up Frank Ryan, the Browns’ quarterback in their 1964 championship, off waivers to back up Sonny Jurgensen. 

Anyway, it’s so interesting and even kind of wonderful to be more and more abstracted onto the periphery of someone else’s drama. My 6-year-old had all sorts of things going on during this event last night with some other girls, and at one point I could see that a couple of boys came by and interacted with them briefly. On the way out, a couple of my daughter's friends came by and they gave each other long, meaningful hugs, like they had just been through this giant, fantastic experience together. It was an hour and a half, slices of takeout pizza on paper plates and a DVD, but there was all sorts of huge things going on for my daughter and the other children. Getting to go to that thing last night was much more emotionally intense for my daughter than probably a half-dozen experiences that my wife and I have already paid more than $500 each to create for her (trips to amusement parks or whatever).

The movie looked OK. A couple of times, it got loud enough to look up and see some funny stuff going on. And a couple of times, it got quiet enough to look up and see that the animation really is just amazing. 

Spoiler alert ...

Movie Review: Sex, Lies and Videotape

Writing about Something, Anything yesterday got me to thinking about another middle class angst movie Sex, Lies and Videotape which is available for viewing now on Crackle. It came out in 1989 and was Steven Soderbergh's big breakout in Hollywood as he wrote and directed it. I watched it last night for the first time in 26 years so I could write something about it today.

In many ways it is a classic angst movie. The big difference here is that we have four characters instead of one. Each one is dealing with their angst in different ways. You have John Mullany who is a successful lawyer and is obviously having some problems dealing with his anxieties by essentially ignoring them. You have Ann Bishop Mullany, John's wife, who is dealing with her anxieties by going to therapy where she doesn't really open up about anything real. You have Cynthia Bishop, Ann's sister and John's lover, who is dealing with her anxiety by simply taking on the persona that she's cool and above it all. Then you have the catalyst character Graham Dalton who has dealt with his anxiety in a very odd manner.  Graham has become reclusive and closed himself off from all intimacy.

When Graham enters the scene all of the other characters seem rather content to keep existing as they have. Essentially hiding their angst under a rock of bad choices. Graham though enters the scene and Ann for the first time, sees someone who has let their anxieties completely overwhelm them. She seems to suddenly become aware of her real issues and begins to look at her life and the lives of those around her in a different light. So in this way the story takes a classic angst story arc. We have a primary character who suddenly starts to see the world around them differently. The trick is Graham also seems to have this same affect on Ann's sister Cynthia.  While Ann seems to be looking hard at the people around her and where she fits in and how she has been too weak for too long, Cynthia seems to be looking more at herself. She begins to see how her choices are affecting others.

This of course leaves us with our two male characters. Graham in many ways is a non-character, character. He is merely the catalyst to help the other characters further their stories. And so Graham is a guy who is left in many ways a mystery to us. Though he is the trigger for much change, even his own in the end, he is not very well known to us. John on the other hand is the one character who refuses to embrace his angst. He refuses to give in to the notion that maybe his choices and maybe his life isn't what it all seems to be. Of course who knows, maybe they could have made a follow up movie all about John.

As for the movie.  Well the story in many ways is weak.  The best character and the most real character is Cynthia.  We've all known a Cynthia in our lives at some point or another or been a Cynthia at some point.  It also helps that Laura San Giacomo who plays her is by far the best actor on screen.  When she's on she dominates the screen.  I would have found the story much more interesting if it had focused on her character and we had followed her through, but instead we get Ann and Graham.  Graham in many ways is too odd to be believable, especially as a character that would trigger this change in Ann.  And that is where the story falls short.  Ann and Graham are the primary characters but they are not nearly as well acted or as interesting as their counters John, Peter Gllagher, and Cynthia.

On a final note, the ending feels too Hollywood.  Not sure how else to put it, but it feels tacked on.

I can't really recommend this movie though it has aged well.  It feels about as timely in 2016 as it did in 1989.

Movie Review: Something, Anything

So when I was in college I had this dream of getting my PhD in Russian, then going to Russia and teaching a class on the American, middle class, angst novel.

The reading list would look something like this.

Less Than Zero
Something Happened
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
Mysteries of Pittsburgh
The Secret History
Butterfield 8
etc.

You get the idea. Anyhow that dream died when I dropped out of my Russian PhD program, but the idea has always lived. In fact sometimes I think I should try and put together the course on-line just for fun. Anyhow, the point is, I'm drawn to these kind of stories and Something, Anything falls perfectly into that category.  What makes it even better is that it is set in a world that feels familiar to me.  The majority of the story takes place in Knoxville, TN, but at one point our character makes the drive from Knoxville up to Lexington, KY.

The movie is written and directed by Paul Harrill, a Knoxville native.  In one interview he says,

For me, [the film] is very much of its place, even though the landscapes aren’t necessarily a huge part of it. But it is in terms of the values and the culture where the story is being told. East Tennessee is where I live and it’s where I’ve lived on and off for 30 years of my life. And I wanted to tell the story of a woman who does follow this sort of archetypal journey in terms of asking questions and walking away from her current life. But I wanted to place it somewhere that I don’t see that much on film, and make that the starting point.

Truth is he nailed it.  I don't know that I've seen any movie that felt more a part of the world of Tennessee and Kentucky than this movie and for me that made the movie a bit more special.  Maybe  I should specify middle class, suburban life in Tennessee and Kentucky.

It's a quiet movie, with a quiet lead character.  But it fits the movie and the story well.

At it's heart it is a take on one of the more classic middle class angst novels, Franny and Zooey.  We have a female lead who is going through a crisis with the world around her.  I think what makes this movie work so well is that he takes that basic idea and pushes it into the real world in a way that Franny and Zooey does not.  We not only get to see her in the crisis, but we get to see the effects this crisis can have on her with her friends, with her family, with her work life, etc.  More than anything it feels real.

I also appreciate the fact that people aren't made out to be good or bad.  We simply have a person who is beginning to look at the world with different eyes than she's ever had before.  That different view point changes her life in many ways.

I would highly recommend this movie.  It is streaming right now on Netflix, so you can watch it for free there.    

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical, AND THE WINNER IS

West Side Story





Thanks to everyone who voted, it was a lot of fun.

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical Finals

Final Four Results

7 West Side Story over 1 Beauty and the Beast

4 Mary Poppins over 16 A Chorus Line

---

That sets up our final

7 West Side Story









VS

4 Mary Poppins

---

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical the Final Four

Final Eight Results

A Bracket

7 West Side Story over 4 The Music Man


B Bracket

4 Mary Poppins over 3 Tangled


C Bracket

16 A Chorus Line over 2 Aladdin


D Bracket

1 Beauty and the Beast over 2 The Sound of Music

---

Final Four Match-Ups


7 West Side Story



VS

1 Beauty and the Beast

---

4 Mary Poppins



VS

16 A Chorus Line

---

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical Final Eight

A Bracket

4 The Music Man



VS

7 West Side Story

---

B Bracket

4 Mary Poppins



VS

3 Tangled

---

C Bracket

16 A Chorus Line

Explicit


VS

2 Aladdin

---

D Bracket

1 Beauty and the Beast



VS

2 The Sound of Music

---

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical Recent Results

OK we are getting down to it now.  Here are the results of the Sweet Sixteen match-ups.

A Bracket

4 The Music Man over 8 Mulan

7 West Side Story over 14 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang


B Bracket

4 Mary Poppins over 1 Singin' In the Rain

3 Tangled over 2 Fiddler on the Roof


C Bracket

16 A Chorus Line over 13 South Pacific

2 Aladdin over 14 Gigi


D Bracket

1 Beauty and the Beast over 4 Yankee Doodle Dandy

2 The Sound of Music over 14 Carousel


A Bracket
4 The Music Man
7 West Side Story


B Bracket
4 Mary Poppins
3 Tangled


C Bracket
16 A Chorus Line
2 Aladdin


D Bracket
1 Beauty and the Beast
2 The Sound of Music

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical C and D Sweet Sixteen

C Bracket

16 A Chorus Line



VS

13 South Pacific

---

14 Gigi



VS

2 Aladdin

---

D Bracket

1 Beauty and the Beast



VS

4 Yankee Doodle Dandy

---

14 Carousel



VS

2 The Sound of Music

---

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical A and B Sweet Sixteen

A Bracket

8 Mulan



VS

4 The Music Man

---

14 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang



VS

7 West Side Story

---

B Bracket

1 Singin In the Rain



VS

4 Mary Poppins

---

3 Tangled



VS

2 Fiddler on the Roof

---

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical Recent Results

A Bracket Second Round Results

8 Mulan over 1 The Lion King

4 The Music Man over 5 The Producers

14 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over 6 Holiday Inn

7 West Side Story over 2 My Fair Lady


B Bracket Second Round Results

1 Singin In the Rain over 8 The King and I

4 Mary Poppins over 5 Frozen

3 Tangled over 11 Oklahoma!

2 Fiddler on the Roof over 10 Guys and Dolls


C Bracket Second Round Results

16 A Chorus Line over 9 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

13 South Pacific over 12 Grease

14 Gigi over 11 Gypsy

2 Aladdin over 10 Jesus Christ Superstar


D Bracket Second Round Results

1 Beauty and the Beast over 8 Funny Girl

4 Yankee Doodle Dandy over 5 The Muppet Movie

14 Carousel over 11 Damn Yankees

2 The Sound of Music over 7 1776


A Bracket
8 Mulan
4 The Music Man

14 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
7 West Side Story


B Bracket
1 Singin In the Rain
4 Mary Poppins

3 Tangled
2 Fiddler on the Roof


C Bracket
16 A Chorus Line
13 South Pacific

14 Gigi
2 Aladdin


D Bracket
1 Beauty and the Beast
4 Yankee Doodle Dandy

14 Carousel
2 The Sound of Music

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical D Bracket Second Round

1 Beauty and the Beast



VS

8 Funny Girl

---

5 The Muppet Movie



VS

4 Yankee Doodle Dandy

---

14 Carousel



VS

11 Damn Yankees

---

7 1776



VS

2 The Sound of Music

---

Ultimate Bracket: Best Movie Musical C Bracket Second Round

16 A Chorus Line



VS

9 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

---

12 Grease



VS

13 South Pacific

---

14 Gigi



VS

11 Gypsy

---

10 Jesus Christ Superstar



VS

2 Aladdin

---