Little Orphan Annie: Canceled!

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Man, this is absolutely no good.

If you're looking for an indication of the sorts of things we're losing to a mix of the demise of print, changing cultural practices and what happens when you continue creating new and shinier franchises... The Chicago Tribune syndicate is canceling the 85-year-running strip "Little Orphan Annie".

Read here.

Since learning about Tintin while in middle school, I always sort of felt that Annie was America's Tintin. A globetrotting adventurer, getting into all sorts of scrapes that were a bit out of a kid's depth, and often had quite a grand scale to the adventure.


Annie enjoys the holidays

Unlike Europe, America doesn't do quite as much to pass down characters from one generation to another, and certainly hasn't embraced comics as a medium in the same way. Of course, Tintin lived in graphic novels, while Little Orphan Annie existed in newspaper strips and collections of that strip.

However, most Americans now associate Annie with spunky Aileen Quinn and Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks (yes, war profiteer as hero). The movie is a bit of an American kid's classic, and was based upon a long-running stage play that has since become a staple of school and community theaters around the world. (As a kid, Sarah Jessica Parker played Annie in the Broadway version). I've seen the movie, likely, a dozen times since the theatrical release.

The strip always retained its tone of adventure, and its classic, post-Barney Google/ built in the 20's-look, compete with Annie's pupil-less eyes. At least the last time I saw the strip presented as new episodes in the paper, which was back in high school.


I think Sandy got into the catnip

Mostly, I'm sad to see a cultural touchstone closing up shop. Annie is a character that has been a common point of reference for Americans for 85 years. It's not a total surprise that 10 years past the 20th Century, we're beginning to say good-bye to the last party guests.


one of the first Annie strips

For the next fifty or so years, there will be those who grew up with Annie, and work to maintain memory of the characters, but at some point, Little Orphan Annie will be a museum piece that some grad student will puzzle over as they work on their dissertation on secret decoder rings and what "Drink Your Ovaltine" really means.


Your faithful blogger wows the crowd at Common Interest Karaoke with "Tomorrow" from the stage show "Annie". No, seriously. That is exactly what is going on in this picture.

As long as there are kids who want to believe adventure is around any corner, and that partnering with your dog, and guys named "Punjab" and "The Asp" is a good idea (and that a billionaire will decide you're keen and take you around the world), I think there's a place for Annie and her soulless, white eyes.

Sirk Watch: Imitation of Life (1959)

Watched:  09/21/2023

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Douglas Sirk

Sometimes you just need a good cry.  This is the movie to make you do it whether you like it or not.

Way back in the mid-90's when I was going through film school, we, of course, had screenings of films.  The movies were curated and representative of a variety of eras, forms, genres, etc...  all tee'd up to illustrate whatever the instructors planned to discuss that week.  It's a weird way to do homework, but we saw some great stuff.  Also, I got to learn to sit with films that were never going to be my cup of tea, especially at age 19 or so.

One of the films shown was Imitation of Life, a 1959 melodrama spanning decades and following a young, widowed white woman, Lora (Lana Turner), who teams up with an African-American single mother, Annie (Juanita Moore), to jointly raise daughters of a similar age.  

It's actually a remake of a film I haven't seen from 1934, starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers.  And one day I'll watch that one, too.

During the same meet-cute where Annie and Lora meet, Steve (John Gavin) appears as a photographer, indirectly getting Lora her first gig and - as this is Lana Turner - deciding to woo her.  Lora welcomes Annie and her daughter into their humble apartment, and as Annie settles into triple role of housekeeper, best friend, co-mother, Lora's dreams of success on the stage suddenly take off. 

Rock Watch: The Nowhere Inn (2021)

Watched:  01/29/2022

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bill Benz

Rock stardom in the modern era is not what I think it was 30 years ago.  Sure, there are acts that can fill a stadium these days, but in the age of splintered genres, channels, modes of consuming music, etc...  when is someone "famous" as a musician or band?

The Nowhere Inn (2021) is a very small film that can very much feel like Annie Clark (aka: St. Vincent/ aka: Annie Clark) and Carrie Brownstein fucking around with a budget and telling a rock-and-roll fable that falls somewhere between Ziggy Stardust and Lynch and/ or a dozen other "identity" films.  That's not to say it isn't a watchable and interesting film, but it flits between "I feel like I've seen this before", "Oh, this is a very fun bit", and "people are assuming I know a lot more about Carrie Brownstein and Annie Clark's lives than I do".  

I genuinely cannot remember seeing a movie before that seemed so unclear on the idea that movies are a mass medium and need to contain everything the viewer needs to know - making references to information I'd be lost without from interviews I glanced at between 6 months and 4 years ago is... a choice.  

Watch Party Watch: Annie (1982)

pretty sure that's Aileen Quinn's head photoshopped onto someone else's body

Watched:  08/14/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director:  John Huston

Little Orphan Annie is a weird property that, frankly, I can't believe hasn't resurfaced in the past decade of "re-imaginings".  If you can have Archie Andrews battling supernatural forces, and... the same with Nancy Drew, it seems like a junior, globe-trotting adventurer with a dog and a potentially diverse cast seems like a pretty easy sell for a franchise.  

But for people to know that was what the strip was about would mean people read newspapers and therefore comic strips.  Instead, most of my generation knows the character from either the 1982 film Annie, or from one of the thousands of local theatre group productions of the musical upon which the movie is based (I've never seen it live).  

Movie Watch 2012: Annie Get Your Gun

As biography, the splashy Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun is, charitably, less than accurate.  But that's not really the point of Annie Get Your Gun, so if that's what you were looking for, you may want to move on.

To be honest, I thought I'd seen this movie as a kid, but I now believe what I was watching was Calamity Jane featuring Doris Day, so that's going to be somewhere in my queue.

The movie is a bright, colorful MGM spectacular from 1950.  Annie is played by Betty Hutton, in her defining role as the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show sharpshooter of legendary skill.  Howard Keel, in an early part, plays Frank Butler (he'd show up a few years later in Calamity Jane as Buffalo Bill, just to add confusion), a fellow sharpshooter and the man of Annie's dreams.  The performances are hokey and broad, but this isn't exactly A Streetcar Named Desire, so much as a sweet story in service of big show tunes.  The "Get Your Gun" of the title is, of course, not literal, and drives the feather-light story.

Noir Watch: Gun Crazy (1950)

This is, I believe, the fourth time I've watched Gun Crazy (1950), a movie about a guy, a girl, their guns and how it all gets a smidge out of control.  It's a movie both entirely of its time, but points the way for movies that would come along within 20 years from studios who learned to take chances as the 60's steamed along (Bonnie and Clyde), and maybe reached it's wildest point with Natural Born Killers (1994).

I'd label the movie safely noir.  Two people that can't control themselves who, through their actions and inactions, get in way over their heads with no path out.  When Bart Tare (John Dall) meets Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), it's the worst possible combination for both of them as their obsession with guns gets mixed up in greed, sex and an inability to find a groove in square living.

Friday Watch Party: ANNIE (1982)

It's the hard knock life.  For us.  

The year was 1982!  Annie the Broadway Musical was now going to be Annie: The Movie!  

If you were of a certain age, you were legally required to see Annie, and, indeed, we did.  Not really understanding the Depression, the politics, or the greatness of Carol Burnet, but totally getting that moving into a mansion with endless money on hand was rad as hell.

It's since been remade at least twice that I know about, but there's only one original movie.  

LINK HERE TO WATCH ALONG

Day:  08/13/2021

Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 Pacific

Cost:  UNCLEAR.  It was $4.  Now it might be on Prime?  

BUT - just look at that CAST!  And directed by John "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" Huston!  It's a huge, splashy entertainment with a dog, helicopters and a shit ton of dancing!  Join us!

The Signal Watch Watches: When Harry Met Sally (for the first time)

My co-worker and I decided to try a movie exchange.  She generally seems to have good taste, but turns her nose up a bit at genre content and still holds the same prejudices she developed in the 80's when she was told "sci-fi is dumb".  Somehow it came to pass that after I let her know I had never seen When Harry Met Sally, that I was informed by her and another colleague that I had to watch it.

The explanation she made, that I bought, was that When Harry Met Sally is the quintessential modern romantic comedy from which all other rom-coms flowed.  It tried to be real, but cute and quirky, and whatever else.

"Fair enough," I said.  "But it's an exchange."

Pondering quintessential movies of the 80's, of course I immediately leaped to Commando, but in the end opted for RoboCop.  I figured she was less likely to be furious with me.  Also, I think RoboCop is a genuinely smart movie.  She watched it, and through gritted teeth lied about enjoying it.  My hat was off, and the game was on.

So, this evening, I watched When Harry Met Sally (1989).  

this movie would have been 100x better if it would have actually been about giants trampling Manhattan beneath their feet (and finding love & each other)

It is, of course, more than 20 years since the movie saw its release, and we're so far away from the date of the impact that water has filled the crater and evidence of the change is there only if you realize that's not just a tree-filled valley.  The plot and ideas have been imitated to death, its gags have become part of the zeitgeist, and I now believe it added the phrases "high maintenance" and "low maintenance" to the lexicon.  I was well aware of the "Sally fakes it in the deli" scene, which was more or less the essence of Sex and City every minute of every episode for its entire duration, so, credit where credit is due.

Billie Holiday hits the Century Mark

It's tough to top Billie Holiday.  She's undoubtedly one of the most important vocal performers of the 20th Century, and certainly one of the most recognizable voices since recorded and broadcast music sprung into existence.

Today marks the birthday of Ms. Eleanora Fagan, born April 7th, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Holiday's biography also reads like the blueprint for a terribly depressing biopic, but it's also a remarkable American story.

This weekend I tried to watch Annie Lennox, who I have admired since I was a kid, perform her new concert, Nostalgia, on PBS, recorded in front of an upper-crust audience at LA's Orpheum Theater.  And, while I understand that many performers sooner or later hit a point where they explore The Great American Songbook - Lennox performed a few of Holiday's standards, and I found the thing puzzling enough I turned it off.  But, taking apart what was happening and for what audience could take a few hundred pages and a deconstruction of cultural appropriation that would leave nobody happy.

Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child aren't owned by Billie Holiday, but they're certainly part of her catalog, and I don't blame Lennox for wanting to emulate Lady Day, but...  context.   Billie Holiday's voice, song choice and expression were formed by what amounts to an extremely troubled youth (broken home - to put it mildly - and as a kid, she ran errands in a brothel) and young womanhood (prostitute by age 15).  Holiday was part of the colorful jazz scene of Harlem from the early 1930's and onward (she was performing by age 17), and was playing with Count Basie and Artie Shaw within a few years.  Even after some very public problems, she did manage to play shows at Carnegie Hall that were very well received.

Signal Watch Watches: Manhattan (1979)

Hey, remember how we sometimes talk about how not everything works for everybody?

Woody Allen movies are one of those things for me.  Objectively, I can appreciate that there is punchy dialog, lovely cinematography, that nobody aside from Ghostbusters knows how to use New York as a character better.  I guess, I've only been there once for a few days 14 years ago.

I actually quite like Annie Hall and a few other Woody Allen movies.  But I think its fair to say that this was not a movie that was about anything I find terribly interesting.  But you're supposed to see it, so see it I have.

The movie has 30-odd years worth of folks who love it and who have gotten something out of it, and good on them.

That's probably enough on that.

Coen Bros. Watch: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

As I said to Jamie when we left the movie "Normally I get annoyed when it's clear the filmmakers expect you to watch the movie more than once to 'get it'."  It's a ridiculous value proposition.  And I am not talking about returning to a mystery movie once you've seen how it all plays out so you can see the pieces working together before the big reveal.  I'm referring to a brand of filmmaking that works extra hard to show how damn smart they are that they forget to tell a compelling story and instead leave a breadcrumb trail for a message that, ultimately, you wonder why they felt they needed to make it so complex you needed a Lil' Oprhan Annie Decoder Ring to decipher it, and it still wound up being "Drink your Ovaltine."

But complexity in messaging has always been the case with the Coen Bros., going especially back to Barton Fink and playing out in even some of their most commercially viable films.  There's always a Mike Yanagita scene, a curve ball leaving you with more questions than answers or at least begging to make you look deeper, and, if you sort it out, it unlocks the picture.   After all, the Coen Bros. do not make mistakes.  They do not do extraneous.  That scene is saying something.

Now, I have my ideas about what the final scene means in Barton Fink, but I would always, always be willing to hear someone else explain it to me, because as much as I like that movie and like what it has to say about the assumptions and pretensions of the creative person, I can't quite nail that last scene on the beach.  I have my ideas, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Sometimes I have a lot of patience for what the Coen Bros. are up to (Inside Llewyn Davis), and sometimes I don't (The Man Who Wasn't There).  And, frankly, while I enjoyed The Big Lebowski's screwball atmosphere the first time I saw it, it was the second time I watched it that the pieces fell in place and I felt like I actually "got it".  Which, of course, makes me want to re-watch The Man Who Wasn't There despite the fact I can't really seem to find it.  Maybe I forgive them because it doesn't feel so much like pretension as a solid movie they're putting out there, one where they offer everything up, and you can try to keep up.  And it's okay to have that nagging feeling that maybe you just saw something that you didn't entirely get on the first round.  With them, I really don't mind giving it another shot.

Hail, Caesar! (2016) was marketed as a sort of slapsticky comedy, something the Coens certainly did back in the Raising Arizona days and which they embraced mightily in The Hudsucker Proxy (a movie I will defend with punches, if necessary), riffing on post WWII-era Hollywood and the innate charm, goofiness and endless scandal that were part of the era.

But this is not that movie.

Happy Birthday, David Byrne

Happy Birthday to David Byrne.  Writer, musician and artist.

Today, David Byrne is 61.

Byrne is best known for his tenure with The Talking Heads, the art-punk band that was part of the late-70's, early-80's scene out of CBGB's.  He has written a few books, from The Bicycle Diaries to Strange Ritual.  His lyrics are rarely about the usual topics of newfound love, love gone wrong or partying all night.  Even in his most recent collaboration with St. Vincent, he's still singing about his relationship with television and mass media.

Signal Watch watches: Tintin

As I understand it, Tintin is a global phenomena that somehow never exploded in the US the way the character has entertained generations across good chunks of the rest of the globe.  Its telling that the release of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn came to the US months later than the rest of the world.  Because it is not "ours", this has meant low-flying expectations for the boy reporter here in the states and a welcome not unlike how we treat foreign exchange students when they arrive at our high schools in clothes not bought at Foley's.

We're talking about the movie here for a number of reasons.  1)  It is based upon the comics by Belgian comics-smith Hergé.  2)  It is a high-flying adventure movie.  3)  Its the creation of a wide-range of geek friendly folks from Steven Spielberg to Steven Moffat.

At the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin, the pre-show rightfully showed clips of adventure serials, Indiana Jones homages, etc...  before the movie.  The comic strips in which Tintin appears actually pre-date Indiana Jones by about fifty years, so I want to make this clear to the legions of Americans who believe that action stars come in either Sylvester Stallone or Jason Statham models and find the idea of a Belgian action hero hilarious:
A)  Van Damme  B) this is the most pure adventure movie to hit the screens in the US in a decade.  And that sort of worries me about American movie-making.

Comedy Watch: Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar (2021)

Watched:  04/11/2021

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Josh Greenbaum

Delayed from summer 2020, Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (2021) was released to streaming services in February for a premium fee, but is now available for a more standard fee, and if I knew how much I would like it, I would have paid the $20.  

It's *not* for everybody, but it was absolutely in my wheelhouse.  This thing - written by and starring Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig - is as bonkers a comedy as I've seen in a looong time.  I don't want to give you any spoilers or plot points.  Just let it unfold.

SW Watches: The Right Stuff (1983)

I was lucky to be born into an era when the job everyone aspired to was "astronaut".  As you got older, if you were me, you realized you were going to be too tall, wear too many glasses, be just amazingly awful at pre-Calc, and maybe develop a crippling fear of heights.  I was just never going to be astronaut material.

But, yeah, like a lot of people my age and older, I was pretty space-crazy growing up.  We were living on the edge of the world of Buck Rogers and Star Trek.  And, to be a part of that seemed like being a part of the future more than anything you could do (we can quiz Matt A. on the veracity of this childhood fantasy later, but it seemed right at the time).

On my 6th birthday, the Space Shuttle Colombia took off from Kennedy (STS-1). I was well aware it was a coincidence, but it still felt like a pretty good birthday present.  Watching it with the fam is still one of those indelible childhood memories.




Two years later, the Philip Kaufman directed movie The Right Stuff (1983) was released to theaters.  Based on a Thomas Wolfe novel, it's certainly not a movie aimed at kids, but The Admiral was also not one to let the two little miscreants he'd sired run around ignorant of one of the greatest periods (if not THE greatest period) of technical achievement in human history.  Nor would he let it pass that we would not know of the flawed, insanely brave men who sat atop those rockets and came back safely.  Let alone, we might not know the name of Chuck Yeager.

I remember seeing many movies in the theater from my childhood, and certainly the memory of seeing The Right Stuff is still vivid.  While the movie was not the sort of thing I was running around play-acting afterward, I knew I'd seen something quite different and kind of astonishing.

In the years that have passed, I have no idea how many times I'd seen it, but I caught it again while Jamie and I were dating, and I remember really realizing for the first time how damn good the movie really is.  I'm always shocked not just by the mixed reactions you can get at the mention of the film, but that it's not mentioned in the same breath with other films that routinely make great movie lists.

Geriatric Watch: Thelma (2024)

Watched:  11/02/2024

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Josh Margolin

So, Thelma (2024) is basically every one of my anxieties about what's coming with my parents - and, god willing, eventually myself - but with a laugh track.

I want to be clear, this is a good movie.  I died laughing at some parts.  But I also did not laugh at other parts I know were supposed to be funny, and that's on me and my hang-ups and not on the movie.  

The basic set-up is that an elderly woman, Thelma (June Squibb), who loves her 24-year-old grandson, is scammed by someone pretending to be her grandson on the phone and sends $10,000 to a PO Box, lest he rot in jail.* When she finds her grandson is safe and it was a scam, she goes on a mission to retrieve her money, against the express wishes of her daughter - Parker Posey, typically *great* - and her son-in-law, good ol' Clark Gregg.

There's certainly some valid critique of how the elderly adults and the adult children are infantilized by the functional adults, as it's maybe more convenient for the middle-aged adults to feel they have everything contained.  The movie also has a nice story of a young man realizing maybe he is slightly capable if he stops living with his parents guard rails.

The cast is solid - June Squibb is the definition of "working actor" and it's amazing to see her get a starring role at this point in her career.  Richard Roundtree plays her pal, and he's... really good.  Which I guess isn't a shock (RIP, Richard Roundtree).  The grandson is Fred Hechinger, who manages to take a character I'd normally have minimal sympathy for and make him likable.  

The movie is not as wacky as I'd believed it would be, but more absurdist and a lot depressing in ways I was unclear it intended to be.  But you can't beat the senior citizens home's take on Annie.  I kind of get the feeling the people find this particularly funny are not the ones living with the absolute certainty they're getting tapped to handle everything when the time comes and have already been thinking about these things for a decade or two.

Anyway, it was fine.  Any issues with it are my own issues.

*this is a real scam, and people are now using AI to mimic people's voices.  What doesn't make sense is that the US mail apparently finds and sorts the mail the same day.  Also - why Thelma doesn't just ask the cops to go to the local PO Box.  A huge number of these scammers are overseas or VPNing from across the country.

That's a Lot of Robert Shaw: Black Sunday, Pelham 1-2-3 and the 70's

So, I accidentally went to go see Black Sunday on... Sunday.


Or it could be exactly right now, when I think I'm about to watch "Giant".

And this evening headed back to the Paramount to see The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.


These guys who dress like your PeePaw? Armed hostage takers.

Both films star Robert Shaw, one of those actors people say great things about, but I think I'd previously only ever seen as Quint in Jaws (one of the best movies, ever. Yes it is. Shut up.). He's great in both as two very different characters. And I can't believe someone decided to replace the guy with Travolta in last year's remake (which I didn't see).

Look, I really wish I liked more new movies, but looking at this summer's offerings, "Iron Man", "Toy Story 3" and "Inception" are about it for me. That's 2 sequels (one of which is based on a 50-year-old property), and one by Nolan, who had me at Memento. But then I read this...

Richard Donner’s original Superman heavily influenced Nolan during the production of Batman Begins: “I literally pitched the studio my take on Batman by saying I wanted to make the Batman film that had never been made in 1978 or 1979.” He was taken by the notion of “an extraordinary hero in an ordinary world.”

Of course, any geek who went through film school recognizes 70's-era film making for being a watershed era in film making. Sure, much of it was low-budget, but the studios were losing so much market share to television and, I guess, 8-tracks and people caring for their pet rocks, that they started just letting the wild-eyed beatniks in their midst run around and make some pretty darn great movies.

I mean, no, they didn't create something as great as G-Force, but...

The 70's gave us The Godather, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, All the President's Men, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now and dozens and dozens of other influential movies. It gave us a naturalistic style to movies, more organic storytelling, tougher material and Pam Grier.


women like Ms. Grier are into tubby comic geeks, right?

Anyway, that's not to say that the 70's wasn't laden with awfulness, too. For every "Godfather Part II" there were 4 "Xanadu" clones, 6 hacky slasher movies, 4 movies about "feelings" or some junk, and 3 movies about people driving around in Southern California doubling for a drive across America, and wearing ugly pants.

However, I live in the future, where we've weeded out the crummy 70's movies, and I don't have to watch them (don't have to, but it happens, anyway). It's sort of how... when I was in film school and some turtle-neck wearing jerk would lament that everything they made in France was sooooo much better than American film, I would ask them if they really thought we were getting the French equivalent of Major Payne imported stateside (because the French are idiots, too, and somehow that means they're making their own "Major Payne").

Anyhow, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 is a movie that's been imitated endlessly at this point, but you can't help but appreciate how well cast they made the movie, how New York feels like a lived in place, and that at no point do we get bogged down in some subplot about any character's children, romance, etc... There's more than enough story there without Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock falling in love during the disaster.

Plus, you have to love Walter Matthau.

Black Sunday still works, and will feel relevant until, I suppose, we have peace in the Middle East and we quit worrying about domestic terrorism (and Bruce Dern).

I'd say the mvoie could handle a remake, but a remake would wind up starring Shia LeBouf as the war-weary Israeli soldier. And the fact that anyone is willing to hire Shia LeBouf, and put millions of dollars behind LeBouf, and count on the fact that millions of people want to watch LeBouf for two hours at a time... that is exactly why most movies fail.

That said, I think we're due for another wave of new and better stuff. This summer's offerings have been, frankly, disappointing. The past year had little to offer that didn't have the word "Twilight" in the title. I hear from Troubles, who knows these things, that the box office is having a tough time of it this summer (Iron Man 2 has done okay at $230 million or so, but that's a far cry from Batman's $1 billion).

When the studio execs quit trying to throw the same junk at the wall and essentially give up on what they know and let young producers risking their skin to make it big try new things, as they did in the 70's (and to an extent, in the 1990's), the pay off is generally in folks taking the creative chances that can payoff in better movies.

Unfortunately, someone has to tell Hollywood that "we're releasing it in 3D!" is not making new and better product, per se. And that I now have 1500 channels.

In the meantime, I will keep spending my clams at The Paramount and watching movies that came out before I was born.

Whoops Watch: Gun Crazy (1950)

Watched:  06/05/2021

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1950's

Director:   Joseph H. Lewis

Well, I turned on the TV and Gun Crazy (1950) was on TCM and at the part where an adult Bart meets Annie Laurie at the sideshow, and the next thing I knew I was finishing the movie.  

So, yeah.

More Signs I'm an Idiot: Alison Brie

Despite the fact I've seen every episode of Mad Men, and I've seen NBC's Community about a half-dozen times now, somehow I'd never put together that both Mad Men's Trudy Campbell and Community's Annie Edison were played by actress Alison Brie.

Alison Brie

also, Alison Brie

Maybe all you white people look alike to me or something.  I have no idea.

I was watching the election episode of Community, and some facial tic or line delivery Brie delivered was 100% Trudy Campbell, and I sort of froze like a deer in the headlights, opened my laptop, looked to IMDB and then told Jamie of my revelation.  Jamie was, of course, perfectly aware of Brie's dual roles and confirmed, yes...  it is very weird I never noticed that before.

I do seem to have a sort of blindspot when watching TV and movies, and any actresses under the age of 30 all sort of look the same to me.  Jamie can confirm that I have no idea what the difference is between virtually any of the popular starlets at any time (I only know who Amy Adams is because she was in Talladega Nights.  Which is kind of sad for Amy Adams), and that I routinely say "who is that?" about the same actors five or six times.  This is true for young male actors, as well.

In general, I kind of rely on actors or actresses having unique characteristics to remember them.  Elisabeth Moss has the icicle eyes and, let's be honest, a pretty specific look.  Christina Hendricks has, um...  Christina Hendricks.  But if you asked me to pick say, Rachel McAdams out of a line-up, I would give up before starting. 

So, I often wonder if I do this with people in everyday life.  Do I walk past the same people at the grocery and not notice them even though they're there every single time I'm there.  Is there a librarian at the reference desk I've somehow never realized was always there when I pass in and out of my building?  I have to assume the answer is yes.

I'll also note that, yes, not only are Community and Mad Men very different programs, shot differently, with different tones, different make-up on Brie, etc...  and Brie does, in fact, handle the two characters a bit differently, and maybe she's just that brilliant of an actor.  But, she is just one person, so... you know...

I also once spent an entire weekend in Vegas with someone two years ago, and only realized I'd known him before when he put on his glasses the last day.  So, yes, apparently I would be the guy who would be all "Wait...  Clark Kent is actually who?"

Friday Night Watch: Confess, Fletch (2022)

I saw both of the Chevy Chase Fletch films in the theater, and was part of a generation of people who wanted desperately to be able to quip somewhere between Fletch and Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters, making for a bunch of horrible kids who said the worst thing at the worst time all the time.

But those Chevy Chase movies were both pretty solid, even if the first is definitely better than the second.  That said, I also remember my seventh grade Language Arts teacher informing us that the movies weren't a patch on the novels, and that Fletch was fundamentally different in the movies than what a coked-up Chevy Chase was delivering.  This did not convince me to check out the books because I was a fan of the movies and felt comfortable in my ignorance.  I have not lifted one of the 11 novels.

In the intervening years, I have no idea if anyone else attempted to make a Fletch movie.  Just wasn't on my radar.  And then in late 2022, I recall ads for a John Hamm movie that was, in fact a new Fletch installment.  

Hamm made his bones as Don Draper on Mad Men, but in subsequent years has shown great talent as a comedic actor as well as dramatic.  He's puzzlingly not quite caught on as a leading man in giant movies, but he has found a happy home in mid-budget films that wind up on streaming fairly quickly.  That said, his brand of comedy has rarely felt much like the persona Chase had made famous, so when I saw he was taking on Fletch, I had no idea how this would go.  

The movie itself completely flopped at the box office.  I have no idea what the plan was, but the domestic gross was about $540,000.  It wasn't a critical darling, but did have a decent RT and Metacritic score.  Still, it's telling that this just isn't the sort of thing people will leave the house to go see in 2023.

The first two Fletch films manage to have intensely convoluted plots, but it doesn't matter, because the plots are there as a vehicle for Chase to do his thing, and if he resolves the mystery, that's terrific.  He wears disguises and is constantly in motion, and that's enough.  This film has a similar and deeply convoluted plot, but Hamm's Fletch doesn't wear disguises, he barely puts on an act when he needs to and he adopts a name (if he can remember it), and I assume it's closer to the books.  But you do start to look at the seams of the mystery a lot more, and I'm not sure I entirely get why the murder occurs that Fletch was supposed to confess to that sets up the movie, or why the cops think Fletch knows the victim or would want to kill her (motive, means, etc...).  It's entirely random and circumstantial to outside eyes.

But the movie moves along at a good clip, Hamm is actually very funny and stays not quite a step ahead of everyone else unlike Chase's Fletch you thought was 5 steps ahead.  

The movie is helped along by a solid cast, including Kyle MacLachlan as an art broker, Marcia Gay Harden playing an Italian Contessa to the hilt, Roy Wood Jr. as a detective/ new father, Ayden Mayeri as Wood Jr's partner, and Annie Mumolo as a wacky neighbor.  And John Slattery briefly as Fletch's old boss, now in Boston.

It's kind of an ideal end-of-the-week movie that's not too much of anything, but also not... dumb.  

Mostly, I kind of think this should have been just a movie straight to Apple+ or Paramount (where I watched it), and it's fine.  It's the sort of thing we all paid to see a lot of in the 1990's.  But the fact the movie didn't make any money is probably much more of an indicator now of what people will just wait for than genuine disinterest in the movie.  I, for one, blocked time on my calendar to watch it when I saw it was on Paramount.  

Would I watch more installments on Hamm as Fletch?  I think I would.  He's enjoyable, the movie is light and fun, and his version of Fletch's persona in the face of chaos is actually pretty enjoyable.  But it's far less broad.  That's left to pretty much all the supporting characters.  So seeing them do this Knives Out style every two years or so would be welcome.  But, I suspect, that ain't happening.