The press of the holiday season -- and in general I'm becoming all the more welcoming of it each year, wanting to let it settle in early -- has this year brought us a more formal sequel to a film that's become a holiday classic, 1983's A Christmas Story. That much-revered (and much-played) film was based largely on some of Jean Shepherd's very loosely autobiographical anecdotes from his 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. In recent years it's found itself played back to back for 24 hours straight on TBS or TNT -- and that might even be the case again somewhere this year. I didn't find it in the immediate listings, though Fios has it as an On Demand freebie via TBS. Either way, it's not an issue for me personally as the original is currently parked on HBO Max, so I have access without commercials when I wish.
Not that there's much chance you've missed seeing it somewhere over the years, here's the trailer for that likely too-familiar film. In the years since, that film's already had two less-than-stellar theatrical sequels, along with a couple of American Playhouse tv films, all attempting to continue the stories of some of the main characters.
This year, just arrived yesterday on HBO Max (with at least initially positive reviews), is a direct sequel to that 1983 film, with Peter Billingsley reprising his role as Ralphie. Now, of course, he's an adult, bringing his wife and kids with him back to his childhood home in Hammond, Indiana. His mom's now a widow, as The Old Man has passed on, and he's facing the challenge of trying to create as epic a holiday for his own family as the one he had against the same backdrop. It's A Christmas Story Christmas (2022 98m)
Shifting sharply, Paramount+ added a psychological horror film to its platform this week that hit theaters at the end of September, was highly successful (grossing $210 million against a $17 million budget) and is still lingering on a few big screens out there. In it, an overworked clinical psychologist either falls prey to a seed planted by a patient, or to something supernatural. It's Smile (2022 R 115m) Written and directed by Parker Finn as his feature directorial debut, it's a concept expansion from his 2020 short film Laura Hasn't Slept. This new film stars Sosie Bacon (Kevin Bacon's daughter) as Dr. Rose Cotter, the therapist who finds herself in the center of a growing, increasingly terrifying mystery. Themes of suicide run strongly in this, so prepare yourself or avoid it accordingly.
Angst of a different sort started yesterday on Hulu (another of the somewhat confusing FX On Hulu partnership series where the show hasn't aired on FX), with the start of an 8-episode miniseries based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner's 2019 novel of the same name: Fleishman Is In Trouble. In it, Jesse Eisenberg plays Toby Fleishman, a recently divorced 40-something year old man who is trying to navigate a middle age return to single life and the world of dating in an age of apps, while juggling his co-parenting of the former couple's children... made more complicated when his ex disappears. Clare Danes plays Rachel, his ex, while Lizzy Caplan plays Libby, an old friend of Toby's, who also serves as narrator. I'm in no rush to watch this, and am mainly including it both because it's getting some early positive reviews, and for the simple sake of variety.
As one casual reviewer noted after watching the first two episodes, such problems as the main characters here have are self-created, living lives of success, wealth, and general privilege, with sexual encounters seemingly at every other turn. One person's sophistication is another's shallowness. What I've seen and read of this doesn't have me expecting that I'll like the main characters, much less do much identifying with any of them. As ever, your life experience is likely to be different from mine.
Currently trying to come to grips with how far I've fallen in terms of even simple physical exertion, newly added to Disney+ this week is a six part documentary series in which Chris Hemsworth, who has been professionally passing himself off as a Norse god for better than a decade now, meets with a series of scientists who are exploring the potential of expanding the limits of human longevity. The trailer alone looks exhausting, seeming to tease at the idea that the proffered cure would likely wear us down until death seemed like a welcome respite. I suspect those of us who just want to drink a potion (or have a painting we can hide away in a special room) and stop aging aren't likely to find what we're looking for here.
Still, it looks like an interesting journey, and it's been decades since I spent any serious time on this particular cutting edge. Back then, most of the leading elements involved restricting food intake, tricking the body into running at a lower temperature, and a variety of dietary supplements. It's Limitless
This immediately linked in my mind to some recent interview material with Sigourney Weaver, now 73 - so a solid dozen years older than I - where she was recounting how in preparation for the upcoming Avatar: The Way of Water, she and the other actors had to learn how to freedive -- which is to remain underwater for an extended period of time without the aid of scuba gear, through a combination of hyper-oxydizing the blood and controlling the reflex to breathe, and quelling the urge to panic. She mentioned that her best time was in the area of six minutes. My mind then bounces between things I used to casually do, and contrasts them with the shuddering wreck I've become. Oh, you want me to go across the street? Okay, let me grab my car keys...
Ah, well, admitting a problem's the first step.
Moving on...
Shifting primarily back to HBO Max (though Turner Classic Movies will be running it at 8pm and 11:30pm next Tuesday, the 22nd) I'd like to suggest a documentary about the rise and fall - and general cultural impact - of Horn & Hardart's special food dispensing restaurants. It's The Automat (2021 79 minutes) With appearances by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elliot Gould, Colin Powell, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks -- who also wrote and performed a song featured in the film, "At the Automat" -- it's a nostalgic reminscence of a vanished comfort.
Arriving,
suitably enough, next Wednesday, just before Thanksgiving, is an Addams
Family series that focuses on the ever-precocious, focused, usually
solitary, and seemingly unflappable Wednesday, this time as she
navigates the social minefield and other mysteries of The Nevermore
Academy.
A Tim Burton
project (he's one of the executive producers, and directs the first half
of the series), though more formally one from the partnership of Miles
Millar and Alfred Gough, it's Wednesday
All eight episodes arrive on the 23rd.
Fans of the CBS crime procedural series Criminal Minds, which ran for fifteen seasons between 2005 and 2020, will be getting a ten-episode, sixteenth season on Paramount+, starting Thanksgiving. Nearly all of the cast (no Dr. Spencer Reid nor Matt Simmons) that was still around as of the show's final broadcast episode will be back for this series. They're back to face a challenge as their usual class of prey has networked and leveled up during the pandemic, in Criminal Minds: Evolution.
The first two episodes will arrive with the turkey, and an episode each subsequent Thursday -- to a point. Paramount+ is pulling that network tv crap of suspending new episodes during the thick of the holidays, so we'll be getting new episodes through December 15th - so the first half of the season - then they'll skip three full weeks, resuming January 12th, which will then play through to the finale on February 9th. A First World Problem, no question, but I hate when things are needlessly stretched out this way. Oh, you have more time off? Well, well, we can't show you these then, can we? Let's hold them off until time's less your own...
Then again, it's silly for me to be bothered by this one way or another, as I still haven't gotten around to watching the rest of the original run. I was binging my way through it months ago, then failed to get back to it; I'm not even sure where it was I left off. So, it's not as if I'm planning to jump on these new episodes next weekend anyway.
Next week we'll be getting back together on Black Friday, when I hope that we'll all have the sense to stay home if we have the option, still bloated from the previous day's gastronomic excesses, with ample leftovers to indulge in between naps. My specific plans are still in flux, some of them being shaped by the evolving weather forecast - that Friday and Saturday, possibly starting late Thanksgiving night itself, could give us our first preview of winter weather, so I'm not going to want to travel in it. It'll be in my best interests overall if I have a piece written and in place, ready to auto-publish that Friday in case my plans change on me, so that's something to work into place this weekend.
As ever, I hope this finds you well, and that some of the items above were good news for you. Enjoy your weekend, and see you back here next Friday. - Mike
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