Run mplayer from bash in background without extra bash

I would like to watch a movie with mplayer from bash in the background, like I do with all programs and there has never been any problems:

mplayer Kick* &

if you'd like to see Kickboxer, for example. But, this doesn't bring up the window, instead it says the process is stopped. I can bring the movie window up with fg mplayer, but then the CLI is unavailable. (This is -- as far as I can see anyway -- equivalent to mplayer Kick*).

I'm able to work around the problem like this:

$(mplayer Kick*) &

But then I get two extra bashes (I see this with ps). It is not really a problem as those closes down when I Alt-F4 the movie, but it is still undesirable.

I guess I'm most annoyed with having to type that extra stuff, so if you come up with an alias or function, that would be OK, to. Although, it wouldn't hurt me to learn what's going on.

Solution 1:

mplayer -noconsolecontrols <whatever> &

Solution 2:

mplayer -noconsolecontrols -really-quiet 2>/dev/null *.ogg &