Cinema Hype

I know you’re probably wondering what happened to the Most Wonderful Time Film Festival. I had this huge list of Christmas movies I was going to plow through. I still do. So what happened? It’s a Wonderful Life happened. George and Mary and Clarence and Zuzu happened, and so did disillusionment and redemption (I hear) and Frank Capra’s utter inability to cut anything, ever.

How is it that people watch this movie straight through? I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s not. I’m enjoying it. But the story of George Bailey’s life is long. I’ve been watching it all week, trying to finish–it’s like a giant bowl of pasta, where you feel like you’ve been eating and eating and eating, and you still have half the bowl left to go.

So that’s where the film festival stands: there’s a stack of borrowed movies in my living room and one behemoth American classic holding them all up (in the figurative sense). With a little luck and a little persistence, there will be more Christmas movies before the holiday ends.

Until then, I’ll be on the couch.

I apologize to all who were waiting on this week’s Thursday haiku (and I know there were many, many people waiting…right?); a minor act of God, also known as a cranky internet connection, kept me poetry-free. But. Getting on with it:

Trying to finish
It’s A Wonderful Life soon;
things look dubious.

I have a request to make. It’s nothing, really. Just…the next time I pray for guidance, can Cary Grant come to visit? He doesn’t really even have to do anything, per se–I’m not sure he’d have much to say about my life–but I’m sure that having him just stand around and look debonair would be quite helpful.

What I just described is essentially the plot of the 1947 movie The Bishop’s Wife: a workholic bishop (David Niven) and his beautiful wife (Loretta Young, assisted by her spectacular cheekbones) pray for guidance about building a cathedral and about their marriage, and Grant shows up in the form of an angel named Dudley. It’s a good movie, but it sometimes feels like it’s missing something, like somebody forgot to decide what’s really going on in the script. There are questions left unanswered: Is it a drama or a comedy? What’s the deal with the random ice skating? And, most importantly, what really happens between Dudley and Julia?

The structure of the Dudley/Julia relationship (and therefore the movie) is strange from a romantic comedy standpoint. Usually, a woman either ditches her stodgy old flame for the new man who truly understands her OR she tests the waters with a dashing newcomer but later realizes that the original lover was the better choice. Here, Julia connects with the dashing newcomer…and then she stays with the stodgy old flame, even though he’s still the less appealing of the two men. It’s a point of ambivalence for the audience: we realize that Julia should and will stay with the bishop, but it’s so much easier to root for Dudley, even if it’s inappropriate (and he’s a heavenly being, which I’m trying to ignore).

Furthermore, the script addresses the fact that the bishop and the townspeople are scandalized by the friendship, but nobody seems to think that the audience might agree. There’s the feeling that somebody should say something, or that either Julia or Dudley needs to acknowledge that maybe the bishop has reason to be upset, but the movie generally glosses over those concerns. Toward the end, it’s finally implied that Dudley may have fallen in love with Julia, but the ninety minutes before that are a vaguely unsettling series of flirtations, situations that anybody who’s ever been in a relationship would recognize as inappropriate. The movie might make more sense if it didn’t require us to believe in the ignorance of the main characters, or if it addressed the awkwardness and worked through it.

Aside from the strange dynamics between Dudley, Julia, and the bishop, The Bishop’s Wife is a solid holiday classic: nothing fancy, but there is plenty of snow and talk of Santa and the obligatory un-Scrooging of a main character, and that’s kind of the point.

The upshot: A decent, old-fashioned Christmas movie; worth seeing if you can ignore the elephant in the room.

Christmas wonder, joy of the season, blah blah blah. What I learned from Elf is that I totally want to go on a date with Will Ferrell. It’s a little weird, I know, especially if he’s wearing the tights and pointy shoes. (Maybe some people go for that; I don’t.) But judging from his first outing with Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), he’s not the type to sit in a cafe and make boring small talk. I’m just saying.

Anyway, the movie. The point of Elf isn’t the script, or even the characters, really. It’s all sort of basic holiday family movie fare: Scrooge-y businessman changes forever after run-in with excruciatingly cheerful/naive main character, etc., etc. The point of Elf is Ferrell. The best thing–or the most notable thing, anyway–about Ferrell as an actor is that he’s not afraid. He embraces whatever he’s doing. He commits. Sometimes (ahem…Anchorman), it’s enough to make a girl turn off the TV, but in Elf, it’s just funny. Endearing, even. Buddy the “Elf” is a sweetheart, and Ferrell makes it work by being utterly, steadfastly sincere. And that is what Elf is really about. Isn’t it?

It’s been a good year for George Clooney. A good decade, really. He’s in his prime, directing and acting in good movies; he’s politically active; he’s still ranking high with the ladies. He sweeps around Hollywood being all handsome and debonair and self-deprecating, and everybody loves him for it. He’s got a new movie coming out tomorrow, The Good German, in which he denigrates the effects of war, which…seems relevant. There was a time, though, when Our Man George wasn’t riding quite as high as he is today, and isn’t it in all of our best interests to remain true to our roots? In that vein, I give you the George Clooney Retrospective Fantasy Film Festival:

Predator: The Concert: George’s first big-screen appearance (not to disparage his highly esteemed turn on The Facts of Life, but we’ve got to be a little choosy, right?), in which a grizzly bear terrorizes a big-band show in the forest. We’re sure he–George, that is–was perfectly noble in the role.

The Harvest: In which George plays the “Lip-syncing transvestite,” an image that pretty much speaks for itself.

From Dusk Till Dawn: The first movie in which George may have actually been seen by the general public.

One Fine Day: Hairpin turn! Our versatile hero makes a pit stop in the Land of the Mundane Romantic Comedy just long enough to romance Michelle Pfeiffer, then breathes a sigh of relief that he never has to do that again (the MRC, not Pfeiffer).

Out of Sight: When George Met Steven. The beginning of a beautiful friendship, and also of our George’s climb up the critical-acclaim pile.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?: George plays Ulysses Everett McGill, and therefore becomes automatically awesome. He’s [not] bonafide! What’re you?

Good Night and Good Luck: George does his first writer/director/star project, and smart people everywhere fall in love with him. So does the Academy. People who are pro-censorship (or, I suppose, pro-McCarthy), less so.

What’s next, George? We want to be charmed, and we believe you’re the man to do it.

I’ve been putting off writing about White Christmas since Saturday night. I watched it with my whole attention. I enjoyed it. That’s the issue, actually: I may have enjoyed it too much to critique it. I just love it so much.

There, I said it. I love White Christmas. A lot. A lot, a lot. It’s just so funny, and then Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen start dancing, and The Bing and Rosemary Clooney start singing, and they love him, they love him, especially when he keeps them on the ball, and….this is what happens. I go all gooey as soon as they start singing about snow, and I can’t get it together until after the goofy little ballerina girls tip-toe their way around the giant tree at the end. It’s just so good: so sweet, so sharp, so much fun.

That’s all. Watch White Christmas, if you’ve never seen it. Watch it even if you have seen it. Simple, classic, charming. Perfect for a Saturday night writing Christmas cards or just curling up with some popcorn.

There are plenty of reasons that The Nativity Story shouldn’t be that good. The script is a little stilted. The production values come across as just a little bit 70s-BBC. Even some of the Biblical source material is missing (i.e. Ummm…heavenly host?). Somehow, though, it all comes together as an absorbing, thoughtful film.

What carries The Nativity Story is…well, the story. In all of the tellings and re-tellings and re-re-tellings, it’s easy to forget Mary and Joseph as living, breathing, interacting people. They get stuck in the relative shortness of what the Bible tells us about them. The movie strives to offer us a fuller picture: Director Catherine Hardwicke gives plenty of weight to the socio-political backdrop and then delves into the meat of the story, the relationships and conflicts that sometimes get lost in the telling. It turns out that the things Mary and her loved ones (I’ve always loved the term “Holy family”) go through are harrowing and heartbreaking: legal and religious issues, social rejection, several long journeys (with a very cute donkey, but that’s neither here nor there), and an absolutely corrupt king, among other things. The character of Joseph gets an especially close inspection, and emerges as a complex but likeable person. Hardwicke seems to relish telling the story of Mary and Joseph as a tale of lovers in a dangerous time as well as a piece of religious history.

The other reason The Nativity Story succeeds is because of the actors involved. A lot of people have high hopes for Keisha Castle-Hughes after her Academy-award-nominated performance in Whale Rider. She does well here, considering what she’s given. The role of Mary is a difficult one, mostly because there’s so much expectation and so little to do: there are long stretches where the script notes clearly call for “silent awe,” which is understandable but a little awkward. When Castle-Hughes gets actual dialogue, though, she’s charming and displays strong chemistry with her fellow actors. Her scenes with Elizabeth (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and Joseph (Oscar Isaac) are a relief after all of the beatific gazing. As far as Joseph is concerned, I’m not sure where Hardwicke found Isaac–he’s essentially a newcomer–but he’s outstanding: honorable and soulful, upstanding and approachable, all at the same time. It’s no wonder that Mary’s head over heels for him by the end of the movie. Everyone else sure is.

The Nativity Story isn’t perfect. The Hebrew accents feel a little silly, the angel Gabriel is vaguely creepy (though his hawk avatar is a nice touch), the wise man are obnoxious, and it occasionally comes across as a bit of a high-budget church pageant, among other things. There’s also the matter of the mysteriously missing heavenly host. But the whole here is better than the sum of its parts, and if you’re looking for a Christmas movie without Christmas lights or Danny DeVito, this is a perfectly good way to go.

So, you’ve all recovered from Thanksgiving, right? You’ve eaten alllll the turkey, cleaned the candle wax off of the tablecloths, slept off the tryptophan coma, and gotten rid of any extremely large pumpkins you might have lying around (just my family? Really?). Good. Because guess what? As of yesterday, we’re so over that most autumnal of holidays, and we’re moving on to Christmas, whether you’re with us or not.

Here at CHHQ, I’ll be spending much of December with my DVD player as part of a Christmas film festival–comedies, dramas, classics, whatever. I’m not dissing Hanukkah or Kwanzaa here; it’s just that there are so many more Christmas films to contend with–if anybody feels strongly that I should sit through Eight Crazy Nights, now is the time to speak up, and I’ll add it to my list of possibilities. Anyway, the big question is: what to watch? If you’ve got a holiday movie I just can’t miss, let me know. Viewings and reviews begin next Friday, December 1.

News broke today that legendary director Robert Altman passed away at the age of 81. During his fifty-five-yar career, Altman gained a reputation as an inventive and prolific director, and he was nominated five times for Best Director by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, though he never won. In 2007, the Academy honored him with the prestigious (but honorary) Lifetime Achievement Award.

As we take a moment of silence, I’d like to propose a Robert Altman Memorial Film Festival:

MASH (1970)
Nashville (1975)
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, because I love the title
The Player (1992)
Short Cuts (1993)
Pret a Porter (1994), in honor of my maternal grandmother, who saw it with her friend Alphilde and didn’t like it because of all of the naked ladies
Gosford Park (2001)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Thanks for what you did, Robert.

Cinema Hype is not a celebrity gossip site, but who would we be if we claimed to live and write in a bubble? We’ll keep our crying over thoughts on Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe’s impending divorce to ourselves, but in the interest of promoting healing, we’d like to propose a brief film festival by which to celebrate the Pax Romana of a Hollywood couple we thought might actually make it.

The selections:

The Man in the Moon (1991), in which millions of adolescent girls first want to be Reese;
White Squall (1996); in which Ryan cavorts around a ship with many other hot teenage boys;
Playing by Heart (1998), in which Ryan plays solemn raver boy opposite Angelina Jolie;
Cruel Intentions (1999), during the filming of which Reese and Ryan become Reese And Ryan;
Election (1999), in which Reese ups her indie cred;
Igby Goes Down (2002), in which Ryan attempts to up his indie cred;
Legally Blonde (2001), in which Reese becomes Hollywood royalty while wearing more pink than Tori Spelling on Valentine’s Day;
Crash (2004), in which Ryan makes his play for an Oscar as a good cop gone bad; and, finally,
Walk the Line (2005), in which Reese shows off her singing voice and actually succeeds in winning that Oscar, much to Filliam H. Muffman’s disappointment.

It’s been a long, glorious ride. We at CH sincerely wish the best to both of them, and look forward to more of Ryan cavorting with other hot guys (ship optional).

First off, let me say that there is something inherently hilarious about British claymation bunnies. There’s something even more hilarious about British claymation bunnies howling at the moon. Eighty-five minutes of howling-bunny footage probably would have been enough to keep me happy, but it turns out that The Curse of the Were-Rabbit has other things to be appreciated, as well: plot, characters, adventure, silly voices, and Ralph Fiennes. Also, Wallace and Gromit and plenty of Wensleydale cheese.

I’ve seen various Wallace & Gromit short films over the years, and honestly, it’s inconceivable to me that anyone might not like our dynamic heroes and their Rube Goldberg morning routine. What’s not lovable about that, even if we do see the same thing in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? So maybe I’m biased. But a real, full-length W&G feature seemed like a good idea to me.

Thankfully, it was. The movie is silly and crammed with puns and people will funny hairdos (not to mention the bunnies again). Director and W&G creator Nick Park clearly did his horror-movie homework and filled his movie with tiny homages to the genre, which matures it a little without making it an adults’ movie masquerading as a kids’ movie, as so many animated films seem to be lately. The story is action-packed and even gives Wallace a little chance to grow as a character, even exploring his claymation love life a little. Essentially, it’s all the goodness we can expect from W&G on a grand scale.

Plenty of questions spring to mind after watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!, including “Who gives rocks to trick-or-treaters?,” “What are the odds of all the supposed rocks ending up in Charlie Brown’s candy bag?,” and “Who makes a list of people not to invite to a party?” But there’s one other question that’s going to stay with me:

Why are they all such haters?

If Linus and his stripey hair and worried eyes want to sit outside all night, waiting for the Great Pumpkin to rise up out of the pumpkin patch with his bag of toys for all of the good little girls and boys, why must everyone judge? Don’t they know that not all who wander are lost? He’s a dreamer. A visionary. Jeez, Lucy.

I’ve seen the various Charlie Brown holiday movies off and on since I was a kid. As an adult, I find that they’re not really very plotty–mostly, the kids are mean to each other (specifically, the girls are mean to the boys), and then there are little punchlines. Snoopy dresses up as the World War I Flying Ace and gets shot down, but it doesn’t really pertain to the story much, except when Linus mistakes him for the Great Pumpkin. It’s all a little strange. But then there’s that awesome, classic Vince Guaraldi score, and all is forgiven. Somehow, everything Guaraldi wrote for Charlie Brown is ageless and seasonless, and seems just right, no matter what. And in October, it’s just fall, the way it was meant to be.

Who invented the Halloween movie? I’m not talking about horror; all-purpose terror is multi-seasonal (or non-seasonal, if you’re me). Instead, somebody somewhere decided that we need movies that are only truly appropriate once a year, that celebrate our love of scary things without ever actually being scary, that revel in simply being silly or quirky or just generally a little macabre. I’m talking It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Ernest Scared Stupid, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit–movies that celebrate costumes and candy and cut-up pumpkins, and call it good. In the spirit of those movies and the people behind them, I’m holding a short film festival for myself: the Totally Un-Scary Halloween Film Festival, in which I’ll be watching and writing about classic and contemporary Halloween-centric movies. Feel free to make up the costume of your choice (I’m going as “girl wrapped in warm quilt on sofa, with laptop”), fill up on the good candy, and watch or read along.

The primary question about our first TUSHFF entry is this: Does The Nightmare Before Christmas actually count as a Halloween movie? I’ve heard not. It does feature the word “Christmas” fairly prominently in the title. And there is some ho-ho-ho-ing that goes on, by someone in a red suit, no less. The Easter Bunny even makes a (brief but somewhat hilarious) appearance. However, I’d like to bring up an important point: Jack Skellington may be obsessed with Christmas, but he’s still the Pumpkin King. He’s played in the snow, he’s brought winter and lights and a little bit of “terrible” cheer to Halloween Town, he’s flown in his coffin-sleigh behind his eight bony reindeer, but he’s ready to pick up his Halloween responsibilities again. He’s not giving up on Halloween; he’s just expanding his own horizons a little. It’s all about Halloween roots! Yeah.

Also: TIM BURTON. ‘Nuff said.

Whatever its holiday affiliation, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a quick, fun movie, like Edward Gorey in motion. The story is actually kind of sweet–Jack trying to bust out of his Halloween funk, and finding himself obsessed with Christmas; Sally trying to save him from his own disaster–but the humor is unabashedly dark, in the tradition of Gorey and Roald Dahl, with whose work Burton is clearly well acquainted, having now put several of his books on film. It’s refreshing, quirky, and probably unlike anything you’ve seen that wasn’t made by Burton himself. Also excellent are the songs, written and performed by Danny Elfman.

To steal someone else’s rating system: Two thumbs up. And if you’re really worried about the multiple-holiday thing, just relax and watch it at Thanksgiving.