Wonderful Christmastime

It's Christmas and it's my favorite time of year. Christmas decorations are everywhere, so is Christmas music, and on TV there are plenty of Christmas movies (some of them are actually good movies). Tonight I will continue a tradition of mine and watch It's a Wonderful Life, one of my essential Christmas movies. It may very well be, for me at least, the perfect Christmas movie. It's such a well established classic there's really not much I can say about it hasn't already been said. Dare I say it warms my heart, it really does. It's just not Christmas without my friend George Bailey and his friend Clarence.


And it's not Christmas for me without Love Actually which slipped it's way into my Christmas tradition only a few years ago. I have to admit I am partial to multi-story lined movies and romantic comedies so it may be only natural that I am very fond of this movie. The stories about different kinds of love amongst different people in London, with some help from a wonderful score by Craig Armstrong, are all very endearing (even the ones I don't care for). What I really like about this movie about so many different people in somewhat overlapping circles of friends, families, and coworkers is though there are scenes at the beginning and end with many of them in the same building there's no forced meeting of any of these different stories. There's about 3 different climaxes that happen more or less at the same time. They don't converge to be solved all at once, though there is that nice epilogue at Heathrow Airport. It may be sentimental and mushy but by then I won't care; I'm overwhelmed with good feelings from these characters that were inspired by the kindness and hope and love that really is all around at Christmas.

Christmas with Bing

Each year I look forward to spending the holidays with one of my favorite leading men, crooner/innkeeper/ex-G.I./priest Bing Crosby. He stars and sings in four of my favorite films to watch at Christmastime.

Holiday Inn (1942): Bing stars with Fred Astaire as former song and dance partners who have a nasty habit of chasing the same women. After Bing moves to Connecticut to open a themed boutique hotel which is only open on national holidays, a.k.a. "Holiday Inn," the two men reluctantly reunite. Though it takes place over the course of a year, with a musical number for each holiday, Holiday Inn really feels like a Christmas movie because it introduced the now-classic carol "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin.

White Christmas (1954): Bing and Danny Kaye play Army buddies turned successful entertainers who follow a sister act (Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen) to Vermont during an unseasonably warm winter. Vera Ellen is one of my favorite dancing ladies and when she teams with Danny Kaye for "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing," it is pure joy.

And speaking of that song...it's interesting to see how differently "White Christmas" is treated in Holiday Inn and this film which shares its title. In Holiday Inn, the song is melancholy, sung by a man who is lonely at Christmas. Twelve years later, the song has become a standard. When it is performed by Bing and the rest of the cast (at the beginnning and at the finale) it's no longer a lament, but an expression of nostalgia.

Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945): Bing portrays Father O'Malley, the newly arrived priest who shakes things up at a failing parish. The delightful Barry Fitzgerald plays an old-fashioned elder priest. In 1944, Going My Way was awarded Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Leo McCarey), Best Actor (Bing Crosby), Best Supporting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald), Best Song ("Swingin' on a Star"), as well as two other awards.

This film was so popular it warranted a sequel the next year, The Bells of St. Mary's. This time, liberal Father O'Malley finds himself butting heads with strict nun Ingrid Bergman (also an Oscar winner in 1944 for Gaslight) over how best to run the St. Mary's school.

Again, these films do not take place exclusively during the holidays; however, the "holiday spirit" is at the core of each one. The stories may seem corny to "modern" audiences, but I contend that if you can't enjoy these two sweet films then you have no heart.

AMC is showing Holiday Inn during December (check listings on http://www.amctv.com/) and a White Christmas marathon on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any scheduled showings of Going My Way or The Bells of St. Mary's this month. However, all four of these films are available on DVD.

Happy Holidays!

Gone With the Wind at 70

Yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the premiere of Gone With the Wind. Earlier in the week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "Why We Give a Damn About Scarlett," which described the film's enduring popularity and the conflicted emotions it has inspired.

I must admit that my appreciation for this film grows upon each viewing. The first time I saw it was in elementary school; for some reason my classmates and I were required to watch it. It took two days. After the first day, I dreaded watching the second half of the film because I hated Scarlett. She was such a horrible brat, I couldn't understand why Rhett, Melanie, and the others kept hanging around her. After this viewing experience, I decided that I hated Gone With the Wind.

However, subsequent viewings have allowed me to see past the brattiness and appreciate Scarlett's full character, as well as the subtleties of the story. However, her single-minded pursuit of Ashley Wilkes continues to vex me, no matter how many times I've seen it. As the film apporaches the end of its running time, without fail I will start to think, "Surely she has gotten over this Ashley fixation by now." Then, she approaches him in the lumber office with that intense look in her eye and I have to exclaim, "Still?!" I suppose this reaction illustrates how powerfully the film draws in even the casual viewer. Despite a 4 hour running time, once I've started I find it hard not to watch the whole thing.

Will any films from 2009 be so well remembered 70 years from now? My personal experience has been that this was not a great year for the movies; and it certainly can't hold a candle to 1939, when Gone With the Wind as well as many other classics were released. The 2009 Golden Globe nominations were also announced this week, and just looking over the list of nominated films proves that this was a year of slim pickings. I hate to make lofty predictions, but I doubt we'll be celebrating the anniversary of It's Complicated in 70 years.

On other websites...

Here are some links to interesting recent articles about film...

From The Onion AV Club, their list of 50 best films of the last decade: http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-films-of-the-00s,35931/
I can't say I agree with every choice, but they also included a lot of films (foreign or small arthouse flicks) that I haven't had the chance to see. On the same site they have other "Best of the Decade" articles including the best bad movies, favorite scenes, and the best performances of the '00s.

For another take on the "best of the decade," a list of the best films from 1900-1910 courtesy of the Movie Morlocks blog on TCM.com: http://moviemorlocks.com/2009/12/08/the-decade-list-1900-1910/#more-16854.

And from Slate.com, an amusing article about how a shirt buttoned all the way up has become costuming shorthand for "special": http://www.slate.com/id/2237378/.
*Disclaimer: there is no mention of something being the best of the decade in this article.

Now is the winter of our discontent...

This opening line seems appropriate as I now have Richard III, starring Ian McKellan, in my possession while the weather reports warn of incoming snow storms. Perhaps I'll get snowed in, and then I can check this one off my Great Movies list (hopefully with little to no discontent).

I remember watching Siskel & Ebert review this film back in 1996. I think this was the first time I had heard of someone adapting one of Shakespeare's plays to another time period and setting. In this case, from the Middle Ages when Richard III lived (or the Elizabethan period in which Shakespeare wrote and staged the play) to an alternate England of the 1930s, one ruled by fascism.

Of course, the same year would bring Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann and set in modern-day "Verona Beach." Though Shakespeare had never truly gone out of style, Luhrmann's film made The Bard suddenly hip. There followed a slew of film adaptations set in present day: 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew) in 1999, then Michael Almereyda's Hamlet a year later, then O (Othello) and Scotland, Pa. (Macbeth) in 2001. (Incidentally, why was the exceedingly bland Julia Stiles cast as Kate, Desdemona, and Ophelia? Who anointed her as the leading interpreter of The Bard for an entire generation?)

Of course there was also A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in the Victorian era for no discernible reason except that it allowed the characters to ride bicycles and wear a lot of extra clothing, and Titus (Titus Andronicus), both from 1999. It seems wrong to call Titus, or anything directed by Julie Taymor, "traditional," but the fact that this film adaptation retained the play's historical setting would make it seem so. There was, too, Love's Labours Lost in 2000, which was also set in the 1930s, but this time with considerably fewer fascists and a lot more dance numbers.

I could keep listing films, but the simple fact is that while Shakespeare may not always be as hot as he was in the late 90s, his work will never grow stale as long as creative writers and directors find new ways to present them and to make them relevant to modern audiences. It's not always successful (She's the Man a.k.a. Twelfth Night for Teens), but sometimes you get something Great.

Read Ebert's "Great Movies" review of Richard III here.