“The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”: Alternate Christmas Movies

I love Christmas movies.  Every winter, as the season approaches, I feel a battle begin to rage within me, two sides fighting over when it is too early to start watching Christmas movies (the same battle is fought over Christmas music but that’s another post).  Some years November wins, others I survive until December.  There is also a battle over which movies to view each year.  I don’t want to tire of them but there a few, some mentioned on this list, that I find it infinitely difficult to avoid every year, they give me so much joy.  I know, many of you are saying, “Man, Dave, you need to get a life.”, to which I reply, “Any life lived is a life, even if it’s not what you would do with yours.”  But I digress.  I don’t want to talk about what many call ‘the classics’ (although there are many here I would not call that), Christmas Vacation, Miracle On 34th Street, Home Alone, It’s a Wonderful Life (which I do love watching…often), you get the idea. Although there are many ‘alternative’ Christmas movie lists in this crazy internet tube, I have laid out one ground rule for my list:  the piece being watched has to have the December/January holidays as its theme or take place during this period for more than half of its running time.  That way, unlike Warner Brothers, who released a Christmas collection a few years ago with Boys Town included even though only the first few minutes take place at Christmas, mine are TRULY holiday movies.  Of course this will in effect remove some of my favourites from the list, Holiday Inn and Christmas In July, to name two (okay, Christmas In July takes place in JULY but anytime I can give props to a Preston Sturges movie, I will).  Well, let’s see what this fool watches (almost) every year.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – “Really?  A Bond movie?”, you may ask.  Well, as a Bond fanatic, and more the books than the movies (Roger Moore almost singlehandedly destroyed the series), On Her Majesty’s Service is my favourite book and was my favourite Bond movie until the new Casino Royale.  The book shows Bond at his most vulnerable, in love, and at his most angry, when that love is threatened, and the movie manages to stick closely to the book.  James Bond becomes Sir Hilary Bray, genealogist,  and spends his Christmas holidays at a ski resort/clinic in beautiful Switzerland trying to finally bring down the elusive Blofeld, played smarmily by Telly Savalas.  Even though, I’m not fond of John Glen’s erratic fight scene editing and George Lazenby, in his only Bond appearance, isn’t Sean Connery (but he’s miles better than the stiff Moore), this one has lots of holiday cheer, skiing, figure skating and Diana Rigg.

The Thin Man – Now I’m really stretching, you may say, but the fact is that the first Thin Man movie takes place almost entirely over Christmas eve and Christmas day and has much holiday cheer, in the form of copious amounts of alcohol consumed by William Powell and Myrna Loy as the mystery-solving Nick and Nora Charles, a rich couple who have some unseemly connections (his, actually).  As in the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the mystery is simply a cover for a romantic screwball comedy, with Powell and Loy throwing around wisecracks like a drunk spilling their drink.  In many ways, it’s the anti-Christmas movie because there’s not a lot of goodwill to men, just murders to solve and this is never more clear than when Nora says, after a few too many Merry Christmases are bandied about, “The next person who says Merry Christmas to me, I’ll kill ‘em.”  By the way, there were 5 sequels, all with the Thin Man moniker, even though the titular Thin Man was a victim in the first movie only.

3 Godfathers – This might be the least known movie on the list.  A John Ford/John Wayne western, 3 Godfathers is a Christmas parable about three outlaws on the run through the desert.  They come upon a pregnant woman who, with the help of the three men, gives birth before dying and her last wish is that the men take care of the baby so they head to the town of New Jerusalem where they find her family but also reparation for their crimes.  This is a terrific movie with strong Nativity themes running throughout and takes place entirely during the Christmas week.  If you haven’t seen this lesser-known gem, search it out.

Remember the Night – Okay, I managed to squeeze a Preston Sturges movie on to the list.  Sturges wrote the screenplay but Mitchell Leisen directed (even though Sturges was very blunt about his less-than-exemplary opinion of Leisen’s skills).  Barbara Stanwyck plays a thief in New York, court-ordered to spend Christmas week with lawyer Fred Macmurray, whose plans to visit his family now have some excess baggage.  The requisite crazy Sturges dialogue and oddball characters keep the laughs coming but the standout is the heart-tugging scene when Stanwyck makes a stop at her childhood home, to find she’s neither welcome nor wanted.

Elf – Every year the studios try to catch lightning in a bottle by releasing a couple of Christmas movies, hoping they catch the public’s fickle attentions.  Usually we get a Deck the Halls or Surviving Christmas (if you haven’t heard of these, be happy) but every once in a while we get an Elf.  Although this one has been catching some speed the last couple of years, Elf is still a bit of an outsider and the most enjoyable Christmas movie in years.  Will Ferrell is a human adopted as a baby by Santa and raised as an elf but realizes he’s not like the other elves so he travels to New York to find his father, curmudgeon book publisher James Caan.  This one successfully mixes some edge with some sweet scenes (especially with sort-of romantic interest, Zooey Deschanel, who shines here) to create very big laughs.  My only complaint is that the movie is almost derailed by a silly (even within the context of this movie) finale in Central Park. 

Die Hard – This is my favourite Christmas movie.  It is actually my favourite movie, period, so by virtue of that, it has to be my favourite Christmas movie.  You may think that this movie is about New York cop John McClane fighting terrorists in a Los Angeles highrise, an action-packed thrill ride filled with violence and inappropriate language and you would be right, but it is also chock-a-block with Christmas music, decorations, holiday cheer, faith in your fellow-man, a negative predilection towards greed and consumerism and family togetherness.  Think about it.

Honourable Mention: Saturday Night Live, December 8, 1990 – I know.  This is an episode of a television comedy sketch show and so, it really doesn’t belong on this list…that’s why it’s an honourable mention.  Saturday Night Live has had a spotty success rate and I’m not patient enough to slog through the crap to find that golden kernel of comedy, however the night this aired, I was otherwise engaged and I heard Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians were the musical guests and I was very into them at the time so I taped it.  Thank you to myself for that prescience.  This was one of the only SNL episodes that worked (for me) from start to finish.  Tom Hanks hosted and once again, brought back my favourite SNL character, Mr. Short Term Memory in a skit that after dozens of viewings still makes me roll on the floor (“Hey!  You’re Tony Randall!”).  ‘The Five Timers Club’, ‘Carl Sagan’s Global Warming Christmas Special’, ‘Sabra Shopping Network”, all absolutely hilarious.  And, oh yeah, Edie Brickell was good, too.

To all my friends, family and readers, may the joy of the season be made manifest in your lives.

A Pacifist’s Love Of War Movies

I call myself a pacifist.  I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a time when killing swaths of your fellow humans could be justified.  I can’t think of a war that 1) couldn’t have been avoided if the right people were in charge, 2) didn’t go terribly wrong in terms of casualties, civilian and military and 3) bring out the worst in human behaviour.  But I have a dark, dirty secret (that isn’t so secret to those who know me well)…I LOVE war movies.  I don’t just mean the anti-war classics like All Quiet On the Western Front and Paths Of Glory.  I mean good old-fashioned jingoistic flag-wavers with John Wayne and Van Johnson.  I mean modern classics like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon.  I know this seems like a disparity and I suppose it is, in a way.  But in war movies, I often see men (and women) rising to humanitarian heights, overcoming physical limitations and demonstrating partisanship and cooperation, bringing out the man’s best in the worst of circumstances.  This week is Remembrance Day here in Canada and in Britain and Veteran’s Day in the United States and at this time, I always feel led to watch a few of my favourites as well finding one or two I may have overlooked.  As I grow older however, I become more aware of my mortality and more appreciative of the sacrifices made  by others who chose to go into harm’s way for the ideal of freedom and this year in particular, I have been thinking of people I have known who were connected to war in some way and of course, the movies their situation brings to mind.

Although my dad was a couple of months shy of active service in World War 2 (he joined up on his 18th birthday but all he saw was basic training outside Toronto and weekend furloughs in Toronto), I have several uncles who saw a great deal of action.  My uncle Mike was shot down behind German lines early in the war and sat through the war in a POW camp.  As a child, when he and my aunt Kaye would come over for a swim and he would take off his shirt, I would marvel at the foot long scar rippling across his left shoulder from stray bullets during his capture.  The Canadian military was ultimately very generous, providing him with a pension and a cushy job chauffeuring military types around Southern Ontario until his retirement but that would be a small price for the indignities he must have suffered and horrific sights he must have been privy to in those years in the German camp, as in the quintessential POW movie, The Great Escape.  Although this rollicking and exciting adventure strays sometimes from the source material, the book by Paul Brickhill that outlines his own experiences as a prisoner at the infamous Stalag Luft II, the truly amazing thing is that the most unbelievable parts in the film are those that actually happened with Steve McQueen’s unpredictable behaviour and demands accounting for the bulk of the changes from the book.  Another great movie (and book) from this same event is the British classic, The Wooden Horse, the true-life story of how an escape tunnel was dug essentially using only a wooden gymnastic horse and the ingenuity of dozens of prisoners.

My uncle Harry was one of the 76,000 Canadian troops that participated in the invasion of Sicily and ultimately Italy and spent many long months working his way north to free Italy from the fascist grip of Mussolini.  On a recent trip to Italy, we were in Salerno, where the disembarkation of the Allied invasion of Italy took place and and as I walked on the boardwalk next to the Mediterranean, I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of young men who lost their lives where I was walking.  The invasion of Sicily brings to mind the Oscar-winning film about the man who led the great invasion, Patton.  General George Patton was an imposing, brash, egotistical man but a brilliant tactician and the ideal fodder for a movie biography.  Francis Coppola and former military man Edmund North wrote a terrific script that perfectly captured the enigma that was Patton.  George C. Scott would not give a better performance, even if he felt it necessary to turn down the Oscar that came with it and the movie would famously become Richard Nixon’s favourite.

Many years ago, I watched what was essentially another rip-off of The Dirty Dozen, The Devil’s Brigade.  An entertaining romp, this one held a place of importance  and pride to me though because it concerned a ragtag U.S. commando unit drummed into shape by Canadian Special Forces officers, led by Cliff Robertson.  For once, the Canadians were the real heroes.  It was many years later that my dad informed that not only was the Devil’s Brigade a real World War 2 unit, but the best man at my parent’s wedding, George Stocking, was a former member of the Devil’s Brigade.  I promptly rushed home and watched it again and got a copy for my dad, who had never seen the movie.

My favourite war sub-genre is the submarine movie.  The idea that a small group of men from every background works together for the greater good (and their own safety) inside a giant tube, constantly facing stress and danger is a formula that never gets old for me.  Purists will list Das Boot and Run Silent Run Deep as the classics of the genre but my favourite is a propaganda piece that may lack in realism, but more than makes up for it in heart, Destination Tokyo.  Released at the start of the Second World War to give audiences a glimpse into the heretofore unknown world of the silent service, it stars Cary Grant as the skipper of a sub that has the unenviable task of sneaking into Tokyo Bay on an espionage mission, providing us with humour, pathos, excitement, and sheer bravado in spades.  Yeah, it’s old-fashioned but it’s old-fashioned fun.

Many may feel, even with the advent of ultra-realistic movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, that war movies diminish the great sacrifices the men and women who have served have made but I know that during virtually every war movie I watch, I have at least a moment of reflection when I’m thankful uncles Mike and Harry and all the other uncles, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and aunts were willing to make the decision to serve their country so that pacifists like myself can enjoy the freedom they fought for.

From Italy With Love or My Week In Italy Through Film

It was just one week ago (this very moment!) that I was driving home from the airport, fresh (or fatigued, depending on your outlook) from my first visit to the beautiful, exasperating, exciting, strange and wonderful county of Italia, a whirlwind week of food, art, history, and friendship.  As if the jet lag wasn’t enough, we made sure we wore ourselves out, drinking in (literally and figuratively…I still don’t know how I functioned each morning after the wonderful bottle or so of wine I polished off every dinner) everything we could in the short time we had.  Our motto: Do it now, process it later.

I live in Southern Ontario, not exactly Hollywood North (although a fair bit of filmmaking does take place in Toronto and isolated areas) so when I see my environs captured on celluloid, it’s usually Anyplace, U.S.A. over top of places familiar to me with all the requisite flag and sign changes.  I can still however, scream and point as I see these poorly disguised landmarks in movies like Short Circuit, To Die For and Dawn Of the Dead (shot in the mall I used to work at and okay, I simply screamed in pain at Short Circuit).  But here was a country so steeped in history, so utterly familiar to those who have never been there that the very names conjure up vivid images, Trevi Fountain, St. Peter’s Basilica, Pompeii, the Colosseum, mozzarella, pizza, Michelangelo.  And so I found in my travels that so much of what I was seeing in person revived memories of movies both recent and long forgotten.  It seemed as though each sight, taste or smell elicited a film flashback  and so I will give a day-by-day reminisce, mingled with the movies brought to mind.

Day One: Rome (the airport at least)-Flying into Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport in Fiumicino, a suburb of Rome, I was reminded of the opening scenes of Avanti!, the Billy Wilder-directed Jack Lemmon comedy about an American businessman wrested from his golf-and-martini life to fly to Italy to facilitate the shipping of his father’s body back Stateside, even as he is engulfed by ‘amore’.  The opening scenes are the pilot’s view of the approach to Da Vinci Airport and I looked out the small window over the wing (why does it seem I’m always over the wing?) at the vast sprawl of suburban Rome, feeling somewhat more excited about the prospect than Jack Lemmon did.  As I climbed into my tiny Fiat Grande Punto and raced down the Autostrade on the 3 1/2 hour journey to our hotel, I felt at times like Matt Damon racing through the countryside in The Italian Job or one of the Bourne movies, until my wife told me to slow down or the GPS bleated its insistence that I was in fact speeding.  We arrived at our hotel, jet-lagged and apprehensive about this strange new country.

Day Two: Paestum-A mere four kilometres from our hotel (although the guide book said one kilometre so we decided to ditch the car and get a taste of the countryside…boy, did we ever) is the ancient Greek town of Poseidonia, which the Romans later named Paestum, where lay what most historians consider the best-preserved Greek ruins in the world.  Beyond the quiet humility I felt as I thought about my relative insignificance in the long dance of history that played out on this plain, I also felt awed as I envisioned a 40-foot-high Laurence Olivier sitting in the enormous temple of Zeus in the Ray Harryhausen ‘classic’, Clash Of the Titans.  But what I was most reminded of, sadly, was the movie that played on the plane the day before, the latest Nia Vardalos fiasco, My Life In Ruins.  The (unfunny) story of a Greek tour guide finding romance with the hunk bus driver while showcasing the beauty of Greece, I was saddened for a fleeting second by the thought of the wasted potential of Vardalos, who wrote and starred in the wonderful My Big Fat Greek Wedding then squandered that with Connie and Carla and this latest dreck.  Fortunately, the glory of my surroundings woke me from this sad reverie.  After our sojourn at the ruins, we stopped for our first lunch in a small bar/gelateria (a bar in Italy is the North American equivalent to a coffee shop) and it was here that one of the real differences between Europe and North America becomes most evident, the food.  In North America, we have a philosophy that more and bigger is better.  Grocery stores have become supercentres with several dozen varieties of, well, everything.  Buffets are ubiquitous, obesity is on the rise and processed is the word of the day.  In Europe, however, they still seem to take pride in their food, both growing and making it.  Everywhere we went, from the wonderful hotel restaurant to the Autogrill, Italy’s expressway rest stop, the food was terrific and made with care from fresh ingredients.  Virtually every local pizzeria featured what I would term ‘artisan’ food.  Which leads me to…

Day Three: Rome-We rose at 4:30 for the 3 1/2 hour drive back to Rome.  I know, “Why are you driving all the way back to Rome?”, you ask.  Well, you see, we had tickets for a papal audience at the Vatican at 10:30 and I had never driven in Rome proper so I wanted to get there in plenty of time, for that as well as REAL reason for the trip back, a 12:45 appointment at the top of the Spanish Steps to have our wedding vows renewed (yes, I’m such a romantic)!  Well, we made great time (again, Italian Job) and it seemed, as we approached the outskirts of Rome and the GPS informed us that we had a half hour to drive just 13 kilometres to reach our exact destination, that we were on the cusp of possibly the greatest day of our lives and everything was falling into place.  Then we hit the famed Rome traffic jam, five packed lanes as far as the eye could see!

(In the spirit of my beloved serials)…What dastardly deed had the populace of Rome foisted on our hapless hero and his blushing bride-to-be (sort of)?  Would they make it to their appointment with destiny?  Are their upcoming nuptials in jeopardy?  Would the marriage be consummated (okay, ewww..)?  Find out in the next spellbinding chapter of From Italy With Love or My Week In Italy Through Film at this theatre next week (or whenever I get the rest done)!

State Of the (Jays) Nation

My friend, Cito...not really.

At the end of a less-than-illustrious baseball season (for Blue Jays fans), I’m going to review the year that was and comment on the year that is to come based on the events of the last 48 hours.

Citogate.  Fox Sports News (which I trust more than Fox News) reported yesterday that a ‘near-mutiny’ has existed in the Blue Jays clubhouse and unnamed players have insisted that due to a lack of communication, ‘old-school’ style managing and general negativity, two-time World Series winning manager Cito Gaston has to be let go by next season.  Cito has expressed incredulity at this and has been ‘blindsided’ (his own words) and while yesterday, rumblings were still being heard off the record, today the players have had an about-face and it appears now everyone is just peachy about having Cito back next year.  What happened?  A closed door meeting?  An edict from on high?  No, apparently a clubhouse meeting was scheduled but called off and head office had its own fish to fry (more on that later).  No, I think everyone is still unhappy but no one expected the story to leak so now those same ‘no ones’ don’t want to look like whiny babies complaining that Daddy is mean to them when they don’t do their chores.  Let’s be honest, with the exception of a couple on the roster, Adam Lind, Aaron Hill, Roy Halladay and perhaps Marco Scutaro, no one had performed to specs the last couple of months and I find it a bit disingenuous to blame a man who sits on a bench and watches YOU play and who through the last half of last season and the first two months of this one provided a glowing win-loss record, 78-51 (in a season this long, it’s easy to forget that the Jays were an American-League-leading 27-14 through May).  Yes, Cito has a different approach.  He lets guys work through their difficulties on the field, often to the groans of the fans.  He has a quiet, almost hands-off approach so it’s easy to disregard his wisdom (as Travis Snider found out early on this season to his regret) but he must know something because he….wins….games! (his managerial record is 809-758).  Well, it appears that Cito will be around for next year but one person who won’t be is J.P. Ricciardi.

J.P. Ricciardi, the general manager of the Jays for the last 8 years, was fired today, one year shy of the completion of his contract.  Ricciardi came over from the Oakland A’s where he served under Billy Beane who touted the idea of ’smallball’, taking the focus from home runs and batting averages to on-base percentages and moving men around the bases.  This theory worked well enough to win the A’s a World Series and bring Ricciardi to the attention of the cost-cutting new owner of the Jays, Ted Rogers.  He was hired in 2001 to bring this new attitude to the Jays clubhouse and so Ricciardi presented his Five Year Plan (which, by the way, we are in the 8th year of).  I need to make it clear that I was not a fan of J.P. Ricciardi.  He seemed arrogant and rude and the list of his poor decisions and signings (Wells, Rios, Burnett, Ryan, Thomas) is long and undistinguished.  I’m not particularly sad to see him go but….I do feel sorry for him.  Why, you ask?  Because, so long as the Jays are in the American League East, so long as the Jays have almost forty games a season against the Yankees and Red Sox, teams with a seemingly endless pool of financial resources to draw from, so long as Rogers is content to keep our salary cap at under one hundred millions dollars, chances are no general manager will be able to lead this team to a World Series berth (I say ‘chances are’ because last year the Tampa Bay Rays, with a salary less than half of the Jays, did just that…against those same teams.  So there is a chance).  And when the team fails to reach that pinnacle of baseball, there will be anger and animosity against ANY general manager who, the fans feel, can’t get the team there.  It’s inherently unfair but a part of life in the A.L. East.  So, to Ricciardi’s replacement, former assistant general manager Alex Anthopoulos, good luck!  You’ll need it (and a thick skin…though not as thick as you would need in New York or Boston, so thank your lucky stars you’re not there.)  I can only hope that you are more level-headed than Ricciardi, with more media patience and tact.  You’re Canadian so already chances are you’re a nice guy (not too nice though, I hope).  Oh, and good luck with the whole Halladay thing.  Really.

Oh, and get rid of Wells.  It’ll help you in the long run.  Really.

The Death Of Classic DVDs Will Be the Death Of Me

I LOVE classic movies.  When a new one is released on DVD or shows up at the local rep theatre, my excitement is palpable.  People always ask me if I have Turner Classic Movies in my cable selection and I tell them that if I did, I would never leave the house (the other side of that coin is that due to my…’involvement’ with a local video store that has one of the largest rental collections in Canada, from whom I receive free rentals, we only have basic cable, which doesn’t include TCM).  Now, when I say ‘classic’, I don’t mean The Breakfast Club or Happy Gilmore.  I don’t even mean The Godfather or Rocky.  I mean black and white.  I mean movies that are older than your parents (in some cases, your grandparents).  I get all aflutter over movies with Errol Flynn, Jean Arthur and Cary Grant in them.  I become giddy as a schoolgirl when I think of movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Preston Sturges.  I actually know who Zasu Pitts, Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton are…and I like them!  When I say, “They don’t make them like they used to”, I mean it.  But my excitement came to a screeching halt a few weeks ago, thanks to an article in ‘Canada’s newsmagazine’, Maclean’s. 

On August 6, Maclean’s published an article entitled “Say goodbye to big screen classics”, (http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/06/say-goodbye-to-big-screen-classics/) which espoused the theory that classic movies on DVD would become as rare as the dodo, or a Toronto sports team winning a championship.  Through interviews with a smattering of highly placed studio execs, the story developed that studios, due to a downturn in sales, would be virtually discontinuing the release of classics, other than huge hits like The Wizard Of Oz and Gone With the Wind.  Even a ’boutique’ distribution company like Criterion would be paring back their schedule with more of a focus on modern film.  Well, I have a word or three to say on this…

I work in the trenches, retail trenches, that is.  As the sole person in charge of the ordering for one of the largest video stores in Canada (8,000 titles for rent, 10,000 titles for sale when the average Rogers and Blockbuster carries 1000-1500), I have a daily view into the soul of the DVD consumer and most of the time I don’t like what I see.  There has always and will always be crap.  The term ‘B movie’ came from the time when you went to the theatre for the evening, and saw two movies, the ‘big’ title, an ‘A’ title and a lower budget (and usually quality) ‘B’ title.  So yes, there will always be the Adam Sandler fan (don’t think he’s the first to make a fortune from lower-brow comedy…before him there was Chevy Chase, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Lucille Ball, Arthur Lake (Blondie), Three Stooges and Fatty Arbuckle). 

It seems clear to me though that the quality of these classics are much higher than what today’s studios are putting out.  I don’t know if it’s the old studio ‘contract’ system which basically forced most actors and crew to appear in or work on whatever the studio heads told them to.  There wasn’t any of the script readings by actors and agents to decide if the potential movie fit his or her image (the studio head told YOU what fit your image).  You were on a weekly salary and you did what the bosses told you (which doesn’t sound all that different from my job, except for the pay scale).  A real difference is that while the Warners, David Selznick and Harry Cohn were businessmen first, they knew and loved movies while today’s execs are mostly MBA graduates who think that the French New Wave is Depeche Mode.  William Goldman famously said that in Hollywood, no one knows anything and that is more true today than ever. 

Yes, I admit that there is some good stuff coming out of Hollywood today (this year alone we’ve so far had Up, (500) Days of Summer, Away We Go, Inglourious Basterds and District 9) but most of this is coming from independent filmmakers or those who work outside the system with that system’s blessing.  I’ve already written a blog on the death of Hollywood (http://argento2665.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/the-blockbuster-and-the-death-of-hollywood/) so I don’t want to get back on that soapbox but I can’t help but think these issues are intrinsically tied together.  If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it and if someone removes that history, we have nothing to learn from.  Classic DVD’s are that history and I would hate to see a day when I’m forced to resort to trading with other movie buffs on the information superhighway for a fourth generation VHS dub of Sullivan’s Travels (a movie about movies that will change the way you think about movies).  I fear though that day is closer than we all think.

A Baseball Newbie’s List of Lesser Diamond Flicks

I wasn’t always a baseball enthusiast (my wife says “read ‘fanatic’).  For most of my life, I more or less despised team sports.  In school I was aware of my physical limitations (general clumsiness) so I never felt I could contend with most of the other kids on the team and subconsciously at least, I had a powerful need to not let people down, even if they were people I didn’t really care about (jocks).  This attitude grew into a more general hatred of and intellectual superiority over those who enjoyed sports.  Then about seven years ago, I took my seven-year-old to his first major league baseball game in Toronto and found, much to my dismay and pleasure, I was having a great time.  As a kid, I had enjoyed baseball more than the Canadian staple, hockey, but I had obviously forgotten that joy and this event, coupled with an encroaching mid-life crisis, led, no, drove me to obsess about baseball.  For at least six months a year, I became the dreaded sports dad/husband.  All this verbiage is simply to explain that my love of the game is a recent development and I’m playing catch up with life-long fans so the breadth of my knowledge and exposure may not be as great as some.  I watch copious amounts of ball during the season and then read and watch ball-oriented fiction and non-fiction during the off-season.  We all know about the Bull Durhams and Naturals but I wanted to focus on some underrated, unorthodox, even unknown titles that I’ve enjoyed.  Some of these aren’t critical darlings but in some way, they have touched me or made me appreciate the game that much more.

Kevin Costner is spotty.  He is unreliable.  He is too laconic.  He is Jimmy Stewart without the chops.  But there are two genres that he excels at, in which he seems truly at home, westerns and baseball movies (this would include movies in which he plays a baseball player but aren’t really about baseball, like The Upside Of Anger). My personal favourite of these is For the Love Of the Game.  Costner plays a Detroit Tigers pitcher in the dusk of his career, pitching the game of his life, a potential perfect game, and as he plays, he remininces about a life of missed opportunities.  There is a wonderful undercurrent of bittersweet regret comingled with wry humour and pathos that really works for me and the movie offers a terrific behind-the-plate view of the sometimes monotonous life of a ball player.  Costner gives a good (possibly great) performance and this movie gives credence to my theory that there is no bad John C. Reilly movie (although Stepbrothers comes awfully close).

Jimmy Stewart had the lanky build for a Randy Johnson-like pitcher and as one of the biggest box-office draws of the late 1940’s, was perfect to play White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton in the ‘true’ feel-good Stratton Story.  Stratton was one of the winningest pitchers in the American League in the 1930’s until an off-season hunting accident took one of his legs.  His recovery and subsequent return to pro ball, albeit the minor leagues, nonetheless is a terrific story of grit and determination.  Stewart is, as always, reliable but June Allyson shines as the perky, imperturbable Ethel, the wife who pulled him through.  A great look at baseball in the 1930’s.

“A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.” – Earl Wilson.  It has been said by many in the game that a pro ball player makes it based on mental toughness as much as talent.  A hitter has less than a second to decide whether he will swing, where he will swing and what to do once he swings and if he succeeds 3 out of every 10 times, he is considered a success.  And this with tens of thousands of people screaming at him, many not favorably.  This would be enough to drive a normal man crazy and that’s exactly what happened to Red Sox player Jimmy Piersall, documented in his autobiography, Fear Strikes Out.  His harrowing ordeal became a movie in 1957 with Anthony Perkins as Piersall and Karl Malden as the tough father with all his dreams invested in his son.  Malden is, as usual, terrific and Perkins was certainly able to convey the depression and internal struggle that Piersall fought his whole life but as a ball player, well, Perkins makes a good depressed person.  He is just too slight and weak to make us believe he was able to make it that far (and he has a terrible swing).  But overall, still a fine movie.

Possibly the greatest player with the greatest story in baseball history is Jackie Robinson.  The story of  his rise through the ranks of the white baseball world, dealing with overt racism, often from his own teammates and fans, in the most civilized and gracious way, to become one of the best players in the game would make one of the best baseball movies of all time.  Well, 1950’s The Jackie Robinson Story is not that movie.  It’s the children’s Jackie Robinson story, a simplistic and timid tale released only two years after Robinson made it to the ’show’ and even recognizing  the time of its release, it’s abbreviated running time (76 minutes) is wasted brushing lightly on his difficulties as the first black man in a white game.  It’s almost a disservice to modern fans who watch every race participating in today’s game to view this early period through the rose-coloured tint this movie offers.  Why do I include it on this list, you may ask?  Because the man who portrays Jackie Robinson is none other than…Jackie Robinson himself.  It becomes an important historical document, one that shows us the soft-spoken, kind man who rewrote the history of the game.  Granted, though he IS playing himself, he’s not the best actor but in this performance, we can see a kernel of the great man that was and was to come.  So, in the meantime, until someone decides to retell this story properly and respectfully (please!), we’ll have to live with this.

A movie that more accurately deals with the race issue in this period is the 1996 television movie, Soul Of the Game.  Blunt, sharp, well-written and acted, this story of the Negro Leagues and their greats, Satchell Paige and Josh Gibson, sets the record straight, showing a much more confident Jackie Robinson, played by Blair Underwood, beating these other players to the ‘bigs’ because he was willing to (pardon the pun) ‘play ball’.  Delroy Lindo’s Paige is an excellent portrayal of an aging great trying to hold on to youth and fame just a bit longer.

Seeing that I’m fairly new to the game, there are doubtless other lesser known baseball movies that I could put on my off-season viewing list and I would be most thankful for some suggestions or your thoughts on the ones I’ve mentioned.  See you at the park!

High School (Movie) Reunion!

Ah, yes.  The proverbial high school reunion.  I am waxing nostalgic because this past weekend I had the distinct (dubious) pleasure of attending said event and it became clear to me that 2o-25 years seems like a looong time (although it feels like yesterday… literally!).  I spent the evening drinking substandard red wine, eating finger foods and trying to figure out just how the hell I remember the names and not the faces, the faces and not the names or the manes and not the names.  After all, the 80’s was a time of big hair and big dreams.  As the (terrible) D.J. played some of the worst music from 1976 to 1997 (maybe he didn’t get the memo that it was an EIGHTIES reunion), I thought about the movies of the 1980’s.  Not the big moneymakers or Oscar winners necessarily, but the movies that that were important to me, either for the environment, the company or the impact on my film consciousness.  Here are some of those movies, in no particular order, just as they crowd into my mind:

Say Anything… (1989) - To be fair, I saw this when I was in my early 20’s but I scream at the grievious crime that kept this film from being released ten years earlier, at the start of my illustrious high school career.  If I could have had watched at the tender age of 14, loveable yet ambitionless Lloyd Dobler chase and win valedictorian Diane Court, oh, the great changes that would have been wrought in my life.  Okay, maybe not, but John Cusack’s performance has cemented him for all time as the poster boy for dweebs with a dream (female, not computer).  Director and writer Cameron Crowe has made the smartest, wittiest, sweetest teen film ever and everything else pales in comparison (sorry, Twilight fans).  Every character is fresh and original yet someone we know; the dialogue is constantly a surprise yet exactly what that character should say and the plot has enough romance to woo the girls, humour to win the guys and the music is timelessly perfect.  Suffice to say, this movie makes me wish I could relive my teen years, as crappy as they seemed at the time.

Gandhi – This is the one that first showed me the separation between movies (entertainment) and film (art).  No one would see it with me so I trekked up to the Capitol Theatre in Chatham, Ontario by myself because I heard it was “good”.  Before this, my tastes tended to Porky’s, James Bond and Star Wars, but for three hours, I sat mesmerized by a film that played epic yet private and personal.  Richard Attenborough’s direction was letter perfect and Ben Kingsley’s performance as the small man with a giant influence was nothing short of brilliant.

Friday the 13th 3-D – Okay, not much of a watermark but it was the first movie I saw that used something akin to the modern 3-D technology I absolutely love in theatres today.  I had seen some poor 3-D in the past but I sat in awe as there was real depth to the sets and when that eyeball popped out of that guy’s face and into my lap, I laugh out loud in appreciation.

Phenomena (Creepers) – My best friend Dwayne and I had a tradition, two dollar Tuesdays.  Every Tuesday, we would go to a movie, regardless of what was playing and sometimes this was difficult.  Before the current predilection towards first weekend boffo box-office, movies used to have what is called in the industry ‘legs’.  These are movies that hung on….forever.  It was not uncommon for a movie to play for literally months and with only three theatres in town, this would wreak havoc on our tradition.  Well, Creepers was not one of these movies.  In fact, Creepers was a filler.  When a big movie was opening on Wednesday instead of Friday, the Capitol would throw in something no one had ever heard of to fill the space for a big five days, from Friday until Wednesday, to disappear into oblivion.  That Tuesday, we saw the poster that showed a young girl holding a handful of insects, with the tagline “From Dario Argento, the master of terror”.  Who?  How could someone we’d never heard of be the master of terror?, we joshed as we paid our two bucks.  Well, what I watched for the next 83 minutes was horrific, convoluted, nonsensical…and I loved it!  It turned out Dario Argento really was the ‘master of terror’…in Italy!  Creepers, it seems, was the gutted version of Argento’s Phenomena, 30 minutes shorter, for some violence to be sure, but also major plot points.  It was wacky, yes, but the gorgeous frame composition, bravura camerawork and elaborate murder set pieces, all Argento staples, were jaw-dropping.  I became a rabid Argento fan, finally finding many years later, a subtitled complete version of Phenomena, which I now own.  Honestly, it didn’t make much more sense but it was still so enjoyable.  Note of interest:  the 14-year-old star of Creepers?  Future Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly.

Purple Rain – I was a metalhead.  I loved Rainbow, Scorpions, Van Halen, AC/DC…you get the idea.  That’s why it was a miracle that we went to see Prince’s seminal film (okay, he didn’t make very many).  That miracle, though, became an epiphany when Prince Rogers Nelson took the stage.  We went to see Purple Rain four times that year and wore out the LP at home.  I watched it recently with my wife and was surprised how broad and ridiculous the script and acting was (except for the under-rated Clarence Williams III as Prince’s dad) but the music and performances…that’s where it’s at.  Prince took absolute control of every moment when he was performing, brash, profane, funny, heart-breaking, a tumult of sheer lavender energy.  The icing on the proverbial cake was nabbing tickets for the opening night of the Purple Rain tour, still one of the best concerts I’ve had the pleasure of attending.

Dune – Dwayne and I were spending the night in downtown Windsor, doing some Christmas shopping (a very different time when Windsor was a place we looked forward going to) and we decided to see this new sci-fi movie to waste the evening.  Neither of us had read the book and we thought it could be the new Star Wars.  Could we have more wrong?  Frank Herbert’s classic novel, which I have since read twice, was thought unfilmable and had David Lean (!), Ridley Scott, Salvador Dali and Alejandro Jodorowsky tied to it at one time or another.  It was bizarro David Lynch (that’s meant affectionately) who finally took up the gauntlet after his success with The Elephant Man.  Dino de Laurentiis gave him virtual carte blanche and he turned out this…monstrosity (again, affectionately).  Surreal, epic, and silly at the same time, it was like a drug trip without the drugs.  I saw it again in the hopes it would make more sense, but thankfully it didn’t.  Lynch, unhappy with the result and resultant TV cuts, took his name off the movie (Directed By Alan Smithee).  Obviously we enjoyed it more than Lynch, for the wrong reasons.  We would spout lines from the movie for laughs for months (“Tell me of your homeworld, Usul”).  I have recently obtained a ‘fan edit’ version which is said to be closer to Lynch’s original script at 3 hours…I haven’t had the ambition to watch it yet.

What 1980’s movies made an impact on you?  Or if you’re older or younger, what movie most embodies the high school years for you?  Let me know!

The Blockbuster and the Death Of Hollywood (?)

Don’t get me wrong.  I love the big boom as much as the next guy. Cinematic thrill rides still move me.  A great fight  makes me walking out of the theatre looking to get in one and a great car chase makes me push the pedal a little bit harder.  But honestly, is that all there is?   I watch a lot of classic movies and by classic, I don’t mean the original Star Wars trilogy (although those are classics for their time).  By classic, I mean movies in black and white, with actors who, for the most part, are now deceased.  My favorite era is 1935 to 1945, a fertile period unmatched for sheer great film quantity and quality, but that is another blog entirely.  My point here is that when others (my family and those I work with and for) are forced to watch these movies, they invariably say the same thing, “They’re just so sloooow.”  (To which I respond, in my head, “No, it’s just the person watching.”)  To be honest, it’s not their fault.  This generation (and to a large extent the last) has been weened on a relatively recent development in the movie world, the blockbuster.  Fast-paced, plot-anemic blockbusters.

The term ‘blockbuster’ stems from the theatrical world where, it is said, a popular and high-grossing play would ‘bust’ the other theatres on the block and drive them out of business.  In the movie world, the term came into use in the mid-1970’s, coinciding with the release and subsequent success of the first bona-fide movie ‘blockbuster’, Jaws.  Before Jaws, there were massively popular movies, like The Sound Of Music and Gone With the Wind (which, if tickets prices are adjusted for inflation, is far and away the biggest grossing movie of all time.  Take that, George Lucas!) and the term would refer to their box office gross but Jaws started a trend that would change the way movies are made and marketed.  These movies would be termed ‘event movies’ and eventually ‘tentpole movies’, meaning that a large portion of the studio’s money and power would fall behind one movie, usually opening in the summer that would be expected to carry the studio through the bulk of the year, thus the ‘pole’ that holds up the ‘tent’.  This thinking has so changed the way we see movies and the movies that we see that the studios fight, sometimes years in advance, over what weekend their ‘blockbuster’ will open (now movies are called blockbusters before they have made a single penny) so generally, only one movie will open each weekend throughout the summer, especially in the first two months. 

This attitude has changed the way movies are made as well.  Each ‘blockbuster’ has to be bigger, faster and more fantastic than the last which increases the budget through special effects almost exclusively to the detriment of the story and acting.  The story has become secondary, something to hang on the glorious effects.  Granted, last year’s Iron Man and this year’s Star Trek show you can have a successful marriage of story and effects but unfortunately, these are the exceptions to the rule.  Before the 1970’s, movies seemed to be more intelligent, to speak more to the audience.  There wasn’t the need for wall-to-wall because there were characters that we wanted to spend time with between the action.  Film excellence and popularity were not mutually exclusive and here’s some numbers to back that up.  In 1945, the Oscar for Best Picture went to The Lost Weekend which was the number nine box office grosser that year.  In 1950, Best Picture All About Eve was also number nine.  The Ten Commandments, 1956 Best Picture winner was number one and 1960’s Oscar choice, The Apartment was number eight.  Conversely, last year’s winner, Slumdog Millionaire was a somewhat respectable number sixteen, however the previous year was thirty-six (No Country For Old Men), 2005 was forty-nine (Crash) and 2004, twenty-four (Million Dollar Baby).  Get my point?

Attendance numbers have also drastically dwindled and continue to do so.  Although box office groses often range in the hundreds of millions, the fact is that the ticket prices have grown exponentially in the last 20 years.  The average North American movie ticket price in 1980 was $2.69 and this year promises to top $7.50.  In 1960, though, the average ticket price was a measly 75 cents.  Factoring in box office, Gone With the Wind had 206 million admissions, The Sound Of Music had 154 million and The Ten Commandments had 131 million.  Modern day?  Last year’s box office giant, The Dark Knight, had just 72 million while 2004’s Shrek 2 had 74 million and Pirates Of the Caribbean 3 had a (relatively) measly 64 million.  Now I realize that there is so much more to occupy our easily distracted minds than there was 50 years ago but conversely, the population of North America has doubled in that time yet the movie attendance numbers continue to dwindle.  The advent of home theatre and DVD will continue to cut into these, as well.

So, is this the death of Hollywood?  Well, I don’t think we have to pick out a black suit yet but the fact is, the times, they are a-changin’ and Hollywood is going to have to change as well.  The phoenix-like resurgence of 3-D is certainly a good sign that someone in La-La-Land is thinking but it will eventually take more than a pair of goofy glasses to stay alive.

Crisis of faith: Reflections on Victoria Stafford and the nature of God

I realize that I created this blog primarily for forays into the entertainment world, but honestly, I made the damn blog so I’m allowed to expound on whatever I want.  So I will.  This will be about religion, specifically Christianity, which is the religion that I grew up in and left a decade ago.  I’m not trying to offend anyone here.  I just have some very basic questions about God and the nature of faith.  If any Christian out there can answer my dilemmas, I want, no, need to hear from you.

I grew up in the church and became a Christian at the age of 10.  I truly and devoutly believed what I was taught as a child and a teenager.  I made a decision to go into the ministry and enrolled in the Religious Studies program at Wilfrid Laurier University.  That is where the doubts started.  The questions that everyone asks but no one really answers.  I used the standard Christian response that God’s ways are a mystery that we will someday know, but not here on Earth.  Eventually though, this response didn’t cut the mustard and the doubts overrode my faith and I drifted from it.  I didn’t ‘backslide’ (as some Christians reading this might think), in fact, I can truly say that I live a better, ’holier’ life now than I did as a Christian, but without all the guilt.  Lately, my lack of faith has cropped up in several areas of my life with all the questions of how this could happen.  Well, everyone, here are some of my dilemmas:

Today, two young people, a 28-year-old man and 19-year-old woman were charged in the murder of 8-year-old Victoria Stafford.  For those who may not know, Victoria was abducted coming home from school on April 8 in nearby Woodstock, Ontario (a half hour from me) presumably by someone she knew from the only video surveillance available.  It is thought she was raped and murdered later that day and the body dumped an hour away outside Guelph (also an half hour from me).  Now these are allegations and rumours and nothing is certain as her body has not yet been found.  This event brought on a nationwide (Canadian) media frenzy and subsequent search.  I’m not going to discuss the case in detail, however.  I just want to use it as a jumping-off point.  Here I jump.

I think we can all agree what a horrific and disturbing act this is and I’m quite sure none of us can even imagine a situation that would have us commit this act.  As a Christian I believed in an omnipotent God, all-knowing.  He knew, as the book of Luke says, the number of hairs on my head.  He was in control, guiding us if we would be guided.  He gave us the freewill to choose our path but the knowledge to know what the true path is.  How, though, can an all-powerful God not be able to step in to affect events that are against His laws?  Oh, but He is able, Christian doctrine teaches, He just chooses not to.  It’s all part of His plan, which we are not privy to know.  I’ll be honest.  I’d rather worship a God who is unable to stop the abduction, rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl than a God who is able but chooses not to to further a mysterious plan He won’t let us in on.  After all, ‘Jesus loves the little children… they are precious in His sight’, the Sunday School song says.  Well, Victoria Stafford didn’t seem very precious, did she?  Oh, but God weeps over this, Christians would say.  Well, if He’s all-powerful then He could have done something to thwart this horrific act.  Period.  If any of us were confronted with the possibility of stopping this, we probably would have done everything in our power to do so, even at risk to our own lives.  Why not God?

Christians believe that Jesus Christ is ”the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Therefore, anyone who is not a Christian, the Bible teaches, will go to Hell (“For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to distruction,  and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it”).  According to the most recent figures, approximately 33% of the world’s population is Christian.  That leaves two-thirds of the world’s population that God is condemning to Hell.  Of that two-thirds, a large percentage are devout followers of their own faith, many far more devout than the average Christian.  Yet the God that created them, gave them the capacity for belief, condemns them for not believing in Him.  Why does God NEED us to worship him?  Oh, Christians will say, He doesn’t need us to believe in and worship Him, he deserves this belief and worship for giving us life and His Son.  And yet, if we don’t, He will condemn us.  Well, we are told, He is a jealous God.  Why would an omnipotent being feel as petty a human emotion as jealousy?  Is this an attitude that we would accept from another human?  Yes, of course, because we KNOW that humans are frail, flawed beings but God is omnipotent (see previous discussion). 

These are a few of the many questions I have.  Those of you who have questioned over the years my turning from faith have a little insight now.  I will say this, though.  I have read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and I accept it to a point.  I see the intricate structure of the world and all that is in it and cannot imagine it occured by happenstance.  I see how man has developed his world and cannot imagine it occured by happenstance.  I know the emotion of love I feel for my family and the joy I feel in viewing a work of art and cannot imagine it occured by happenstance.  I just can’t imagine this guiding/creating force is the Christian God that I’ve described.  Someday, I hope to discover what it’s all about, but until then, I’ll quote the great Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) in the greatest teen movie ever made, Say Anything: “I don’t know.  I just know I don’t know, you know?”

Liam Neeson-Action Hero? I’m taken with the idea!

In the pantheon of great (and not-so-great) action heroes, there have been some memorable names: Lee, Norris, Willis, Snipes, Seagal, Van Damme, Chan and for the most part, these guys could do action.  Some were martial arts experts, some were perfectly sculpted examples of masculine physique, one was an ex-CIA operative, trained in…well, that what Pony-tail Boy would like us to believe.  With few exceptions however, these ‘actors’ don’t act.  They fight.  And that is what we pay to see them do but wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to have someone doing the fighting who can actually ACT?  Well, this week’s big release, Taken, stars not just a good actor but a bona-fide Oscar-winning actor, Liam Neeson.  Granted, Neeson, in the role of retired security expert Bryan Mills, isn’t going to receive an Oscar for this work but he displays a solidity that makes hima pleasure to watch.  In a stereotypical plot, he is a divorced dad trying to make up for the absent years and reconnect with his teenage daughter, played with alternating giddiness and fear by Maggie Grace.  When she and a friend announce they are going to stay in Paris for a couple of weeks with cousins, Mills’ ’spidey sense’ starts tingling (and rightly so as they actually plan to play groupie and follow U2 on their European tour).  Well, daughter Kim and friend are kidnapped the day they arrive by Eurotrash sex peddlers and after a chilling cell-phone encounter with the kidnappers in which Neeson tells them what he does and what he will do, the action begins and doesn’t relent until the final minute as the self-described ex-CIA  ‘preventer’ Mills, moves through Paris, kicking ass and taking names, although it’s apparent his pen is out of ink as he leaves a multitude of bodies in his wake.  Now, this is truly not brain surgery and perhaps not even all parts of the brain were used to make this or are required to watch.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that you should turn your brain off while viewing because the more synapses that are firing, the loweryour enjoyment level.  The action is well-choreographed, from the Bourne school of hand-held camerawork and quick edits (director Pierre Morel’s only other directorial effort is the juiced-up martial arts extravaganza, District 13).  The supporting cast including  Famke Janssen and Xander Berkeley are adequate but Neeson, who is in virtually every frame, makes a (admittedly violent) silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  This opened in Europe over a year ago and the producers intended to unceremoniously dump this in the theatre in the doldrums of February for a week then a quick video release but it struck a chord with audiences and built up speed to the tune of over 200 million dollars worldwide (much to the producer’s joy), so that now a sequel is planned.  Without the emotional resonance of this one, I predict it won’t work.  But it will be great to see the newest action hero again.

Addendum:  I (unintentionally) saw this in the theatre on the evening of the day that Liam Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died after a skiing accident in Quebec.  As Neeson spends much of the movie in emotional pain, I couldn’t help but wonder throughout if this is how he was feeling at that moment.  It gave the movie a very different resonance.  Just saying.