Saving the Best for "Last?"

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and the Christmas season is now upon us. People have all sorts of Christmas traditions -- but one in particular, that it seems has become more popular in recent years, kind of gnaws at me.

"Whamageddon" is the challenge to go for as long as you can in the holiday season without hearing Wham's original version of the song "Last Christmas." I'm sure everyone who participates in this is just having some goofy fun. (And if you've already posted about "Whamageddon" online, please know that this blog post is not at you in any way. I was thinking about all this... well... last Christmas.)

The thing that increasingly bothers me is: why, of all possible Christmas songs, is it "Last Christmas" by Wham that you're supposed to avoid?

If the challenge were about sheer difficulty, there are more ubiquitous Christmas songs you could set out to avoid. A true Christmas warrior would try dodging Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" for the holiday season.

If the challenge were about keeping goofy synth-pop instruments out of your ears, surely the challenge would be based around "Wonderful Christmastime," Paul McCartney's agonizing contribution to the Christmas canon. (I'm still haunted by that song, more than 25 years after I worked a retail job through several holiday seasons.)

Maybe there's something about the melancholy nature of the song, and wanting to avoid sad sentiments over the holidays? But the challenge could just as easily been about avoiding Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas," or The Carpenters' "Merry Christmas, Darling," or "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (the original version being especially dark).

Even though I know it's all "in good fun," I find myself wondering if the dark reason everyone is supposed to avoid the song "Last Christmas" is because it's the gay Christmas song.

George Michael was closeted for most of his life, including at the time he wrote "Last Christmas." Sure, that doesn't automatically mean the song is about gay love. But if you really listen to the lyrics, I feel like you can't avoid the distinct impression that it's the story of a gay romance gone sour because "the other guy" wasn't ready to be public about his sexuality or the relationship.

Add to that the fact that Michael himself seemed to indicate how important the song was by the fact that he played all the instruments on the recording, which he did not normally do for Wham songs. Also, for years he downplayed the song, trying to distance himself from it and not embracing it until later in his career. (Perhaps because it was only later in his career that he lived openly gay?)

Like I said, I'm sure that the "Last Christmas" challenge is meant in good fun. But, as we now stand on the brink of a major backslide for LGBT+ rights, I kinda don't feel like letting even the innocent things slide without comment. Sure, when tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court hears argument in a major transgender case, and telegraphs some horrific and hostile development in the law they're going to realize by next June, whether or not you enjoyed avoiding one particular Christmas song is not going to matter at all. But since it can sometimes feel so impossible to affect the big things, I'm gonna try to notch a completely symbolic win on an admittedly insignificant thing.

And so, this humble proposal: let's all ditch "Whamageddon" and just openly enjoy the song "Last Christmas" without treating it like some kind of holiday contagion.

High Spirits

Before I get on with the business of listing my Top 10 Movies of 2022 (at least, that I've seen so far), I have to backtrack and catch up with a couple of "late entries" that I only watched in the last couple of weeks. And I'll start with a movie with an "expiration date" that's already gone by, because it's a holiday movie.

Spirited dropped on Apple TV+ early in December. It's possibly the 500th "modern take" on A Christmas Carol and Ebenezer Scrooge. It's distinguished somewhat by being a musical take on the tale (though it's not even the first run at that). Though, as they say: "but wait, there's more."

The film stars Will Ferrell (who became a Christmas icon with Elf) and Ryan Reynolds (whose winning charisma has weathered movies both good and bad). It also features Octavia Spencer (and yes, she sings), and a handful of entertaining cameo appearances best not spoiled.

But one of the things I found most entertaining about the movie is how these actors are all used. This is not Will Ferrell in "dumb man child" mode -- and both he and the movie are better for it. I've always disliked those kinds of Ferrell performances. (Indeed, I watched Elf for the very first time this holiday season, and it left me cold. But that's subject for perhaps another review.) Here, as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Ferrell behaves within the bounds of relative normalcy (for a musical comedy), and actually shoulders the movie's most dramatic and emotional moments.

Ryan Reynolds, meanwhile, twists his charm into being the film's cartoonishly heartless Scrooge character. You'll like him and have fun hating him because he's Ryan Reynolds, a calculation that works equally well.

The movie is more clever than I expected for a Scrooge repackaging, with more intricate plotting, fun fourth wall breaking, and irreverence. But it also brings in, at times, just the right amount of sentimentality for a Christmas movie. This is really the strike zone that fans of Scrooged have long felt that movie hits, starting Spirited on the road to possibly becoming a more enduring holiday classic. (But... probably not, since you can only watch it on Apple TV+.)

And the songs are great. I would expect no less, given who is writing them: the team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who broke out with Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway before their songs became the best things about not-quite-as-good movies like The Greatest Showman and La La Land. They once again bring their A game here; even the "cut song" that plays over the end credits is a brain-sticking winner.

It's possible that Spirited just hit me in an especially un-Grinch-like moment of the holiday season. But in any case, it hit me. I'd give it at least a B+. I'd certainly give it a recommendation too, except that the window for holiday movie recommendations has probably closed. Next December, then, maybe?

A Lovely Christmas Surprise

I don't have any real "Christmas movie" traditions. There are holiday-themed movies I do like, but I don't make a point of watching them each year. Most years, I don't watch any Christmas movies at all. But this year, I did squeeze in a couple. And I think one deserves some blog recognition, while we're still in the "twelve days of Christmas" period and there might still be a narrow window to foist a recommendation on my readers.

Happiest Season was a 2020 release, added to Hulu a year ago during that time when cable channels are running round-the-clock, paint-by-numbers Christmas movies. Happiest Season centers on lesbian couple Abby and Harper. Abby doesn't really like Christmas, but is willing to open herself up to it when Harper suggests Abby come to her parents' house this year. But Harper hasn't yet come out to her family, and her intentions to do so this year are derailed by a series of complications.

The setup here sounds admittedly trite, but it turns out that this movie is actually really good! That starts by being a movie about queer people actually made by queer people. The story comes from actor-turned-director Clea DuVall, who co-wrote this script with Mary Holland and then directed it herself. And she mustered a hell of a cast (including many out LGBT actors) to be in it.

Happiest Season stars Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as Abby and Harper. Those who only think of Stewart from Twilight will fail to grasp that she's actually a very good performer. (She's going to be Oscar-nominated this year for Spencer, and at the moment I'm writing this is the slight odds-on favorite to actually win Best Actress.) The relationship between these two characters and performers at the heart of this movie is perfect; their dynamic feels lived in and natural, and so all the ups and downs of the plot work.

Harper's family is full of great actors with a wonderful balance of comedic and dramatic chops. Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber play her parents, while Alison Brie and Mary Holland (the movie's co-writer) play her two sisters. Each character has an arc of their own, even as the script is mainly engineered to put maximum pressure on the two leads.

Aubrey Plaza brings her signature withering aloofness to ex-girlfriend Riley, while Dan Levy plays broad as "gay bestie" John. While both actors get to display their well-known comic chops, each actually gets a notable dramatic scene that shows off another side of their considerable talents. I don't just mean dramatic "within the context of a comedy," but legitimately emotional scenes.

I went into Happiest Season expecting little more than LGBT representation within arguably the most trope-tastic genre in movies: the holiday rom-com. (Indeed -- I also got exactly that when I watched Netflix's Single All the Way. There's a movie I'll probably just skip in favor of other stuff in my blog backlog. Simply: it's an as-advertised "gay people can be in mediocre Hallmark-style Christmas movies too!" movie.) But Happiest Season was actually moving, actually good. In fact, it somehow landed as my second favorite movie released in 2020.

If it's too late now for you to be interested in a Christmas film, perhaps make a note for December 2022. Happiest Season really was a pleasant surprise. I give it a B+.

Christmas from Mannheim

There's a wide variety of holiday traditions out there. This year, my husband and I tried out something that's a tradition for a lot of other people: going to see Mannheim Steamroller perform a Christmas concert, during their two-day tour stop here in Denver.

Mannheim Steamroller is fairly ubiquitous during the Christmas season. You hear the music, arranged by Chip Davis, whether you've ever bought one of the albums or not. (The bouncy synth take on Deck the Halls seems to me to be the one that pops up all over.) Between that casual exposure and the fact that, well, the concert was mostly going to be Christmas standards, we figured that would be enough of a grounding to attend and have fun.

Still, the fact that the show played in the Buell Theater perhaps set me up to expect less of a typical musical concert and more... a show laced with performance? It was very much the former, though -- even down to the groupies. You could tell that for some people in the audience, this was an annual Christmas tradition. The band would strike up a new song, get two notes in, and you'd hear people sitting up straighter, or whispering "yes!" This was the most well-mannered rock concert you could ever imagine going to, but it had that vibe.

The show was split between two main styles of music. One was the synth-driven pop I was expecting -- though less generated entirely by synth than you might imagine. Two keyboard players and an EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) player drove a lot of the arrangements, but percussion, bass, a small string section, and a pair of live horn players were part of the band. The other style, which might not have surprised me if I'd actually listened to an entire Mannheim Steamroller album before, was essentially Renaissance music -- harpsichord, recorders, and old drums.

This was the 35th anniversary tour of Mannheim Steamroller -- a Christmas tour that's grown so successful there are now two different incarnations of the band traveling the country for the season. No doubt you get the same program at either, as the concert was supported by an array of videos that played behind the musicians. I had to wonder if these too were part of the tradition for the real Steamroller fans, as some of the videos looked to have been created back in the 80s. The retro vibe did bring a bit of a smile to my face. It may have been a little cheesy, but there was something about it that felt perfectly at home with the sound.

I'd say for me, the show was about a B-. It was fun to have done, but I doubt it will become a part of our tradition. On the other hand, it was exactly like going to a concert for a band you don't know very well -- more than I'd have expected for a Christmas concert where I thought I'd know most of the songs.

One Christmas Night

I haven't done so well the past few years with watching Christmas-themed movies around Christmas time. But I did get in one this season (from the previous Christmas). The Night Before follows three childhood friends, all now living different adult lives, in their quest to spend one last party-hard Christmas Eve together.

This isn't quite a stoner movie, but it is stoner adjacent. (Well, alright -- one of the characters is on drugs for basically the entire film.) This is one of those movies about the comedic premises of the scenes more than the plot. It's about finding where the line is, then boldly diving over it. It works (or doesn't) on the interplay between the characters (and their actors).

The trio in this case is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie. And while they do have a decent rapport with one another, it's everyone else in the movie that really gets the laughs. Lizzy Caplan displays dry wit as Diana, the ex-girlfriend of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Ethan. Jillian Bell is great as the wildly understanding wife of Seth Rogen's Isaac (and she absolutely kills it during a particularly great dream sequence). Lorraine Toussaint is hilarious as the alternately clueless and clued-in mother of Anthony Mackie's Chris. Then there's the parade of more expected comedy performers: Mindy Kaling, Jason Mantzoukas, Jason Jones, and James Franco all score decent laughs.

But the funniest moments in the film come from two people you wouldn't expect. Miley Cyrus does a great send-up of herself in a cameo appearance. And then there's Michael Shannon, best known for ultra-serious dramatic performances. Here he channels his intimidating intensity into a role as a guru/marijuana dealer, and he steals every scene he's in.

Of course, the flip side of a movie in which the funniest stuff comes from where you don't expect is that the rest of the movie isn't really as funny as it should be. Though it does have good moments, The Night Before isn't really as outrageous, as irreverent, as wild as it would like to be. Perhaps some level of sentimentality is just part of the Christmas movie formula, but it's a part I think could have been jettisoned more in this case.

I'd give The Night Before a B-. It would have been good enough to be one of a few Christmas movies to watch in December. I did it wrong by having it be the only Christmas movie I watched. Next time around, I'll have to do better.

The Horror Is Real

Halloween Horror Nights just celebrated its 26th year at Universal Studios Orlando. For a month-and-a-half in September and October, the theme park closes every day in the late afternoon, is quickly converted over, and then reopens for the evening. Warehouses contain elaborate haunted houses, with many of the usual rides closed so their line areas can be used to manage the crowds. Around the park, multiple areas are designated as "scare zones," places where costumed people try to spook you as you walk through.

Our Orlando trip took us to Halloween Horror Nights on the actual night of Halloween itself, and it was a highlight of the trip. There was so much to take in, but I'll try to touch on it all (in roughly the order we did it).

Halloween: Hell Comes to Haddonfield. This was our first haunted house of the night. The sun hadn't even set as we waited in line, and the house itself was just getting started. We watched as the staff -- dressed in large black robes to hide their costumes and makeup -- marched onto the scene to enter and take up their positions. This turned out to be one of the best of this year's nine haunted houses. You progressed through the plot of the original Halloween II, with some two dozen Michael Myers jumping out of nooks and crannies to menace you along the way. We came back around to this house again, closer to midnight, and enjoyed it just as much the second time.

Tomb of the Ancients. Not directly inspired by a film or TV franchise, this house was an excursion into a mostly Egyptian-themed burial site. There were plenty of great costumes and gimmicks in this house, making it far and away the best of the non-franchise houses.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This house recreated plot elements from the original 1974 film. It was the shortest of all the houses, which might have been disappointing had it not been so perfect in every other way. The outside facade was done up to look exactly like the house from the movie. Inside, the most iconic moments of the film were brought to life -- including the shocking first appearance of Leatherface (and his horrifying use of a sledgehammer). We also hit this house a second time at the end of our night.

Lunatics Playground 3D. Well, they can't all be winners. This house was themed around the mascot of this year's Halloween Horror Nights, the recurring HHN character Chance. An unhinged deranged clown type -- but, in a refreshing twist, female -- Chance herself was great. (More on her a bit later.) But this house was just a gawdy display, rainbow vomit inside a Hot Topic store. You wore 3D glasses while going through, to add dimension to various spiraling neon backdrops. Yet the house itself seemed neither scary nor clever. It was just vaguely nauseating.

Dead Man's Wharf. We'd started at the back of the park, breezing through four haunted houses in a very short stretch with most people starting near the front. So this was our first trip through one of the "scare zones," an area where dead pirates back from the grave prowled amid bedraggled ropes and crates. I quickly learned the appeal of these scare zones; it was great fun watching other people not spot where the next jump would come from.

Survive or Die Apocalypse. This scare zone was essentially Mad Max: Fury Road brought to life, complete with actual music from the film's soundtrack. As a post-apocalyptic dictator bellowed from a scaffold stage to distract passers-by, scavengers would dart up from behind and scare the crap out of them. Great fun.

The Walking Dead. Back to the haunted houses, this one based on the AMC show. Entertaining but not great, this house felt only tangentially connected to its source. The hordes of zombies inside mostly could have been in any haunted house, and the few nods to the show didn't seem all that thrilling. (Yup, that's Daryl's motorcycle. I guess.) This was the first time I was really glad we'd decided to purchase "fast passes" for the evening, getting to skip the line. It wouldn't have been worth a 60 minute wait, but was decent enough getting to stroll right in.

Ghost Town. Another non-franchise house, this one used an Old West setting. It felt like our timing through this house was just off. As you rounded most every corner, performers had just done their thing and we're getting reset, ultimately to do their schtick to the people behind us. That basically rendered most of the experience as "a walk through creepy, empty Western settings." Seeing as how you can walk through actual abandoned Western towns here in Colorado, I wasn't terribly impressed.

A Chance in Hell. This scare area differed from the others, in that it was mainly a stage from which the Halloween Horror Nights mascot, Chance, could regale (taunt and play with) the crowd. It sort of felt like the Halloween cousin of that Renaissance Festival staple where a quick-witted performer dares you to hit them with a tomato. One of my friends, having attended Halloween Horror Nights several times before (and being a particular fan of Chance) embraced the photo opportunity.

The Exorcist. This haunted house served up iconic moments from the 1973 horror film. There was no projectile vomiting, but you got spinning heads, levitating above the bed, a possessed priest, and more. It's probably heresy in some circles for me to say that I was never as big a fan of this movie as some, but I thought this homage was great fun.

American Horror Story. This house incorporated elements of three different seasons of FX's anthology show -- Murder House, Freak Show, and Hotel. Unlike the Walking Dead house, which was content just to imply connections to the series, the AHS house was filled with recreations of major characters. All had dead ringer costumes, and some even had convincing makeup and masks to make you believe for a moment (at least, in the dark lighting) that the real thing was there. One of the most solid houses of the evening.

Krampus. Inspired by the recent horror movie, there were lots of inspired touches in this haunted house. (As a murderous gingerbread man spun in the garbage disposal, the kitchen actually smelled like gingerbread!) If there hadn't been so many other exceptional houses at the park, this would have been pretty impressive. But the bar was set pretty high this night.

Vamp '55. This scare area had a 1950s high school prom vibe -- where the prom is attended entirely by the dead. Letter jackets, poodle skirts, doo-wop music... and gory makeup. A big departure from everything else in the park, and a lot of fun.

Academy of Villains: House of Fear. The dance troupe Academy of Villains performed live on stage for a charged crowd. I guess they've been on America's Got Talent, though I don't watch that show regularly enough to have seen them. Still, the group's acrobatics, high octane choreography, a neat shadow puppet segment, and other gags made for a great show.

Lair of the Banshee. This scare area (that we went through on our way back to doing the Halloween and Texas Chain Saw Massacre houses a second time) was the spookiest by far. Poorly lit and lined with lots of fake trees to hide the scarers, this section of the park was genuinely creepy.

...and though I don't believe it was labeled on the park map, there was one more scare area where performers chased people with "chain saws." This seemed to be the area that scared some people most of all. Guests were actually running at full speed to get through the area, being chased by a chain saw wielding "killer" every step of the way.

I won't lie -- Halloween Horror Nights is an expensive proposition if you don't live in Orlando. You have to travel there, pay to get in the park (so you can get to things first), pay for the special event itself, and potentially pay for the fast pass if you want to make sure you do it all. But the event really does try to give you your money's worth. We packed a lot of Halloween fun into a great night.

Unmerry Krampus

I had... well, not high hopes, but hopes... for Krampus, this weekend's unconventional new Christmas horror movie about the titular evil monster coming to terrorize a suburban family who has lost the holiday spirit. It seemed like it had the potential to land in the space ruled by Gremlins and Die Hard -- unapologetically non-sentimental Christmas classics. But whatever hopes I'd let myself build up, Krampus fell well short of them.

Foolishly, I expected more of this cast. On the one side of things, you have Adam Scott and David Koechner, both of whom have a proven track record in multiple comedies. Lending some unlikely dramatic heft are Toni Collette (an actual Academy Award nominee!) and Allison Tolman (who was fantastic in the first season of Fargo). Not that any of these people are right at the top of the Hollywood A-list, but you'd think there would be something going in this movie to attract all of them.

Unfortunately, the movie is simply not enough of anything. It's not scary enough to be an effective horror movie, nor funny enough to be an oddball Christmas comedy. There are a small handful of moments peppered throughout that suggest what the movie could have been if they'd leaned more into the premise (or perhaps gone for an R rating instead of a PG-13). The single best extended sequence in the movie involves a confrontation with killer toys in the attic, and even there, some probably unintentional laughs stop the scares in the scene from landing well.

Really, the best thing about the movie is its artistic design. There are some truly creepy snowmen that appear on the front lawn when the blizzard sets in. (But the script doesn't make the most of them.) A storybook moment in the middle of the movie explains the backstory of Krampus in a nicely moody animated segment -- like a Rankin/Bass Christmas special as filtered through Tim Burton's sensibilities. (Not quite The Nightmare Before Christmas, not quite Frosty the Snowman.) But being by and large good looking doesn't make the movie good.

We do not have a new Christmas movie tradition worth starting this year. Stick with whatever you usually watch for the holidays. Krampus gets a D+.

A-sylum

I generally try to keep my blog posts relevant for both Denver locals and my readers from elsewhere -- but on this occasion, I'm going to have to give a recommendation to the locals.

This past weekend, I went the Asylum Haunted House here in Denver. Haunted houses aren't a "must do every Halloween" sort of thing for me, but I do generally enjoy them and try to hit one up every two or three years. One of the reasons I'm not more diligent about it is that so many haunted houses are duds. Not Asylum, not this year. Of course, haunted houses are always more about startles than genuine scares. But to me, the cleverness is even more important. What's the layout like? Does your path from room to room give you a good ebb and flow of tension? Are there particularly memorable rooms? Asylum excels in all of this.

I'm reluctant to say too much for people who might go in the weekends ahead. But to give you some motivation to do so, I'll mention a few highlights. The experience opens with a contained little "locked room" puzzle, where you have to figure out how to escape. It then takes you through an effective and highly disorienting introduction into the "house proper." There's an especially cool "swamp" area built with fog, lasers, and inflatable air bags. There are two excellent sections built on Dutch angles. There's a dark and creepy cave-like chamber filled with uneven columns you have to force your way through (and you're not alone in there). And lots, lots more.

There are several fun characters inside the actual "Asylum" portion of the house. Performers are screaming their heads off, somehow for hours on end, all in good fun. There's plenty of great make-up, including a particularly great character in a full body look that blends in with the background of his room. Even some of the haunted house tropes (a chainsaw wielder, "please help me" victims waiting to die) get a jolt of life from people throwing themselves into the part.

And perhaps best of all, it's big! Our group darted through the house faster than we really should have for maximum enjoyment, but it still took at least 20 minutes to see it all. Do it right, and you could probably get a half hour out of it, which is a lot for a haunted house.

So the bottom line is, if you love Halloween and you live in Denver, you owe it to yourself to go check this place out. (Particularly in contrast to other houses in the area, which I've heard are far less fun this year.) The Asylum is spook-tacular!

Making Each Day Special

After the success of his earlier book, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, magician Penn Jillette has crafted a second volume: Every Day is an Atheist Holiday. If you liked the one, there's no way you won't like the other.

As the title suggests, Jillette has once again put atheism at the core of his book. But once again, it's a subject from which he strays regularly. The book is ultimately a collection of anecdotes from his life, and not all of them relate back to that theme. If you want to read about Jillette's (first) stint on Celebrity Apprentice, he has you covered with some amusing tales. If you want a bit of background on how he first partnered up with Teller to form their famous team, you've got it.

But it's actually when Jillette sticks to the topic of atheism that his book is at its best. A common question that a religious person asks of an atheist is (in some form), "where does your morality come from?" Many theists are so utterly confused by the concept of morals without religion that no amount of reading or discussion could make them understand. But Penn Jillette is on a mission to explain just that, and his simple, down-to-earth manner of writing cuts to the heart of the issue.

Jillette explains how he murders exactly as many people as he wants to: zero. He explains how morality that springs from an external source like a holy book seems less genuine than a moral code that springs from within. And, as his book's title suggests, he explains how someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife will instead look to extract maximum meaning and value from the limited number of days here on Earth that he does have.

Lest you think this is all rather heady stuff for a Las Vegas entertainer, I should clarify that he does all this in a very funny and breezy style. He makes good points, but is just as interested in making good jokes. I found myself laughing out loud at the book far more than I was nodding my head in agreement.

But because this book was more effective than the previous one in those more serious moments, I judge it to be a little bit better. I'd call Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday a B+. You likely still won't want to read it if you're not a fan of Penn Jillette, but you'll definitely be entertained if you are.

Happy Holidays

Gory Christmas

If your Christmas sensibilities trend to the dark side, have I got the movie for you. Yesterday, I fired up Netflix streaming to watch Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. This 2010 movie from Finland follows a young boy who stumbles onto a strange excavation being undertaken by an American on a nearby mountain -- the real Santa Claus has been discovered, buried deep in the ice for ages. But said real Santa Claus is not the "Coca-Cola version" of Santa we all celebrate today, but rather a horrifying devourer of misbehaving children deliberately buried long ago, and now poised to unleash a new horror on Earth.

The truth is, that intriguing premise is probably the best thing about the film. But even in its sometimes flawed execution, there's a lot to like about it. Director Jalmari Helander has a firm command of suspenseful horror. The first half of the film builds a strong sense of creeping dread, and the sequences in which a trio of reindeer hunters try to figure out what to do with the strange old man they've captured are brilliantly executed.

But then things start to go comic and broad. A rather horrifying injury is shrugged off in an almost slapstick way. And then the young boy at the center of the film suddenly transforms into a strange sort of 1980s action hero, spouting off cheesy one-liners as he orders everyone around. This too is somewhat enjoyable on a certain level -- probably the same level that makes a number of people out there cite Die Hard as one of their favorite Christmas movies. But it's a rather jarring shift in tone that I didn't necessarily welcome after the effective horror of the movie's first half.

But turn or no turn, the movie is still a fair amount of sick fun. I give it a B-. Obviously, this isn't a movie for everyone. But I know of enough twisted people who read my blog that I figured I'd better get a recommendation in before Christmas Day. I suspect a few of you out there will want to give it a shot.

Sampling Other Christmas Traditions

Many people have holiday movie traditions, a film they make a point of watching most every December. For many, that tradition is A Christmas Story (which one cable network helpfully indulges by running the film 24 hours straight on Christmas Eve). But even though I know all about the Red Ryder BB Gun, sticking your tongue to a frozen flagpole, the sexy/creepy leg lamp, and more, I had never actually seen the movie itself until this Christmas season. I found it to be a mostly entertaining experience, though I'm quite certain that you have to have seen it for the first time as a young child to have the strong adoration that I've heard many people proclaim over the years.

A Christmas Story is almost an anthology more than a single tale, an anthology of stories that just happen to feature the same characters. Now, one of my favorite movies (and favorite Christmas movie) is Love Actually, and that's very much a hodgepodge with a single theme, but not a single narrative. So while this aspect of A Christmas Story wasn't really a deal breaker for me, I did find myself wishing for a little bit more continuity in the story beyond the occasional return to the quest for a Red Ryder BB Gun.

Still, some of the stories in this mix were pretty entertaining. I thought the most successful moments were the fantasies in the mind of lead character Ralph, as the adults behaved in fun and over-the-top ways. The sight gags with his younger brother were also well executed (such as his piggish eating habits, and his bundling up for the cold by his mother).

What didn't work for me, in a nutshell, was the narrator. I gather the filmmakers felt they had to have the device of the old narrator reflecting on his childhood -- either to explain the period time setting, honor the anecdotes in the book on which the film is based, or both. But I found the voice-over to be intrusive and redundant. Rarely did he reveal anything that wasn't abundantly clear in the behavior of the characters on screen. Most of the time, the actors on camera are stuck holding awkward poses as they wait the required seconds for the narration to be inserted later.

Ultimately, though I can't quite imagine why a 24-hour marathon of this movie is necessary, I certainly found it better than many other traditional Christmas films that people go out of their way for each year. I'd give A Christmas Story a B-.

Henge Benefits

Thursday morning marked sunrise on the summer solstice, and a truly unique experience on our London trip.

When planning our trip and the things we'd like to do in and around London, the question of Stonehenge came up fairly early on. Part of me really wanted to see it, but another part of me was listening to the almost universal review I'd heard from people I know who had been: Stonehenge was all closed off now, you can't actually get near it, and it's frankly kind of lame looking at it all tiny from hundreds of feet away.

But purely by coincidence, we'd already booked our plane tickets for a week in June that would have us in England during the summer solstice. And my boyfriend discovered that for one night only at the solstice, from a few hours before sunset to a few hours after sunrise, English Heritage actually allows full access to the stones themselves. You can walk among them, touch them, and observe all the close details that visitors don't get to see anymore.

That changed everything.

We located a charter tour bus that was shuttling people to and from Stonehenge, and booked a ride that would have us there for 90 minutes on either side of sunrise. Unfortunately, this did mean being awake to catch a bus at 1:15 in the morning, sacrificing our too-recently conquered jet lag on an ancient stone altar.

First, the bad news. This turned out to be the first day of our trip with prolonged bad weather. Torrential rain poured across the plains outside London all night long, and while it had tapered off to a merciful and intermittent drizzle by the time we reached our destination, a low and heavy cloud cover was determined not to go anywhere.

See, the "main attraction" of Stonehenge at solstice is the way that a particular solitary stone about 200 feet outside the circle proper -- called the Heel Stone -- perfectly aligns with the spot on the horizon where the rising sun appears on the solstice. We never saw the sun, only a gradually lightening sky punctuated by a cheering crowd at the seemingly arbitrary moment of 4:51 am.

But that said, I felt like the experience we had was still a once-in-a-lifetime bit of amazing. We were standing right within the inner circle at the moment of sunrise.


In our more than two hours on the site, we got to explore Stonehenge in every detail, from the trilithons...


...to the outer ring (and a face you can see in the rock?)...


...to the chiseled graffiti you can see on the stones from times thousands of years apart...


...to the Heel Stone that would have been even more important had the morning been clear:


We got to see the Ancestor, a huge statue temporary erected near Stonehenge in honor of the solstice:


We were amused by the crowd, a mix of tourists like us, truly committed druidic worshipers who were playing instruments and embracing the stones of Stonehenge in hardy bear hugs, and all-night party-goers both drunk and (heh-heh) stoned.

And yes, we got to touch the stones of Stonehenge:



Stonehenge was a truly unique experience that will always be with me, one I was lucky to have, luckier to share, and luckier still in who I got to share it with.

A Leap in Logic

I won't say "not to nitpick," because of course, this is totally about nitpicking, but...

I saw this ad on a web site this week:


It seems a little off to me to be advertising this product right now, in this month of February in particular, in a year that in fact has 366 days.

That is all.

(Tagged "holidays," because Leap Day should be one.)

Thankful All Over Again

This past weekend, I got to take part in a fun new holiday-esque tradition, the second annual... well... name pending.

For two years running now, my boyfriend has bought an ultra-cheap turkey in the aftermath of Thanksgiving, and kept it frozen in his "could hold several bodies" freezer in the garage, waiting for January to roll around. You've heard of Christmas in July? Well, meet Thanksgiving in January.

Friends came over to his place, everyone bringing a Thanksgiving dish -- some traditional, some a little different (appropriate, considering the occasion). One brought along what turned out to be the best turkey recipe ever: Turkey with Herbes de Provence and Citrus.

Seriously, go bookmark that link or print it out, and hang onto it for the next time you have to cook a turkey. Unbelievable!

Just like Thanksgiving, the cooking was an all-day affair, but with fun activities throughout. Good food, good company.

Though we're still looking for the perfect name. Gobble-a-go-go was in the mix. Thankuary seemed decent. Janksgiving was right out. But in any case, it's a tradition sure to be repeated again next year, so we are going to have to work that name out.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

I've missed a few days blogging here and there over the past week. If you're a regular reader, don't fear a demise of the blog. Just understand there's a... distraction right now. I received the newest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, for Christmas. And it has a way of devouring a person whole. My formal review of the game will be coming at a later date, but for now, I have dragons to slay. In any case, during the past week: movies watched? Zero. Books read? Not even a chapter. And sorry, I just don't have the seemingly inexhaustible stream of Facebook awesomeness on tap that George Takei serves up.

So I'll just leave with a modestly deep thought. 2011 comes to a close here with a number of people in my life actually having a rather choppy ride in the last couple weeks -- to put it mildly. "Out with the old, in with the new" is a popular expression on New Year's Eve, and I'm feeling that sentiment a bit more keenly than usual this year. Here's hoping for good things for all my loved ones, friends and family, in 2012.

Happy New Year!

More Christmas Tunes

Scrooged was not the only limited release soundtrack I received for Christmas. Not even the only Christmas-themed movie soundtrack, actually. I also received La La Land Records' new 2-disc soundtrack for Gremlins.

Jerry Goldsmith has always been one of my favorite composers. Perhaps my favorite, actually, because he never really got the award love he deserved, winning his only Oscar for The Omen, despite over a dozen nominations and a career that spanned decades and a heap of great movies.

Gremlins is an interesting fusion in his catalog. Indeed, the movie itself is an odd fusion, a surprisingly dark and violent movie masquerading as family Christmas fare. The music is definitely evocative of some of the scores Goldsmith wrote for other, more conventionally tense or horrific movies -- Alien and Outland in particular. But it also comes in the middle of the 190s, in a period where many composers had decided to try incorporating what those crazy new synthesizers could do.

Consequently, Gremlins is a soundtrack with one foot firmly in orchestral and the other dipping perhaps a bit too far in the synthesized. I say a bit too far only because of the inherent limitations of the technology at the time; it all sounds a bit goofy. (Much like the soundtrack for the original The Terminator -- released the same year as Gremlins -- sounds when compared to the also-synthesizer Terminator 2 released early in the 1990s.)

Still, the score itself is solid. Much of what I praised in Danny Elfman's Scrooged work is true here for Jerry Golsdmith. There are rousing action pieces for Stripe and the other Gremlins, soft and emotional pieces for Gizmo, and a sprinkling of Christmas standards over the whole. It's kind of interesting to compare and contrast the two scores, to see how two different composers handled movies that in some ways incorporated many of the same ingredients.

People who don't love Jerry Goldsmith as much as I do might not be quite so gung ho about the Gremlins release. And even I have to question the release of a 2-disc set, whose second disc recreates the sad original soundtrack released decades ago and featuring mainly pop tunes from the film. In short -- this one won't be for everybody, even among the film score nuts. But if you like Goldsmith, it's one you shouldn't skip.

Christmas Elfman

I've blogged before about how I often watch the movie Scrooged in the run-up to Christmas. This year, my taste of Scrooged came from a different angle, as I received a new limited edition soundtrack of the film as a Christmas gift.

Scrooged was scored by Danny Elfman, and could be argued as the point where he finally broke out of just being "Tim Burton's composer" (though, of course, the two still do work together extensively) and became a respected film composer in his own right. And deservedly so, because Scrooged is quite the accomplishment in his career.

Though Scrooged is without question a comedy film, it has more than a fair dose of dramatic moments. (None more notable than the 10-minute impassioned monologue Bill Murray delivers at the conclusion.) Elfman's score stands out for being just as flexible as the film itself.

It has all-out action cues, such as the opening sequence in which "psychos seize Santa's Workshop" in the fictitious movie "The Night the Reindeer Died." It has playfully comedic cues, particularly those for Bobcat Goldthwait's much put-upon character. And it has poignant and somber cues for moments like the aforementioned monologue, and the romance between Bill Murray and Karen Allen. All laced with some fun musical phrases peppered in from a handful of famous Christmas carols.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say this is Danny Elfman's best score, but it's certainly a good one. I've enjoyed listening to this new, complete soundtrack. If you're a film music enthusiast, it's one to add to your collection.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

A Christmas Carol, Featuring Tiny Twins

For years now, I've lived in an apartment and condo that doesn't really have a lot of floor space to spare. So I never went out and got a full-sized Christmas tree; there was nowhere to put it.

My mom helped me a while back with a possible solution -- she gave me a cute, tiny little fake tree, barely more than a foot tall, that could fit on a shelf or fireplace mantle. And for a few years, I set it up for the holiday.

A couple years ago, I fell out of the habit. It was time to put up the tree, and I decided that the tiny little tree that seemed cute at first in fact seemed a little sad to me now. It was like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special in reverse. To avoid looking forlornly at the tiny tree, the new "tradition" became not putting up anything at all.

This year, I had some encouragement from my boyfriend to turn the tradition around once again. And it came with the contribution of a second tiny tree, a little larger than the first. Still small enough for me to have space for it, but now Christmas x 2.

I set it up last night, but had a bump in the road. The Christmas lights that had gone unused for a few years no longer worked. But I made a stop on the way home from work tonight, and now the problem is solved. And when I plugged in my twin trees? Well, I felt a nice, warm feeling. I hadn't felt particularly Grinchy before, but I feel decidedly less so now.


Thank you to my "Christmas benefactor."