For the month before Christmas...

Tis the season! Mulled apple cider, the smell of pine and chestnuts roasting over an open fire (always sounded like a euphemism to me for the emasculation of the masses by retail America at this time of year...or is that too cynical?).

But for the film minor that I was, this presents a wonderful time of year with classics like A Christmas Story, It Happened One Night, and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. I make it a point every year to watch A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life - but at the same time it's also a brutal time for film-goers with saccharine fare like 1990's A Mom For Christmas starring Olivia Newton-John, or 1941's Penny Serenade. For the most part, though, I like to go a different route.

I have a fondness for the non-traditional holiday movie. Not quite Silent Night, Deadly Night or Black Christmas - but I don't mind the occasional explosion or fight sequence in my holiday entertainment (not all of them fit that mold, but most are not the first movie that comes to mind when you think Christmas).

And here is my holiday dirty dozen, my twelve favorites for the holidays (mind you, not necessarily the best, just the order in which I am most likely to re-watch) -

1. Die Hard - The action film that keeps on giving. It made, "Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker," an acceptable holiday greeting. Okay, so it didn't quite do that, but it provided a cathartic outlet for the person who just came from the mall, allowing the frazzled holiday shopper to imagine their fellow shoppers as Hans Gruber plummeting from Nakatomi Tower.


2. The Ref - What says Christmas in America more than Dennis Leary and familial dysfunction? And it's hard to complain about a cast that includes Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis.


3. Trading Places - John Landis has directed two of my favorite holiday films (I always watch An American Werewolf in London around Halloween). Then there's this. The only thing that might say Christmas in America more than familial dysfunction is unbridled capitalism.


4. Lethal Weapon - What do the first four films on the list have in common? Guns. It's all about the Christmas violence. At least three have hostages, and two have serious violence. Don't you just love it when the in-laws get together?


5. Love Actually - Just a nice film that can be watched with the family. A whole bunch of stories intersect in this British comedy showing just about everything that a family or an individual might go through during the holiday season.


6. Millions - Another excellent British comedy that can be watched with the family, as long as the kids are of an age to understand some of the things, as this does go some places that younger kids might have a hard time understanding.


7. The Lion in Winter - Fans of good acting, rejoice. Just like any modern story about the holidays, this fictional chronicle of a family Christmas in the house of Henry II, and Eleanor of Aquitaine is filled with just as much dysfunction as any of the films on this list. The acting is absolutely brilliant from Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, and youngsters Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Daulton (yes, A View To a Kill, that Timothy Daulton).


8. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, or whatever you call him, has a showing in Narnia after the land has had 100 years of winter with no Christmas. When things look bleak, he shows up to cheer refugee children/Narnian royalty Peter, Susan, and Lucy with gifts of peace and goodwill: sword, shield, dagger, bow, arrows - you know the old saying coined by Sun Tzu, "He who aspires to peace should prepare for war."


9. Die Harder (DH2) - Back to good old fashioned Christmas violence.


10. Better Off Dead - John Cusak's Christmas classic, complete with stalker newspaper boy.


11. Scrooged - A competent modern retelling of Dicken's A Christmas Carol. Bill Murray is solid and entertaining, but the funniest stuff is from the supporting cast of Carol Kane, Bobcat Goldthwait, and David Johannson (Buster Poindexter).


12. Bad Santa - Billy Bob Thornton pretty much plays that uncle that no one wants to acknowledge they have. The guy is pretty much a screw-up, but finally gets something right. Not an uncommon story line, but done with a lot more edge than you see from most holiday films.

Cue the 1970's porn music, please

So...

Last night I was watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe with my wife and my daughter while eating dinner. Nothing fancy - kabobbed chicken marinated in a souvlaki sauce, a sauteed melange of vegetables (tomatoes, onions, peppers, and zucchini) with some crumbled feta, and some rice pilaf. I only mention the dinner, because it is relevant to the following.

For those who have not seen the film, it is an excellent adaptation of the C.S. Lewis source work of the same name - complete with a unicorn. More on the relevance of the unicorn momentarily.

As I mentioned, we were eating dinner while watching. Not an uncommon practice in my house - the three of us sitting in a tight grouping, my five year-old daughter between me and my wife, often discussing the movie we're watching.

By the time the movie reached the climactic battle (see picture above), my five-year old daughter and my wife had finished her dinner and moved to the couch. As I was feeding our infant daughter with one hand, and eating with the other for the first half of my dinner, I was the lone family member still eating.

I had just shoveled a fork-full of rice into my mouth when my eldest innocently asked her mother, "why is Peter on a unicorn?"

To which my wife replied, "maybe he just enjoys the smoooooth ride."

I nearly blew rice out my nose.

Happy Thanksgiving!

http://entertainment.msn.com/video/playerN?pid=65UcwE6g0BrHya02xCavmnwMW5VICJN-

Not your child's cartoons...

Outside of fans of the genre and the Japanese, animation has long carried the stigma of being a category of film that caters only to kids. I bring this up, because I was recently watching Ralph Bakshi's opus to this nation's popular music, American Pop, and it had me thinking - what are the best animated films with an adult target audience.

Honestly, I found the list difficult. For some reason, the animated sitcom seems to bear greater appeal for adults than feature length - The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Robot Chicken, The Critic, and Futurama all came to mind quickly and easily. And for whatever reason, when these shows have attempted feature length film versions, all have been weak (I know a lot of people liked Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, but I found it to be a half-hour episode with a lot of boring filler that made it closer to 90 minutes - I was highly disappointed).

I noticed as I worked on this list that half of films that came to mind were foreign, and that the more recent it got, the more likely the piece was foreign.

10. Fantasia - When you really think about it, this is really nothing more than a really pretty music video for classical music. There is no overlying nor underlying storyline, just a lot of animation that was years ahead of its time. A pretty strong argument can be made that this is targeting children, however, I have to admit, I gained a greater appreciation of the film as I got older.

9. Wizards - Fascinating piece done by American animator Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi is clearly making an editorial statement about war, and propaganda with a heavy reliance on Nazi imagery to make his point. Inconsistent and sometimes slow, this movie is definitely worth watching.

If you're an animation fan and you have missed this one, find it.

8. Heavy Metal - Flawed, but fun. More promising than it delivered, this anthology took stories from the earliest issues of the magazine and linked them with the common element of the "lochnar," an ancient artifact of evil. The movie featured art and stories from the likes of Moebius and Richard Corben.

Heavy Metal suffers from a problem common to anthologies: inconsistency. The Moebius and Corben pieces are pretty to look at, but lack the substance and entertainment value of some of the other pieces.

Unfortunately, the movie's sequel, Heavy Metal 2000, was lacking in the promise of the first.

7. Wicked City - This mid-1980's Japanese horror-noir piece is often acknowledged by fans of manga and anime genre as a seminal piece of Japanimation, influencing everything and everyone from films like Urotsukidoji and La Blue Girl to Todd MacFarlane's Spawn. Demons and cops - how can you miss?

6. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - From the Japanese series of the same name, the movie follows bounty hunter, or cowboy, Spike and his co-horts on the trail of a terrorist on a bio-formed moon of one of the solar system's other planets (at one point in the series Spike asks one of his cadre who is returning to Earth why she would want to go to "that pit.") More a thriller than an action film, this is not for those looking for a shoot 'em up action-fest. Think taut detective drama with action.

This easily could have been done as live action, as could several of the films on this list, however, I really believe that any of these done as live action would have lost something.

5. Akira - One of the first feature length pieces of Anime that I ever saw, and (from my own stand-point) a fascinating study on the deep seated lingering cultural impact of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Japanese psyche. Adapted from the comic book of the same name, Akira was revolutionary when it came out.

At the time, the leading American animation house (Disney) utilized three-layer animation (three cells to create the effect of depth). Akira used five. It created a richness and depth of motion not previously seen in American animated films.

As for the story - that's a little more difficult. Let's just say that the government is messing with forces they don't completely understand.

4. The Incredibles - This one making the list I see as the most likely to create arguments, as I think this is the only one that people might view as a kids film. That said, the movie borrows heavily from Alan Moore's Watchmen and deals with a number of adult themes, including the concept of sacrifice for the greater good.

Death is not treated with kid gloves in this piece - although it is at times treated comically ("no capes!"). Nor is the mid-life crisis of Mr. Incredible which nearly destroys his family.

3. American Pop - In my opinion, the best of Bakshi's films, American Pop follows four generations of the same family and its relationship with American popular music from the early part of the 20th century until approximately 1980. In typical Bakshi form, the man utilized his patented roto-scoping technique to integrate live action with his animation to great effect.

If you haven't seen this one, find it.

2. Princess Mononoke - The Miyazaki environmental masterpiece is beautiful, violent, bloody, and gentle all at the same time. It is a story with a hero, but no true villain - unless ignorance is counted as a villain. It is as much about preserving and honoring the past, as it is about accepting the change that the future brings.

Like Akira, this film is touched by the cultural impact of the atomic bombs, but with a less bleak outlook for humanity.

I have probably watched this film a half dozen times and it never gets old.

1. The Triplets of Belleville - Were it not for this piece of French animation, Mononoke would have garnered the top spot. Belleville is strange and wild, as much an homage to the animation of the 1920's and 30's as it is a nod to those who ride in bicycling's biggest race - the Tour de France.

A deserving winner of the Best Animated Feature Oscar, this film is fascinating not only for its beautiful animation and story, but for the fact that through the course of the entire film there might be a total of five lines of dialog.

Not to be missed.

I spent a lot of time considering other films - The Simpsons Movie, Beavis and Butthead Do America, even hybrids like Cool World and even The Wall - but either the movies themselves fell short, or, in the case of The Wall, really lacked enough animation to be considered animated. Other pieces like The Animatrix, and Titan AE were filled with promise, but the creators' ambition failed to live up to the promise.

Granted, I have yet to see Beowulf, and recent attempts at the adult audience with films like A Scanner Darkly, but this is my list, and I am sticking by it until I see better.

Yet another meme...

4 jobs I've had:
Reporter
Stunt coordinator (music video)
Martial Arts instructor
High School English Teacher

4 movies I love to watch over and over:
All That Jazz
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Princess Mononoke
Lawrence of Arabia

4 places I have lived:
Chappaqua, NY
Boston, MA
Williamsburg, VA
Frederick, MD

4 TV shows I enjoy watching:
Scrubs
Eureka
Battlestar Galactica
Heroes

4 places I have been:
New Orleans, LA
Portland, ME
Venice, Italy
Aachen, Germany

4 websites I visit daily:
si.com
boston.com/
thecoffincorner.blogspot.com
bostonherald.com

4 favorite foods:
Chicken Scarpariello
Pizza
Beer (I write about it for a brewing newspaper, I better like it)
Chocolate Chip Cookies

4 places I would rather be:
Maine
Ireland
Massachusetts
New Orleans

30 Days of Undead on a Plane...

I meant to talk about this shortly after I saw it. A couple of weeks ago I saw 30 Days of Night. The adaptation of the graphic novel is a worthy addition to the horror lexicon.

The movie was thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end - and this is coming from somebody who is not really a Josh Hartnett fan.

Outside of Hartnett, the film is largely filled with character actors of the "I recognize that guy, but I don't know from where,"-type. Unless you're a serious film fanatic, you won't place anyone of them, but you will recognize them.

The vampires themselves were, as my wife said, truly frightening, and completely lacking of humanity. This wasn't one of those tales of tragic love like Dracula, or even Fright Night, in which the vampire encounters one who looks like the long lost lover. This is a tale about predator, prey, and survival - and we're no longer the top of the food chain.

While I enjoyed the first two Blade films, those were really action films. This might have been the best vampire horror film that has come out of American cinema since Near Dark in 1987 (but still not quite on par with Russia's Nightwatch).

Flight of the Living Dead...

From Snakes on a Plane to Zombies on a Plane. Surprisingly well acted, and decently written, this latest entrant into the zombie genre is good fun for fans of the undead. The movie feels a little long in the set-up, as a 747 heading to Paris runs into a major storm front while carrying some questionable cargo.

Of course, that cargo gets loose and starts eating passengers.

Once the zombies are on the loose, look for the stewardesses carrying body parts in their mouths. Some of the best scenes ever.

Personally, I feel that this was more deserving of a theatrical release than Snakes on a Plane. C'est la mort.

Memed again...

So my wife memed me. I have to come up with eight random facts about me...

1. I love football. I played and/or coached for approximately seven seasons. The same number of seasons that I ran track, and played in little league. This upcoming year will see me playing my tenth season of Australian football.

2. The only athletic endeavor which I have been involved with longer is the martial arts which I started around the age of twelve and practiced regularly until I was 31. After a six year hiatus I have started teaching Kung-Fu again on a weekly basis. All-told, I have been at it for 20 of the last 25 years.

3. Growing up I never thought I would live south of the Mason Dixon line for any truly extended period of time. Boy, was I wrong.

4. I miss Portland, ME and have been gone from the New England city for too long.

5. Every year that the Aussie rules season starts, I think "this year's gonna be the last." I've thought that for about the last four. It never seems to take.

6. My wife is a hobbit fetishist - that's how we ended up dating in the first place.

7. I have interviewed Steve Sabol, and Olympic participants Bela Karolyi, Shannon Miller (gymnastics), and Kate Sobrero (soccer).

8. Somehow my journalistic career has taken me from writing about sports to writing about beer. It's not bad work if you can get it.

As always, these things die here with me.

Nailed with a meme

My wife's friend Anna nailed me with the following meme regarding books...

Total number of books:

Easily in excess of 1000.

Last book I read:

Currently I am reading both I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The last completed was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.

Last book I bought:

Technically, Kelly bought the Harry Potter...off hand, I would say Living to Tell the Tale.

5 Meaningful Books:

Let's see...five meaningful books, and I can't repeat anything Kelly had. Well that's just a nuisance considering I'm the one who introduced her to Matt Ruff, and I know I've read the book more times than she has. Since I can't use Fool on the Hill, guess I'll have to dig deep on this one -

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez. Read this for the first time in college. Absolutely brilliant.

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien. Probably have read the trilogy (which I am counting as one book) close to two-dozen times. It never gets old. And if you're not impressed by a guy that has created a whole world, with history, different cultures, languages with gramatical structures, then you're just not worth my time.

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke. Brilliant piece regarding mankind's evolution. One of a handful of books that I was exposed to in high school that had an impact on me.

Zorba the Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis. One of the other impact books from high school.

God Bless You Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite from an author from whom I have a hard time picking a favorite. In the writer's universe of dark satire, there's something I always found to be gentle and nostalgic about this book.


Not much into tagging others, so in my case, the meme stops here...