Christmas Watch: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)

Watched:  11/23/2024

Format:   Cinepolis Theater

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dallas Jenkins

Selection:  KareBear

So, yes.  This was not entirely my idea. 

The book which inspired the film The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024) was a staple in our household while I was growing up.  In it's way, the book was as familiar as Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary for me (I can't speak for Steanso).  But I honestly haven't revisited the book in decades or seen the older movie version with Loretta Swit.  But every Christmas, whether it's at church with my folks or watching someone at the Vatican read scripture, when they get to the right part, I think of Gladys yelling "Hey!  Unto you a child is born!"

For context - While growing up, we were very involved in any church we attended, and my mom, The KareBear, ran the Sunday School at a couple of them.*   My mom's perennial draw to the book likely stemmed from seeing herself in several roles in the book - from the hard-scrabble kid growing up figuring things out, to the pious girl who loves church (our narrator, Beth), and culminating in herself as the overextended mom running a Christmas Pageant wherein things are not ideal.  

I'll admit, from the kid participant perspective in Christmas pageants - this thing lands.  (My earliest memories include my mom making me be an angel in a Vacation Bible School production and having to explain to me that angels are also dudes despite the felt-craft imagery I'd seen to date.)

And, lo, this fall my mother declared that *all she she wanted for Christmas* was for the fam to gather and go see the movie.  So, last night my folks (The Admiral and KareBear), Jamie, Steanso, Cardboard Belts and the kids all went to the theater and caught the film.  

Hallmark Watch: A Very Merry Mix-Up (2013)

Watched:  11/22/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First?

Director:  Jonathan Wright

Ah, the Golden Age of Hallmark.  If you weren't a city-gal falling for a simple boy from...  somewhere else even 45% more rural?...  were you even Christmassing?  This one is still from the Hallmark era of Actresses I Knew From Other Things Picking Up A Quick Paycheck.  And, to wit, Alicia Witt is our star.  

In this movie, Witt plays the world's perkiest depressed girl.  In the wake of her father's passing, she's running his antiques business - right into the ground.  While she has no visible traffic in her shop, she also won't find time to organize the store, do her books, or do much but stand in place behind the counter.  She seems to have no friends and her mother has left.  She's dating a guy who openly has contempt for her, and seems to have picked her because she'll agree to whatever, like a real life Sim.

She is unwell.

Her man is, of course, Business Man.  And that is bad.  Because business.  City.  Cell phone.  He is bad.  Even if, you know, he's rightfully pointing out that she's running her dad's business into the ground.  That is bad.  Do not point out the inevitable failure.  He proposes to her stupidly and publicly, and for reasons, she agrees, because depression is a wild ride, I guess. He then tells her she's flying to meet his family, and he'll catch up.  And she does this.

The titular very merry mix-up occurs as Witt is a moron who meets another moron and neither realizes the other's story doesn't match, and she just leaves the airport with this guy and goes to his house, believing he's the brother of her fiancée.  Btw, she's never even heard her fiancée has a brother also, btw, (friends, do not go with a stranger just saying things that sound vaguely comforting to a second location).  

She, of course, falls for the brother because we can't quite do While You Were Sleeping, but we can come close!  And she loves Christmas, and... get this... so does he!  The brother, Matt, is not much of an actor, and you can feel Witt just over-caffeinating herself to get some energy out of their scenes, because she's, like, good and stuff, and kind of stuck in this movie.

Anyway - she figures out she has the wrong house and goes to the right house, and Business Man's family is hilarious.  Yes, they suck, but that sucking is by far the best part of the movie.  It's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf about to break out at any moment. 

Knowing Witt is ruining her dad's business, Business Man (a) finds a way for her to sell the property for $3.5 million, and then (b) offers to help her set up in another spot a couple of blocks over.  Yes, this will benefit him, too.  Which is something that would help her, is she's marrying him.  It's the definition of win-win.  Yet...  Witt, who thinks owning a business is about nostalgia for one's childhood and not feeding oneself, gets mad and breaks up with Business Man, refusing the deal.  

She gets back with dumb-dumb.  The End.

This is a movie about dumb, sweet people belonging together.  There's worse things. I think they'll likely be bankrupt within a year, but okay.

The movie is full of gigantic plotholes, the main character seems traumatized and that goes undiagnosed (and I worry for her).  It's dumb things happening so movie will happen. It hits all the Hallmark waypoints.  City bad.  Business bad.  Not Business Man good.  Wise old relative.  Stupid stories about the past.  Decorating a tree too close to Christmas.  

It was good to go back and see one of these Classic Formula movies, and I do miss them starring someone famous for something outside of being in Hallmark movies.  

Anyway, if you want to buy me the Alicia Witt Christmas record, I won't complain.  

Witt is, of course, a stone cold fox, which makes this easier to watch.

Happy Birthday, JLC

Happy Birthday to one of our patron saints, Jamie Lee Curtis, my second favorite Jamie after the one who lives in my house.

A terrific actor who has starred in great movies, and through sheer JLC'ness, made some movies great -  She's a great interview subject, and someone who seems to embrace the work she does in a way that's inspiring.

And her work in The Bear is some of the best acting I've seen on planet Earth.

May she have a fantastic birthday.

De Palma Watch: Blow Out (1981)

Watched:  11/21/2024

Format:  Criterion 4K

Viewing:  third

Director:  Brian De Palma

De Palma is a fascinating subject himself in so many ways.  He bows at the alter of Hitchcock, he works within frameworks that are uniquely his own - and *boy howdy* are they on display here.  He seems to think the only way to get people to show up for the movie on time is a surplus of nudity before the action begins.  I'm not sure he writes great characters, but he does keep you engaged with plot and ideas.

Here in 2024, I don't know if I like watching his movies because I like a thriller, or if I like watching De Palma do his thing and try to puzzle it out.  Why not both, I guess?

I've started getting 4K discs, and... holy cats, was this a good movie for that.  Shot by Vilmos Zsigmond (check out this IMDB page), and with a healthy dash of De Palma's weirdo split focus (via bioptic lenses) and split screen stuff...  but, the depth of field, the gorgeous lighting, wild camera angles...  

Noirvember Watch: On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Watched:  11/20/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Nicholas Ray - w/ Ida Lupino

It's a Noirvember to Remember, and I am way behind on my noir intake.  I am also way behind on my Ida Lupino intake, in general.  

I'd watched this one previously on Noir Alley, and liked it pretty well.  On a second viewing, I think I appreciated it more - likely because I knew where and how Lupino was showing up, and I wasn't halfway through a movie wondering where the hell the co-star was.

I can't always account for how some movies stick with you, but certainly the imagery in this movie has come back to me in ways I wasn't really expecting from the first time I saw the movie.  The film moves between a post-war noir setting of urban squalor to the snowy mountains of Colorado, shot on location.  Ryan in his city-cop coat chasing down our killer in two sequences against the natural backdrop is something.  As is the darkened cottage where where Lupino lives, with her tactile posts to guide her through her own home.

It doesn't hurt that both Ryan and Lupino are memorable in almost any role.

Noir Watch: The Sniper (1952)

Watched:  11/18/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Edward Dmytryk

Watched Sniper (1952) again.  I re-read my second write-up of the movie, and it says everything I would say about it now.  It's a social-issues crime movie, and a pretty good one.  And beautifully shot, imho.  Looked great on Criterion.

Here's my first write-up of the movie.  

I mostly just always get irritated that they bump off Marie Windsor so early in the movie, but that's a me-problem.  And it does land exactly how it should in the movie.  Poor Marie.

90's Regret Watch: Armageddon (1998)

this @#$%ing pile of *&^%

Watched:  11/16/2024

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Bay

I write this post from beyond the grave.  

I'm not sure what it was that, specifically, convinced my soul to abandon my body during Armageddon (1998).  There were so, so many options - from Ben Affleck leading the cast in singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" to Bruce Willis shooting up a functioning oil rig with a shotgun to Liv Tyler disrupting everything in NASA Mission Command screaming about her "daddy".  Or maybe just the premise of the film altogether.  But with 30 extremely loud and stupid minutes left to go, I realized I had passed on to the blogging platform in the sky.

This movie is essentially the redneck fever dream of people furious at other people who paid attention in school or watch PBS because that shit ain't cool.  Michael Bay and Bruckheimer are convinced only nerds care how things work and what the movie needs to do is think of funny and rad things to show - but are neither funny nor that rad.

I'm not averse to anything about the movie on paper.  A ragtag crew is called in to save the world and blow up an asteroid aimed at Earth.  Sure.  Why not?  The actors lined up are *good* to *great*.  So the challenges arrive in every writing, directing, editing and other creative decision that went into the film. 

WTF Watch: Kissin' Cousins (1964)

Watched:  11/15/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gene Nelson

In this movie, Elvis comes down hard on the side of @#$%ing one's cousin(s). 

This is not me inferring something.  This is what happens in this movie from a few different angles. 

To be sure, one is hard pressed to find a more problematic movie than Kissin' Cousins (1964), the movie I watched last night.  And when people say they want to go back to a better America - I want to say "this America?  Cousin @#$%ing America?"  The contemporary reviews of this movie sure weren't great, but they also don't seem overly concerned with how this movie is about two things:  putting ICBM siloes on US soil and normalizing gettin' with yer kin.

It also features suggestions that the best way to win a woman is to pursue her relentlessly and a little bit violently, despite her express wishes.  It goes in hard for sexualizing the infantilization of women.  And probably a dozen other things, but those are some of the eye-poppers.

Like a lot of Elvis movies, it's not so much a musical as an excuse to roll out a new Elvis record.  There's some plot, but it's a framework to stop the eight minutes' worth of story for Elvis to sing a song.  In this way, it's not so much a musical - which uses songs to carry the story and have characters express themselves - as a series of music videos interspersed between goofily delivered plot points.

Action Watch: Monkey Man (2024)

Watched:  11/12/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dev Patel

When I saw the trailer, I recall wanting to see Monkey Man (2024).  But, honestly, 2024 has been another year of WTF, as every year has been since we lost Bowie.  And, events conspiring as they did, I missed the film until now.  

Why now?  Well, Jamie said "I want to watch an action movie", and I was really looking hard at Lady Snowblood, which she hasn't seen yet.  But I said "you know, that movie features so much trauma stuff and violence, so maybe not."  And, instead, chose the light action-comedy, Monkey Man.*  But, curiously!, there's a really, really similar plot line between Lady Snowblood and Monkey Man, and both have some pretty crazy amounts of balletic violence going on.

I am the first to admit - I am, at best, vaguely aware of Indian politics and current events/ issues.  And while I followed the film, I'm also certain I missed piles of nuance and subtext that someone more culturally literate than myself could track.  

The gist is, years ago a young boy is a fan of the mythical character, Hanuman (a monkey figure).  Through flashback interspersed, we learn that his village was burned by a sort of religious figure who is also an industrialist who used the cops to enforce his desires - like taking the land owned and occupied by minority ethnicities or religious factions.  In the course of the village's destruction, the Kid's mother is murdered in front of him.

BatTV Watch: The Penguin

Well, the final episode of The Penguin dropped.  

Don't read this if you haven't finished the show.

All in all, I really don't have any major complaints about the series.  And y'all know me.  I love a good bout of complaining.  

I guess if I was to complain, I'd say that the back-and-forth sometimes felt a bit unnecessary, regarding who was on top.  I get it was a reversed Red Harvest situation, but...  sometimes it felt a little loosey-goosey.  I also wish the Maroni plotline felt a bit more built out - but that's me wanting more Shohreh Aghdashloo.  Also - I don't know how the Falcone/ Gigante mob was supposed to work, how big it was supposed to be, etc...  it sometimes seemed huge and other times like it was maybe 8 guys.  

But these are nits which I have picked.

On the whole, it's kind of astounding.  And for all the good Marvel shows, it really did feel like new territory and showing audiences what was possible.

It's not a secret I like a good crime story or gangster story (and, no, I probably haven't seen that one thing you want to talk about immediately. Stop asking.).  But from the first episode, it was clear The Penguin was going to be better than it needed to be.  By the 4th episode, you kind of knew that this show is going to be held up as one of those highlights of a genre that makes folks ask "why don't they make more stuff like X?"