We’re No Angels (the original with Humphrey Bogart, not the remake with Sean Penn) is an off-beat Christmas story about three escaped convicts who end up solving the problems of a middle-class French family with the help of a pet viper.
“The Holly and the Ivy” isn’t available on DVD yet but I have hopes, maybe by next Christmas. It occasionally turns up on Turner Classic Movies. It is a quietly powerful story about an English clergyman (Sir Ralph Richardson) who gets together with his adult children for the holidays, leading to some accusations and reconciliation as he realizes that he has been more thoughtful and sensitive to his parishioners than he has been to his family.
The Best “Christmas Carols” — from “Bah humbug” to “God bless us everyone!”
Posted on December 21, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is my favorite Christmas story and I love it in just about any of its movie incarnations. “Bah, humbugs” have been muttered by Scrooges played by top-notch dramatic actors like George C. Scott and Albert Finney, former Miss America Vanessa Williams, former Fonzie Henry Winkler, and former Saturday Night Live star Bill Murray. I love them all. But here are my very favorites, the ones I try to watch every year.
5. Mickey’s Christmas Carol Who better to play Scrooge than his namesake Scrooge McDuck? And who better for the part of the unquenchable Bob Cratchit than Mickey Mouse? This compilation DVD includes other Christmas goodies “The Small One” and “Pluto’s Christmas Tree.”
4. The Muppet Christmas Carol has the distinguished actor Michael Caine as Scrooge and the equally distinguished Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit. Special mention of A Sesame Street Christmas Carol as well.
3. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. The voice talent is outstanding, with Broadway star Jack Cassidy (father of teen idols David and Shaun) as Bob Cratchit and of course Jim Backus as Mr. Magoo, in this version an actor playing the part of Scrooge. The tuneful songs were written by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne, who later went on to write “Funny Girl.” (The legend is that their song “People” was originally written for this movie.)
2. A Christmas Carol This MGM classic features the top stars of the 1930’s. Watch for future “Lassie” star June Lockhart as one of the Cratchit children — her real-life father Gene Lockhart played Bob. (He also appears in another Christmas classic, as the judge in Miracle on 34th Street.)
1. A Christmas Carol This is the all-time best, with the inimitable Alistair Sim as Scrooge. There has never been a more embittered miser or a more jubilent Christmas morning rebirth. When he orders that turkey for the Cratchits and walks into his nephew’s celebration at the end, everything Dickens hoped for from his story is brought to life.
Go ahead, admit it. We won’t judge you. You, in the car, with the Ramones t-shirt, singing along to “Fernando” when it comes on the radio. And you, in the shower, singing “Dancing Queen” into the shampoo bottle. You, over there, pretending you don’t have the Greatest Hits CD on your shelf. Say it loud. You’re a fan. You can’t resist ABBA. Like the Borg, resistance is futile. Those songs are not just stuck in your head; they are a part of your DNA. Yes, ABBA’s platform-shod, glitter and spandex-wearing, unforgettable (even when you want to) music may be ear candy but it is high quality ear candy and I dare you not to sing along and smile about it.
ABBA (the name comes from the first letters in the first names of its four members) was one of the top pop groups in the world from 1972-1982 with sales of almost 400 million records (as we used to call them back then). In April of 1999 the musical “Mamma Mia!” opened in London and like the songs that inspired it, it quickly became an international phenomenon. It had just enough of a story to link the songs together as something more than a revue or what today is called a “jukebox musical.” And now, more than a quarter century since their last hit song, the movie version of the musical has been released or rather unleashed, powerful enough to make the most hard-hearted indie rock absolutist clap along.
ABBA songs are like helium balloons — lighter than air but irresistible fun. This musical featuring the songs of the uber-pop Swedish group who at one point exceeded Volvo as the greatest revenue-producing enterprise in the country is as bubbly as a glass of champagne and almost as intoxicating.
Donna (Meryl Streep, enjoying herself enormously) is a one-time girl-group singer who now runs a ramshackle resort in Greece. Her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried of HBO’s “Big Love”) is about to get married. And without telling her mother she has invited three men she has never met who could be her father: businessman Sam (Pierce Brosnan), author/sailor Bill (Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd), and decidedly un-spontaneous banker Harry (Colin Firth). They arrive just as the other alumnae from Donna’s group show up, multi-married and very well-preserved Tanya (Christine Baranski) and best-selling cookbook author Rosie (Julie Walters). Various slamming-door near-misses, some combustible confrontations, and many musical numbers later, everyone is ready for the platform-shoes and spangled bell-bottoms encore.
The light-weight story line is just enough to provide momentum between the songs but it gives them some surprising heft as well. At times it seems a little stunt-ish and there were some hoots from the audience for the opening notes of songs that we thought we knew too well. But we end up hearing them differently separated from the crystalline harmonies of Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad and the lyrics fit surprisingly well into the storyline. But what adds real resonance is the way they are performed. Director Phyllida Lloyd cast actors in the roles. Their singing may not be perfect but they deliver the songs with gusto and sincerity. A couple of times there were snorts from the audience at recognizing the opening bars of a song they’d heard a hundred times, thinking it had been cheesily shoehorned into the plot. But within the first eight bars it seemed as though the song had been written for just that moment, especially Streep’s “Winner Takes it All.”
But the highlight of the movie is the dance numbers which make great use of the geographic and narrative settings. Broadway veteran Baranski does a fabulous job with “Does Your Mother Know” and Walters is charming with “Take a Chance on Me.” A literal Greek chorus joins in, at one point with swimming flippers. Take a chance on this one; in no time you’ll be a dancing queen.
What can the most successful doll on the planet show us about being Jewish today? A new film called The Tribe uses the story of the Jewish woman who created the Barbie and Ken dolls to explore the nature of identity for Jewish Americans. Actor Peter Coyote narrates the film, which “weaves together archival footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas, and slam poetry to take audiences on an electric ride through the complex history of both the Barbie doll and the Jewish people- from Biblical times to present day.” It is a thought-provoking film that raises more questions than it answers and a good discussion-starter for middle- and high-schoolers. Curriculum guides for school and home use are also available.
“Dark” is right. Christopher Nolan’s sequel to his Batman Begins is not only dark; it is searing and disturbing. The bad guys are very, very bad. These are not guys who do bad things because that is the only way for them to get what they want. These are bad guys who do bad things because they enjoy them. As the Joker (Heath Ledger, in his last completed performance) says early on, “That which does not defeat us makes us…stranger.”
But what is more unsettling about this ambitiously epic film is the way that it shows us how even the good guys are perilously close to being bad. We like duality in our superhero sagas, but we like the meek or ineffectual character with the hidden strength and ability — Clark Kent as the incorruptible Superman and Bruce Wayne as the eternally honorable Batman. But this movie is an exploration of the way that none of us, not even heroes, not even ourselves — none of us know exactly where our boundaries are drawn. Over and over in this film people find themselves crossing lines they once were certain that nothing could tempt or force them to breach, with the most fundamental elements of identity and integrity revealed as ephemeral.
In the last episode, we saw how billionaire Bruce Wayne, a damaged man, found his deepest essence expressed as a masked avenger, Batman. The pull of turning himself into a creature of the night to protect the innocent and put the guilty in jail was so powerful that he risked losing the woman he loved, his childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes in the first film, Maggie Gyllenhaal in this one). But as this movie begins, the clean-up efforts by Batman and district attorney Harvey Dent have infuriated Gotham’s criminals, who are escalating their efforts and working together to spread corruption throughout the community so that no one trusts anyone. A man with a mask can be anyone — or more than one. Copycat Batmans (Batmen) are showing up with something the real Batman never carries — guns. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted to inspire people,” Wayne says. The line between justice and vengeance is blurring.
Blurring of lines is one of the themes snaking through this film. Characters slide in and out, over and across lines of identity, principle, and purpose. This is a comic book movie and it has chases and crashes and fight scenes, including a astonishing somersaulting truck, but when it is over it is the wrenching choices, the internal confrontations, that reverberate. The most stunningly unforgettable moment concerns a choice made by a character who is on screen for less than five minutes. But because we know so little about him (far less than we think we know, as it turns out) and because the decision he must make is so heart-rending, his choice becomes ours.
And Batman’s time and place becomes ours, too. The setting is less stylized than previous Gothams, recognizably Chicago. This is a real city with windows opening up on sun light that is always on the other side of glass and steel. We, like the characters, are relegated to the shadows, the underground passages, the airless buildings, a kind of architectural mask.
The sense of dread, of corruption, of dissolution of structures permeates the film. A bad guy who is ruthless in pursuit of money or power is not nearly as scary and unsettling as one who cares about nothing — not even his own life — as long as he is messing with everyone’s head. Like the bad guy in “Saw,” the Joker likes to expose moral weakness and exploit hypocritical pretense to honor and integrity. “Some men aren’t looking for anything — just to watch the world burn,” says loyal retainer Alfred (Michael Caine). “They can’t be bullied, negotiated, or reasoned with.” And the greatest damage this kind of terrorism inflicts is that it no longer allows us to be the trusting, decent people we like to think we are.
Ledger, in his last completed performance, is mesmerizing. His tongue flicking like a lizard, there is a wetness to his speech that makes us feel as well as see the nerve-slashing wounds that give his face the grotesque rictus that imitates a smile. Instead of the careful clown-like make-up of previous Jokers, Ledger’s is smashed and smeared, chaos upon chaos. Bale continues to make Batman and Wayne compelling and Freeman and Michael Caine as Alfred are watchable as ever. “You complete me,” the Joker says to Batman. Ledger completes this film and his loss is just one more reason to walk out of it a little sad and dazed.