Christmas Movies

Started by modage, December 01, 2003, 08:20:18 AM

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Bethie

I'll tell ya what's amusing, ME kicking Cronenberg's ass!  
who likes movies anyway

modage

yes, its quite dark but thats what makes it ultimately life affirming.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Weird. Oh

Anyone ever see a christmas move called Christmas Every Day. Obviously, from the title you can see that it's like Groundhog's Day (much less funnier) only for Christmas. I used to catch it on Fox Family Channel or whatever it's called. Anyhow, it's a sappy movie. Anyone else ever seen it?
The more arguments you win, the fewer friends you will have.

Bethie

That's a movie for 12 year old girls.
who likes movies anyway

Weird. Oh

Quote from: BethieThat's a movie for 12 year old girls.

well I'm not a girl, but I watched it when I was 10 or 11. So. oh well. I suck.
The more arguments you win, the fewer friends you will have.

MacGuffin

BB-Gun Maker Shuns Christmas Publicity

The Red Ryder BB gun is "the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts," according to young Ralphie Parker, who pines for one in the movie "A Christmas Story" But Daisy Outdoor Products, which makes the Red Ryder, is shying away from any publicity that represents the gun as a toy.

Joe Murfin, Daisy's vice president of marketing, was emphatic that BB guns, even if they've been turned into celluloid holiday icons, are not playthings.

"They are not purchased by children and should not be used by young people without adult supervision," Murfin said in an interview in which he answered only limited questions about the gun. "A BB gun or an air gun is an appropriate Christmas gift assuming the parent making the gift is willing to take the time to work with the young person and teach them gun safety and marksmanship."

Toy consultant Chris Byrne isn't surprised that Rogers, Ark.-based Daisy doesn't boast about the gun's popularity.

"They are a classic American brand, but anytime you talk about selling guns to kids in today's society, they are pariah," he said.

The gun, named for the comic strip cowboy Red Ryder, remained a favorite among children for decades and was the inspiration for 1983's "A Christmas Story," about a young boy in the 1940s who longs for "an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, Range Model air rifle with a compass on the stock and this thing which tells time."

In the movie, little Ralphie dubs the gun "the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts" but is admonished by numerous adults (his mother, his teacher, even a department store Santa) that "you'll shoot your eye out!"

Despite the cult popularity of the movie, and the zest for Daisy and Red Ryder memorabilia among collectors, the company has for years shunned publicity.

Recent negative news could contribute to the company's desire to keep a low profile. Last year, Daisy settled a lawsuit brought by the government that alleged defects in 7.5 million high-velocity, multi-pump pellet-BB rifles marketed to shooters age 16 and up.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said BBs could get stuck in some models of the air gun, leading users to think that they're empty and posing a potential hazard. At the time, the commission said at least 15 deaths and 171 serious injuries had been associated with the alleged defect.

As part of the settlement, the company agreed to launch a $1.5 million safety campaign and put additional warning labels on its high-powered guns.

Harry Wilson, who teaches political science at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., and is writing a book about gun-control policy, said there is no upside for Daisy to seek widespread publicity. He said Daisy's tactics are similar to those of firearm manufactures who target their niche in trade magazines and on outdoor channels.

"They think people who have nostalgia for the BB guns will still go buy them and they don't want to stir up the other folks," Wilson said. "It's part of our culture now that (firearms manufacturers) feel that they have to fly below the radar screen."

Daisy collector Neal Punchard, who wrote a retrospective coffee-table book to mark the company's first century, said it is a shame that such a venerable American institution has gotten overlooked because there is such an anti-gun backlash. "But then, anyway you slice it, they're selling guns to kids," he said.

Wilson sees some irony in the situation, noting that violent video games continue to grow in popularity but BB guns have come under fire.

"There's no question that, with video games, the level of violence has been ratcheted way, way up. Shooting aliens on a plasma TV is a lot different than shooting a tin can with a BB gun," he said.

Byrne said the toy industry has become so anti-gun that water guns are no longer called guns, "they're called blasters now."

"We have all these abstract concepts saying kids shouldn't play with guns," he said. "But if you look at kids playing with laser blasters, as long as we show guns giving power to the powerless, you will see it showing up in play."

"A Christmas Story," based on the book "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" by humorist Jean Shepherd, ends with Ralphie snuggled in bed with his Red Ryder, nicknamed Old Blue.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Myxo

Just saw a Christmas Story for the first time ever.

Really, really funny and very cool movie.

Gamblour.

Quote from: MyxomatosisJust saw a Christmas Story for the first time ever.

Really, really funny and very cool movie.

But more importantly, let's thank god you were rescued from that rock you were under.
WWPTAD?

modage

Quote from: modage on December 05, 2004, 11:33:03 PM
rise old thread, rise!

SURVIVING CHRISTMAS (2004)
Released to DVD just nine weeks after it opened in theaters.

bad.  but not as bad as it could've been.  it could've been/looked HILAROIUSLY  bad, but it was a lukewarm bad and not a bad that scorches your eyes.  the premise is extremely farfetched, but could've been actually funny if they had a better script to flesh it out (4 credited writers), a better director and had somebody actually funny in the lead.  affleck is probably the biggest problem in the film (if that comes as any surprise), he flounders in the lead comic role as a guy who pays a family $250,000+ to pretend to be his family for the holidays.  but it gets even sillier as he makes them read from scripts and hires a random old guy to be his grandfather etc. so had they hired anyone who might've been able to navigate the funny a little more successfully (ben stiller, vince vaughn, owen wilson, jack black, etc.) it would be a more watchable bad movie atleast.   
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Pubrick

i hope this revives the time-honored holiday tradition of bethie pwning people.
under the paving stones.

Reinhold

Quote from: Myxo on December 26, 2004, 07:23:49 AM
Just saw a Christmas Story for the first time ever.

Really, really funny and very cool movie.

the book's as good, and goes into a lot more detail about other parts that the movie doesn't mention.
Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.

MacGuffin

New Scrooged Set Due
Murray's Xmas masterpiece returns in an edition yule definitely love.

On October 31, 2006, Paramount Home Entertainment will release Scrooged in an all-new Yule Love It Edition on DVD. The Christmas classic, starring Bill Murray as a miserly television executive, will feature improved picture and sound as well as an expansive spate of bonus materials. The single-disc set will be available for the MSRP of $19.99.

The Scrooged: Yule Love It Edition will feature the following content:

Widescreen Version Enhanced for 16:9 TVs
Audio options: Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, English 2.0 Surround; French 2.0 Surround
English Subtitles and closed-captioning for the hearing impaired
Commentary by Director Richard Donner
Christmas to Remember
Updating Ebenezer
Bringing the Ghosts to Life
The Look of Scrooged
On the Set with Bill Murray - Part 1 and Part 2
ShoWest Message from Bill Murray
Theatrical Trailer




It's A Wonderful DVD
Jimmy Stewart's Christmas classic turns 60.

On October 31, 2006, Paramount Home Entertainment will release It's A Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition) on DVD. The double dip into the James Stewart masterpiece about redemption at Christmas time will feature along with bonus materials and extra features. It will be available for the MSRP of $19.99.

The It's A Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition) DVD will feature the following bonus materials:

The Making of It's A Wonderful Life
A Personal Remembrance - A special tribute to Frank Capra narrated by his son Frank Capra Jr.
Original Theatrical Trailer

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Behind the scenes of 'It's a Wonderful Life'
The holiday fixture is a film classic, but the production wasn't always angelic.
Source: Los Angeles Times

It is arguably one of the most magnetic moments ever captured on film. This enduring celluloid juncture from 1946's "It's A Wonderful Life" can be summoned to mind by merely mentioning "the prayer scene." In it, a tearfully reduced George Bailey — played by Jimmy Stewart — sits at a bar and contemplates taking his own life, then clasps his hands and quietly asks for God's intervention.

And while filming this key moment, this pivotal point in the picture, Frank Capra goofed — big time.

Despite a reputation for being fastidiously well prepared, the veteran director had no idea that his star would turn on the waterworks and deliver such an impassioned, intimate performance on the first take. It was something overwhelming even for Stewart himself.

So the cameras rolled, the music and bustle in the bar erupted, and the scene played out — but when it was over, Capra realized his angle was too distant. And he had failed to capture a close-up of the emotionally draining scene. Capra apologized and asked his Oscar-winning star to replicate it, but a spent Stewart knew he'd nailed it and couldn't fathom a re-creation as effective as the one he'd just poured out.

To remedy the situation, during postproduction the director and his editor manually and painstakingly moved in — frame by frame. It created what appears to be an optical zoom.

Luckily for Capra, the result was near perfection.

It's no mystery why this year the American Film Institute named Capra's postwar classic "It's a Wonderful Life" the most inspiring motion picture ever made.

To most, it's an enriching, sentimental Christmas favorite not to be missed — almost sacrilege when viewed during any other season.

It's all the more remarkable that this homespun movie, which was not initially envisioned as a "holiday" film, has become so entrenched in popular culture, such a beloved tradition for families to share.

Oddly enough, the film was unceremoniously released during Christmas week of 1946. Never mind the yuletide flavor, the wintry snowdrifts in Bedford Falls and the holly wreath George Bailey carries slung around his arm — this Jimmy Stewart-Donna Reed romance was originally scheduled to open in January 1947. But RKO Studios knew it had something special and rushed it into theaters a few weeks early to meet the deadline for Academy Award consideration that year.

Capra shot much of the film on a specially constructed quaint-town set located at RKO's ranch in the San Fernando Valley — a site that has long been overtaken by property development. In media interviews at the time, Capra did not portray it as a holiday film. In fact, he said he saw it as a cinematic remedy to combat what he feared was a growing trend toward atheism and to provide hope to the human spirit. In a moment of possible revisionism decades later, Capra said that he also realized that with the holiday season comes an inherent vulnerability in all humans, and that this uplifting tale might just ride on that sentiment.

Without question, however, is the fact that audiences trusted Capra to deliver such patriotisms, all neatly wrapped with a ribbon and bow. Like "Meet John Doe" (1941), about a lie that sparks a political movement. Some critics accused Capra of presenting a "naive" faith in the common man within a syrupy-slick presentation. So skillful in his flair for filmmaking and eliciting emotion, his titles were once called "Capra-corn."

But the Oscar-winning director has had the last laugh.

"It's a Wonderful Life" keeps popping its way back into homes on television, in commercials, on DVD, routinely broadcast twice each season on NBC. (It's being broadcast Sunday night.)

Capra, an Italian-born filmmaker who gave us such early classics as "It Happened One Night" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," died in 1991, but not before witnessing "It's a Wonderful Life" take on iconic wings of sort when television began airing it regularly in the 1970s.

The movie transcended time and soared well beyond his imagination.

"It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen," Capra told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I'm proud ... but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."

In probably his best-loved role, and a dark one at that, Stewart plays selfless everyman George Bailey through a tumultuous timeline that climaxes in near suicide on Christmas Eve. In answer to his desperate prayer at the bar, George is rescued by an unlikely angel with a smiling marshmallow face — a little fellow named Clarence — who convinces him that life is precious and that each man's life touches another with untold influence.

"I think, as the story unfolds," Stewart explained years ago, "it becomes clear that the movie is about hope, love and friendship."

There has been no shortage of fans of that message over the years, including director Steven Spielberg, who once said: " 'It's a Wonderful Life' shows that every human being on this Earth matters — and that's a very powerful message."

The actress and comedian Carol Burnett once said of the prayer scene: "That scene is one of the finest pieces of work that anyone has ever done on the screen. That moment, at that bar, it's indelible in my mind. He realized that he has lost everything. The money is missing. It's Christmas Eve. And he sits there and starts to cry. He is so in tune with that character and that writing that he and George Bailey are one."

As holiday classics go, "It's a Wonderful Life" has become the American version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Scrooge is portrayed in the form of blowhard heavy Henry Potter (the great Lionel Barrymore); Clarence the Angel (Henry Travers) can be considered the ghostly visitor who illustrates to George what life would have been like without him; and Zuzu Bailey (Karolyn Grimes) is a more sprite version of Tiny Tim, casting cheer into the night as the story comes to a triumphant close.

It's interesting to note that James Maitland Stewart, who died in 1997 at age 89, was indeed a man of faith, a practicing Presbyterian, and himself a firm believer in heavenly help, as his grave marker in Glendale's Forest Lawn cemetery attests: "For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways."

According to his daughter, Kelly Stewart Harcourt, that engraved passage from Scripture was something Stewart's father had pointed out to him when the young actor went off to war and served as a fighter pilot.

One who reaffirms this very message and other bits of wisdom found sewn in the movie is Grimes, now 66, who portrayed the little tyke who asks her daddy to repair her fallen rose petals. Today, Grimes travels the country making personal appearances, tends to her website (www.zuzu.net) and greets enthusiastic fans at nostalgia shows and screenings of the movie. She has no idea how many times she's written out her most famous line on photos and Christmas ornaments: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."

Having appeared in another Christmas classic, "The Bishop's Wife" starring Cary Grant, this time of year is obviously Grimes' busy season.

"There have been adverse things happen in my own life," she said, "but there are balances out there. And the movie itself has affected my life so much because I have George Bailey's philosophy ... that friendships and caring and loving will carry you through anything."

Produced on a relatively small budget of $3 million, "It's A Wonderful Life" was generally heralded by American critics while the British found it to be bloody awful.

Over time, the tale evolved into a brilliant holiday gem for American moviegoers, a sparkling ornament.

Even with its naysayers and flaws — and yes there are a few snags — all is forgiven by the time the opening chorus of "Auld Lang Syne" begins. Be sure to hang on to the last seconds. In the finale, you can spot Zuzu attempting to fake the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne."

"If you watch closely," Grimes says of her most embarrassing film moment, "Jimmy Stewart is holding me tightly and he looks at me and begins to laugh because he knows I'm not singing the right words."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks


last days of gerry the elephant

I'm reviving this thread.