After the hugs and fun and burps of Elf in Part 1 of ‘Christmas Films For Every Mood’ it’s time to get a little darker and dirtier with a movie that puts the Claws in Santa.
Urgh, I can’t belive I just wrote that. I feel dirty. Like those pictures of Father Christmas I’ve seen on the internet where he gives out presents to naked women. Dare I make a bulging sack joke? No, I want my presents this year.
And we all know Santa doesn’t visit writers that make really, really, shit inneundos.
“Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la”.
“Tisn’t”
“Tis”
“Tisn’t!”
“Tis!”
“Tisn’t!!!”
“Tis times infinity…Face!”
Whatever your views on the yuletide season, whether you’re merrily enjoying Christmas, happily celebrating Hanukkah or kicking back to Karenga’s joyous Kwanzaa, the one thing we can all do as people of this fair Earth is sit down and watch Bruce Willis kill some thieves (not terrorists).
So please join me on a day-by-day journey of films, for all occasions, but with that over-riding theme of featuring at least one Santa hat, some baubles and a good old fashioned singsong. And Zooey Deschanel in an elf outfit. Thanks Jesus!
continued…
The ‘New’ Christmas Film
Elf
It’s hard to make a new Christmas hit to fit with all the certified ‘Holiday Classics’ but with a smattering of smut and a big dollop of cheese, Jon Favreau managed it.
Will Ferrell’s particular schtick of ‘grown-up baby’ may have some removing the turkey from the oven and replacing it with their heads (make sure its gas first kids!) but this is one example of it working perfectly.
Enthusing the whole piece with a ‘fuck cynicism’ edge, Ferrell is quite simply wonderful as the Man/Boy/Elf not knowing how to cope with the Big Bad Apple. The fish out of water premise may have been done a million times before but writer David Berenbaum wrings every bit of fun he can out of the set-up.
Most importantly for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl obsessive like myself it features the wonderful Zooey Deschanel as an actual Manic, er, Elf Dream Girl. Sadly she’s turned in the raven locks for blonde, but boy that elf costume does something to me.
As a superfluous bonus it features Zooey singing! For those of you that haven’t discovered ‘She and Him’ the band that Ms. Deschanel and M. Ward formed a while back, Volume One is out in the shops now with Volume Two on it’s way. Happy Tidings indeed.
So 2008, the year this whole ‘trying to be funny and opinionated about movies’ thing kicked off. A fellow projectionist asked me if he thought I could watch all the movies released in our 14 screen multiplex. I, quite foolishly, said yes and set about watching and reviewing each one. You can find them all here at Confessions Of A Projectionist. All 189 of them.
But as you can’t be arsed to read all that here’s a rundown of the good, the bad and the downright loveable.
Jesus ruddy bloody Christ I’m poor at maths. This is the penultimate year (not including 2009) in our amble down Reminiscence Road and I was hoping to neatly tie it all up with a big bow of celluloid string ending with a rundown of this years offerings. Seeing as it’s only mid-November you may just have to wait for the rundown of this here year until all the films are signed, sealed and delivered. Sorry about that.
For the meantime, enjoy 2007. Just don’t eat it all at once.
Damn Glastonbury-free 2006! How dare you even exist? From this day forth I decree that all years that don’t feature a Worthy Farm related knees up must be stricken from the record books.
Actually I had a really nice 2006, I saw Radiohead twice and went to my first European festival called Pukkelpop. So fuck you ‘First Paragraph Owen’ how about getting on with talking about films. This isn’t a bloody music website y’know.
Reeeet, on with 2006.
After the joyous movie orgy of 2004, 2005 was always going to be a bit of a letdown. Yeah it contained some worthy films but most were just that, worthy. Well made, well acted, well put together but nothing to really get your blood pumping, nothing that really deserves being put on your name badge if you work for a well-known multiplex.
But there were still some great blockbusters, thoughtful indies and two, yes two, films starring Natalie Portman. So it wasn’t all that bad.
Strap yourselves in, because 2004 is gonna be a large one. While other years in the noughties (dammit!) have left me struggling to pick a defintive classic to throw open to discussion, MMIV was littered with more memorable movies than you could shake a stick at.
So instead of wasting time with an opening paragraph in which the best idiom I could come up with for ‘more than’ was to ‘shake a stick at’ let’s press on with what was the best film year of my adult life. And that’s even with ‘Boo Zino And The Snurks’ included.
2003. The year that University spat me from its motherly vagina, kicking and screaming into the real world. Armed with a trusty 2.1 in Film Studies (impressed?), the world was my proverbial oyster. “At what should I lay my hands?” I cried to the ethereal heavens. “I hear the local multiplex is hiring” they replied.
Six years later and I’m still at that cinema. Damn those ethereal heavens. But, hey, at least I now have a wealth of cinematic knowledge and snarky opinions about movies to help kill a few minutes of your lives. And anyway I love my job really.
So 2003, let it begin.
It’s fair to say that my memory of 2002 isn’t that clear. Being in my second year of university (the one where you say I’ll try hard next year) and enjoying my first real festival (Glasto 2002! Wooo!) and all that goes with it (i.e. copious amounts of weed and a naive belief that sitting on your arse all day smoking said weed is what life is really about) led to a fairly frazzled existence.
But with a host of film magazines at my side and an internet full of facts and figures at my fingertips, here’s a run-down of that wonderfully palindromic year that was, 2002.
If it were possible to delete a recent year from the record books 2001 might be a major contender. We could get rid of the terrorism that led to a pointless war, Douglas Adams and George Harrison would still be with us (as would my cat Teala) and K. Barry Sharpless would never have won his completely undeserved Nobel prize for his work on stereoselective oxidation reactions.
In movie-land we would also be saved the indignity of ‘Pearl Harbour’, ‘Planet Of The Apes’ and ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’. Then again ’2002: A Space Odyssey’ just sounds a bit shit.
So here we are, 2001. (more…)