Crazy Christmas Cinema 'Cause it's Cool (phew)

White stuff is falling from above, and all shapes and sizes of Christmas specials are getting they're weekly runs.Of course, this is always a great way to get out all our favourite christmas films, and maybe even discover some new ones.Here are some great ones, with both nice and naughty checks so your family christmas doesn't turn sour when the kids see nudity and scarred for life.



National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)

Nice List:If you think your family becomes as inhuman as the Joker's mother around Noel, they're nothing compared to the Griswolds, led by clumsy smart-aleck Clark Griswold.As Clark attempts to give the perfect Christmas from his childhood to his family, he inevitably ends up getting a very messed up Yuletide with his dysfunctional folks and assortment of problems.

Naughty list:The National Lampoon films are notorious for playing with their PG-13 and 14a ratings, and a particularly sexy fantasy sequence Clark has about his future pool is a little too risque for tykes.

Home Alone (1990)

Nice List:We're all familiar with this one, so I don't feel like I need to give a summary.You could never deny that the booby-traps sequences are hilarious, and if you did, we'll hurl a paint can at you.

Naughty List:If you don't find the plot disturbing, then you might find the gangster-film-within-a-film "Angels with Dirty Souls" (a "film noir" title if there ever was one) is.You almost feel sorry for poor Snakes, who demands "10 %", only to get 7 gallons of hot lead pumped into him by that cold-blooded Johnny.The worst part? That insane laugh Johnny belts out while blasting Snakes to kingdom come.That is the stuff of nightmares, my friends.

Elf (2003)

Nice List:This genuinely funny and light Christmas comedy centers on one of Santa's elves Buddy (Will Ferrel), who finds out he's actually a human and then travels to the Big Apple to find his dad (James Caan).Most of the laughs revolve around what happens when the innocent Buddy lands in New York.

Naughty List:For a Will Ferrel comedy that is live-action, it's surprisingly clean.I don't think any young boy would find Renee Zellweger in the shower scary, and only her shoulders are shown.



And for different tastes:


Joyeux Noel (2005)

It's easy to forget about the veterans during the holidays, or throughout the year, so maybe you can watch this moving film about the famous 1914 Christmas truce that was called in the trenches.If enemies could sit and enjoy each other's company, why can't you do the same with your family?



The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

It would be a different world without Tim Burton and his friend Henry Selick to liven things up.They even found a way to mix Halloween and Christmas together, those crazy dogs.If you like thousands of creatures (and other things) stirring on Christmas Eve, you'll probably prefer this one.

Trippy Timelines of Terror!-Ballet films

If you ever wanted to see Padme Amidala doing tippy-toes, you probably are psychic. "Black Swan" gracefully jumps onto screens this weekend, and as for what's it about, a beautiful but fragile ballerina (Natalie Portman) is chosen to play the two roles of good girl and bad girl in a production of "Swan Lake". Due to the extreme mental and physical ordeals she puts herself through in the name of perfection, she starts to go a little cuckoo and begins experiencing powerful hallucinations. Now, I've never watched a movie completely centered on ballet ("Step Up" has enough street-dance to not be a ballet movie), but, as it turns out, the art of blood-stained shoes has a long cinematic history:

1948-"The Red Shoes" (picture above right)

Considered a British masterpiece, this adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's story centers on a girl who lives to dance, and how this leads to tragedies and heartbreak.

1951-"An American In Paris"

Gene Kelly plays a WW11 vet who tries to make it as a painter in the City of Love, and gets mixed up in a crazy mix-up of love.This film ends with a 16-minute ballet sequence set to "The American In Paris", a musical number that cost more than $500,000.

1951-"The Tales of Hoffmann"

Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville) tells the tales of his three past girlfriends while his newest girl Stella performs a ballet in a Nuremberg bar.Based on the opera "Les contes d'Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach.

1985 (yes, I'm going that far ahead)-"White Nights"

Gregory Hine's American tap dancer defects to Soviet Russia and meets Russian ballerina Nikolai Rodchenko (Mikhail Baryshnikov), who wants to defect in the other direction.Sorry, I can't write anymore Russian names.

2000-"Billy Elliot"

A coal-miner's son starts goes from boxing to ballet, his father and brother are outraged.But, when his father Jackie sees the talented dancer his son is, he decides to help push him toward his

dream.Now a major musical.

2003-"The Company"

A film about the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago directed by Robert Altman, this follows real stories taken from the companies' dancers, choreographers, and others.

As you can see, it is clear that ballet is not visually underinterpreted.Along with hip-hop and ballroom, it is a tradition that is still being continued.

In Memory of the Naked Gun

On Monday, November 30, we lost a great contributor to the history of comedy cinema and television. His name belongs to that hallowed pantheon of great actors with great comedic talents, along with Peter Sellers, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, the Wayans bros, and many others.While his characters were ridiculous buffoons, he was anything but. He was Leslie Nielsen, and he will never be forgotten.

For those who don't know him, Neilsen is a Canadian-born actor who, besides a role in the sci-fi classic, "Forbidden Planet", is best known for his ingeniusly-funny role in "Airplane!" and as the idiotic (but lovable) bumbling Lt. Frank Drebin in "Police Squad" and it's movie adaption, "The Naked Gun". Later on in life, he would star in less-popular film spoofs, such as "Spy Hard" and, erm, "Scary Movie 4". He was legally deaf, which gave him the push to support the Better Hearing Institute. He died of pneumonia in his sleep, with family and friends.

Rest in peace, senor, and as a token of gratitude for spending years playing clueless fools, here's a last little line and memory:

"Surely you can't be serious!"

"I am serious...and don't call me Shirley."

R.I.P, a great actor, great comedian, and horrible cop.

Random Reviews: Megamind

Rating:3 stars out of a possible 5

Dreamwork's post-HTTYDragon and ShrekFA attempt is not a roaring success, nor is it a failure at all. At this point in the animation game, there are two types of animated-superhero films for cinemagoers: Ones that are "The Incredibles" and those that aren't. It's on the same level as Dreamwork's other offerings,but it still manages to make a small but welcome addition to the major interest in superhero/comic films.

Megamind (Will Ferrel) is fist seen in the film falling to his iminent death over the skyline of Metro City, before he begins telling us his history. As it turns out, he was pretty innocent when he decided to become a supervillain; the poor dude was brought up by inmates, who warped his sense of good and evil, and was shunned by his classmates when he attempted to go to school. From there, we follow our anti-hero as he finally succeeds in death-raying his nemesis Metro Man (Brad Pitt) into oblivion, becomes depressed and bored after taking over Metro City,and then decides to use MM's DNA to invent another do-gooder to combat and rejuvenate himself. Comedy, heartbreak, and superpowered combat ensue.

Like "The Incredibles", this film's genius is it's mixing and messing with the accepted themes and core components of superhero myth. Megamind is destined to be a good guy, but he has built himself a life of evil that he can't walk away from without some effect (in this case, losing his top henchman and best friend Minion). Roxanne Ritchie, the red-hot reporter that Megamind loves to kidnap, is far from another helpless Lois Lane:she is an independent and highly-intelligent, and does not get pushed around by anyone, especially not by a guy with a big blue head. Compared to Megamind, Metro Man is a blunt knucklehead, who even questions his role as guardian and hero of multiple lives. And Jonah Hill's character is actually quite scary when he gets all sinister, rather than the good Megamind intended him to be.

Will Ferrel's hilarious voice work for Megamind includes a high-pitched but still menacing voice, as well as a pretty funny Marlon Brando impression ( "Iiieee aahhhm yuu ffaauthfher" ). All in all, it's still a more-than-worthy effort, and I hope we start seeing more superhero-parodies like this and keep the "Incredibles" torch burning.

5 Reasons To See Beetlejuice

Halloween has passed, but our appreciation for this twisted masterpiece is still strong. It's the best Tim Burton film I've seen thus far (Oh come on, it's awesome enough...okay, there may be better ones... I haven't seen "Edward Scissorhands", all right!) and the season has come to once again view the movie that's so wierd it's genius. Here are my top five reasons to do so:
#5-Sand Worm
If Salvador Dali had designed those giant worms from Dune,it would have looked something, or a lot, like one of these.Weird and actually pretty freaky, these babies are scarier because they're not CGI, but unadulterated '80's Claymation, made with TLC by the master of whatchamacallits and yahoozits, Mr. Burton.The sand worm seen in the movie can now be seen inside the lower intestine of the guy sitting next to you on the subway.
#4-Shrunken Head Adventurer
Like a darkly humouresque Gonzo from the Muppets, except this was a human being. Who, you know, had his head shrunk.Very profound.
#3-Creepy Factor
Do not expect cute and cuddly from Tim B., for anyone who does will be ridiculously/pleasently surprised.The giant snake scene is particularly noteworthy, as is the spooky reference to "The Fly".
#2-Great Humour
Say it with me now: "De-me-sa-de-e-i-o.Daylight come and me wanna go home".Classic.
#1-Micheal Keaton's performance/Great cast
It was my dad who first told me the best part about "Beetlejuice":the insane and geniusely hilarious acting from Micheal Keaton, which virtually steals every stinkin' scene he's in.Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are sweet and not annoying at all as the lovely (but dead) couple and have more-than-decent chemistry.Then there's the pretty and perfect turn from Canadian comedian/actress Catherine Hara,who is the nastiest (and therefore funniest)screen yuppie this side of that guy from "Aliens".Winona Ryder makes a great goth girl, and makes the role hers, but at the end of the day, this film belongs to Burton and Keaton

Random Reviews:101 Action Movies to see before you die

Just recently, I bought the super cool new edition to the "101 Movies" series, which is Action Movies. You can bet this was one of the awesomer books, weird choices not withstanding (Yes, "Avatar" is a weird choice for an action movie).There were a lot of different things about this one, a lot of things I thought were cool and others I didn't agree with.

3 Things I Enjoyed:
1:Variety-Everything from superhero films to sword-fight classics, with some high-adrenaline shoot-em-ups in between. There's even an Alfred Hithcock film thrown in, "North By Northwest" (on my "To See" list), as well as Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King.Awesome if funky choices.
2:Choice- I'm glad, for one, to see that Spiderman numero uno made the final cut, usually overlooked in favor of Spidey number 2. To not include "Chrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" would have been a tragedy of woeful proportions, but a whole score of sweet-looking martial arts films, including Crouching Tiger, are spread throughout the book.
3:Oldies but goodies-When you think action movies, you don't really consider something like "The Adventures of Robin Hood" or "Captain Blood", but they're all here.Every one is a classic, from "The Great Train Robbery" to "Safety Last".You just can't beat Golden Age Hollywood.

Now, I'm not on board with all the Bay-Bruckheimer productions, especially after seeing "Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen" (Since when does Transformers need to have Frat parties and dogs mating?),so I'm probably going to ignore those ones. Besides those, and the surprising lack of Akira Kurosawa samurai films-Mercenaries with katanas really only reminds you of action-the book is pretty dang epic.This is also probably the one I've seen the most films from.

Oscar Strikes Again

Last Sunday night was the Oscars, the classic commemerative film awards ceremony (or, as others would put it, "Hollywood's shameless self-promotion"), with Steve "the Jerk" Martin and Alec "30 Rock" Baldwin hosting. Now, these two didn't do anything really new for this run, besides pile on the Nazi jokes like hair gel onto Ben Mulrooney. Steve got to say most of the show's funniest lines ("Precious" is the only movie that lives up to it's video game"), leaving Alec to look swank on stage. As for the actual awards:

Cristoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for "Inglorious Basterds" because he realized playing a Nazi is a chance for an actor to lose themselves in a complete psychopath, so this Oscar's all his. "Up" is absoulutely Best Animated Feature, a classic Pixar mix of major heart and gleeful humour. Sandra Bullock for Best Actress, long deserved, Jeff Bridges for Best Actor, greatly deserved by the sound of it. Now, as for Best Picture, it's an average Cinderella story: small little Iraq War drama beats sci-fi, big studio behemoth. Hurt Locker is more deserving, it's more original and needs more moola from the public. Avatar winning would have been a major upset, so well done. Of course, best comedic performence goes to Ben Stiller for his little Navi'i skit, which seemed like a "better idea in rehearsal", during the show.