25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 21

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 19

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 18

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 17

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 15

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 14

Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet at Christmas

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 13

Holiday Watch: Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

I'm at the tail end of low-grade but extremely annoying cold.  Today it settled in my chest as this loud, dry cough.  So, I've been basically laying around since about Wednesday, which may explain why you've seen so much blogging and movie watching.

I really miss being twenty-five and never being sick for more than 48 hours.

I can't say I'm the world's biggest fan of Christmas in Connecticut (1945).  It's a sort of mid-century American farce.  Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is the Martha Stewart of 1945, a popular home-making writer for a Redbook-like magazine, providing lifestyle and cooking tips from her New England farm as she makes delectable meals for her husband and baby.  What America doesn't know is that Lane is actually a city girl, unmarried and childless, who is sharing the recipes of her friend Felix, a restaurateur.  It's a wartime film, and so it follows a sailor who survives a U-Boat attack by drifting at sea and is considered a war hero.  Through some convoluted chicanery, Lane's publisher, Alexander Yardley (the always fantastic Sydney Greenstreet) invites both the sailor and himself to Lane's farm for Christmas.

Not wanting to lose her job, Lane borrows her stuffy suitor's farm for the event, having him pose as her husband and she manages to borrow a baby.  Like I said, it's got quite a bit of farce to the whole thing.

The movie is a bit of frothy Christmas fluff, a bit of something for the whole family.

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 12

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 11

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 10

Holiday Watch: Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

I think the first time I saw Miracle on 34th Street (1947) was in high school when some teacher or other was trying to kill time before Christmas break.  Between you, me and the wall, what I probably remember most from that first viewing was Maureen O'Hara.  Yes, I was a teenage boy.  Sue me.

But even with that viewing, I dug the spirit of the whole thing.  It's a great example of a true all-ages movie you could take the kids and Grandma to and enjoy it yourself.  It's a fantasy, yeah, but it's one that exists in the adult world of drunk Santas, incompetent counselors, exhausted parents, Bellevue Hospital, legal issues, politics and divorce.

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 9

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 8

Holiday Watch: Krampus (2015)

Yeah, yeah.  Someone was going to go see this, so it might as well have been me.  SimonUK and I talk each other into all sorts of things.

I don't think I'd ever heard of the notion of The Krampus until sometime in the last decade, and I can't remember if the Venture Bros. were my first exposure to the character or not, but I remember being very, very excited about The Krampus.  It certainly wasn't part of American Yuletide tradition when I was growing up.  All we had was The Grinch, and that was a very, very different kind of story.

In a way, The Krampus is both enforcer of the spirit and meaning of Christmas and the antithesis of the Coca-Cola version of Santa that I think maybe people get a little worn out on, so the idea that there's a version of St. Nick/ Santa/ Father Christmas/ Papa Noel that goes around with a demonic jerk that will hit you with birch switches just sort of appeals, I guess.  After all, Christmas is a holiday of behavioral extremes.  This season of goodwill and charity is also topped off with family violence, Black Friday brawls over electronics, and spikes in depression.

Krampus (2015) is a product of Michael Dougherty, the same guy who wrote and directed Trick r' Treat, which we watched and quite liked just this last Halloween.  Unlike the latter film, Krampus is not an anthology film - it's a pretty straightforward pressure-cooker horror flick that, instead of going after sexy but dumb teenagers or college-kids, or yuppies in a secluded house, takes place in what seems to be the suburban mid-west and pretty much your typical American whitebread family Christmas get together.

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 7

25 Days of Super Christmas - Day 6

Holiday Watch: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

My understanding is that, for a span of years, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) fell into some sort of legal limbo and the film entered the public domain.  Back when cable was still a relatively new concept and far more attention was paid to local affiliates, the movie became a staple for UHF channels to play over and over during the Christmas season.

That's not really my memory of the movie, but I came in on the tail end of that.  By the time I became aware of It's a Wonderful Life, it may have already been spoofed on Saturday Night Live and elsewhere.  It was already baked into the zeitgeist.

I actually do remember seeing the movie for the first time, but I'd have to do some math to figure out which year that would have been.  I know I watched the movie on a Christmas Eve when I was in middle school, and I recall I was in a mood because - as was usually the case - our house was packed with relatives and had become quite stuffy with that many warm bodies.  To make a showering and prep schedule work, I had been ordered to get cleaned up for Christmas Eve services very early in the evening.  This mission accomplished, I was sitting around in church clothes, overheated, hours before we were scheduled to leave.  So, I watched almost the entire movie, as I stewed in my least comfortable clothes, but I was absolutely rapt.  I loved the movie.  I won't say it saved Christmas for me (as long as I got to get home and get into street clothes again, I was good), but it certainly cast how I was thinking of the next few hours in a new light.

"A Very Murray Christmas" is the Christmas Special Gen X Needs

Murray is categorically a Boomer, but since we all saw Ghostbusters on VHS if not in the theater, he's been riding out in front of Gen X, the patron saint.  Whether he was unflappably dealing with Gozer, an alien in his own skin in a Japanese hotel bar, or deciding to take his crew on an ill-fated voyage to the depths of the seas while they all wore matching outfits, he was the guy we aspired to be when we hit whatever age he happened to be in his latest project.

I dunno.  Maybe that's just me.  But I've ordered speedsuits for all of you.  You'll have to attach your own name patches.

Few actors play exhaustion and pulling at the end of their wits and muttering about the insanity of it all to himself in quite the same manner as Murray.  And that's kind of been the story of Generation X, something the Boomers weren't paying attention to as they Me-Generationed, and something the Millennials are oblivious to as they wonder aloud why more people aren't listening to their ideas.

Generation X is tired.*