A Christmas Story Medley

'Tis the season, and thus the time (and the only time) to watch some Holiday films. Rather than to rewatch the same old classics each year, I prefer to always watch films I haven't seen before (though I can rewatch Die Hard, Gremlins and Nightmare Before Christmas just about endlessly). So, here's a medley of Five Festive Films ranging from classic to crap.

Christmas Story (Joulutarina, 2007)
Director: Juha Wuoljoki


No, not the comedy about the bespectacled kid wanting a BB gun for christmas (we'll get to that). This finnish fairy tale is relatively recent, but already gets steady airtime in finnish TV. The film does like many Hollywood franchise starters like to: goes to the roots of a particular legend. But as anyone who has seen Santa Claus: The Movie or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians knows all too well, Santa isn't usually a very good protagonist on celluloid.

The premise of Christmas Story itself feels calculated. For the information of my foreign readers, Finland has a strange obsesion to prove Santa Claus is Finnish. As an example, they poured a shitload of government money to this movie, which is little more than a travel advertisement to Lapland. There are long, lingering shots of beautiful landscapes, but a boring story and theatrical acting. It's just like most other finnish films made today, then. No wonder we usually do so badly at international film festivals.

Santa grows up as a little boy called Nikolas, who goes to live in different houses each year in his poor village. As the switch to a new house happens in Christmas, he leaves presents for the children of the house. As time goes on, he gets more and more obsessed of giving gifts to all the children.

It's nice that Santa has also shades of grey in his character, but for a fantasy film, everything happening in the film is pretty mundane and way too realistic. All the magic is left to the imagination of the viewer, which sounds like a good idea, but is executed poorly here. Where did Santa hire his elves? Where does Mrs. Santa come from? Why is Santa obsessed with children being naughty and nice? Why does he watch us while we are sleeping? And why does he lust after mommy? These are just some of the questions the film has no intention of answering. For a cheery christmassy feel-good film it sure the plot revolves a lot around sorrow, pity, regret and obsessive behaviour.

If you will watch only one Finnish Santa Claus movie, I recommend Rare Exports. At least that one was based on the actual Finnish pagan god, not the German saint who was developed into a marketing figure in the United States. Santa is multi-national, not in any way Finnish.

★★

A Christmas Story (1983)
Director: Bob Clark



This is the more popular Christmas Story in most of the world, yet I suppose not in Finland as I had never seen the film before recently. This cult comedy is about little Ralphie Baker (Peter Billingsley) who gets ready for christmas in a small American town in the 1940's. The preparations, toy lists, wait for Santa, everything is told from a prespective of a child pretty well. It seems children in the 40's weren't that much different from the children in the 80's when this was made, or in the early 90's when I was that age. They all felt enthusiastic, anxious and a little fearful around Christmas just because they hoped they would get everything they wanted from Santa. Ralphie's misadventures in school, in the playground and at home are narrated by a much older Ralphie, played by Jean Shephard.

I thought the best thing in the film, however, was not in its depiction of child culture, but rather in little touches. My favorite character was Ralphie's Old Man, Mr. Parker (Darren McGavin). The scenes where he is watching his family acting obnoxious, whether the kids are porking up their food with their mother encouraging, or horribly singing Jingle Bells out of tune, it's clear that the man would wish to be as far away from them as possible. The threat of spending the holidays indoors with them seems unbearable. For the kids the father is also a sort of Punisher, the supervisor who will straighten out behaviour that's out of the line. He is also has a soft spot for awful kitch, and is not well beloved by dogs. This all doesn not mean that the man hasn't got his heart in the right place. In the end he will give his sone the present, which will probably not be a good idea.

Seeing as director Bob Clark also directed Black Christmas, he seemed to have the right idea about the holiday. A Christmas Story is a bit too American and a bit dated for me to want to watch it every year again and a again, but it holds well even when watched first as an adult. I suspect it would go down well with the kiddies, too.

★★★

An American Carol (a.k.a. Big Fat Important Movie, 2008)
Director: David Zucker



As this happened to be one of the last films of Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper and, um, Gary Coleman, I was intrigued to watch this. I didn't expect it to be good, but as even Scary Movies 3 & 4 had their moments, there was no way David Zucker could fail, even if the movie's premise sounded a little too neo-conservative for my tastes.

Yeah, right. The fact that it features a Paris Hilton cameo tells you enough about this films "quality".

It was absolutely horrible, Meet the Spartans-sized bad. For starters, even though the film is loosely based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the film itself is set around the 4th of July. As it's not actually a Christmas movie I felt doubly stupid for watching this piece of shit.

The moronic documentary directory Michael Malone (Kevin P. Farley) hates everything about America and is smelly and fat. That's why three ghosts appear to show him what America is all about. And that includes shooting liberals who don't share your views and being ready to blow up every arab there is because they might all be terrorists. And it's so absurd to think Christians might ever do anything bad to anyone with their views or actions that it's a subject of a skit.

Now, I have nothing against gross-out comedy and I can handle different political views in films (I usually embrace them, such as Charles Bronson's vigilantist films). That being said, this was not so much conservative, as so crazily right-wing it seems a campaign film for Tea Party candidates. The film begins with a joke how all arabs are named Mohammed Hussein (seriously), does plenty of bad terrorist jokes and it's all downhill from there. Eat your heart out, Chris Morris.

If it all were made with a tongue-in-cheek sillyness that would suggest that the whole film is a big joke, it would be just fine, but sadly the film is also preachy as hell. It's the kind of film that critizises Michael Moore for showing only one side of the truth in his films, yet cuts corners in just about every one of its arguments at the same time. And sure enough, like all poor conversation stirrers, Zucker likes to pull the Hitler card as an argument to anything. The overall message seems to be that because The United States of America is the world's greatest country, one is a traitor to his own country to critizise it in any way. A good citizen just accepts anything the officials tell him to. And of course that the war against terrorism is the worst threat America has faced since Nazism. It's sad to see Communism doesn't rank that high on the American list of biggest threats of all time any more. In addition to the afore mentioned dead celebrities, Zucker has lured the Hollywood conservative likes of Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight to do roles in his bug-crazy near-fascist fantasy. Seriously, the film portrays African-Americans only in a scene where they perform modern slaves (because that's what would have happened if The Civil War had been resolved with diplomatic means) and liberals wanting to seperate church and state are portrayed as deadly zombies that should be shot to the head.

The people responsible for this drivel would deserve it more. It did have one good joke, which infuriates me, as it pains me to say anything positive about this. The worst film I've seen in a long, long, long time.

★

Scrooged (1988)
Director: Richard Donner



For a much better modern adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel, I had to turn to Bill Murray. Good ol' Bill, he never fails. Except when he made Garfield, of course.

Bill Murray plays a TV executive that's a real dick to his employees, family, the poor in general and to his long lost love, played by Karen Allen. And that, of course nothing plays to the strengths of the film's lead actor than the ability to act a complete douchebag. After firing a back talking employee, putting a scary promo of a heart-warming Christmas special on air and humbugging just about half of NYC's population (including Miles Davis' street orchestra), Bill gets a meeting from a ghost of a long-lost buisness partner. Now, the film is quite close to being a horror-comedy. Yet, the ghastly sequences are done in a tongue-in-cheek manner that reminiscens Creepshow and the likes. Probably the scariest moment in the film comes when the rotten zombie ghost tangles Bill Murray from a scyscraper window and his wrist starts to rot off. For someone afraid of heights, this makes a dizzyingly terrifying scene.

Bill meets up with several more ghosts, and as the story goes, after seeing himself dead in the future, he decides to change his ways. The ending is a bit overkill in all its feel-goodiness. I would've gotten enough christmas spirit fom just Karen Allen's smile. Boy, that gal sure has a beautiful smile. But anyway, the film delivers plenty of laughs and a classic character for Bill Murray. I don's see why I wouldn't want to watch this again, come next christmas.

★★★★

Pictured: Holiday cheer.

Don't Open 'Till Christmas (1984)
Director: Edmund Purdom



I have a weird fondness of various Christmas-themed horror films. So I had to see one for this article as well. Usually it is Santa Claus who does the slaughtering. yet in this British slasher classic, it is Santa Clauses who get the axe. It has everything that a good slasher should have. Plenty of funny deaths (one santa gets impaled with a spear through the mouth when blowing on a party whistle, one has his penis cut off while urinating) and some gratitious boobs. The plot itself is the most basic one one can have, with police pursuting the killer that seems to always be one step ahead, and a heroic journalist slowly uncovering better evidence. If the film wasn't so outrageous in its violence, it would be your standard Halloween-carbon copy. Yet with the Santa theme, it is a fun ride. And the present that ends the film is quite unforgettable.

★ or ★★★★★






OK, that's enough of holiday cheer for this time. Merry Christmas to both my readers and if people should happen to stumble to this post, Happy Hanukkah, A Crazy Kwaanzaa and a solemn and dignified Ramadan to you as well! Or Happy festivus for the Rest of Us!

Bye Bye Bristol

One of the best places in Helsinki was stripped away from us film fans last weekend as the film theatre Bristol was closed. The theatre had been viewing films since 1961. For me, Bristol was always something of a hidden gem in the city's theatre lineup. It was a big theatre, showing interesting films, but with kind of few other moviegoers. If I wanted to see a film on an opening night, Bristol was the best bet to get good seats. I remember seeing Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring there for the first time. However, the viewing experience then wasn't so pleasant, as people threw popcorn off the balcony, someone smoked in the matinee constantly and people didn't turn off their mobile phones. I've heard rumours that Bristol was also the theatre where Finnkino put it's worst employees to work.

Nevertheless, Bristols seats were comfrotable, there was plenty of leg space and the first row on the balcony was probably the best place to see a giant blockbuster in my home city. Bristol became a comfrotable place for me also because it held a great number of press screenings of films. So there I saw the Good (Where the Wild Things Are), the Bad (Big Momma's House 2) and the Underrated (X-Men: The Last Stand) for the first time.

The final weekend's programme consisted screenings of old classic films. It was ridiculously awesome to see Conan the Barbarian on a big screen, in a theatre packed to the rafters but me and my friend in my favorite place, balcony front row, centre. I won't do a Conan review now, as I have bigger plans for the barbarian epic in the future. Suffice to say, this story shall also be told. I hadn't time to see other classic films that weekend as I had something of a christmas rush at work. Seeing Back to the Future, Talvisota and Jaws on it's giant screen would've also been cool. But there was no way I was going to miss Bristol's final screening.

Ben-Hur (1959)
Director: William Wyler

The classic Hollywood Epic Ben-Hur was the film which was also the first film ever shown at Bristol. I give big props for the theatre staff for arranging the screening to be accurate, from the playing of the opening music for the first ten minutes and having the Intermission time. Minuses for the modern audience not aware of these old-time habits.

I hadn't seen the classic before. As the film itself features occurences running parallel to the story of Jesus Christ, it was also more than suitable film to be shown so close to Christmas. For a person who thinks Life of Brian is one of the best films ever made like myself, Ben-Hur was also a fun ride. The Pythons clearly got a number of ideas for their masterpiece from the classic poster to the opening and closing scenes. I just about could manage in the theatre without starting to shout quotes like "Blessed are the cheese-makers", "Welease Wodewick!" and "Alms for an ex-leper!" during the course of the film.

Sure, Ben-Hur was quite pompous. It shoe-horned its Christian message to the point of boredom during the last twenty minutes and in every now and then during its course of three hours and 45 minutes. At its core it starts as a simple revenge story of a man wronged, but rising up from his downfall to avenge his fate to his oppressor. It is a pure Count of Monte Cristo story in the beginning. The titular Judah ben Hur (Charlton Heston) is condemned for a crime he didn't commit by his former friend Messallah (Stephen Boyd). Messallah wants to rise up in the ranks of the Roman military and sees this conviction as a way for better circles. Ben Hur goes on from being a slave to a war hero and then to become an adoptive son of a Roman aristocrat Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins) and a very powerful man himself. But he always keeps his vengeance and worry about the fate of his family in his heart.

I felt that the plot was oddly structured. Everyone has at least heard of the chariot scene in the film, but how it is glued to the actual story never makes sense to me. Why would a powerful Roman consul race lowly peasants often enough to be the best of the best in races which have a huge death toll? How convinient that Judah learns just the art of races during his time as an adopted son of a Roman aristocrat. The character motivations are also flimsy and switch from their goals bit by bit. The characterization isn't stable to say the least.

Nevertheless, the main scene itself is just as breathtaking as it had been promised to be. The stunt work is nothing short of marvellous, the editing, the sense of speed and of course the crashes made my pulse go from 0 to 200 in seconds. And to see it on a canvas as large as at Bristol. Wow! I can see George Lucas was inspires to make the pod race from Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace here. As it is shoehorned to the plot just as badly, Lucas makes the mistake that the viewers don't give two shits about anyone racing and the might as well be robots. In Ben-Hur, however, the antagonism of Judah ben Hur and Messallah culminates in the scene, as well as their worldviews. Messallah uses his horses purely as a mean for his own victory and constantly beats them to do a better job. Judah loves his horses and to keep them from harm is more important to him than gaining positions in the race. He fights Messalah only when he is attacked first and with Messalah's own weapons, the whip and the wheel. As he is shown to be such a good character I was waiting for him to forgive Messalah for his sins at his deathbed after the race. But Judah actually just gets even angrier.

One can see the Christian moral story of refusing the help of Jesus until it seems too late. Yet for the repenting one, redemption can still come. It is as flat as can be as long as morales are concerned, but at least Christ symbolizes here what he is supposed to: forgiveness to others and peace within oneself. One surely would need those qualities today as well as then.

★★★ 1/2

The Directors: Satoshi Kon

I am starting a new series on this blog. I take a look at the work of various film directors. I am interested in different sort of filmmaking from time to time. So the only limit is that I have to have seen all of the feature films each director has directed (not necessarily if he's done only episodes, produced, wrote, etc.) For current directors, I do a SWOT analysis. For those that have passed away, a necrology. I will rank all their fims together with a rate average. Thus, we can eventually learn, who is or was the greatest director of all time.


The first one in this series shall be the anime maestro Satoshi Kon, who sadly passed away earlier this year. I was appointed to write a necrology about him at Helsinki International Film Festival, which was when I noticed I actually hadn't seen any of his films! Kon had the chance to only direct four feature films before his untimely death, aged 46. He was a maestro of anime films which all had modern characters caught in illusions and false conceptions, and usually also some sort of merger of reality and fantasy. The topic itself may not seem that special, but Kon's unforgettable style was something never seen before. The strongly visual, sometimes also frightening, stories mixed dreams, illusions and reality very colourfully and vividly. Kon's style has influenced numerous other directors, including Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan. The viewers of Kon's films could never be sure themselves, what was real and what fantasy which made the films intriguing yet sometimes difficult to follow.

At the time if Kon's death he was working directing the film Yumemiko kikai (The Dreaming Machine). The fate of the film remains uncertain. So powerful was Kon's vivid imagination that no one else seems quite sure what he was looking for in the finished film. Let's hope the film shall be finished and take a look at the four other ones left behind.

Perfect Blue (Pâfekuto burû, 1998)



Kon directed perhaps his best film as his debut feature length. Perfect Blue is a story about an ex-pop star who leaves her old career and attempts to switch to an acting career. However, a stalking fan is not too pleased with this decision. The popster soon finds not only her life is in danger, but also that her grip of reality is shaking and she doesn't know what is real and what fantasy any more.

Perfect Blue is a film about the collective pop culture experience, which can drive people to madness, if they get too obsessively tangled to it. A celebrity is felt to be public property and feels like a traitor when she decides to do something else than expected. For the celebrity herself this is not an easy decision, as it's hard to know what people actually want from her and whether she is just being exploited. The Hitchcockian layers of psychological damage and sexual subconscious run through the film elegantly and the slowly decending madness is worthy of Polanski. The film actually mostly resmbles a certain Brian DePalma film, which I'm not going to spoil. The only downside is the main character with her basic anime looks and squaky voice. I would've wished a deeper characterization, a treat which is troublingly rare in Kon's filmography.

★★★★



Millennium Actress (Sennen joyû, 2001)



A couple of reporters arrive to a legendary japanese actress's house to do an interview about her life. They soon find that her story comes to life with them as minor characters in it as well. Moreover, the actress's story doesn't so much follow the times than it follows the trends in japanese cinema over the decades. Thus war times can turn into feudal countrysides where samurai roam, or a rocket launchpad. Godzilla cameos.

Unfortunately, even though I love the film's premise, I find this to be Kon's worst film. Kon hasn't been that good in creating multidimensional female characters in any of his films. Even though his women are strong when they need them to be they usually have about as much charisma as any stock anime girls. Whereas Perfect Blue is driven by other things besides the main character's psyche as well (such as the pop-culture obesessed japanese mentality, not to mention murders and such), Millennium Actress lies solely on the shoulders of its central love story. Which is bland. Although it might be that Kon just tried to copy the most basic love story from the cinema history as well. It still doesn't make this film more than a wasted opportunity.

★★ 1/2



Tokyo Godfathers (Tōkyō Goddofāzāzu, 2003)



Tokyo Godfathers was the reason I wanted to time this necrology around Christmas. It is a Christmas fable about the good will toward men. Three homeless drifters find a dumpster baby and bicker among themselves on what to do with it. They intend to return the baby to its parents, but the method causes a lot of trouble and for all of them to come to terms with their past.

The characterization of main characters, which usually was Kon's main fault, works actually very fine here. The film stars an ageing transvestite, an old boozehound and a young girl who has run from home. Each of these characters is portrayed multi-dimensionally and interestingly. The filmitself also bears little similarities to Kon's other, more fantastical work. Tokyo Godfathers is firmly rooted to real world, and could've easily been shot as a live-action film as well. But then we would miss all of Kon's fantastic art from the caharacter's very expressive faces to the city-scape of Tokyo, which is almost a main character in itself. The film brings to mind Lee Man-hui's The Road to Sampo in that it is about a trio of drifters who learn a lot about life while striwing for their destination. The humour is a little too goofy and the film has a little too many happy coincidences, but this is welcome change to the same old holiday fims you see every year.

★★★



Paprika (Papurika, 2006)


Paprika was the last film Kon finished before he died. It's also his biggest epic, so lushingly full of imagination, detail and luscious visuals that most other animated films pale by comparison. It is also probably the hardest of Kon's films to follow. Reality, dream, subconscious, ego, id, superego, avatars and culture begin to blend in surprising and surrealistic ways that has to be seen to be believed. The plot features therapists on a dangerous trip through different patient's dreams to pursue stolen technolgy, which could cause huge harm in the wrong hands.

Like Inception after it, Paprika takes us inside other people's dreams. However, Paprika follows more closely the logic within dreams. Thus, surreal images are common, things can morph, appear suddenly or act strangely. It is very hard to describe the film any further, but I'd surely like to watch this film a couple more times before I can make a proper judgement on its themes. As it is it's still a stunningly fine-looking film, probably the most eye-catching and visually beautiful anime film I've ever seen. It is worth to watch because of that alone. And it's a must-see for anyone respecting Kon's career as it works very fine as a swan-song to a maestro who pushed the borders of his medium multiple times. That is, until they finish his work on The Dreaming Machine.

★★★★



Satoshi Kon's score: 3,25