I was woken up this morning by the sound of snowplow blades scraping against asphalt, and looked out the window to see 5 inches of snow on my car. While mildly annoying, it is really nothing new or extraordinary to anyone who has lived in New England for any extended period of time. However, this being the first significantly-accumulating snowfall of the year, tonight I will be partaking in a long-standing tradition of watching The Shining when I get home from work.
Years ago, my friend Craig suggested this as the perfect movie for when it's snowing, and my friends and I made a yearly ritual out of it. The idea was such a good one that it has stayed with me in the 10 or so years since it was conceived. But the real connection between the film and the conditions is obviously just the snow, not anything to do with Christmas or the holiday season in general.
For some reason, this got me thinking on a tangent as I was driving to work this morning at 15 MPH. Sure, there are plenty of bona fide Christmas movies out there, such as Bob Clark's ubiquitous A Christmas Story, or my personal favorite, Brian Desmond Hurst's 1951 version of Scrooge, starring the perfectly-cast Alastair Sim. But for some reason, I have always loved movies that are sort of about Christmas, but not really. Movies in which Christmas is featured, but in a more tangential or incidental sense. So, without further ado, here is my short personal list of favorite "Sort-Of Christmas Movies":
Die Hard - NYPD Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) is invited to LA by his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) to attend her office Christmas party. It just so happens that at the same time, a group of German terrorists (led by the incomparable Alan Rickman) has infiltrated and beseiged the entire building. In a series of physics-defying Christmas miracles, McClane manages to slip away, assess the situation, and pretty much singlehandedly kill the shit out of all the bad guys, while also managing to piss off the FBI and befriend the dad from Family Matters, who seems to always play a cop in everything he's ever been in. (Cracked's Robert Brockway weighs in on this one here.)
Gremlins - Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante bring us the story of a young bank teller who is given a bizarre and exotic Christmas gift by his eccentric inventor dad, Hoyt Axton. It is an impossibly adorable little furry thing called a mogwai, which, through the violation of some logically arbitrary "rules" and Corey Feldman being an idiot, manages to reproduce and spawn an army of evil, obnoxious reptiles. Chaos ensues, of course. I love this movie mostly because it manages to combine the elements of small-town politics from It's A Wonderful Life with the campy "Monsters are invading the town and the authorities don't believe me!" premise from virtually every monster and sci-fi movie of the 1950's.
Edward Scissorhands - In this highly stylized modern-day fairy tale about a hopelessly deformed misfit adopted by a suburban family, Tim Burton manages to maintain a charming tone while teaching us satirical lessons on morality, love, tolerance, gossip, and the origin of snow. Another bizarre cross-genre film that mixes the gothic feel of Frankenstein with the small-town sensibilities of Anytown, USA. Also notable for being Vincent Price's final film appearance, and I must say that for what amounts to little more than an extended cameo, he really added a beautiful dimension to the film as Edward's creepy-cute mad scientist "father".
Love Actually - A sprawling, sappy manifesto on the many facets of love, which I happen to think is completely adorable. This movie tells the 653 intertwining stories of 1,022 characters who all know each other or are related or fall in love or whatever. The brilliant Bill Nighy totally steals the show as the burned-out former rock star hilariously attempting to use Christmas to resurrect his fame and fortune. Also features some dated and awkwardly shoehorned-in UK vs. USA political commentary between altruistic Prime Minister Hugh Grant, and sleazy US President Billy Bob Thornton, when a momentary love triangle between them and Martine McCutcheon somehow translates into a pissy foreign relations incident. (??)
Brazil - Set during the Holiday Season in some unspecified, dystopian year in the near future, Terry Gilliam's masterpiece is a sort of tongue-in-cheek version of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. In my opinion, this is not only an incredibly great movie and a chilling vision of a totalitarian and beaurocratic future, it is also the single most re-watchable movie I have ever seen (like, 50 times). If you haven't seen this movie, you haven't lived. Features top-notch performances by Jonathan Pryce, Ian Holm, Katherine Helmond, Robert DeNiro, Jim Broadbent, and Michael Palin. (Note: Also available in the despicably mangled studio edit, scornfully referred to as the "Love Conquers All" version. Do NOT watch this under any circumstances.)
So, there you have it. Something a little different for this year's Christmas movie-watching festivities, if you're in the mood. All of these movies are great on their own merits, but they are especially fun to watch during the holidays. Enjoy!
Lots to watch. Good thing the Christmas season lasts more than one night! Thanks for sharing your faves.
— By Pat McDermott, on
December 9, 2009 7:25 PM
...And I don't even really know what it's about, exactly.
Mostly-genius filmmaker Terry Gilliam has a new movie coming out soon. Watch this trailer and tell me if your mind just completely explodes at the speed of light:
FINALLY, a movie in which Tom Waits plays the Devil. It's pretty much the role he was born to play, a thought that was cemented in my mind after listening to The Black Rider for the first time.
I could write about sixteen thousand paragraphs here about Terry Gilliam's body of work, which is pretty much hit-or-miss: in his case, "hit" equals mind-blowing film genius, and "miss" means it's just not his best work, but still pretty great. "Dr. Parnassus" looks to me like it's getting filed in the "hit" column for sure.
The trailer is done! It's posted on YouTube, and the customer, Pat McDermott, seems to be very satisfied with the results.
Upon uploading this video initially, I was faced with a major disappointment. For some reason, the video appeared blurry and pixellated, until I clicked on the little "HQ" toggle on the lower right side of the movie player frame. I was scrambling to find out what had gone wrong, and apologizing profusely to my customer for delivering a sub-excellent product.
It all made a little more sense after finding this blurb in the YouTube Help forums:
We made improvements to standard quality for video uploads! Unless there is a large difference between standard quality and HQ , the upload will produce standard quality by default (and not HQ as before).
In other words, the bar has been raised and you're going to find it hard to get HQ encoding at present, with the "upgrade" to "standard (normal) quality." It can be done but you may need to search the forum to find out possible ways that could work for you. Most of us are too tired to repeat ourselves on this, and no one I know is convinced they have a foolproof method forrendering that will ALWAYS give you HQ encoding.
In other words, the resolution and quality of my uploaded video was TOO GOOD. So good that YouTube split it up into high-quality and low-quality versions for the benefit of people with slower connection speeds. I will have to keep this in mind for future projects, as I think the whole HQ toggle thing is obnoxious, and frankly, unnecessary. If anything, the HQ display should be the default setting, allowing people to lower the quality if needed for streaming speed, etc.
Regardless, this is a very exciting milestone for me. I have been interested in working with video for many years, and have never really had the opportunity. Now I am dying for my recent purchase of Adobe Master Collection CS4 to arrive so I can do even cooler stuff from here on out.
Ms. McDermott is currently on a rampage (in a good way), posting this link on her site, her Facebook page, and sending it out to a staggering number of colleagues, web loops, discussion groups, and a company called Blazing Trailers that specializes in showcasing exactly this kind of media.
I am proud of my work on this project. If it generates some more work of this nature in the future, even better. I look forward to creating more trailers for Pat when she rolls out the remaining books in her series!
I seem to be satisfied? I'm ecstatic! You did a fabulous job, Rick! I'm glad you've extended your considerable talents into video. Thank you so much!
— By Pat McDermott, on
May 21, 2009 12:22 PM
You're very welcome! I've already got a few fragments of ideas bubbling for the next one.
— By Shag, on
May 27, 2009 9:49 AM
I have spent the last month or so working in a completely new medium: video. Author Pat McDermott is shouldering a huge amount of the responsibility of promoting the re-release of her novel A Band of Roses, and as her graphic/web designer and marketing consultant, I have offered to try my hand at the trend of creating a video "trailer". Apparently it is a hugely popular marketing tool in the independent publishing world, typically a series of still images panning across the screen or zooming in/out, with accompanying captions to give the gist of the story.
The only problem is, many of these trailers aren't really very well done. I have watched several, and been disappointed (and occasionally embarrassed) by the lack of finesse, subtlety, pacing, and dramatic formula they tend to exhibit, making some of them seem more like PowerPoint presentations than marketing pieces. There are a few I've seen that are outright embarassing, and seem to have been composed with a sledgehammer and a shoehorn.
One in particular tells the story of a psychic of some kind who is on vacation. Slow, lilting music, scenes of stucco neighborhoods slowly panning by... and then, at about 1:00, scenes of lightning, zombies (using images from Resident Evil and other video games) and demons flash by on the screen accompanied by terrifying loud music. This goes on for maybe 5 seconds, and then abruptly returns to the previous music and pacing. No transition or even editing of the soundtrack. It was as if the zombie scene came from another trailer completely and was ham-fistedly pasted over the original piece.
I mean no disrespect to the creator of said trailer, but I do feel justified in offering some very frank and objective criticism when I see something like this. I suppose it's a side-effect of having the no-holds-barred Murray Tinkelman as my college professor, a guy who would just as soon throw a chair or tell you to get the hell out of his class than explain to you why what you did was wrong. Man, I miss that guy.
In any case, yes, there are elements of these trailers that are well-done, and I do like some of the photo choices that are vague and archetypal enough in nature to intrigue the viewer. Others are oddly out of place, too specific, and seem to completely kill the atmosphere of the overall piece. It's a book, after all. You can't show the viewer what the character is supposed to look like based on some available stock photography. I consider it far better to leave things as vague as possible and let the reader's imagination paint in the details.
The general problem with many of these efforts is one of presentation, and craftsmanship. It's entirely possible that the book the trailer advertises is a great one. But that will never matter if the marketing is no good. I consider myself lucky to have a formal education in art, design, and illustration, as I feel the concepts I learned over the years apply to this type of project just as they would a painting. I try to be conscious of the importance of the work as a whole, not just a string of "cool ideas" laid end to end, but a complete composition.
With that in mind, I took this project on, my goal from the start being to attempt to use the conventions of existing book trailer "culture", but present the finished piece in a way that was more dramatically relevant to a trailer you'd see for a big-budget film. I dusted off a 2-year-old copy of Adobe AfterEffects that I had been meaning to immerse myself in for some time, and a couple of textbooks I had bought when I planned on learning AfterEffects a while back (that never really materialized). I dove in, learned the basics, and progressed from a bumbling hack to a fairly competent craftsman within a week or so.
The trailer project is still in the draft stage, although not much remains before it's completed. I'm very excited to add this piece to my portfolio, and the skills of video compositing and animation to my general repetoire. You can see the current work-in-progress here.
More on this as I near completion. I have already added some live-action video and filled in the missing 15-second gap towards the end with the remainder of the captions, which Ms. McDermott and I ironed out to perfection over the weekend. I'm currently having a teeny bit of trouble getting a render of the most recent version completed (something wrong with the way AE is processing the soundtrack source file), but I'll continue to update the WIP link as changes are made.
Oh, and I forgot to mention... working on these may be a bit tedious, but it's fun.
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