TrueNorth

Best Christmas movies

There are several levels of Christmas movies that I recognize in my personal taxonomy of the genre.  Level 1 movies are the most Christmassy, they are they ones that we all recognize as staples of the season.  Level 2 Christmas movies must have at least one Christmas scene in them, but they are not necessarily "about" Christmas.  Level 3 Christmas movies just have to have a snow scene in them or have in the past been associated by me with Christmas because I watched them once around the holidays.  Level 3 movies are great to watch after the first snowfall of the year, to start to get you in the mood.  So, definitions out the way, here is my list:

Level 3
Airport (lots of snow in this one!)
Dr. Zhivago (ditto)
Bus Stop
Tunes of Glory (must be accompanied by the drinking of whiskey)
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Pink Panther
The Lord of the Rings

Level 2
The World of Henry Orient
The Trouble with Angels
When Harry Met Sally
The Apartment
Meet Me in St. Louis

Level 1
The Holly and the Ivy
The Bishop's Wife
It's a Wonderful Life
Miracle on 34th Street
White Christmas
Holiday Inn
A Christmas Story
A Christmas Carol (Alistair Sim, of course)

Wall-E - best picture?

The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. has named Disney/Pixar's "Wall-E" the best picture of the year, marking the first time in its history that it has given its top prize to an animated film.

I can almost agree with this.  The first hour or so of the film (up until the point they blast off into space) was the most hypnotically photo-realistic stuff to come of the Pixar studios ever.  It was brilliant and I got totally absorbed in the whole post-apocalyptic landscape.  This part was magnificent.

The second part put me to sleep.  The action was confusing, the characters were boring, the graphics much less engaging.  If the first part of the movie was Pixar at its best, the second part was easily Pixar at its worst.  Bottom line:  This is the only Pixar movie I would consider a failure.  It should not get the award.

Paul Newman RIP

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Obituary: Paul Newman

He joined the US Navy, hoping to become a pilot but failed the physical examination when it was discovered he was colour blind.

Instead he trained as a radio operator and rear gunner, spending most of his military service flying in torpedo bombers over the Pacific.

Environmentalists good for something - comic relief

The Movie Review: ‘The Happening’

M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening, is not merely bad. It is an astonishment, so idiotic in conception and inept in execution that, after seeing it, one almost wonders whether it was real or imagined. It's the kind of movie you want to laugh about with friends, swapping favorite moments of inanity: "Do you remember the part when Mark Wahlberg ... ?" "God, yes. And what about that scene where the wind ... ?"

I vote she moves to Italy

POLLACK WAS LOVED - New York Post

SUSAN SARANDON, who appeared in three films last year and won kudos for her TV movie "Bernard and Doris," is still not a contented soul. She says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada.

Burton, Harris, O'Toole and Reed

Born to raise hell: The reckless passion that drove four of Britain's most extraordinary film stars on | the Daily Mail

The friendship between O'Toole and Harris began in 1956, when they were cast together in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the Bristol Old Vic.

Harris described this period as "golden days". "We kept each other up half the night," he said. "We never slept. It was days of chat and yarn-spinning and great, legendary boozing."

During the show's run, Harris and O'Toole would nip out to a nearby bar in the interval, dashing back just in time for curtain up in the second half. One matinee they overstayed their welcome and a stage-hand burst into the bar screaming: "You're on!"

Both men leapt to their feet and made it back into the theatre in 15 seconds flat, O'Toole first.

Crashing into the wings, he hurtled past the backstage crew and tumbled on to the stage, almost falling head-first into the audience.

A woman in the front row smelled his breath. "My God, he's drunk!" she exclaimed. O'Toole lifted his head. "You think this is bad," he said. "Wait till you see the other fellow."

I'm glad someone else noticed this

Done With Mirrors

So the "New York Times" is unsparing in its evisceration of "Expelled," and I ought to approve that.

I don't.

Because I also remember this review.

Mixing sober outrage with mischievous humor and blithely trampling the boundary between documentary and demagoguery, Michael Moore takes wholesale aim at the Bush administration, whose tenure has been distinguished, in his view, by unparalleled and unmitigated arrogance, mendacity and incompetence. Of course, your estimation of the movie will largely depend on whether you share this view, but this unabashedly partisan collage of interviews, archival video clips and Mr. Moore's trademark agitprop stunts is nonetheless his most disciplined and powerful film to date.

That was fast

Michael Moore's latest crockumentary "Sicko" isn't even out yet and already it has been demolished by the critics.

Here is Dr. David Gratzer, the Canadian author of "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save Health Care," who believes both the US and Canadian systems are deeply flawed:

"Like most Canadians, I believed that we had the best-run health-care system in the world. Because the system was publically owned, I assumed that compassion came before profit and that everyone got good care. . .After I entered medical school, however, my view of Canadian health care changed…I trained in emergency rooms that were chronically, chaotically, dangerously overcrowded, not only in my hometown of Winnipeg, but all across Canada. I met a middle-aged man with sleep problems who was booked for an appointment with a specialist three years later; a man with pain following a simple hernia repair who was referred to a pain clinic with a two-year wait list; a woman with breast cancer who was asked to wait four more months before starting the lifesaving radiation therapy. According to the government’s own statistics, some 1.2 million Canadians couldn’t get a family doctor. In some rural areas, town councils resorted to lotteries: the winners would get appointments with the only general practitioners around."

Mere anecdotes? Yes, but mine cancel out Moore’s. Where are the stats? Moore emphasizes life-expectancy figures in which the US slightly lags some other Western countries. But life expectancy involves many factors; two that Moore is especially knowledgeable about, obesity and homicide by firearm, are special American plagues. Here’s a stat: The percentage of patients having to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery is about five times higher in Canada and seven times higher in Britain than it is here. [see Gratzer, 171]

Robert Mitchum on the War

...I think it must have been the Vietnam War, but the sentiments are still valid.

via HotAir.

Celebrities narcissistic

Really?