‘Tis the season for people to partake in the company of loved ones, goodwill and cheer but when that wears off you can turn to some commerciaized emotional hyperbole (movies) that along with the Charlie Brown and Nat King Cole ought to keep the season jolly.

10. Lethal Weapon (Mr. Joshua: “It’s Christmas!”)

9. Ernest Saves Christmas (one of the best Ernest movies out there second maybe only to Goes to Jail)

8. Rocky IV (Sly must go train in the cold Siberian tundra for his fight with Drago on December 25)

7. Elf (It was a cute movie and you need a few of those)

6. Die Hard (Argyle playing Run DMC is worth it alone)

5. It’s a Wonderful Life (Bruce Wayne from Batman TAS episode 102 Christmas With the Joker – “It’s not relentlessly cheerful is it.”)

4. Home Alone (slap stick Pesci style)

3. Mirale on 34th Street (1947) (gotta love screwing the Government with it’s own legal loopholes)

2. A Christmas Story (It had Darin “The Night Stalker” McGavin as the gruff dad)

1. Scrooged (The Night the Reindeer Died)

Bonus: Santa Claus (my favorite when I was a kid) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089961/

Have a good one.

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/674/674712p1.html

They’ve done another one about comedies. PersonallyI have some problems with anything Steve Martin every did being called “funny” but that’s a subjective thing (no it’s not . . . but differ to diplomacy). Also any list of comedies that does not include Leprechaun http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107387/ is missing some angle on humor. I think the next step is to finish off the solid lists and get into post modern genre combinations like top 25 Space Musicals or something. I myself am thinking that a version of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes set in space and given the edge of some Ice Pirates http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ and an homage to Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom for the big number would be something fun, just Busby Berkley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby_Berkeley it up (yeah it should be a verb). They pay for concepts in Hollywood don’t they?

I just stumbled across this http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/673/673392p1.html at the IGN website. It is a list of 25 of the best action movies. The list has some variety of style, genre, etc. You may disagree about some placements but this is a list that gets it right and stays within the easily definable bounds where such subjective lists belong.

I just got a link
http://www.empireonline.co.uk/features/50greatestindependent/50-41.asp

from my good friend Eripsa. This link lists the top 50 or so “Independent Films”. This term has been in dispute ever since the mid 90’s when Mirimax made a name for themselves by distributing these films that were not seen as being part of the studio system: MGM, Universal, etc. Soon the Independent Film Channel followed and later another Sundance. They were seen as a place to showcase the independet sprit of filmmaking and all that. However, along the way as is to be expected and in a perfectly sensibly fashion following the success of Mirimax’s indie hook, a whole new crops of autuers appeared and the independent label perhaps got a little blown out of proportion. It is my firm belief that “gay cowboys eating pudding” is not inhernently indie. I do not prescribe to this ideal about the “sprit of independent cinema”. Today I think, more so than not, what people might think of as independent cinemas just isn’t. For my two cents a film is truly independent if it is produced and financed outside of the Studios (i.e. the big Corporation with money) entirely. It is the sort of film like Kevin Smith’s Clerks or David Lynch’s Eraserhead where they had difficulties getting the money and where the likelyhood of the film getting made, let alone distributed and released to the public, was not at all certain. We’ll that’s my new rant have at it! I have to go finish my own independent film now.

A few weeks ago I saw a rather artistic looking commercial. It was “artistic” in the sense that there was clearly care taken to consider a film stock and to set up and film the commercial on whole. Essentially the setting is sort of a ghetto “war torn” like city area mostly in grays and blues. As the activity of the commercial begins we see children in small groups become engaged in what escalates to a massive water balloon fight. Ironically the music used in the commercial is Teddy Bear’s Picnic. Ironic because this song is usually associated with children in gleeful play out in nature and here we have children who in a juxtaposition are gleeful while the surroundings and composition of the commercial seem to elicit the dirty documentary style that was employed during scenes of rioting in such films as The Battle of Algiers. The subject matter of this film being that that the native residents of French occupied Algeria are using terrorist tactics to fight for their independence from a French occupation that subjugates the the native people.

Okay so this is all pretty involved. On one level, albeit the “deeper” level, the commercial plays as a political commentary about guerilla warfare. However, on the surface the commercial shows children not suffering but playing. In large numbers the young people are enjoying the warm sunny day while having a water balloon fight. No one is shown to be crying or having a bad time, the occasional adult walks by and is oblivious to the fun that the youths are having with their picnic in the ghetto.

So what the hell was this commercial all about? It wasn’t a commercial for water balloons, it wasn’t one of those government PSA’s about getting outside and playing with other children. This commercial which though it had underlying themes of collective warfare, was really just about children playing outside and having fun on a sunny day, was for the new Xbox 360.

I suppose it is a romantic notion that children can play and have fun outside in the numbers and in the environment shown in the commercial. Still I am quite concerned if we have become such a technophilic culture, so detached from our physical world with sunlight and wetness from water balloons, and the laughter that comes from playing with other people that a commercial that features all of this so prominently is used as an advertisement for a video game box where you sit inside and play with people who are somewhere else.

I will concede this point. One of the more popular games for this sort of video game system is Halo which is a war game where an individual or a team fight to save the world, etc. I just don’t think the sytlism of riotous warfare made parody of in the commercial (which I will admit people in this day and age would associate with movies, video games . . . the news) is more strong than the “sense of play” that is conveyed in the content of the commercial.

Okay this site might be cool.

http://www.channelfrederator.com/

The problem with success is that it can lead to mediocrity. As Cartoon Network begins to air live action movies like Tim Burton’s Batman there is a legitimate concern http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=6885 that soon Cartoon Network will suffer the fate of Music Television.

I was just surfing the net minding my own business when the phone rang. Low and behold it was none other than Robert “Drug Dealer Guy” Davi [in the recording]. No shit! He was letting me know that he has 3 daughters and that as a California voter I should be aware of Proposition 73. I’m not sure how he wanted me to vote, since I hung up, (I’m a busy man). I suppose it’s a moot point since I already sent off my absentee ballot a week ago. Still … these last minute get out the support pre-recorded calls have been quite a hoot. I just hope that “Uzi Guy” Al Leong gives me a call about redistricting prop 77 before all is said and done.

Last night I was watching some episodes of the second season of Home Movies and during the commentary track creator and star Brendon Small (see cool things to your right) made a comment about how, to him, some of the most intimate moments in life are just when two people can talk about nothing of real importance and be on the same page. I think the key to this intimacy is a shared sense of humor. When I watch something that I think is funny, like very funny, I’m usually the only one in the room that gets that particular joke.

A big part of what makes these laugh out loud (Or high pitched yelp as I am want to do when I’m most amused) moments is that I see something in the joke that connects me to the writer; to the origin of that piece of humor. Sometimes it is not as simple as my love for the meta or hyper-ironic use of a pun, still there is usually something there in the complexity of the extrapolated background story that results in such a joke. To me it is funny if I can feel attached to the writers of that joke; if I can share (vicariously participate) in that intimate moment where that piece of funny was elucidated.

This is why I value humor so much in my personal life. I think it is the best way for people to connect as humans beyond the platitudes of political rhetoric and the false indentities of cultural and sociological stereotyping. As Bob Ross says everytime he finishes painting one of his “happy little trees” and starts to paint another one: “Let’s just give him a friend … it’s one of the most important things in life to have a friend.”

Today while taking a dinner break from doing night scouting of locations for a film project the cinematographer and I were watching I Love the 80’s 3D (the 3rd installment of 80’s nostalgia, they’ve probably got 2 more good ones left). In 1983 there was a grand little film made that stared Gary Busey and Mr. T this film was called D.C. Cab: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085387/

Anywho . . . the cinematographer mentioned to me that in High School his Spanish teacher was engaged to Mr. T. The fact that Mr. T was engaged to a woman that went on to become a Spanish teacher is awesome enough. BUT the real cool thing about this is that through me working with this guy, whose Spanish teacher was engaged to Mr. T, I am now no more than 3 degrees* removed from knowing Mr. T (go ahead and intend whatever pun you want); and that is the sort of fodder fit for a blog.

* I am not counting myself because I do not think you have to do that.

I just saw this picture today on the Wikipedia, created by Jimmy Wales a stalwart believer in personal freedom and liberty, while surfing the web. It is the central electrode of a plasma lamp and I think it’s cool.