Holiday Movies and More...
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Question: I know how much you love holiday movies joke, joke so I'm wondering which one you object to least? And don't say
Bad Santa that's not a Christmas movie! Copper
FlickChick: You may laugh, but I actually like
It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the original
Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and
Christmas in Connecticut (1945). And I like them all for the same reason: They're not cute and saccharine if you've never seen any or all of them, you'd probably be surprised by their sharpness.
It's a Wonderful Life, especially, goes to some very dark places. And
Christmas in Connecticut is a blast:
Barbara Stanwyck plays a magazine columnist who made her reputation writing about how to maintain a perfect household she's basically the
Martha Stewart of her day, and she's always writing about the wonderful meals she makes for her husband and their small child on the family's Connecticut farm. But she's making it all up: She lives in an apartment, the old Hungarian guy who owns the restaurant around the corner cooks for her, and she isn't married or a mother. Her career is threatened when the magazine's publisher (not her editor, who knows the truth) cooks up a heartwarming PR stunt: He wants her to invite a wounded war veteran recently released from the hospital - his human interest story has been all over the papers - to join her family for Christmas dinner.
And just so everyone doesn't think I'm going soft, I also like
The Hebrew Hammer (2003), which manages to be rude about Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa - I've never cared for
Andy Dick, but he is
unrepentant as evil Santa Damian.
And I'll watch
any Christmas-themed horror movie. Most of them are crap, but I love seeing department-store St. Nicks murdered in public restrooms and psychopaths wreaking havoc in Santa suits; they pander to all my most ingrained loathing of the forced gaiety and soft-focus sentimentality of the period between Thanksgiving and New Year's - that's five long weeks that also happen to be my busiest weeks of the year at work because it's when all the studios release all their big-budget, Oscar-contending movies. As soon as every cabdriver in New York adds Dean Martin singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" to his heavy rotation, I start craving a slay ride. I suppose I should be happy that the remake of
Black Christmas (1974) is opening on December 25, but in my heart of hearts I suspect it will be as obvious and uninteresting as director
Glen Morgan's
2003 remake of
Willard. There we go - now I'm starting to sound like my familiar holiday self!
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
Question: I'm trying to locate a copy of a movie that was made in the late 1960s or early '70s. It's about high-school football and Gary Busey stars as a player. I think Larry Hagman is his coach, and his dad puts all kinds of pressure on him, but I'm not sure of the name. I thought it was "Poetry in Motion," but all I find under that title is a DVD of poets reading poetry. The movie was filmed in Northern California and I'd like to surprise a friend with a copy because her husband was an extra and their kids are dying to see it. Becky
FlickChick: You're looking for a 1973 made-for-TV movie called
Blood Sport (1973), with a young
Gary Busey as a teen athlete whose father (
Ben Johnson) pressures him into playing high-school football (Busey himself played in college); his coach is played by
Larry Hagman. I've heard people say they were reminded of it by
Friday Night Lights (the book and the film) because it dealt with the pressures put on young players by football-loving towns, by parents who live vicariously through their kids, and by coaches who are determined to win at all costs. The bad news is that like many TV-movies of the 1970s and '80s, it's never been commercially available on video or DVD. I haven't even been able to locate a bootleg, but if I were you I'd start scouring sites that specialize in obscure or hard-to-find videos and DVDS. You should also check eBay regularly, but be careful: There's a
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie of the same title - and you don't want that one.
Remember: Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
