The Life and Times of a Midwestern Movie Addict

I haven't written in several days, mainly because I've been enjoying being off the grid of late.  I wanted to be by myself a lot of the time, and in the evenings maybe I wanted to see a friend or two.  I also got my stomach thing again earlier in the week, and stabbing abdominal pain tends to outweigh the joy of writing.  But I'm back in full form and ready to dish you two fab films from the 80s, both that figure heavily in both New Year's time, and also the career of Dan Aykroyd. The first film I had never heard of until 1996, when Jamie Kennedy spoke about Jamie Lee Curtis in the film, Scream .  Someone asked if in Halloween, you ever got to see Jamie Lee's breasts, and Jamie Kennedy said no...not until she got a legitimate (non horror) role in 1983 where she played a street smart prostitute with a heart of gold and a huge rack.  That film was Trading Places , which while being notable for Mrs. Curtis' ample...eherm...assets is also well known for being one...

...the Sex part always gets in the way.  No, I didn't invent this little bit of wisdom...in fact it wasn't even stated originally in a homosexual setting...rather it was an attempt to address the paradox in male/female heterosexual friendships.  The wisdom states that men and women can never be friends because the sex always gets in the way...regardless of how one feels about the other.  A man always wants to sleep with a woman he finds attractive, ultimately dooming the friendship to failure.  And if a man doesn't find a women friend attractive, you can probably assume that she finds him attractive.  A true paradox, though the same can be applied to gay male friends....one or the other is usually attracted to the other and thus the friendship is doomed to awkwardness and failure.  Who invented something that sounded so unPC, you ask?  Screenwriters Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner, that's who.  They attempted to explore this theme in their critically a...

For our last film of our last of the 25 days of Christmas movies, I wanted to take a look back at one of the classics of the holiday season, as well as a classic in its particular film franchise.  This film premiered on television in 1965 and became a holiday staple on CBS for the next 35 years.  It starred one of America's favorite comic strip characters and tried to help us all discover 'what Christmas is all about' while also featuring one of the saddest looking Christmas trees ever put on animation.  This was what A Charlie Brown Christmas was all about...well, it was about more than that I guess.  Good grief, I can't be witty all the time.  As for the short, it was a wonderfully cute little yarn featuring the kids from "Peanuts" and with a bit of a holiday message to share.  Over the course of the film, Charlie Brown discovers that Christmas isn't about presents, getting cards, winning decorating contests, or even directing Christmas pageants.  It...

I can remember a year in my youth when Mom was seriously considering skipping Christmas...I can't remember precisely when or why...and that may be because it never actually happened...but I still can remember it.  When I think of such an idea, especially now on Christmas Eve, I can't help but have the kneejerk reaction of "what a silly idea"...and then I wonder, what would it be like to skip Christmas for a year.  I'd certainly save money, and I wouldn't need to rush around my holiday break trying to see every family member that I know.  Also, I wouldn't need to burden anyone else with buying gifts for me, so others would save money as well.  As one rationalizes it, it becomes a rather good idea...to at least try once.  Of course, then I'd be missing the family and the fun of Christmas, and that's the real point.  I think that's what John Grisham was thinking when he wrote his light, frothy comedy "Skipping Christmas" as a short novel...

For the day before the day before Christmas, I thought I would focus on yet another film from my childhood, one I don't think I've seen since before I turned 10. This was a film spawned by the popular television appearances made by the late Jim Varney in his most famous character alter-ego, Ernest P. Worrel. This film was to be called Ernest Saves Christmas and it is one of his most popular and humorous film outings in his repetiore.  In this film, Ernest has the good fortune to pick up Santa Claus at the Orlando Airport in his taxi and thus begins a crazy adventure where he must help Santa convince both a cynical teenage girl, and a middle aged nice guy that he does in fact exist.  The man is the important one to convince, as Santa wants him to take over the business so that he can retire, but the girl becomes a factor when she steals Santa's bag for her own use.  Its a cute film, and one that I can't really find too much fault in (unlike the less funny and more sil...

Now I know that there are some of you out there who won't agree with my inclusion of this film as a Christmas movie in my 25 days because it does not seem synonimous with the holiday.  Many of you will even go so far to say that it isn't even about Christmas...and no, it isn't, but it does feature the holiday in both its prologue, third act, and coda and frankly that's good enough for me.  Also, it deals with a very important dramatic question for any Christmas loving child...."where does snow come from"?  And thus, we are launched into the narrative of Edward Scissorhands , one of the most touching and personal films that Tim Burton has ever made. For those of you who don't know the story, it is a modern day fairy tale (that a grandmother tells to her granddaughter in the film no less) that takes place in today's peasant kingdom...suburbia, and how those that live there react to an outsider who is brought into their midst.  Shy Avon lady Peg Boggs (...

I realized the other day, as I was stuck in WV under mounds and mounds of snow that, in all the careful planning and organizing of Christmas movies for each day of this blog, I had nearly forgotten one of the best ones of the darker persuasion.  It is a film that I took to at a very early age, upon its original release in 1993, because I had always enjoyed things of the macabre nature...especially the dark things which this artist constantly seemed to be thinking up.  The film itself wasn't hugely successful as a children's film (mainly due to its macabre nature) but it did manage to be successful enough to be memorable...and would eventually be made more successful after the fact by the goth and emo crowd who seemed to relate to its outcast leads.  The film is, The Nightmare Before Christmas , which began life as a Tim Burton poem (with illustrations) when he worked as an animator at Walt Disney Studios, and was finally given filmic life when he became a household name f...