Christmas Cinema Part 2 (With Extras!)

I haven't been as consistent with the movie watching as I would have liked (in other news, I DID get the dissertation proposal written, so, yay) but I managed to find a few new gems and a couple of oldies I haven't mentioned before. For some reason, I am turning completely sappy in my old age, and that means I am crying at absolutely everything. Unless I mention otherwise, assume I cried at some point during the watching of these Christmas movies (and TV episodes, too). As with any good party buffet, let's start with the cheese:

- 12 Men of Christmas
(There were no tears here - I wouldn't have minded, as the idea of a festive holiday firefighter/beefcake calendar should be worthy of a few joyous ones, but... no.) Oh, Kristin Chenowith, I adore you, and you are always watchable, but even your presence here can't save this poor, well-intentioned travesty. It's ridiculous (in the 'itching in the back of the neck' way) and sappy (in the 'nuts, I think my feet are stuck' way) and it just doesn't work. Also, your editor should send his Internet diploma back, as moving a couple of scenes to their correct locations would have really helped to make the acting make sense; and your screenplay writer(s?) should send their cereal box Author's Guild Secret Decoder ring in for repairs because suddenly shoehorning in a Pride and Prejudice spin halfway through the film and then dropping it again is not the best way to use and abuse a classic. Jane Austen hates you, and she was actually OK with the zombies. Try again next year, and please try to find a co-star a little closer to your own height - or if he's big enough, make sure he carries you everywhere. You're so wee, it couldn't do any more damage to his back than practically folding in half every time he's supposed to kiss you already does. Hugs!

- A Christmas Wish

(Bingo.) This is the kind of movie the Lifetime Channel was designed to cherish - low-budget, low production values, big heart. It was actually a recommendation from the longtime movie reviewer at the Deseret News, so I checked it out. Kristy Swanson (formerly known as the original 'Buffy: The Vampire Slayer') is so sweet and charming, and K.C. Clyde (the rebellious/reformed elder from The Best Two Years) is almost compulsively watchable. The sorriest part of the movie was that they didn't get enough screen time together! Yes, the script is a little flimsy in places. Yes, there are contrivances all over the place. Yes, there are adorable children, and the requisite 'Christmas miracle' accompanied by the 'Christmas change-of-heart.' It's all there, right down to the awkward title changed by Lifetime to a different, equally awkward title. (Five gold stars to anyone who figures out the original title just from watching the movie!) ((Also, there's another movie called THE Christmas Wish, and it stars Neil Patrick Harris and Debbie Reynolds. I am so disappointed in myself that I did not know about this earlier! To iTunes!)

- Christmas Angel
(Sniffles. Definite sniffles.) K.C. Clyde's second appearance on this year's review list; and boy am I glad he was in this movie, because the female lead was about as stiff and interesting as a yard stick until he got her to laugh at something. Here, Salt Lake City is (fairly cleverly, actually) a stand-in for Chicago, and includes a cancer patient, Secret Santa-ing, and a dog (the dog does not speak, or have cancer). It's yet another flick born for Lifetime! I'll probably watch it again next year, but only because it's turning out that I'll watch K.C. Clyde in anything. Apparently.

Onward: Naturally, I revisited Christmas in Connecticut and The Holiday. Took at little jaunt with Queen Latifah in The Last Holiday (she is just fabulous in EVERYTHING). Finished up all the Doctor Who Christmas specials (four more days! Wheeee!). Today, I found my new favorite Christmas movie.

- Arthur Christmas
LOVE. Lovelovelovelovelove this movie. I was enthralled and delighted from the opening sequence, and found the entire film to be so very clever and snarky and adorable and FUN. It was great, too, to realize that there were quite a few homages to other films happening, and that I would probably need to go see it again very soon to figure out all the ones I missed. Like, tomorrow. The pacing is perfect, the design is gorgeous and everyone in it is totally charming. You should go see it. (It's BRILLIANT. And I liked it a lot.)

Hi, Arthur! Go ahead and send those back to that judge in New York -
(SPOILERS) it's pretty important if they're going to finish the movie!

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A few other things that have been making me happy this Christmas season:

- This ad(vert) from British department store Jon Lewis (of course I cried)
- Two tunes from Straight No Chaser that always make me grin: 12 Days of Christmas and Christmas Can-Can
- This really is possibly the greatest family Christmas letter ever written.

- Oh, and I almost forgot... How great is THIS?!?

SO GREAT.

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4 more days!

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Adult Content

Warning: the following post will be rant-y, and a little bit high-horse-y, and will go over some things that (in an ideal world) your average 15-year-old knows nothing about. There won't be any swears (I don't think) or inappropriate pictures of people doing inappropriate things, and content will stay (as they say) Safe For Work. Still, it is 'Adult Only' stuff. (Oh, and males will most likely not want to read on, either.) You've been warned.

But come on - if you can't rant and rave and wax self-righteously philosophical (I'm not saying that WILL happen, it's just a possibility) to the larger of-age public over the Interwebs, who can you rant to?







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I'll say this just one more time: tights are not pants. (Or, more alliteratively for the English among us, - if any are still reading - 'Tights are not trousers.') The fiasco at BYU-Idaho over a girl being kicked out of the testing center for wearing skinny jeans has been ridiculous, of course, but at least people are talking about what actually comprises modesty. I have my own opinion of skinny jeans, but while they are generally very, um, slim-fitting (occasionally to the point of wrinkling and rolling at the slightest movement, like, say, breathing) at least the denim usually keeps other things from becoming apparent. (The abomination known as 'jeggings' will never, ever enter the 'jeans' category. Or the 'cute in any context at all' category.)

On the bus the other day there was a girl wearing a puffy coat and full-head fur hat - and leggings that were probably actually tights, as I think I could have drawn the pattern of the lace of her underwear even though she was sitting several rows away. That is far too much information for public consumption! Also, it's just plain stupid if the rest of you is bundled up for a trip to the Antarctic. Please, please, let us resist the madness and not forget that at its heart, modesty means making sure that everything you've got (or even just part of what you've got) is not on FULL display. It's kind of like the prize case at Chuck E. Cheese: every last option for you to redeem your Skee-ball tickets is there in bright, garish color, but after a few minutes you realize it's all just cheap crap. (Oh, yeah, I said it.) More flattering lighting, less junk competing for attention, some elegant drapery, a little mystery - when it's not handed out all willy-nilly, suddenly the value goes WAY up. Plus it just looks better. (And helps prevent pneumonia.)

Modesty: The Great Multi-Tasker.

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For some reason, this week at church I realized that I would have made a really fantastic mother. I would have taught responsibility, and fun, and self-worth, and an awareness of the larger world, and serving others, and all those things that would make happy, secure, productive, community-minded individuals. I also realized it's just not going to happen. My time and the Lord's time are not the same, I get that, but in my time (biologically speaking) the end is nigh. I'm no Sarah in the desert, and I certainly haven't got an Abraham. I'm giving it one more year (maybe two, 40 is a nice round number) before letting go completely. After that - well, I don't want to think about that for just a little while longer.

See? Adult. Kids just don't get this stuff.

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I was going to do a whole section here on obscenity, the 'big one' in particular, and how useless and moronic society has made the word SO CAN EVERYONE PLEASE JUST STOP USING IT SO UGLY LAZY GAH, particularly the 10-year-old kid this morning who tossed it off like it was a lyric from the Muppet Show who couldn't honestly have had any real conception of what the word actually MEANS.

And then I decided that that would probably make it's own post at some point in the future, so I stopped.

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A few days ago a got a letter from the campus medical centre recommending that I come in for a pap smear. I can barely remember the last one, so I figured a) things wouldn't be as busy now that the term is over, and b) I could also try for a general checkup as well as suggestions for a dermatologist and an osteopath while I was there. (Note: Honestly, it's completely ridiculous that I'm nearly 38 and still have the complexion of a pizza-faced teenager. If I have to keep the skin I'd like to have the body and metabolism as well, thank you very much.) I went in for my appointment today and learned a few interesting things: namely, medical professionals the world over don't register a person telling them they don't have sex. It just doesn't hit their radar. Granted, this is a college campus, but it took three different references to 'intercourse' (from the nurse) and an explanation (on my part) about the difficulties with the physical exam before she understood that I haven't had sex. Ever. I think she nearly fell out of her chair when it finally came clear. The good news is that the chances of me ever developing cervical cancer are practically nil, and my next appointment for a pap smear will definitely come on a 'you call us, we won't call you' basis.

It makes me a little angry, and a little sad, that this experience was so shocking for the nurse. SURELY there are other people out there living by standards other than those society has devolved to. Surely it's even more unreasonable to assume that I'm the only virgin at the University - though judging from the nurse's reaction, she hasn't seen any of the rest come through the medical centre! (Which in some ways stands to reason, I suppose, as there are fewer health problems to worry about.) It was just another shock to her system when she also heard I don't smoke or drink - 'Where are you from?' she asked. I felt like saying 'Another planet, evidently', but instead just stuck with 'Salt Lake City, UT.' There are far more accurate responses I could have made, but the poor woman had had enough trauma for one day.

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Whew! Now I'm worn out. It's OK if nobody actually read this all the way through (you sensitive souls, you) I just needed to tell somebody. Well, 'somebody'.






If you are still here, look! There's a 'Coming Soon!' And it's for Christmas movie reviews and an awesome sugar cookie design and things which are much more merry and bright (and family-friendly)!

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Christmas Break

This is some of my research and reading to do over the Christmas holiday.

Looks like it's a good thing I'm not going home, after all -
I don't think I would have made it on the plane!

Lost and Found

I found my purpose today.

Last week an English friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to a stage version of an old British children's show called Bagpuss. She sent me YouTube links so I'd have some idea what it was about, and was so excited I agreed to go and bought the tickets as her Christmas present.

We went to the matinee showing on campus today, and were almost certainly the only (university) students in the room. The rest of the audience was made up of parents and very small children, and a few elderly folks (one of whom, we suspect, may have been the original illustrator on the TV series). The show is about a fat, floppy, stuffed 'cloth' pink-and-white-striped cat named (called) Bagpuss, owned by a little girl named Emily. Bagpuss lives in a shop where nothing is sold - instead, Emily brings in items she has found, and Bagpuss and the other toys tell stories about the items, clean them up, and leave them in the shop window so they can be claimed by their owners. The stage production starts with a modern-day grown-up young lady coming into the closed-up shop and carefully uncovering the toys, only to be surprised when the somewhat old-fashioned (and much younger) Emily enters and begins telling a story - acting as puppeteer with the toys and inviting the visitor to play along. They eventually tell stories for three 'found' objects, and the grown-ups in the audience realize that the visitor is actually the adult Emily, come back to visit the shop where she used to play out stories with her father (who has very recently died).*

It was very sweet, charming, with a simple set-up and easy-flowing structure - and honestly, I cried. One doesn't generally get to literally play with the child one once was! The show was just lovely, and I think my friend and I had the most fun of anyone there (even with me going teary every few minutes). We danced, we sang along, we waved and laughed and behaved like (very nice) children... I wish I'd done more of that when I was a child! (And a teenager. And mid-twenties. I've done pretty well for the last decade or so.)

For all that it's my field of study, I'm not usually moved to tears (or dancing) in the theatre. I think that what this means is I should be making children's theatre, and finding ways to get paid to get kids to sing and dance and clap and laugh. The most interesting, memorable (in the good way) pieces of theatre I've seen in the last couple of years have been for kids - and if I've cried, and remembered, that means they were for me, too.

I'd better get to the children's section in a bookstore pronto - looks like I have some research to do!

* It was even a little more heart-tugging for those in the know: the original Emily was played by the daughter of the show's creator. 

Note to Self (Do It NOW)

I have learned (through painful experience, the way in which the most effective lessons seem to be delivered) that it is fairly important for me to act immediately when a reminder or a new idea occur to me. I'd like to say that's because I receive a lot of spiritual promptings which, when obeyed, save lives and lighten hearts on a regular basis, but the truth is that I have a holey memory. Hole-y. Like Swiss cheese - old, dried-up, crumbling, faintly green, and full-of-holes Swiss cheese into which excellent ideas and motivations rapidly fall, never to be seen again... or at least not until it's too late to get off the bus and take care of them. I've trained myself to pause before leaving my bedroom or going up or down the stairs to see if I have everything I need or if I've forgotten anything - still not foolproof (shut up) but a definite improvement. Also, in addition to remembering things I need to pick up or put away or turn off or whatever, I have lots of good ideas - but those ideas have an extremely limited shelf life on the extremely unstable middle-aged shelf that is my brain. An idea may teeter for a few seconds, but if I don't grab it and do something about it (like nail it down with a mental thumbtack and a mental shoe, otherwise known as 'take care of it regardless of current activity') it falls quickly and silently into the abyss below the top of my spinal column. (I've told y'all how much I hate to exercise, right?)

ANYWAY, if I think "I should turn off the heater before I leave", DO IT NOW. When it occurs to me that I ought to take an umbrella today and should put one in my bag, DO IT NOW. After preparing a potential dissertation topic presentation and then realizing that the 2,000-word proposal for that dissertation is due two weeks later,

look up the requirements from the course

go online and find sample dissertation proposals so that you know how it should look

get the resources together/at least skim the books/find journal articles

AND DO IT TWO WEEKS AGO, NOT TWO DAYS BEFORE IT'S DUE.




Honestly, it's not like you're going to be able to play the "well, now I know what I should do for my next Master's degree" card AGAIN. Figure it out, and do it now.

Sheesh.

Christmas Cinema Part 1

It's time for my (now officially) annual month-long holiday film fest, with mini-reviews. Please feel free to add thoughts and suggestions!

The Blind Side has now been slated as the token Thanksgiving movie - there's a dinner! And a kid dressed as an Indian! And gooey heart-tugging family goodness! What more do you want?

I started off this season with While You Were Sleeping - still adorable. It's aged really well, and is all about a Christmas/New Year's miracle without being cheesy enough to actually SAY that. OK, no, really, it's about Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman being cute in proximity to Christmas trees and poinsettias, and that works for me too.

Oh, yeah. He's leaning.

I don't understand this
 movie poster. I really don't.

A couple of new additions this year (I love finding new holiday movies): The Thin Man and Holiday Affair. As you've probably already guessed, these are Hollywood 'classics'. I'd heard of The Thin Man before, and wasn't really surprised to find it was a murder mystery that happens to take place over Christmas and New Year's. Goodness, Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) are fun together - it's no surprise this film spawned a whole series of sequels and is (most likely) the prototype for "the couple that investigates, flirts, and squabbles together stays together" formula. Holiday Affair proves that the love triangle pre-dates Twilight and the entire YA-fiction genre by a good fifty years, and that a precocious, adorable child (missing a couple of front teeth, natch) is the linchpin for a 'feel good' family schlockfest. It's darling, and if you've only ever seen Janet Leigh being murdered in Psycho this would make a nice holiday change of pace for you.

Not that cellphane isn't a good look for Janet, but you know
a man art-directed this marketing.  No woman would be caught
dead in cellophane in December. Brrrrr.

I'll be running back through last year's list, repeating some and adding others, and my current project is re-watching the Doctor Who Christmas specials; I've done The Christmas Invasion, Runaway Bride, Voyage of the Damned, and The Next Doctor - I've just got A Christmas Carol left and a brand-new one to look forward to in a few weeks (based on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe). Also, happy of happies - there's going to be a two-hour Downton Abbey Christmas special! I just might have to re-watch Series 1 and 2 to get ready for it! Merry Christmas to ME. Study? Write a dissertation? Pish - it's the holidays!

Christmas Cinema Part 2 coming... eventually!

I'd be willing to bet Asta (the dog) is a Doctor Who fan.

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Thinking Out Loud

Over the past few weeks I've had a couple of misunderstandings with my roommate (a super-nice girl) and they seem pretty generally to have stemmed from a little bit of miscommunication and a whole mess of assumptions. Basically, I find myself screwing up because I'm operating on the basis of information that I assume to be true... and it's not. So how do I stop? Making assumptions is a pretty ingrained practice, an efficiency strategy/coping mechanism - kind of the 'organic' version of computer cookies. (Mmmm, cookies.) A lot of the time it works just fine; you make decisions and move forward based on things that have happened before, or 'common sense', and save yourself the trouble of checking and double-checking day-to-day details. So how do you change the practice when you're getting the details wrong and making mistakes due to that faulty information?

I have a theory.

I've been writing about this in the journal part of my school notebook, and just today I had another screw-up (at least this time it was only a problem for myself, not anyone else). I decided to write it out here to remind myself to work on applying it a little better - one of my assumptions, I think, is that my memory is as good as it's ever been, when in all honesty it's starting to slip. I need the reminders. (I am my mother's daughter.) ((Sorry, Mom.)) Part of the trick to all of this is that I'm not always aware that I'm making an assumption about something that should actually be questioned. The challenge, then, is to create a new paradigm in which I actively (and routinely) question everything about which an assumption would otherwise be made.

I think: As with most things, communication is key. And more than that, transparency may be key to communication. Yes, my roommate and I need to get into the habit of talking more often if we're going to communicate better (duh, for a start). Once we're talking, transparency may mean adopting a sort of running Twitter feed: if I am very clear about my activities and intentions (whether or not they may affect someone else) I may become very boring and not at all sought after at parties, BUT the people I'm communicating with will be more able and motivated to correct assumptions I may not have recognized in order to question.

For example, if you need something from me and you tell me you're leaving 'around' a certain time; and if I say not only 'I'm going to run out to take care of that errand for you' but also '...and I thought I'd stop at the store for a few groceries while I'm out...' (because I assume that you are taking your car and that your schedule isn't particularly pressing); then you can follow up with 'I'm not sure I can wait that long - my ride will be here in five minutes!' which tells me that you are a) traveling with other people, and b) that your schedule is actually defined. My assumptions are corrected because you were able to give me information I didn't realize I needed, I can run the errand without detours and you head off happy. If I operate under a policy of 'full disclosure' instead of 'minimal effort' I may help to create fewer misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

Note to self: Anyone wishing to stop making assumptions (or, operating as though assumptions are always true) must be prepared to be corrected, sometimes indignantly, as transparent communication disrupts the assumptions of those you're communicating with. If, on the other hand, those corrections are not made, than transparent communication on your part means you're off the hook responsibility-wise if information isn't shared. Also, if you pay more attention, listen more carefully, observe body language, (etc...) you'll become more skillful at figuring out when questions are needed. And, really, it never hurts to ask. Or, at least, it hurts more later if you don't ask.

Ergo: When you think you know something, check on it. (Isn't that the old carpenter's rule? 'Measure twice, cut once'?) Bus schedules, birthdays, study topics, quoting somebody... even if you think you know, check. (That way you won't be standing out in the cold for half an hour, stewing over a bus that hasn't shown up, when all you had to do was walk ten feet to look at the posted schedule and realize you were wrong - there wasn't a bus scheduled to arrive then, doofus - and you'd still have had time to work something else out.)
Also: be transparent, particularly in regards to plans and immediate/future activities. It's far more frustrating to try to fix something you messed up later!

Okay, more later...  I think I'd better go check one more thing for my schedule for next week! (And then maybe look at the whole thing again...)

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Christmas video reviews starting soon! (Hopefully tomorrow!)

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