Silver Screen

Hello World, And so here we find ourselves, perched precariously upon the very threshold of the 3rd Sunday in Advent already, with scarcely a week to go before Santa’s big day, with all of the candy canes, jingle bells, and holly berries that entails, and don't spare the sugar plums, my good man! Nowadays, even a brief jaunt around town offers plenty of opportunity for spotting elaborate holiday decorations on lawns and buildings, vehicles sporting antlers and reindeer noses, plus lots crammed with evergreen trees and wreaths, and enough shiny red bows to rival the voluminous amount of red tape produced by the federal government on a regular basis. (Oh, hit that easy target!) It may just be my (admittedly over-active) imagination, but it seemed that Hanukkah came early this year, so it's already pretty much out of the way - and just as well for it, I will say, or else get trampled by the ho-ho-holly and jolly jingle bell juggernaut behind it, warming the cockles of the hearts of merchants all over the world. (Or perhaps their wallets might be a more appropriate designation under the circumstances.) All of which reminds me of a recent front-page story in our local newspaper, touting the seasonal attractions to be enjoyed in the region, and inviting me to bring the whole family for a tour of the new Christmas Village in a nearby shopping center, complete with what they described as a full-size replica of Santa’s Workshop for young and old alike. Obviously they took pains to identify it as a “replica,” as if that’s a real place to start with, and not just some bogus marketing ploy dreamed up off the top of their heads. Ho-ho-hokum, is what I say, and that’s not just a bunch of fruitcake, believe me. Elsewhere on the local scene, we had already determined that last Saturday was the time to head to our neighborhood VFW and pick up our Christmas tree for this year, gracing our hearth and home with its twinkling lights and heavenly fragrance, and not to mention, making spirits bright by its very presence. In an auspicious turn of events, we arrived at the lot just as it was starting to snow, which really lent an air of holiday cheer to the whole experience, turning it into a real Currier & Ives sort of occasion, with thoughts of sleigh bells and bob-tail nags adding a Jack Frost touch to the winter wonderland. We found they had a wide selection of lovely trees, which surprised me because of recent stories about potential tree shortages, due to production problems in 2009, when the current crops of trees were originally planted. Many had quite beautiful shapes, big and little alike, and with all of them covered with snow, it looked for all the world like a magical fairyland, just waiting for elves and snowmen to pop out and complete the picture. We had no trouble picking out a tree that we liked, and while it ended up being a little bit smaller than what we usually go for, it had the all-around good shape that we need, since we put it up in the middle of our living room, and can’t hide “the bad side” away in a corner, like other people can. All of our cats now are seasoned veterans of yuletides past, so trees in the house are old hat to them at this point, exciting neither curiosity nor terror in any of them. Frankly, if it's terror I'm looking for, I really just need to launch into a few choruses of "Good King Wenceslas," and guaranteed to do the trick. I don't think anyone needs to be reminded of what a persnickety curmudgeon I am (ill-mannered snickering from our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery is purely superfluous to this generally accepted maxim) but it always surprises me when anyone decides to make a new recording of an older song, and then they seem to just go ahead and make up the words as they go along, without bothering to verify beforehand that they have the correct lyrics in the first place. This is especially egregious with a well-known standard ("Happy Birthday" springs immediately to mind) where everybody in the world already knows the words, so that even trifling mistakes in the new version really stand out like a sore thumb, as it were. I find this commonly happens with holiday music, only some of which is excused by those creaky old wheezers, like "O Tannenbaum" or "O Come, All Ye Faithful," which have been translated from other languages so many times over the centuries, that there is no one definitive translation that everyone agrees on. Sometimes lyrics are changed for cultural reasons ("goodwill to men" changed to "goodwill to all" for the sake of inclusivity, for example) or to eliminate outmoded terms that people don't understand anymore. But sometimes, it's none of the above, and you can't help but wonder who was asleep at the switch when they unleashed these verbal projectiles on an unsuspecting public. I think we can all spot the problem areas in Billy Idol's retelling of the classic yuletide charmer, "Silver Bells:" =================== Strings of stop lights Even star lights Blink a bright red and green As the shoppers run home with their presents See the snow brush Hear the kids laugh This is Santa's big day And above all the glitter, you hear ..... ==================== Star lights? Snow brush?? Honestly, the poor beleaguered writer of this beloved classic no doubt went to a lot of trouble making sure that the words rhymed and made sense, only to have it all turned into gibberish in one fell swoop - and I might add, without even the flimsy excuse of faulty translations to fall back on. Snow brush, indeed. Of course, you can't get this far into the Christmas season without suddenly being overwhelmed with blockbuster movies flying at you from all sides, and this year no different, I can assure you. We have a well-earned reputation for not going to see new movies as soon as they open, in a concerted effort to avoid the crowds, but even we realized that we waited way too long to go see “Thor: Ragnorak” in glorious IMAX 3-D, after it had been unceremoniously ousted by the new “Justice League of America” flick in there instead, thanks not. Unfortunately, we also waited too long to enjoy “JLA” in glorious IMAX 3-D as well, because it quickly found itself booted out of the way by the even newer “Coco,” and once again, thanks ever so much not. We finally managed to scramble out and see “Justice League” in the regular version, and it was a lot more entertaining than we had expected, all things considered. I thought the special effects were very well done, and didn't suffer from lack of 3-D or IMAX in any way, which is really saying something. We really didn't hold out much hope for it to start with – especially after the disappointment of “Wonder Woman” (and “Batman vs Superman,” which we didn't even go see) – but we were pleasantly surprised at this new offering. I thought that Wonder Woman worked well with other players in the DC multi-verse like Batman and Superman, the new Flash was adorably awkward, and even Aquaman was much less ridiculous than I would have guessed. It had an interesting story that held together for the most part (unlike the bewildering and haphazard meanderings of “Wonder Woman,” for instance) and certainly didn't lack for explosions, battle sequences, high-tech gadgets, and plenty of welcome humor along the way. (“Children, I work with children,” Wonder Woman groans at one point, in what may literally be my favorite line from a comic book movie of all time.) It actually made me look forward to whatever might be next on tap from the DC studio’s gallery of super heroes, which will certainly be here before we know it, the way things go nowadays. Heck, with enough notice, we might even get out there and see it while it's still at the IMAX in glorious 3-D, and that’s not just a lot of kryptonite, by golly. This is normally where I would be saying something to the effect that we finally became the last people in the entire galaxy to go see the new Thor movie – but for a dinner-time show on a Wednesday, I admit that I was surprised at how many people were right in there with us, especially more than a month after its release. It got great reviews, which is not always a guaranteed result in the Marvel Studios multi-verse, and being a big fan of Thor, his diabolical brother Loki, and The Incredible Hulk, I had high hopes for it. As an added bonus, we found yet another Marvel character, Dr. Strange, making a surprise cameo, more or less out of the blue. They also tossed in a motley assortment of other new characters, killed off a bunch of older ones, and wound up with a sort of half-baked mish-mash that didn't necessarily hold together as well as might have been intended. It did have excellent special effects, and certainly kept careening along without let-up, so that nobody was going to fall asleep in the middle, that's for sure. But it seemed to be trying to strike a balance between a screwball buddy movie, and a nihilistic Greek tragedy, and missing the mark on both ends of the spectrum. I found it too bloody and depressing overall to be really funny, while at the same time, way too goofy to take seriously on any level. Of course, Thor has already had 3 of his own films, as well as 3 with the Avengers, and it presents quite a challenge to keep this material fresh enough to appeal to new audiences and old fans alike, I'm sure. Maybe that's the reasoning behind singers making up new lyrics to old songs, after all. As for me, I see that the star lights are blinking a bright red and green, so I'm going to grab my snow brush and silver bells, and run home with my presents, or my name isn't - Good King Wenceslas