Sometimes, it’s best to keep things simple. That’s what I’ve been doing this week. It’s a new experience for me, as I usually like to keep things as complicated as exhausting as possible. That’s also what this video does, quite effectively I think.
Enjoy!
Well, do you?
Anyway, there are two things that I particularly like about this video. One of them is the long tracking shot that follows Tove Lo as she walks back to her dressing room. It reminded me a bit of the opening to Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. I also liked the long close-up of Tove Lo sitting in her dressing room. It takes courage on the part of both the director and the performer to hold a shot for that long.
Enjoy!
Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was once the biggest movie star in the world.
At times, that’s hard to believe. Vic may have started out as a stunt man before moving on to star in westerns and action movies but Vic is now 80 and he moves slowly and with a permanent slouch. At times, he appears to be so frail that you wonder how he even manages to get out of bed in the morning. Though he still possesses the acerbic wit for which was once famous, the words now come out a lot slower and his voice is tinged with pain that is both physical and emotional. It’s been a while since Vic appeared on a movie set. After years of being a self-described asshole, Vic now spends most of his time alone. His only friend appears to be his aging agent, Sonny (Chevy Chase).
When Vic receives an invitation to attend a film festival in Nashville and accept a career achievement award, Vic goes in hopes of not only getting his ego stroked but also visiting some of the places where he grew up. It’s only once Vic has arrived that he discovers that the film festival is basically a group of wannabe hipsters hanging out in the back of a bar. Under the direction of Doug (Clark Duke), the film festival has previously given lifetime achievement awards to everyone from Al Pacino to Robert De Niro. Vic’s the first recipient to actually show up.
After a night of watching a younger version of himself and answering inane questions about his career and his turbulent personal life, Vic comforts himself by getting drunk and yelling at Doug and his friends. The next day, while the film festival continues, Vic get Doug’s sister, Lil (Ariel Winter), to drive him around Tennessee. Vic wants to visit the places of his youth. As for Lil, she just wants to get rid of her cranky passenger so that she can deal with her emotionally abusive boyfriend.
As you probably already guessed, in The Last Movie Star, Burt Reynolds may have been cast as a character named Vic Edwards but he was basically playing himself. (Director Adam Rifkin has said that he would have abandoned the film if Reynolds had turned down the role) When Vic watches himself onscreen, the clips are from Burt Reynolds’s old movies. When Vic falls asleep and has a dream in which he confronts his younger self, the film uses footage from Deliverance and Smoky and the Bandit. (“Slow down!” Vic yells as the cocky, younger version of him speeds down a country road.) When Vic considers his own mortality, it’s obvious that the aging and frail Reynolds was doing the same thing.
At the start of the film, both Vic and Reynolds seem so infirm that you wonder how he’ll ever make it through the weekend. But, as the film progresses, an interesting thing happens. Before our eyes, both Vic and the actor playing him become stronger. His confidence returns and, as Vic confronts the past, we finally start to see some hints of the old charisma that once made him the world’s biggest film star. As we watch the film, we realize that his body may be weak but his mind is still sharp. We come to realize that Vic now understands that he will die someday but he’s still not going to give up. He may accept his own mortality but he’s not going to surrender to it.
That Burt Reynolds passed away just a few month after The Last Movie Star was released adds an extra poignance to his performance in the film. The Last Movie Star has its flaws. The pacing is inconsistent and, when it comes to Vic relationship with Lil, the film too often falls back on anti-millennial clichés. In the end, the film works best as a tribute to its star. The film argues, quite convincingly, that if anyone deserved to be known as the last movie star, it was him.
Has it ever bothered you that, at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter basically gets away with nearly destroying George’s life? It’s certainly bothers me!
Well, fortunately, the lost ending of It’s A Wonderful Life has been uploaded to YouTube! Broadcast on a 1986 episode of Saturday Night Live and introduced by William Shatner (who, it must be said, really gets into introducing the clip), this clip gives George the revenge that he deserves!
As George Bailey put it: “You double-crossed me and left me alive!”
(Incidentally, I love the fact that Uncle Billy says that he talked to “Clarence at the bank.” Obviously, Clarence put those wings to good use!)
Enjoy!
Now, before anyone asks, this is not the Oscar-nominated original with Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood. Nor is it the 90s remake with Richard Attenborough and that girl who gives a hundred interviews a year about how she doesn’t care about being famous.
Instead, this is a 46-minute made-for-TV production from 1955! It stars the one and only Thomas Mitchell (you’ll remember him as Uncle Billy from It’s A Wonderful Life) as the man who might be Santa Claus!
Even though this version may not be quite the holiday masterpiece that the original is, I still like it. You really can’t go wrong with Thomas Mitchell as Santa.
Enjoy!
And remember….
THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS!
I’ll admit it. I get sentimental around Christmas time.
Actually, to be honest, I’m sentimental all the time but I’m even more so once December rolls around. Suddenly, the simplest little things can bring tears to my mismatched eyes. I find myself telling complete strangers about how much I relate to Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street and Violet Bickerstaff in It’s a Wonderful Life. December is the time of the year when I suddenly find myself walking up to my neighbors and complimenting them on how they decorated their house. I actually find myself spending more money on other people than on myself.
And I guess I’m not alone in that. I mean, that really is one of the big things about the holidays. Regardless of how cynical or snarky the world may be, it’s always safe to be sentimental in December. That’s something that’s certainly understood by the programmers at Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel. This month, both of those networks have broadcast some of the most sentimental films ever made.
Take The Christmas Pact, for instance. This film, which aired on Lifetime, was one of the most unabashedly sentimental films that I’ve ever seen. That’s not a complaint, of course. Or at least, that’s not a complaint in December. If the film had been released in October and called The Halloween Pact or maybe The Labor Day Pact, I might feel differently. But this is The Christmas Pact!
In this one, Kyla Pratt played Sadie and Jarod Joseph played Ben. They’ve grown up next to each other. They’re best friends. One year, they plant a tree and, every year after that, they meet at the tree on Christmas and they not only add a ormenant but they also discuss their Christmas wishes. It’s an incredibly sweet idea and, from the start, it’s pretty obvious that they’re meant to be together.
Unfortunately, the path of true love never runs clear. In this case, it’s partially because everyone swears that you can’t fall in love with your best friend. (I actually used to believe that but then I did fall in love with my best friend. Yay love!) It’s also because Sadie has big plans and opportunities, the majority of which involve leaving town for some place better. Can true love survive in a complicated world?
Of course it can! It’s Christmas!
Anyway, The Christmas Pact has a nice idea behind it, even if it is sometimes easy to get annoyed with just how unnecessarily difficult Ben and (especially) Sadie make things. In the end, though, Kyla Pratt and Jarod Joseph had enough chemistry to keep the story moving. As I said earlier, it’s December. Things that wouldn’t work in any other month do work in December.
That’s the magic of Christmas.
For me, Christmas Perfection was about as perfect as a Christmas film can get.
It’s all about Darcy (Caitlin Thompson), who grew up dreaming of the type of perfect Christmas that she never actually got to experience. Her parents are divorced and can hardly handle being in the same room together. Her best friend has the type of dark sense of humor that doesn’t always go along with Yuletide joy. Her best friend since childhood, Brandon (James Henri-Thomas), is obviously in love with her but Darcy continually insists that he’s just a friend. She dreams of a perfect boyfriend, one who makes every Christmas special.
Every December, Darcy sets up her Christmas village. It’s a recreation of the perfect Irish village that she always used to hear about when she was younger and it’s full of figures that are based on the people from Darcy’s life. Darcy has created the perfect world in which she wishes she could live.
And then one day, through a little Christmas magic, Darcy wakes up in her perfect village!
It’s a village where every day is Christmas. Every day, Darcy wakes up and puts on a perfect Christmas sweater. Her parents, who love each other and never fight in this perfect fantasy world, start every day with a perfectly prepared breakfast. In her perfect Christmas village, everyone gathers in the pub and dances and Darcy ends up each day by making a snowman with her perfect boyfriend, Tom (Robbie Silverman).
Everything’s perfect, right?
But then, something unexpected happens. Suddenly, Brandon shows up! It turns out that, through the same magic that transported Darcy, Brandon is now a part of the Christmas village. Brandon takes one look around and tells Darcy that this is insane. She’s created a world that’s so perfect that it’s also a prison. By creating a rigidly perfect Christmas, Darcy has lost sight of what the holiday is all about!
Darcy dismisses Brandon’s concerns. But, as day after day passes, she starts to realize that a world without spontaneity isn’t a world worth living in. Tom may be the idealized guy but that also means that, at the end of every day, he’s going to make the exact snowman in the exact same way and he’s not going to listen to Darcy’s suggestions for how they could make the snowman different. I mean, everyone knows what a snowman is supposed to look like, right?
Now, I know this might sound like it’s just a Christmas-themed version of Groundhog Day and certainly, that’s a legitimate comparison. That said, I still liked the film. It even brought tears to my mismatched, multi-colored eyes. I looked at Darcy and I watched her obsessive attempts to make the holidays perfect and, as a child of divorce, I knew exactly what she was going through. Year after year, you wonder why you couldn’t keep your parents together and you fool yourself into thinking that, if you can just get them together for one perfect day, you can magically erase all of the pain and sadness of the year before. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that and sometimes, like Darcy, we spend so much time pursuing an idealized dream that we forget that there’s still joy and happiness to be found in the messiness of reality as well. It may not always be easy to find but it’s there. You just have to be willing to look for it.
The film may be called Christmas Perfection but it’s message is that Christmas and families and friends don’t have to be perfect to be special. And that’s a good message for us all.
As our longtime readers know, I’ve never been one for false modesty. I know that there are things that I do well and I don’t see any reason not to brag about my natural talents. On occasion, I’ve been told that it can be a little off-putting but so what? As long as its justified, what’s wrong with a little arrogance?
That said, part of knowing what I can do means being honest about what I can’t do. And if there’s any job that I would absolutely suck at, it would be writing advertising jingles. I mean, there’s a reason why none of my poems ever rhyme. Coming up with pithy one-liners that will make you want to “buy! buy! buy!,” just isn’t my specialty. Fortunately, jingles themselves are no longer as important as they were back in the Mad Men era. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of one current jingle and that’s the “Liberty Liberty Liberty Lib-er-ty!” song.
(And everyone hates that!)
Fortunately, Belle Williams (Tatyana Ali), the main protagonist of Jingle Belle, doesn’t have that problem. Long ago, she abandoned New York for Ohio and she’s established herself as one of the best jingle writers around. Unfortunately, it appears that she might be losing that magic touch. As this film begins, she’s suffering from a terrible case of writer’s block. In fact, when the mayor of her hometown calls and asks her to return home and help write the annual Christmas pageant, her initial reaction is to say no. However, her boss (Loretta Devine) insists that Belle take the assignment. Perhaps a trip back home is just what Belle needs to break through her writer’s block.
Belle returns home, planning on helping the town out. What she doesn’t know is that the Christmas pageant is being directed by her ex-boyfriend and former performing partner, Michael Hill (Cornelius Smith, Jr). Can Belle and Michael set aside their differences and their complicated personal history long enough to put on a successful Christmas pageant? And how will Michael the purist react when Belle’s boss tries to turn one of their songs into an advertising jingle?
Of course, you already know the answer to all those questions. Jingle Belle is predictable even by the standards of a Lifetime Christmas movie. As I’ve said quite a bit this month, how much you enjoy this film will depend on how much tolerance you have for Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas films in general. (That’s kind of become my mantra this month.) Anyway, there’s no surprises to be found in this one but Cornelius Smith, Jr. is appropriately charismatic as Michael and the great Loretta Devine mines a lot of humor out of the role of the demanding boss.
The film’s final message is that small towns are better than big cities and you can write jingles anywhere. It’s a nice little message but, then again, it does seem like, if you work in advertising, it would be a good idea to live near the hub of the advertising industry. That said, I’ve never written a jingle in my life so I could be wrong. All I know is that, wherever Belle lives, she’ll come up with something better than the Liberty Mutual jingle and really, that’s the most important thing of all.
How do they celebrate Christmas in Tennessee?
With a lot of down home love!
Or, at least, that’s what I learned from watching this Lifetime Christmas movie.
A Christmas In Tennessee is the latest in a long line of Lifetime Christmas movies that make a big deal about where they’re set. In the past, we’ve had Christmas in Mississippi and a Christmas in Vermont and I imagine that, at some point, we’ll have a Kansas Christmas or an Iowa Christmas. The thing that these films always have in common is a strong sense of nostalgia. These are films that tell us, “You can run off to New York, California, or Toronto but your heart will always remain in either the South or one of the smaller New England hamlets.”
In the case of the film, it’s Alison Bennett (Rachel Boston) who attempted to leave town, heading off to the big city so that she could become a big time French pastry shop. However, when she became pregnant, she moved back home and got a job working in her family’s bakery. Now, years later, it appears that the bakery is about to go out of business and her daughter, Olivia, is writing letters to Santa in which she begs Santa for money. Since the town traditionally publishes all letters to Santa in the newspaper, Alison is worried that everyone is going to realize how bad her situation is.
Meanwhile, Matthew (Andrew W. Walker) has come to town. Matthew is charming and handsome and actually rather nice but he works for a real estate developer who wants to buy the town square. Matthew is ambitious. He wants a promotion. The only way he’s going to get it is to get his hands on that property. However, to do that, he has to convince Alison to sign over the land to him. Alison could really use the money but there’s no way that she’s going to betray the town that she calls home. That’s not the way things are done in Tennessee!
And then …. okay, let me stop to catch my breath here. There’s a lot going on in this movie.
*breathes*
Okay …. and then, two mysterious strangers stop by the bakery. One of them has a white beard and a jolly manner. The other is his wife and is played by Caroline Rhea. Olivia takes one look at these two strangers and decides that 1) the man is Santa Claus and 2) Santa loves her mother’s cookies! It’s time to write another letter to Santa.
Well, of course, Olivia’s letter about Santa’s favorite cookies goes viral. (It even appears as a story on “Buzz News.”) So, can Alison use her new found fame to save the town?
A Christmas in Tennessee is okay. How you react to it will probably have a lot to do with how you feel about Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas films in general. If you like them, you’ll like this one. At heart, it’s a sweet movie and both Rachel Boston and Andrew W. Walker give sincere performances. It’s an idealized version of Christmas and who doesn’t love that this time of year?
I look forward to discovering which state we’ll visit next year.
Awwwwww! Gwen and Blake are so cute together.
There’s a lot of reasons why this video works but really, it all comes down to charisma and chemistry. Gwen and Blake look like they should be celebrating Christmas together and, when you watch, you want to celebrate with them. This video was directed by Sophie Muller, who has directed over 230 videos since the late 80s!
Enjoy and Merry Christmas!
Through the Shattered Lens