Music: My Favorite Things Holiday Albums

TV is a little light this week, and God only knows when I'll get around to watching another movie (except maybe The Bishop's Wife), so I thought I'd look at seasonal music. Growing up, Christmas albums had a heavy influence on me; we'd put them on the turntable and listen as we hung lights and ornaments and wrapped things in tinsel. There were two records that were a must each year: Bing Crosby's White Christmas and Andy Williams' Merry Christmas. To this day it is not officially the holiday season until I've put those records on. (Well, and really the holidays officially start in our house when Santa ends the Macy's Parade, but that's another story.)

My mother had an Elvis Christmas album but I didn't have much feeling for that one. And then we had a Christy Lane album (also titled White Christmas; my mother is a minister). I do remember liking Lane's version of "Away In a Manger." It was kind of twangy.

Later I would incorporate Jimmy Buffett's Christmas Island into my regular holiday rotation. I enjoy his version of "Run, Rudolph, Run."

I guess I'm mostly a sucker for the classics, though. I don't mind some of the newer stuff, though I much prefer the upbeat to the balladic. "Jingle Bell Rock" is a good one, and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." I guess those aren't that new, but you get the idea.

And I hate "Little Drummer Boy" and all those slow, mournful types. It's already dark and cold, and though I can appreciate "Silent Night"—I've walked alone on a cold, clear night and felt that song deep in me—I can't really enjoy it.

Having grown up in a theocentric household, I do like "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Joy to the World" and all those. But my all-time favorite Christmas song? "Sleigh Ride." Preferably as sung by Mr. Williams, but just about any version will do.

Father's Day

My dad is reading my book (The K-Pro).

You have to understand, my father and I are very close. Our whole family is, really, what with me being an only child; we're a nice, tight little unit. But Dad and I have a special bond. I'm a Daddy's Girl.

So I'm both really excited and really nervous to think he's reading something I wrote.

Anyone who writes or acts or somehow produces a final product . . . And who has family and friends they very much value . . . They will understand this butterfly of feeling in knowing someone close to them is reading (watching, viewing in some way) one's work.

The good news is that Dad's early impressions are favorable. (And my dad is not someone who will gloss to spare a person's feelings. Hmm. Sounds familiar . . . Maybe I should point out he, like me, has Asperger's.) He's read two chapters, is on the third, and says he's definitely pulled in, curious to figure out what is going on. Apparently he'd been reading, but they had tickets to see Star Trek, and he found himself not wanting to put the book down and go to the movie. They did go, of course. But now he's eager to continue reading.

So it seems for this Father's Day, my dad has given me a gift greater than anything I could have given him! (But I did give him stuff. DVDs. Of Fawlty Towers and Mulberry. 'Cuz he likes those shows and needs stuff to watch over the summer.)

The State of Things

So here's where I'm at:

I've been asked to pen this script, so that's a priority. Hope to have the first draft done by the end of the month.

And there's the K-Pro book launch. I'm looking over proofs for the hard copy now. (It's already on Kindle if you want to read it that way; other formats will come online on the official launch date of March 26.)

And my Sherlock script has done well in competition (finally), though it needs some rewriting . . . But since it's just a spec/writing sample, that goes to the back. (You can read a draft of it on my Stage 32 profile under Loglines & Screenplays.)

So I'm busy and not reading as much (though I have started The Dante Club and really like it, except it's giving me grotesque dreams). And shows like Elementary, which I usually cover here, have been in repeats. Though I'll go ahead and take this moment to admit I've been late to the Community party but really enjoyed last night's Thanksgiving episode.

Revolution is coming back in a couple weeks, too, and I might try to watch it. Or not.

Lots of movies I keep meaning to see. When I have time. I'll write about those when I do. Have time. And see them.

Finally, back to London in July. Looking forward to that.

So stay tuned; I do intend to keep content up here as much as possible.

Television: Doctor Who, "The Snowmen"

I understand that one of the things that makes Doctor Who fun is its silliness and, on the whole, low production values. Though "The Snowmen" looked better than an average episode (probably by benefit of being the Christmas special), it was no less silly in a number of ways. Oh, humorous too, but in a lot of ways just silly. Sentient snow? Crystalline entities? (Hey, I remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) And what really is just an ice version of a stone angel? Though I suppose this Great Intelligence will be returning to cause more mischief.

I guess what most bothered me while watching it was (a) ripping off the Game of Thrones catchphrase, and (b) overselling the Sherlock Holmes angle. Not just by the mentions of Doyle and Strand Magazine and by the Doctor dressing in signature cloak and deerstalker, but by the very fact that this new companion—who is something of a South Park Kenny in her ability to die on a regular basis—has been set up very like Lara Pulver's version of Irene Adler. She clever and a liar, and the actress even looks a bit like Pulver. (Oh, and are we doing the dead-not-really thing again?) Yes, Steven, we know you do that Sherlock show, but please try to do something original instead of simply swirling your spit from one side of your mouth to the other.

Lack of plain logic also irked me in spots. Why couldn't she get out of the carriage? She wasn't tied up. She'd gotten in easily enough. And then, when they did let her out, she didn't leave. So . . . What was the fuss about? And why are ice people the equivalent of the last day of humanity? What are ice people going to do, exactly? What reason do they have for eliminating flesh-and-blood people? Ice doesn't need to eat, just needs to stay cold. Even with human DNA . . . What does that accomplish? Frozen corpse zombies? These things were unclear and failed to make sense, the end result being I never felt the required tension of truly believing anything was at stake.

That said, "The Snowmen" did at least set up an [possibly] interesting dynamic of having the Doctor pursue this Clara person to figure out who (or what) she is. I suppose this is meant to set the tone for the remainder of the season, and perhaps longer, depending on how long she remains the Doctor's [would-be] companion. But still, what it boils down to is: the Doctor chasing a girl. I'm not entirely sold on that. The payoff will need to be pretty spectacular, the answer to who or what she is a real stunner. I won't hazard any guesses, though if I were the one writing it . . . She'd be some kind of personification of a fixed point, not in time so much as . . . Or maybe she's a Time Lady? Who regenerates in the same form? Or maybe she's just a distraction. They did that in Sherlock Holmes, too, remember. "Red-Headed League" and all. If you send the Doctor on a chase, what are you doing behind his back when he's not looking? Just a few interesting possibilities, off the top of my head. If I took time to really think about it, I could come up with more. But I have other things to do.

I wonder if the Doctor is the reason she ends up in/as a Dalek?

Happy Holidays

. . . to all my faithful readers. Enjoying a rare break in the rain here in California.

Looking forward to a bright new year. Best to you all. ~M

Movies: Love Actually

Starring: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman
Directed By: Richard Curtis
Written By: Richard Curtis
Universal, 2003
R; 135 min
3 stars (out of 5)
_______________________________________________________

I saw this movie back when it first came out, not in the cinema but as a rental. I didn't really remember anything about it except that I'd come away vaguely unsatisfied by the whole experience, and so over time had the sense that I didn't much like this movie. But every year about this time a good many of my friends will begin to say, "Oh, and I've got to watch Love Actually! It's a modern Christmas classic!" So I began to wonder whether I'd missed something and it was better than I remembered and decided to watch it again.

Conclusion: Love Actually is better perhaps than average, but only just. Certainly, I see why people watch it at Christmas, and on the whole the storylines are hopeful, some bittersweet, but all generally palatable. But I also question the need for some of the plotlines, many of which are little more than sketches—did there used to be more of them but these were cut down for time? Why not remove them entirely then, make a whole other film? And was Rowan Atkinson supposed to be some kind of Christmas angel? I hope so, because I like that idea; I only wish there'd been more of that.

I don't know whether Love Actually was the first of these kinds of movies that take a number of plots and tie them up into a bouquet of sorts at the end (think: Valentine's Day and the like), but it must have at least been very early in that line. Although here the flowers are only tenuously held by loose ribbon: the prime minister's sister lives in the same neighborhood as his love interest, who lives next door to the woman Alan Rickman's character is . . . Well, and so on. And some of the links aren't even that clear, so that at the end it's just a bunch of people meeting at an airport, and I was sitting there asking, They know each other? Were we supposed to know that? So that it appears mostly to be a matter of convenience, or maybe just a wrap party with the cameras still running.

I take exception, too, to the portrayal of American women in this film. Was that Harriet girl supposed to be from Texas? Though I have to say, I'm not all that surprised. I travel to London pretty regularly, and I've been asked more than once by people there, after learning I'm originally from Texas, (a) where my hat is, (b) where my boots are, (c) why I don't have an accent, and/or (d) what kind(s) of horse(s) do I own. The first time a British person asked me these things, I laughed because I thought he was joking. He wasn't. And more often than not, when I'm asked these questions while traveling, they are posed in all seriousness.

Love Actually does please me, however, in confirming my deeply held belief that Liam Neeson would be the best dad ever. He's about the same age as my dad, so if he's ever looking to adopt . . . Really, though, it takes a lot to make me tear up, but that moment in which Neeson's character watches his son get a kiss from his (the son's) crush—yeah, okay, my eyes tingled a little just then.

For the most part, I liked Love Actually, though I felt it rough in a lot of places. And maybe that's a difference in cinematic styles; in my experience American films tend to be very slick and shiny, British films less so. Love Actually has a strange and interesting blend of the realistic (a family scarred by a husband's toying with his assistant while the wife tends to hearth and home, a man trying to get over the death of his wife, young love) and the fantastic (like the ugly British guy going to America and coming back with pretty girls, or the guy learning Portuguese so he can propose to a woman he's never even been able to speak to, or Hugh Grant as Prime Minister—and Emma Thompson's older brother). Therefore it comes off as half slick and shiny and half gritty, and then with all the stories that only enter in marginally (the Keira Knightly bit, and the porn star stand-ins, and Bill Nighy), there's something slightly unfinished about the whole thing. Even the stories that we're supposed to take as neatly wrapped up (like Christmas gifts?) don't really feel finished. But maybe that's the point. Life and love don't begin and end in handy plotlines; they are rough and unfinished, at least until you bow out and exit the stage.