Scrooged: The Best Christmas Film Ever...

Without a shadow of a doubt my favourite Christmas film of all time is "Scrooged", a 1988 American comedy starring none other than Bill Murray (hmm, there seems to be a theme developing on my film bloggage). A modernisation of the classic Dickens (and only Dickens I have ever been able to stomach) "A Christmas Carol" this is a brilliant, brilliant film, and here is why...

First of all, this Christmas film stars BILL MURRAY. Oh what can I say about Bill that hasn't been said before. He is a comedic genius, a brilliant actor and a discerning one, which,in a world where remakes and other crap are hurled at our cinema screens on a weekly basis, makes me love him even more. In "Scrooged", filmed four years after the success of "Ghostbusters" he plays Frank Cross, a television mogul and our modern-day Ebeneezer Scrooge. Frank is at the top of his profession, he is rich, he is respected and he is a total bastard. From firing his staff on Christmas Eve for daring to question him, to asking a man to staple antlers to a dormouse's head, there is nothing that this man will not do to further himself and his career. And the pinnacle of this career will be the live-action broadcast of Dicken's immortal classic "Scrooge" (damn you Americans, it's "A Christmas Carol"!) on Christmas Eve.

Also, this film includes a zombie. How much more could you ask for in a festive treat? John Forsythe (or Blake Carrington as I remember him) is the first "ghost", Frank's mentor Lew who returns to his office as a corpse  straight from the golf course, who fountains out scotch like a sprinkler through his decaying body. The other three ghosts are no less impressive. David Johansen is the Ghost of Christmas Past, a chain-smoking taxi driver with a New York drawl ("Face it, garden slugs got more outta life than you.") Carol Kane is my favourite as the Ghost of Christmas Present, a delicate pixie with a voice that could grate cheese and a penchant for violence ("Sometimes you have to slap them in the face just to get their attention!") And,  finally, a hideous Jim-Hensen-in-Hell-style contraption is led in for the ghost that all men fear, the Ghost of Christmas Future.

Oh Frank, let's not fight...

Alfre Woodward as Grace, Frank's long suffering assistant, fills the shoes of Bob Cratchett with her mute son Calvin stepping in as an utterly adorable Tiny Tim (a role often given over to sickeningly punchable little urchins). We also have Eliot Loudermilk played by Police Academy's Bobcat Goldthwait as the poor unfortunate tossed out of the building and his job by Frank on Christmas Eve. He appears throughout the film in varying states of desperation as he drowns his sorrows before appearing for the finale to give that wonderful trademark voice of his a good showing. Finally we have the beautiful Karen Allen, as Frank's long lost love and charitable angel of good deeds, Claire. And my god, if you don't shed a tear when she appears for her final scene you are made of stone.

Niagara Falls, Frankie baby

The lessons of the story remain the same but the details are pure eighties and it always fascinates me how relevant these still are today. The eighties was the era of Wall Street of course and the motto of "greed is good". Of course Frank is not a trader but he is a hard-hearted and stinkingly rich guy who has trod over many people to get where he is; the corner office of a mirrored Manhattan skyscraper. Now we stand two decades away from this film with protests around the world against corporate injustice and "big money" at the expense of the little people and a general sense that the mess that we're in is from decades of selfishness and avarice. 

Living in London for the last decade I am also profoundly aware of how many shivering figures I walk past on the street on my way home to my warm house. For a comedy film, the scenes depicting New York's homeless are both touching and thought provoking. There are people who need help and to float past with your eyes averted is to close yourself off from life. For what is the Christmas spirit if we don't carry it with us all through the year?

Do it for Eva!

I can't help also but think about the hold the media has over the holidays and indeed over the rest of our lives. Frank's desire for people to be afraid to miss the Christmas Eve show mirrors all those must-see shows we are now bombarded with. The need to see, to watch overrides the need to experience and live. But what are we missing whilst we are glued to the latest episode of X-Factor? (Clue - it's not on the other channel!) All I can say is that Ghost of Christmas future's face is a television screen.

Murray's portrayal of Frank from a dark miserly soul to enlightened Christmas fan is beautiful to watch. He really appears to relish the chance to play the bad guy. But it is the final scene that gets me right in the chest. Finally seeing the light, Frank interrupts the live show and Murray gets a chance to speak directly to the film audience through the camera lens. His wild-haired, wide-eyed and impassioned monologue on the joys of Christmas, life, love, generosity and being merry is one of the most brilliant things I have seen on film. Riding his comedy high, this is a sermon worthy of the best preachers. Culminating with a whole cast rendition of Al Green and Annie Lennox's "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" this is way more uplifting than Dickens. Over to you Frank...

"It's Christmas Eve. It's the one night when we all act a little nicer. We smile a little easier. We share a little more. For a couple of hours we are the people we always hoped we would be... It can happen every day! It can happen to you! I believe in it now."

Have a Merry Christmas. Everybody.

11.22.63 by Stephen King

Last month Stephen King published his fifty fourth novel "11.22.63". First of all, let me say that I am a huge Stephen King fan. I think he is one of the best storytellers to put pen to paper and a keen observer of human nature. However, it was with a whimper of vague relief that I finished this giant tome earlier today.

In "11.22.63" King combines one of the great American stories and one of the great literary premises, the assassination of President Kennedy and the idea of time travel. In an interview King admitted that he first had the idea for this novel in 1971 when he was a school teacher but found the research required too overwhelming to manage at the time. With hindsight he is glad he waited but I can't help feel that this story was allowed to stagnate in his brain for too long as what has come out is a bloated and messy novel, with just a few hints of the greatness I know Stephen King is capable of.

Let's start with the premise. Our hero Jake Epping, a divorced school teacher is convinced by his local diner proprietor, Al to go back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination from happening. They are going to do this through a little hole in time-space-reality at the back of Al's diner marked by what appears to be an invisible concrete step that spits you out into 1958. Hmmm. I wasn't convinced.

Even less convincing was the fact that Al managed to persaude Jake of the importance of his mission at all. They barely seemed more than acquaintances at best and whilst Al was adamant that a world with JFK would be a better one, little was done to show us that Jake held deep seated convictions of his own in this vein or indeed that he thought much of Kennedy at all. In fact Jake admits several times during the book that his historical knowledge is basic, at best so what on earth would cause him to hold so fiercely to the idea that saving Kennedy would be a good thing? Throughout his time-travelling adventures Jake refers frequently to the "butterfly effect" with some wariness. What kind of effect on history is he having just by being in 1958? However, he never seems to contemplate that making an enormous change like saving a US president from assassination would have any effect other than good on the course of history, specifically stopping the Vietnam War from ever happening. I found myself harking back to "The Dead Zone" where the hero has a glimpse of a terrifying future and sets out to change it in the present. Jake had no idea what he was letting himself or the world in for and still launched himself into the task with what seemed to me to be ill-informed gusto. For most of the book I just wasn't sure that what he was doing was right and that was the major problem for me.

So Jake heads back to 1958 and takes the pseudonym George Amberson. What we have from here on out is an all out nostalgia trip. This is the land of King's childhood, which having read "On Writing" a half autobiographical look at his craft, I know is  a precious memory  to the man. Everything tastes better in the past . Everything is cheap. Everything is pure and innocent. Although it must be said that King's view is not entirely rose-tinted as hefty reminders of racism and prejudice are scattered throughout just to remind the reader how far we have come. 

There was a shining beacon of excitement for me when George/ Jake visited post-"IT" Derry and encountered some familiar faces. Call me a geek but I love it when King pulls his worlds together into one SK universe. The frisson created by the undulating violence  and horror of Derry is mirrored for an instant when George/ Jake finally arrives in Dallas to carry out his mission (in fact Dallas isn't done any favours at all by King, he clearly hates the place) but then that is lost again as George/ Jake moves to small town Jodie and becomes... a school teacher. Exciting stuff. We are then treated to what, to be honest seemed like endless pages of school and small town stories interspersed with scenes where George/ Jake occasionally stalks would-be assassin Oswald and his family.

The main storyline for the seemingly unedited mid-section is the love story of George/ Jake and school librarian Sadie . A likeable couple, I didn't really want them to fail although I felt that we spent a little too much time with their blossoming romance at the expense of the pace of the story. What really dismayed me about this romance was the physical side.  Stephen King has never been great at sex scenes but these were bad. Really bad. Sadie and George/ Jake might be having a great time in bed, but I honestly just wanted it to be over.  Apparently King has been nominated for a Bad Sex Award on the back of this book and I can truly say that it is well-deserved. *shudder* 

Although I would never profess to be enormously knowledgeable about the details of the Kennedy assassination, King has clearly found some time to do some homework on this. The "real-life" characters of the Oswalds and their acquaintances are really cleverly and brilliantly portrayed, particularly as there is little real interaction between our hero and narrator and those people. Oswald is an immature, unstable wife-beater but the   character is not two-dimensional,  as his overbearing mother  and his family's poverty  are shown as examples  of the things that went wrong for this troubled man.   

In terms of horror there are very few   classic King moments, but this is no real disservice to the book. Aside from the inevitable force of violence that is Oswald, the other villain of the piece is the past itself which we are constantly reminded is "obdurate". Turns out the past doesn't want to be changed, which again makes you wonder why George/ Jake is so insistent to bend it to his will.

*SPOILER ALERT* 

And the assasination itself? Well, King leaves us in no doubt as to his views on the many conspiracy theories about that day. However, what could have been a really interesting ending is frankly a little rushed and a little overdone. We are treated to a narrative that covers exactly one hour in a 2011 where Kennedy survived and we get a potted alternative history that throws some curve-balls at some well-known names and is generally a bit depressing. But we get no real answer as to whether this happened because of Kennedy's ongoing presence or just because time doesn't like being messed with. The moral of the story seems to be "what will be will be" which I am happy with as a general rule for life, but it kind of made me wonder why I had to read nearly 1000 pages to get to that.

*SPOILER OVER*

This book is not badly written, indeed I think King is incapable of writing something truly bad, but it does lack some structure in places and I will echo many fans' view that King's editors have gone on a really long holiday and don't show any signs of coming back. In the same interview I mentioned earlier, King said that he didn't think that people in their twenties and thirties really "got" what happened on that day in November 1963. King claims it was his generation's 9/11 and, indeed it has been crystalised in history as one of those "everybody knows where they were when..." moments. As a thirty something, I was not even thought of in 1963 so maybe this is why this book hasn't resonated with me as it has with so many other readers. My collection of Stephen King horrors has pride of place on my shelves and had this latest offering been what I had hoped for ,  a shiny hardback edition of "11.23.63" would have joined my tatty paperback collection. As it stands, I bought this in Kindle format and I won't be buying the paper edition.

Sorry Steve. I still love you, though.

"Sint": Festive horror from Amsterdam

As part of my job I spend quite a bit of time in Amsterdam, and one of my favourite times to visit is the very beginning of December. Like many other European countries, the Dutch celebrate Saint Nicholas or Sinterklaas on December 5th. Not to be confused with Father Christmas or Santa, Sint Nicolaas is the original red-clad giver of presents and he is a big deal in the Netherlands. 

Sinterklaas arrives around the end of November in Amsterdam by steamboat from his home in Spain. Accompanied by his controversial helpers, the Zwarte Piet (Black Peters), he tours the Netherlands until December 5th leaving presents in the waiting shoes of children. The whole event is comparable with Christmas, with huge marketing campaigns and television shows dedicated to the characters. 

Sinterklaas and his questionable friends

So it was with glee that I listened to a colleague tell me last year about a new film from Dutch director, Dick Maas that presented this lovable figure as a bloodthirsty, supernatural creature who unleashes a wave of horror on an unsuspecting Amsterdam. 

To say that this film met with shock in the Netherlands is an understatement. People didn’t take kindly to their children’s favourite Dutch folklore figure being portrayed as a hideously disfigured murdering ghost in film posters. Complaints lead to the poster being changed from the more explicit design on the right to what I think is a better and indeed, scarier poster on the left. 

New and old posters

I finally managed to procure a copy of the DVD this year. Our opening scene shows us the familiar mitre-topped figure of Sint Nicolaas terrorizing a village in the 15th century. Tired of the exploitation and violence, the villagers set fire to his ship burning the bishop and his gang to death. A quick fast forward to 1968 and we see a hideously deformed Sint risen from the dead as he slaughters an innocent family on the night of December 5th leaving one traumatised young survivor, a young boy called Goert. For when the moon is full on December 5th, Sintaklaas is unleashed and he isn’t bringing presents. And so a festive horror is born. 

The nods to horror past, particularly one of my favourites, John Carpenter’s “Halloween” are evident. We follow three teenage girls home from school as they talk about boys and the fact that one of them is not as sexually active as the others. Hmmm, familiar. Goert is now a cop, a figure of authority albeit slightly more manic and hysterical than Dr Loomis. 

Unlike classic US horror “Sint” breaks some of the horror rules. Our virginal heroine is not so virginal and, indeed is not our heroine. We in fact have a hero in the shape of her latest squeeze, Frank. Characters are introduced and ruthlessly bumped off, women and children too. Nobody is safe from Sinterklaas. 

Cute. And doomed.

The film is also quintessentially Dutch with a teacher jokingly berating the kids for giving each other dildos for presents and references to the fact that the girls are from South Amsterdam and therefore more posh than Frank. 

Frank was pleased that Lisa liked her new dildo

There are some great scenes with a gang of zombie-like Zwarte Piets slaughtering a gang of friends, also dressed up as Zwarte Piet. Police reacting to sightings of the figure of Sintaklaas in a city where everyone is dressed in a red mitre hat. And a crazed Sintaklaas racing along the canal house roofs as gravelly voiced and no-nonsense cop, Van Dijk says “That’s the trouble with Sinterklaas. Everybody likes presents but you always end up with a load of crap that you don’t really want.“

Not to be taken too seriously, this is fun and inventively gory horror story which is worth watching with subtitles rather than dubbed for the great delivery by some of the actors. 

Yay! Its Sinterklaas!

So, happy Sinterklaas Amsterdam. I noticed it wasn’t a full moon this year so I think we’re alright for another year. 

View the Trailer for "Sint"