Broken Glass

It had been another long, hard, frustrating day at the job. (Not nearly as long, hard or frustrating as being unemployed, I'll confess, but nothing nice either.) I wanted nothing more than to get home to La Casa del Terror; feed Olivia and Ms. Christopher, who circle like furry, finless sharks as soon as I walk in the door; microwave something passably edible; and relax for a few minutes.

That was before I opened the storm door at the back to the apartment and saw the broken glass.

I stood there for at least a full minute, transfixed. The back door of La Casa del Terror has four panes of glass in it, each a square foot in size. The pane on the lower right--the one closest to the lock, the one Olivia liked to look out while standing atop the garbage can within--was now mostly missing but for jagged fragments sticking out of the window frame. Shards were scattered at my feet.

The meowing of the cats from within brought me back out of myself. I tried the door--it was still locked. I pulled out my keys, unlocked the door and stepped inside, only to find more glass spread out across the kitchen floor and two hungry, nervous-looking felines who wanted very much to run up to me, but who had to be shooed away so that they didn't walk across the broken glass, assuming they hadn't already.

I found one more thing on the kitchen floor as well--a palm-sized chunk of concrete.

What had happened was now obvious, and should have been before: Somebody had waited until I'd left for the day (which was later than usual, since I'd worked so late the night before), walked all the way up to my place on the third floor and chucked the chunk of concrete through the pane of glass.

This member of Mensa then stuck his/her arm through the broken window and reached for the lock, hoping to flip the lock open and grab the easy pickings. Too bad for him/her that the back door to La Casa del Terror opens with a key on both sides, not just the outside. Sucks to be you, Burglar Bill.

(I later found out from other neighbors that I was far from alone. Others in the building had been hit as well. Storage lockers in the basement had been looted. Doors had been pried.)

I put down a tin of Friskies for the Girlish Girls--partly because they were genuinely hungry, as they always were when I got home from work, but mostly to distract them while I dealt with the mess. It worked, but only partially--as soon as I opened the door to sweep the glass of the porch, both Ms. Christopher and Olivia wanted to go outside to investigate and had to be kept at bay with gentle recriminations and an occasional foot block (a skill acquired in my days as a goalie in street hockey games). They hadn't been hurt so far, and I didn't want that to change now. TVs, DVDs, cameras--these things are valuable, sure, but eminently replacable. The Girlish Girls? Not so much.

After sweeping both inside and out and then vacuuming both spaces, I looked them over to make sure no stray glass shards had escaped my efforts. They looked clean. (They weren't. Sunday morning, a sliver found its way into my right foot.) I then got down to the main job: fixing the hole where the rain gets in (and the burglar didn't).

Buried deep within one of the hall closets was a storm window for the storm door. It was original to the building, and the panes of glass within it were a perfect match for the back door. It hadn't been used in years--not since the first (and only previous) break-in at my place.

And the burglar on that occasion? Was me.

I'd gone out the front door--probably just to check the mail--and realized only after I'd shut the door that my keys were still on the coffee table. The good news? The back door was unlocked. The bad news? The storm door was hooked, and the storm window was in place. So I walked all the way up the back steps to my place, unbuttoned my shirt, pressed it against the pane of glass nearest the hook and busted the window open--not quite as crude as chucking a chunk of concrete through the window, but, in the end, just as effective.

Once I dug the storm window out of the closet, I slipped a pane out of it, slipped it into the door (after prying the decades-old wood molding off) and did the worst puttying job in the history of home repair--if you heard a loud whirring sound in the distance, that was my dad spinning in his grave. At least the pane of glass won't be falling out anytime soon; the putty is as thick on it as toothpaste on a brush.

After that, I was sweating thoroughly, but was not yet done. I needed to put the storm window back in its old spot in the storm door--if I can't stop burglars, I might as well at least slow them down--and needed to fill the two-pane-wide hole in it. Once again, I went to the closet, where I pulled out a disused wooden cutting board, determined that it would fit well enough with a bit of trimming, and started to chisel away at it with a hammer and slotted screwdriver.

It was only then that I noticed--or, at the very least, acknowledged--how badly my hands were shaking.

Review: UltraViolet (2006)

Milla Jovovich is in something of a rut. She's starred as a genetically enhanced asskicker in two Resident Evil movies (with filming on a third installment slated to begin soon), and now she's starring as a genetically enhanced asskicker in UltraViolet--only this time she's beating the stuffing out of hordes of stormtroopers instead of legions of the living dead.

Jovovich plays Violet who, she tells us via voiceover, was "born into a world you might not understand." No shit. It's a future city that looks like Tokyo and Dallas had architectural offspring where the neoreligious government, led by Vice Cardinal Daxus (Nick Chinlund), oppresses the masses while working to eradicate "hemophages," people infected with a blood disease that makes them vampires, even though we see many of them running around in daylight and don't see them sucking blood. When the hemophages hear that Daxus has a weapon that would wipe them all out, the send Violet to steal it, warning her not to look in the case supposedly holding said weapon--which, of course, she does anyway at the first opportunity.

Guess what? It's not a weapon in the case, but a child (Cameron Bright). A child who may hold the sercret to destroying all hemophages. Or all humans. Or something. Rather than kill the kid, Violet's maternal instincts kick in and she goes on the run, spending the rest of the movie in elaborate fight scenes with either Daxus's well-armed but remarkably incompetent troops or her hemopage "friends."

Writer/director Kurt Wimmer lifts pieces from other cinematic puzzles like The Matrix, Underworld, Elektra and Aeon Flux. And what happens when you jam pieces of different puzzles together? You get nonsense. It's never clear why things are happening the way they do. The visuals are often video-game level, though whether this is due to budgetary restriction or stylistic choice is unclear. And whatever serious issues are buried in UltraViolet, like the public attitude toward contageous diseases or the role of religion in government (if there's a Vice Cardinal, there must be a Cardinal, so where is he/she while all this is going on?), are further obscured by all the kicking, punching, slicing and shooting.

Maybe we're not supposed to notice what a mess UltraViolet is. Maybe we're just supposed to pay attention to Milla Jovovich's tight ass and alabaster abs and ignore the plot entirely. Yes, Milla does look great kicking ass, as she usually does, and she's in damn near every scene (with her hair and clothing colors changing regularly and for no apparent reason). But the constant thwacking of faceless groups of fighters, no matter what side they're fighting for, gets repetitive fast. Even Wimmer seems to get bored with it all--toward the end, we don't even see Violet beating the stuffing out of Daxus's troops, but hear gunfire in the distance instead. And even though this is all so very silly, most of the actors, Jovovich included, don't seem to be having any fun. Only Nick Chinlund seems to know his tongue is supposed to be in his cheek, playing Daxus as a man who grins a lot and really enjoys being evil. He gets the best scene, too, knocking off hemophage assassins while calmly sipping a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, he and Jovovich are not enough to save UltraViolet from being derivative and dull.

Baby Steps

I had planned to write a lengthy, elaborate essay about my new job working in the Land of the Dead, also known as 2nd Shift, which is a lot like George Romero's Land of the Dead, only not nearly as entertaining. And maybe someday soon, I'll write such an essay.

But circumstances have changed, as circumstances are wont to do. This time, though? They're changing for the better. Much better.

You see, even though I'd found a job (with the considerable assistance of a former co-worker who'd kept her ear to the ground on my behalf, as so many friends have over the past six months), I kept looking, working connections and following leads wherever they went. Sometimes they lead straight into brick walls or dead ends. Sometimes they burned with promise, only to flame out before my eyes. Sometimes they popped up suddenly, only to vanish just as suddenly. In other words, it was just like my job hunt had been all along, only condensed into a shorter timeframe--a more concentrated dose of frustration and disappointment, which would have bothered me much more if not for the presence of the 2nd shift job, which at least paid me more than unemployment did (although not much more, and with no benefits) and gave me somewhere specific to go every day, rather than lying at home in a ball on the futon, watching All My Children and wondering how the hell my life had come to this.

Then, a lead came up suddenly that held great promise--a company I'd interviewed with in October had an immediate opening and, much to my surprise and delight, it was 1st shift. And downtown. And a lot more money than I was making operating a large, noisy printing machine in a dusty, isolated warehouse.

So an interview was set up, and I asked all my friends to pray for me. And pray they did. Hard. But as they old saying goes, "Pray for the things you want, but work for the things you need." So if I wanted this job, I needed to go in and interview my ass off.

I gave it my best shot. I answered the questions, took the tests, did what I thought I needed to do, hoped I'd done it right and fretted afterward that I hadn't done enough or said enough or been enough of what they wanted me to be. But it was over, and I needed to wait, no matter how painful the waiting would be.

I didn't have to wait long. The following Monday, the company representative called. To make an offer. For a position higher than the one I'd interviewed for. And for more money than I'd made at my last daylight job.

It would be easy to, in the words of J.B.'s late father, "pin a bouquet on my ass" for having done so well. But I won't. I will, instead, thank everyone who hoped and prayed before the interview and who squealed and stammered and screamed for joy after the offer was accepted. You were all there for me in my time of need, and I am there for you should you ever need the same.

However, amid the celebration and clinking of glasses, one thing must be clearly understood: This is job is not the destination, nor the end of the journey. Don't get me wrong. I'm ecstatic to have found a full-time gig that will pay me what I'm worth, that will challenge me, that will allow me to stop by favorite bar after work for a round or three served by the greatest waitress in the whole wide world. But my goal is not merely to be paid for work. It's to be paid for doing what I love to do. And that is writing. Movie reviews, essays about Chicago's vanishing landscape, even brief updates like this...these are the things I'm more passionate about than I ever could be for any 9-to-5 job.

This is a great step in the right direction. But it's only a step. A baby step at that. But with enough such steps, even a baby can travel great distances. And this baby has miles to go before he sleeps. But at least he's headed in the right direction--up.

And the Oscar Goes to...(2006 Edition)

Welcome, one and all, to the third annual And the Oscar Goes to... on this here bloggity. The results from the previous two years were--shall we put in politely?--uneven: in 2004, I got Best Picture and Best Director right, but blew all the acting awards; and in 2005, I nailed the acting awards, but missed Best Picture and Best Director. So, this year? I anticipate perfection, one way or the other: Either I'll sweep the field or be plowed under.

So, before Isaac Mizrahi starts peeking down dresses and grabbing boobs on the red carpet, let's take a look at the nominees, shall we?

Best Director. The Academy is awfully fond of giving Oscars to actors who direct--Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson all have one for directing, but not for acting; Clint Eastwood has two. And the Academy clearly wants to give George Clooney an Oscar this year, given that he's nominated in three different categories for two different movies (Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck.) It's unlikely, though, that they'll give him one in this category; he's more likely to get something in Best Original Screenplay (odd, since much of Good Night's script is taken from transcripts of Edward. R. Murrow broadcasts) or Best Supporting Actor. Paul Haggis probably has better odds in the Best Original Screenplay category for Crash. Bennett Miller's inclusion is a bit odd, since Philip Seymour Hoffman's spot-on performance in the title role is the chief reason to see Capote. And Steven Spielberg? He's already got a Best Director Oscar at home. My choice? Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain. It's a quiet, sad, poetic movie with just enough controversy to hold the Academy's notoriously short attention span.

Best Supporting Actress. Two of our greatest, busiest character actresses--Catherine Keener (playing novelist Harper Lee in Capote) and Frances McDormand (as a coal miner in North Country)--get nods here, along with Rachel Weisz, an actress usually regarded as lightweight, who scores with a serious turn in The Constant Gardener. But the Academy loves recognizing young, upcoming talent in the supporting categories, and this year there are two such nominees: the charming Amy Adams for Junebug and and the seething Michelle Williams for Brokeback Mountain. Williams' performance as the wife of Heath Ledger's closeted sheepherder is all balled fist, contained rage, and, ultimately, detonation. As much hype as her co-stars have received, she gives the best performance in the movie--not what you'd have figures from a Dawson's Creek alum, right? She's my pick here.

Best Supporting Actor. Paul Giamatti got screwed last year when he didn't get nominated for Sideways, so his nod here for Cinderella Man is a do-over for the Academy, but that's about all. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance in Brokeback Mountain is more of a co-lead than a supporting one, but it's not as acclaimed as Ledger's, since he does a more convincing job of aging 20 years than Jake does. William Hurt? Already has an Oscar. That leaves Matt Dillon as a racist L.A. cop in Crash and George Clooney as a CIA operative hung out to dry by his handlers in Syriana. Hollywood loves a comeback story, even though Dillon isn't making a comeback so much as landing his first prominent role in a while, but they love it more when one of their most-popular stars scruffs it up, stops shaving and puts on weight for a role as Clooney did for Syriana. Of his three nominations this year, Clooney is most likely to win in this category.

Best Actress. Three of the five nominees in this category are playing characters based on real life: Charlize Theron (North Country), Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line), and Dame Judi Dench (Mrs. Henderson Presents). and three of the nominees are not usually regarded as "serious" actresses, but "funny" or "diverting": Keira Knightley (Pride and Prejudice), Felicity Huffman (Transamerica), and Witherspoon. Dench already has an Oscar, as does Theron. Knightley is the youngest of the bunch and might have had a chance had she been nominated, against all reason, in the Best Supporting Actress category--it wouldn't have been the first time a newbie giving a lead performance had been dumped into the Supporting category--so she's got plenty of time to get nominated again. Huffman's complicated performance--a woman playing a man trying to become a woman--has already won awards, but so has Witherspoon's turn as conflicted singer June Carter, so it's virtually a tossup. Witherspoon, however, is usally cast as a light romantic comedy lead, and busts out of that big-time here while doing her own singing, so the Academy might view her performance as more of a stretch and a revelation than the well-respected Huffman's work. Hard to choose, but I'm going with Witherspoon.

Best Actor. As with the Best Actress Categoy, Best Actor features three stars playing real people: Philip Seymour Hoffman as writer Truman Capote in Capote, Joaquin Phoenix as singer Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, and David Strathairn as journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. It's also very cool to have three actors generally regarded as supporting players--Hoffman, Strathairn and Terrence Howard (as a rapping pimp in Hustle and Flow)--get nominated for lead roles. Ledger isn't a typical nominee, either, since he's usually dismissed as a pretty-boy "star." (The brooding Phoenix is more the Academy's style.) Strathairn does a dead-on impersonation, which in some years might be enough, but not when placed against other dead-on impersonations in the same category. Phoenix gets Cash's cadence, body language and singing down well, but may suffer in comparison to Witherspoon because his performance isn't nearly as much of a revelation as hers is. Howard's nomination was something of a surprise, given how long ago Hustle and Flow opened (the Academy has a notoriously short memory), so the nomination will likely have to be his award. That leaves Hoffman and Ledger--both playing gay characters--but Hoffman appears in nearly every scene of Capote and thoroughly dominates, so I think he'll get the Best Actor nod. (And wouldn't it be kinda cool if Best Actor and Actress were Hoffman and Huffman, at least from an alliterative perspective? Yes, it would.)

Best Picture. Most years, the winner of Best Director tips off the winner of Best Picture, which would mean Brokeback Mountain would take this category. This year? I'm not so sure. I don't think the reality-based nominees--Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, or Munich--will resonate as much with the Academy as Brokeback Mountain and Crash, both of which touch on hot-button issues (sexual repression, both societal and personal, and racial tensions, respectively). It really depends on which one the Academy feels hits its hot button harder, and perhaps on whether the Academy wants to reward an intensely personal story or a broader tapestry performed by an ensemble cast, any of whom could have been nominated along with Dillon. I think they'll lean toward the latter, and Crash will take Best Picture.

Well, those are my choices; your mileage may vary. Have fun mocking inappropriate star/starlet styles, painfully long acceptance speeches and Jon Stewart. Me? I'm a creature of the night for now, so I'll be taping. It's really the best way to watch the Academy Awards broadcast--you can catch the highlights you want and fast-forward through all the padding (which accounts for, like, ninety percent of the show). And if I blow my predictions yet again, I can end the pain with the press of a button on my remote. Wish everything in life worked that way.

Not Coming to a Theatre Near Me

Some of my friends, aquaintances and frequent readers think that I see every movie that comes out--or that I want to.

Not true. Every year, just as there are movies I simply have to see, there are movies that provoke my gag reflex and, when I see the preview, I say, "Aw, hells no!"

Here are just a few of the films I decided I could live without in 2005:

Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith--When I first saw the original Star Wars on the big screen back in 1977, I loved it for what it was: a popcorn-chompin', bubblegum-poppin' whiz-bang of a movie. That was, of course, before it became the cornerstone of a "mythology" that would spawn five more movies feeding a fanbase with a devotion of frightening proportions. I liked The Empire Strikes Back, even though I yelled at the screen when it didn't actually come to an end, but just...stopped: "Waitaminute...you mean I have to wait three more years to find out how this fucker ends?" Yes, I did. And what did I get for my wait? Revenge of...er, Return of the Jedi--or, as I not-so-affectionately call it, "Muppets in Space." When George Lucas revived the series with three prequels designed to tell the story of how we got to the events of that first movie, I declared The Phantom Menace to be "the best-looking bad movie I've ever seen." That was, of course, until I saw Attack of the Clones, which was even worse (in spite of the presence of the awesome Christopher Lee) due to leaden storytelling and acting so awful that to call it wooden would be to insult wood. So when Revenge of the Sith, the last movie in the series, was released earlier this year, in spite of some positive reviews and friends who kept asking me, "So, have you seen it yet?" there was no way in hell I was giving George Lucas even one more penny of my money--he'd long since scorched away every last molecule of my good will for him. And with so many other movies out there, why wait in a line snaking around the block for a movie I didn't want to see?

War of the Worlds--I wanted to see this. I really did. It was a Steven Spielberg movie, which meant it would be well crafted, if nothing else, and even though I wasn't a big Tom Cruise fan, his presence in Spielberg's Minority Report didn't hurt that movie. So I was willing. And able. But then? Cruise. Would. Not. Shut. Up. He bounced on Oprah's couch like a kid who'd just downed a candy aisle's worth of Three Musketeer bars. He attacked Brooke Shields and her book, Down Came the Rain, which detailed her struggle with postpartum depression and the treatment she received for it, antidepressants and therapy. He was condescending and belligerent in a highly contentious interview in which Cruise told Matt Lauer, "You don't know the history of psychiatry--I do" and calling Lauer "glib." (I wish Lauer had had the presence of mind to ask Cruise which books he'd read about "the history of psychiarty"; I'll bet every dollar in my wallet--which, granted, isn't much--that they were approved by, if not actually published by, the Church of Scientology, and thus probably not the most objective texts one could study.) And he and his Stepford-Wife-to-be, Katie Holmes, jammed their relationship and her pregnancy and lovelovelovelovebarflovelove down our collective throat, so when War of the Worlds finally hit theatres, the idea of sitting through a two-hour long movie with Tom Cruise in virtually every scene was about as appealing as emptying a nailgun into my feet--which is about what it would have taken to get me to stay in a theatre where War of the Worlds was playing.

The Dukes of Hazzard--Though I will confess that I watched this show as a teenager and had a world-class crush on Catherine Bach's fine, fine ass, I refused to see this movie, even though I think Jessica Simpson is adorable. (Jessica? When you're done divorcing Nick, give me a call!) For every movie adapted from a TV show that's a success--Star Trek, The Blues Brothers, Charlie's Angels, The Brady Bunch--there are ten that fail horribly--McHale's Navy, The Honeymooners, Car 54, Where Are You?. And this show wasn't good to begin with. Also? It made me sad that Burt Reynolds, who helped inspire the original series with his Smokey and the Bandit movies, was reduced to playing Boss Hogg in this big-screen remake. That's gotta be a career low.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin--There is nothing wrong with displaying action figures in your living room. Nothing.

Aeon Flux--Turning cartoons into live-action movies has never been a good idea. (Anybody remember Popeye? How 'bout The Flintstones? Or Scooby-Doo?) So it's a bit of a mystery as to why anyone would bother making a live-action version of Aeon Flux, an avant-garde animated series that aired on MTV a decade ago. It's even more of a mystery why Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron would star in a movie that required her to wear a skin-tight leather outfit (not that she didn't look fabulous on the posters). Did she learn nothing from Halle Berry's disasterous turn in Catwoman? Obviously not--Aeon Flux wasn't previewed for critics, was mostly dismissed when they did get around to seeing it (although The Onion gave it a positive notice, but was much more enthusiastic about the original series being released on DVD), and has just about vanished from theatres.

Fun with Dick and Jane--I've seen enough crap remakes this year. The thought of seeing yet another crap remake, this time starring Jim Carrey, is enough to make me want to go on retreat to the Scientology Celebrity Center (hey, that's what they call it) with Tom and Katie. (Except...not.)

I hope that 2006 is a much better year all the way around, of course--having a job, spending even more time with loved ones, finding somebody to pay me to write this nonsense--but in this context, I hope 2006 has fewer remakes and sequels, and more movies I will want to run out and spend my available dollars on--not run in the opposite direction from.

Popcorn Kernals 2005

When I revived this site at the beginning of this year, my first entry back covered all of the movies I saw on the big screen in 2004 (even though I managed to forget a couple--woopsie). So it seemed like a good idea to end the year with an entry covering the cinematic treasures and atrocities I bore witness to in 2005.

There isn't as much to write about this year--partly because I didn't see as many movies this year, partly since I was let go from my job back in August, also because wrote more full reviews of new movies I saw than ever before. Some of them were good, like Batman Begins and Walk the Line; some of them were bad, like the remakes of The Fog and The Amityville Horror; and some more landed somewhere in between, like Frank Miller's Sin City and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I may yet catch a movie or two before this year officially ends on Saturday, and I'll probably get one or two more updates--most likely looking back on this broke-ass year in one way or another--up before then, but here are the movies that, for one reason or another, I never got around to writing reviews for:

Million Dollar Baby--The somber, shadow-filled cinematography by Tom Stern (who handled the same duties for Clint Eastwood on Mystic River and Blood Work, and has worked on Eastwoods movies in one capacity or another for more than 20 years) makes this a gorgeous film to look at, with outstanding performances from Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, both of whom deserved their Academy Awards. Too bad once this movie reveals its "big twist" (which most of you probably know by now, but on the off chance some of you don't, I won't tip it here), it becomes predictable, illogical and very aggravating. Just goes to show how a good movie can be almost entirely ruined by a bad ending--you remember the last taste in your mouth, and when it's a bad one, you forget all of the good ones before it.

The Ring Two--Sequels are tricky things, to be sure, but when you snag the screenwriter (Ehren Kruger) and star (Naomi Watts) of the previous film, an Oscar-winning actress slipping in a cameo (Sissy Spacek?) and the director (Hideo Nakata) of Ringu, the Japanese movie The Ring was based on, your expectations are reasonably high. Instead? You get a story not about a creepy ghost girl, but possession of the creepy little boy--kind of like Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (you know, the one everyone tries to forget?) with lots more water. And what the fuck was up with the deer? Were they pissed off about the basement full of antlers?

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room--Want to get seriously angry at corporate America? Watch this movie. The suits running Enron screwed the public in general, and their workers in particular, exorting them to continue buying stock in the company even as the house of cards was starting to fall. Those workers all lost their pensions, while Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling (brother of WGN weather god Tom Skilling) are still multimillionaires and have pleaded not guilty to all charges. And even if they go to prison, they'll be better off than the many thousands of people who put their faith in them.

House of Wax--Not so much a remake of the 1953 fan favorite starring Vincent Price (itself a remake of 1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum) as a retelling of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a wax museum motif, this wasn't as bad as you'd expect, even with a cast mostly made up of pretty, pretty faces from TV shows, perhaps because of the oddly poetic touches sprinkled throughout, like a cigrette stubbed out on the staircase of a church where many more cigarette butts still linger, underscoring how many times this man has killed; or a tear streaming down the cheek of a victim enbalmed in wax. And arguably the most sympathetic/intelligent character in the movie is played by...Paris Hilton? Nope. Didn't see that one coming, either.

Cursed--Okay, I must admit it: this one was my suggestion to the group. I thought, "It's from Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, who made Scream, and it stars Christina Ricci--how bad can it be?" The answer? There were reasons why it sat on a shelf for a couple of years and wasn't previewed for critics: it was Bad. With a capital "B." Bad script. Badly CGI'd werewolves. Bad continuity due to its much-delayed release (Ricci's character works for The Late Late Show with Craig Kilbourn--even though Kilbourn had left the show by the time the movie finally made theaters). Bad weight loss by Ricci, who now looks like a Bobblehead. Bad all the way around.

The Thin Man--Ah, for the days when movie characters could drink and smoke and be witty. The murder mystery doesn't matter a damn--it's the chemistry and banter between William Powell and Myrna Loy that makes this a classic. And there's nothing better than seeing a classic black-and-white film in a vintage movie house like the Music Box.

Fantastic Four--A sloppy, inconsistent, lumbering mess that nonetheless has entertaining aspects, like Chris Evans's cockiness as the Human Torch, Michael Chiklis's ability to give a touching performance as the Thing while under lots of foam rubber, and the presence of Jessica Alba in a form-fitting jump suit. It did very well at the box office, though, so expect a sequel in a couple of years.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--This year's winner for the longest, most ungainly title is also the winner of the "Most Likely Franchise in the Making" award. You knew that, with the massive success of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies, somebody would get around to C.S. Lewis's beloved series of fantasy novels. Fortunately, director Andrew Adamson (who co-directed both Shrek films) and everyone else involved do a first-class job job of adapting Lewis's prose without losing either the excitement of the narrative or the Christian allegories embedded within it, but also without proselytizing. The result is a fine adventure yarn that makes me look forward to the second movie in the series. And if I'm wrong for thinking Tilda Swinton is dead-sexy as the White Witch, I don't want to be right.

King Kong--Peter Jackson's respectful and respectible remake holds close to the storyline of the 1933 original while adopting the closer relationship between Kong and the blonde he fatally falls for from the painfully bad 1976 remake (which had an exquiste Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin getting stomped like a grape and nothing but nothing else to recommend it). Too bad nobody could explain to Mr. Jackson that his remake would have been a better film if somebody else--anybody else--could have made the editorial decisions on the movie. Jackson's Kong looks great (the skies looked like they drifted in from a Maxfield Parrish painting) and is more faithful than one could have hoped (even returning a squick-inducing scene in a pit that had been cut from the original), but he clearly couldn't bear to take much out of his baby, so what should have been a two-hour thrill ride is a three-hour endurance test almost twice the length of the original. If a scene took five minutes in the 1933 Kong, it takes ten minutes here.

Brokeback Mountain--A tragic love story, controvesial because it happens between two cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall), even though homoeroticism has long been a subtext in westerns, like Red River and The Wild Bunch, and is made text here. But it's not so much about societal pressure keeping these men apart (although that's certainly addressed) as much as it's about how one of them men wants to take the risk of comitting to both the man he loves and to his sexuality, but the other can't or won't. Also, as Ann Marie points out on her LiveJournal, this story is as much a tragedy for the women who marry them (Michelle Williams and Ann Hathaway, both of whom show more depth and subtlety than Dawson's Creek or The Princess Dairies might have suggested). They marry and have children with these men, whom they reasonably assume are dedicated and faithful and interested in women, only to be wounded deeply when they find out how just wrong they are. It's a tragedy for everyone involved, wrought by decisions made and not made--one that's worth going out of your way to see.

So there they are--the movies I saw this year. There were other movies, though, that I studiously avoided seeing. More on that tomorrow.

"O Holiday Tree, O Holiday Tree..."

Last week, one of my regular readers--yes, I have more than one, smartass--asked me whether or not I intended to say anything here about the controversy over whether to say "Holiday Tree" or "Christmas Tree"--a controversy fueled by the tree at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., which, apparently, had been known as a "Holiday Tree" for the past few years, but was re-renamed a "Christmas Tree" this year (even though I didn't know its name had been changed to "Holiday Tree" in the first place).

Honestly? It hadn't even occurred to me to address the controversy here. After all, as I've mentioned here before, I haven't put up a tree for the past couple of years, though I have decorated La Casa del Terror a bit, with a plush Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a small white bear in a red cap (which I truly don't remember ever buying or finding or getting as a present--maybe Santa dropped him off last year?), Christmas Cthulhu (bringing "tidings of despair) and, most appropriately for me, the Grinch, all lined up on the edge of one of the loveseats.

I've also got scented candles here and there--Cinnamon for the living room, Vanilla Sugar Cookie for the bathroom, Pine for the kitchen--and my oldest, most treasured ornament, Angelique, sits atop the living room lamp. Seeing her looking down on me almost pushes my worries to the back of my mind and out of my heart for a while. Almost.

But when I did put up a tree--whether one of the faux evergreens bought at a long-closed Goldblatts or the aluminum job I picked up at a now-defunct resale shop in Wicker Park, I didn't call it anything but what it was: A Christmas tree.

I understand the need to say "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" rather than "Merry Christmas" in advertisements and on cards, because not everyone celebrates the birthday of Jesus, who probably wasn't even born in wintertime (the Bible makes no mention of what time of year it is). Some friends light candles for Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, while others dance naked to herald the arrival of the Winter Solstice, and still others could not possibly care less about any of it. And I noted that George W. Bush took flak from the right wing of his own party (not for the first time this year) because the cards sent out by the White House didn't mention Christmas specifically, but put forth a more generic message--as if all the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and everyone on the President's mailing list who isn't a Christian should just suck it up and deal.

But to me, an evergreen with tinsel and beads and ornaments and lights and stars is a Christmas tree. It's specific to one holiday, to one segment of the world population inclined toward religion, even though many agnostics (like myself) and even a few athiests exchange gifts and good wishes sometime around the end of December. And it's not like that tree at the Capitol Building is is covered with Stars of David and colored glass ornaments celebrating the Seven Guiding Principles; there's nothing about it that makes it multicultural. It's a Christmas tree, an evergreen meant to represent and celebrate the everlasting of "our savior"--a tradition we appropriated from the British, who copped it from the Germans in the 19th century, who nicked it from the pagans, who associated it with rebirth and immortality.

Calling it a "Holiday Tree" rather than a "Christmas Tree" makes as much sense as calling a menorah a "Holiday Candle Holder." So unless you're a pagan who's pissed off about all the Christians who've ripped off your fertility bush, you don't have much to bitch about.

But whatever you choose to call your tree--if you have any kind of decorated tree at all--I hope this season, no matter what you call it or how you celebrate it, brings you much joy, warmth and happiness.