2016 Advent Calendar --- day 20

Miracle on 34th Street.  Easily my favorite Christmas film of all time.  Grounded in a reality where Santa Claus is real, and is proven so in a legal battle on Christmas Eve in New York City.
It holds a special spot because I love the magic of this story so much.  

-chris  

A FISTFUL OF FAVORITE CHRISTMAS STORIES

Conceived and used with the permission of Matthew Constantine and Brad Gullickson, the original dorks.

Everyone has a “Top 5.”  But Brad and Matt, choosing to walk a different path, amended that to “A Fistful…” over at their blog, In the Mouth of Dorkness.  A film-centric blog where they also discuss comics and books and TV, these two regularly share their top 5, ranging from “Heroic Kids” to “Spies” to “Summer Movies” to “Punches” to all things in between.  Always fun, often insightful, and something I hope to regularly pilfer for Warrior27.  As they say:  If you’re going to steal, steal from those you know relatively well, who will not sue you.

Christmas is my favorite time of the year.  I love the decorations, the packages, the treats, the general good cheer, but most of all I love the fantasy that surrounds the whole endeavor.  I love the idea of Santa Claus, of one person traversing the Earth in order to bring joy to little girls and boys.  It’s magical, and that hits me right where it counts.  And a big part of the joy comes from all the stories that have been crafted around this time of year—whether those are television specials, films, books, or theatrical dramas.  Here are five of my favorites:

5. The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien was the first author I actively collected, and I collected everything.  I have three different editions of these letters to his children, written by Tolkien with accompanying drawings, which recount adventures in the North Pole with Santa, his elves, and the North Polar Bear, among other characters.  They’re lively and fanciful and a whole lot of fun to read.  They made such an impression on me that I’ve taken it upon myself to do something similar, writing letters to my own boys, from Santa, for quite a long time now.  It’s one of my favorite things to do at Christmas time.

4. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum, adapted by Michael Ploog

This is one of my favorite comics, all time.  A tale recounting the early life of Santa, how he came to be the “man in the red suit,” and the adventures and challenges he faced in becoming the immortal and benevolent saint that he is.  Based on L. Frank Baum’s novel—yes, the man behind The Wizard of Oz—with breathtaking art from Mike Ploog, who had been working in film for a number of years before returning to comics with this and a few other projects, at the time, it is a masterful lesson in adaptation and the craft of comics.  For the art alone, this book is worth it, but the narrative holds its own, as well, and provides an exciting tale for sharing during this holiday season.

3. Miracle on 34^th Street (the original, black-and-white version, please)

My favorite Christmas movie, by far.  The story of the real Santa Claus, living among us without our knowledge, who returns the holiday to its joyous and charitable roots through taking a position as the Santa Claus at Macy’s Department Store.  Put on trial, through the machinations of a relentlessly horrific “psychologist” at Macy's, a lawyer Kris Kringle has befriended must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this man is, indeed, the one, true Santa Claus. And he does that, while Kringle’s generous nature also helps to instill in the young woman who hired him, as well as her daughter, a faith in humanity and life they had both set aside.  It's smart and funny and fantastic.  I Love it!

2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

There’s a reason (or many reasons) why this is considered a classic.  Dickens crafts a wonderfully imaginative and magical narrative that deftly gets across the aspirational core of the holiday season without shoving it down readers’ throats.  If you’ve only ever seen the television or film adaptations, do yourself a favor and read the original.  The writing is beautiful, and any questions of internal logic you might have from those adaptations, as I did, will be answered through this definitive text. 

1. Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

Nothing even comes close to this Christmas special, for me.  I love every single thing about this special—Oscar teasing Big Bird with questions of how Santa gets presents to everyone, the kids surprising Bob with their use of sign language when singing the holiday song he taught them, the tomfoolery (yeah, I used “tomfoolery”) at the ice skate rink to open the show, and the final revelation of the magic of Santa, as Big Bird awakes, icicle dangling from his beak, to find himself alone on the roof of the apartment building—and I never miss a chance to watch it every year.  On Christmas Eve, natch.

Happy Holidays! 

-chris

What It Is – week ending 28 December [2014]

With apologies to Dave the Thune (as well as Mike Baron & Steve Rude).

WRITING:

Every day.  1000 words.  That’s the goal.

Christmas week.  That meant the writing got a backburner again – though I only missed one day of writing this week, but the amounts were all below 1000 – as I worked on wrapping gifts and writing out my boy’s letters from Santa.  Yes.  From Santa.  I stole this idea from Tolkien, who would craft these wonderful, illustrated letters to his own children from St. Nick.  This year they learned of Santa’s discovery of a group of ice dwarves who had been living in the North Pole for far longer than Santa has been there. When the North Polar Bear stumbled into their secret homes, they came out, finally, and offered their assistance to Santa.  It was a fun little story to conceive, and though the dip pen can be frustrating, I am always happy with the results.  And, overall, this was a great Christmas.  Our youngest is seven, at just the right age to enjoy Christmas and the magic of Santa, and he played Santa on Christmas morning, making sure others had gifts before he opened one of his.  That was pretty special.

READING:

Bakuman by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata, published by Viz comics.

I finished reading this series.  20 volumes about two young creators – one a writer, one an artist – who come together in middle school and decide they want to pursue the dream of becoming famous manga artists in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine.  This was such a blast.  The art is wonderful, and the way these creators manage to continually infuse the narrative with tension and drama is a testament to their creativity.  Highly recommended.

Brain Movies III by Harlan Ellison

This collects a number of Ellison’s teleplays, in their original script form.  Ellison has never been one to leave things up to the directors and actors who envisioned his scripts for television.  These scripts are fully realized, with visual details that allow one to picture these stories quite easily, in one’s mind.  Plus, we get a few anecdotes from Ellison, at the beginning of each script, which are always entertaining.  This third volume is centered around Ellison’ full-length story “Cutter’s World.”  We get two iterations of this script – first, the TV-movie version, followed by the revised film version.  It was interesting to see how some things changed.  The first 100 pages were roughly the same, but then Ellison enhanced the story immensely, with stronger connections between the aliens and Cutter, the protagonist, that not only upped the emotional engagement for the audience, but also tied the entire narrative together far better, without it feeling forced.  Great stuff, and interesting from a process standpoint.

DD by Brubaker/Lark

Started reading this run, and it’s good (duh).  Not as engaging as the Bendis/Maleev run, but still some fantastic Daredevil stories.  I think one of the things that places this run beneath the Bendis run is the fact that Brubaker seems to stretch his narratives out more.  Where the Bendis stories seemed to run 5 issues, on average, Brubaker’s storylines all run to about 10 issues.  Not that it feels padded, but the emotional charge isn’t as immediate with the longer arcs, and it doesn’t impact me in as visceral a manner as those quicker, sharper Bendis narratives.  Which isn’t to say these aren’t some pretty great stories.  Just different.  And I can appreciate that.

WATCHING:

Miracle on 34^th Street

My favorite Christmas movie, hands down.  It evokes everything I love about this holiday, the lush decorations, the ideal of it being a season of giving, and the magic that surrounds it all, for me, embodied by the main character of Kris Kringle, the man hired to be a Santa at Macy’s department store who claims to be the one, actual Santa Claus (AGE: ‘As old as my tongue and slightly older than my teeth.’).  I haven’t watched this in a few years, and I decided to subject my seven-year-old to it, even though it was the black and white version (his lament, not mine).  Overly idealized with just the right amount of cynicism from Maureen O’Hara’s and HER NAME’s characters to make it too saccharine, in my opinion, I had forgotten how smartly written the script was.  The way it goes about “proving” Kris Kringle is the one and true Santa Claus in the court proceedings is worth the price of admission alone – especially the scene with the prosecutor’s son coming to the stand as a witness, which leads to the state of New York conceding that Santa Claus is a real person.  I loved rewatching this, and my son also enjoyed it, sitting for the entire movie without any complaints.  Win, win. 

Bladerunner – The Final Cut

Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece (I view Alien as a horror masterpiece) has long been a favorite movie of mine, and when the “Final Cut” was released a few years back, I picked it up.  But I discovered, while watching it this past week, that I had never watched it; I’d only watched the “making of” documentary, apparently.  Man, is this final cut great!  It elevates the film so much, and it was great before.  Without the dopey voice-over, you really get to appreciate the musical score composed by Vangelis and better understand how much it adds to the overall film, evoking emotion without being soon the nose as some composers, aided quite a bit with the “electronica” approach he took.  Just brilliant.  The other major fix is that Scott excised the more upbeat ending by cutting the film at a point prior to that – a point that is more ambiguous while also being more bleak, matching more closely the overall thematic approach to the film.  I was surprised how much more I enjoyed this cut, and I look forward to watching it again. 

MISCELLANY:

New Year’s Eve will see the release of the Winter issue of Needle: a magazine of noir.  And my story, “Silence,” will be included in there, along with some great crime fiction – having enjoyed previous issues, I believe I can say that without reservation.  I will have a link here when it goes live and also plan on writing a bit on how I managed to achieve this goal.  But that’s another post. 

SIGN OFF:

And, as always, check out my friends – Brad & Matt and Don McMillan for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris