One of our family traditions is to spend all day at the movies on December 25th. But before then, we like to get in the mood by revisiting some of our favorite holiday films. We don’t always get around to watching all of them, but the list includes:<\/p>\n
It’s a Wonderful Life<\/span> The Long Kiss Goodnight<\/span> Die Hard<\/span> We just watched The Sure Thing<\/span>, which D got from Netflix because she’d read about it being a tradition with Connie Willis<\/a>‘ family. It wasn’t bad, despite being totally ’80s, but D noted that it didn’t feel<\/span> like a Christmas movie, even though it’s about two college students taking a road trip from the east coast to California for the holidays. The premise was just that–a pretext–and the filmmakers didn’t even try to integrate the trappings of the season with the story or the set dressing.<\/p>\n
The first movie D and I saw together, the night we met. When we lived in the bay area, if we weren’t out of town visiting someone, we would always go see the Stanford Theatre<\/a> show on Christmas Eve. We just saw a live radio play<\/a> production of this in Portland, which was intimate and entertaining and a great example of remixing* public-domain content to create new art.<\/p>\n
D loves this movie, for reasons I’m sure she will be happy to explain.<\/p>\n
What can I say? It’s a classic, and I’m a sentimental fool. Sure, the action scenes are great, but for me, the heart of the movie is when John McClane is in the bathroom, bandaging up his feet and talking on the radio with Sgt. Powell. That scene, and the whole story, are all about character<\/span>. (This is also why I don’t much care for any of the sequels<\/a>.)<\/p>\n