Scrooge

Events traditionally unfold in the 1970 version of Scrooge, known perhaps for its musical flourishes and alternative takes on narrative contentions.

Scrooge remains as thoroughly miserly as one would expect if even vaguely familiar, and greedily refuses to grant the slightest clemency to any of his festive hard-working debtors.

To be expected, he also treats Bob Cratchit with cold and calculated avaricious disdain, and once again denies his humble nephew as he pleasantly invites him to Christmas dinner.

Many of the lines no doubt are almost identical to the 1951 classic, as it proceeds with temperate respect to the ageless wonder miraculously crafted.

It does struggle somewhat at times when the story isn't enriched through upbeat song, the less melodious dramatic scenes lacking convincing qualities effectively managed.

I did rather like the songs however and their exuberant convivial ecstatic fortitude, the fitting emphasis on play and fun mellifluously denoting communal cohesion.

Some of them are quite elaborate as well with dozens of extras performing in unison, the intricate nature of the ebullient dancing considerably impressive in stride and swoon. 

In this version, more attention is paid to Scrooge's apprenticeship with ye olde Fezziwig, and Alice is presented as Fezzi's daughter who Scrooge freely falls for even though he can't dance.

An extended scene romancing in the countryside adds much more romantic and amorous depth, Scrooge's inevitable inestimable turn all the more cruel and dishearteningly tempered. 

I always love the Fezziwig scene and it is rather short in some of the versions, I often think all of that effort for such a short time but at a younger age it did seem much longer.

Another notable difference looks at Scrooge's imagined descent into Hell, where he encounters Jacob Marley again and finds himself enlisted as Satan's clerk. 

The final song the purchase of the toys is rather well done Scrooge's generosity unsurpassed.

Not in keeping with the season to state overzealous!

How could it be!

Merry Christmas, everyone. 🎄🎅🤶🌟⛄𐂂👼

The Holdovers

As Christmas approaches, a severe depressed teacher is suddenly stuck with a pressing burden, to monitor the activities and structure the days of a small group of children at a private school.

The children were left behind for unfortunate reasons their grief somewhat turgid, and to make things worse the ornery prof gives them lengthy flush days full of challenge and study.

Instinctive rebellion athletically simmers as the taut strict injustice wholeheartedly incapacitates, alcoholic coherence and ancient civilizations acerbically mustering seditious resolve. 

When the surprising introduction of chill unexpected adventurous pastimes makes itself freely known, and a former dismissive and angst-ridden parent turns a bucolic leaf and picks up his son. 

He also takes three of the other kids leaving only one student to be chastised and disciplined, the student desperately trying to contact his mom but she can't be reached at the resort where she's staying.

The resident cook still performs her duties as the Holiday Season ominously howls.

Helping the instructor try to loosen things up.

As the frustrated teenager dismally exfoliates. 

It's a traditional woeful bitter look at hard-boiled excessively critical regulations, as they gradually let go of their uptight ceremony and warmly embrace something much more public.

It reminded me of A Christmas Carol (1951) and how Scrooge had to once spend Christmas at a boarding school, until his adoring sister finally convinced their father to let him come home to celebrate together.

Imagine Scrooge the child, bright and decent, despondently stuck at school for Christmas, with Scrooge-the-elder, jaded and unfeeling, scheduling his activities throughout the day.

Scrooge vs. Scrooge the malignant metastases overtly arrayed through pomp and circumstance, slowly learning to get along as the stilted teacher incrementally lets go.

Perhaps if he'd been sent to the military academy he would have wound up more like Ebenezer, the Scrooge-like prof through an act of kindness embracing lithe spirits and altering his destiny.

Much more serious than many a light happy-go-lucky convalescent Christmas film.

That may find a lasting audience amongst the people who listen to the people whom no one ever bothers to care to listen to. 😎

Westfront 1918

I often read about the terrors of the First World War while still at school, of the maniacal desperation consistently felt by its brave and valiant soldiers.

New advances in military technology had devised so many cunning new ways to kill, that the omnipresent despotic brutality was enough to drive the most courageous mad.

There is a romantic conception of warfare kept alive through faux medieval battles, where you defend your family with a sword not gas or a submachine gun.

Theoretically, way back when, you could defend innocent lives if you had the nerve or know-how, without having to worry about being cut down by a crafty sniper, mine or bomb (arrows perhaps).

That was a dominant theme in the books and essays read so long ago, that there was nothing romantic about the new style of fighting it was just cold calculated destruction.

It levelled the playing field.

Before, if you were strong and athletically gifted you had an advantage when engaged in sword-fighting, but with the advances in modern weapons technology natural gifts meant next to nothing.

Communication was unclear and patchy and uncertain objectives were awkwardly obtained.

Until hundreds of thousands of recruits mournfully charged machine gun nests.

When the Germans eventually ran out of bullets.

Victory was obtained.

That's not how lives should be lived and it's certainly not how they should be sacrificed, it's odd that people thought things were progressing when they horrifyingly ended up that way.

The romantic lure of the chivalric codes that killed so many millions in World Wars I and II, mistakenly applied, may have taken sociocultural root again, the potential resurrection much more disturbing.

Like crocodiles Dylan's Masters of War hid in crevices and caves for more than a half-century, until the internet had broken down the peaceful net gallantly established by postmodern artists and teachers.

Westfront 1918 hoped not to revisit the devastation of War, released in Germany in 1930 it went so far as to champion camaraderie.

How do you convince incredible people not to throw their lives away attacking other nations living in peace, who have done them no violent harm?

While trying to convince others that those same people living in peace need help to defend their country?

Proceed one step at a time.

Know that you're part of a team much larger than yourself. 

Know that politicians like Kamala Harris stand for you.

And give you a legitimate voice in Congress/Parliament.

Criterion keyword: visceral.

Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front)

Ideological exuberance devastatingly clashes with abysmal import, as new recruits head to the trenches mind-bogglingly eager to do their part.

The crushing realities having been kept generally tight-lipped amongst the influential, the daily terror and the resounding menace not quite as romantic as old school sword-fighting (see MacBeth).

But the adoring dreams jingoistically cultivated with envious furor and imperial venom, have concretely created joyous optimism overwhelmingly destined for chaotic discord.

How could those responsible continue the campaign, when only children were left to call up to refill the ranks that were clearly suffering?

How could monotonous ideals still stubbornly endure amidst the reckless bombardment, of mechanized condemnatory contradiction uniformly proving just recalcitrance?

But they do, they still do today, and they've once again become widespread and persuasive, notably within the war in Ukraine where Russia has clearly been deluded.

With a widespread dismissal of alternatives and a unilateral focus on master and slave, the fascists cruelly and abominably wage woebegone destruction with merciless rancour.

Fortunately, the free people of Ukraine are capable of multilateral thought, which inevitably outwits absolutism with inherent character and formidable verve.

People will argue that a cultural focus on the needs of the many is yet another form of absolutism, but how does food to eat and multivariable pastimes lead to a singular demarcation?

If manifold businesses with corresponding counterparts judiciously compete within a regulated sphere, antitrusts eventually level the field to promote newfound trajectories while nurturing tradition.

Thus, there is no absolutism, the absolute cannot coercively materialize, the checks and balances ensure constructive fluid motion and the liquidation of totalitarian trusts.

Do you really want only one store to buy clothes in, and only two or three restaurants where you can eat, and to accept what they provide with neither question nor critical infrastructure designed to inspect them?

Do you not want the liberating option to try new things regardless of race or income?

Do you want to transform a brilliant world full of life?

Into dull autocratic inertia?

Nightmare Alley

How far should someone go when seeking abundant easy money, where to clearly draw the line between entertainment and ecstatic despair?

People actively seek to believe in mystic supernatural antics, in worlds beyond the concrete material physically composing so much life.

How much of this is healthy or how much goes much too far, are manifest questions which consistently go unanswered, but if your belief in the afterlife provides you comfort, and doesn't cost you a fortune, and you don't make political decisions because a bee landed on your ice cream, and you don't force other people to believe, and you realize it might all be bullshit, I really don't see much of a problem, comfort's an important aspect of life.

Claudius's relationship with the Oracle of Delphi remains mysterious, but who knows how much was true, and how much conjured for dramatic flair?

I've often thought that renowned "oracles" or "fortune tellers" were students of history from the future, who somehow managed to fit in with the past without being locked up for witchcraft or heresy.

If genuine clairvoyants exist today, why aren't they world renowned?

Perhaps they've been sequestered by the highest bidder.

And are lavishly tucked away.

I play the sign game because that's how my mind's always worked, ever since I was but a wee lad, I remember playing the sign game.

But it's off a lot, it's sometimes correct, but isn't reliable enough to make wagers.

Plus, when people realize you're like this they constantly try to trick you. So it's difficult to detect anything that's genuine. Not that it isn't still fun trying.

Nightmare Alley may be a solid horror film but that doesn't mean it isn't revolting, do we really have to see an unfortunate soul bite the head off a live chicken (with special effects)?

Sick in the head, no holding back.

If you want a celebration of the most miserable aspects of existence, hopelessly wrapped up in abhorrent ethical decay, you may indeed prosper from a viewing of Nightmare Alley, which presents harsh lessons for light of heart ambitions.

Don't try to swindle the rich and famous, the brightest lights, don't take things too far.

Life's too precious and worth much more.

There's more value in a dragonfly's existence than overflowing riches.

Wiener-Dog

Questions asked.

Questions answered.

Romance blooming.

Pupils of film.

Granddaughter and Grandmother.

United, by wiener-dog.

Excessive sensitivity juxtaposed with sadists sincere, extreme disinterest expositionally generating love, scholastic rigour ridiculed reconstituted rescinded, the torments of a dying elderly woman in exacerbated psychotropical guilt.

Todd Solondz still excels at bluntly employing scatological strategies to sleuth sociological severance with miserable dis/ingenuous poignancy.

Although it's been so long since he released a film I briefly mistook him for Quentin Dupieux.

He hasn't lost his knack for satirizing master narratives which tend to explore similar themes with less oblique testimony, emerging to once again disseminate elite sadomasochistic observations which confess noteworthy cultural concessions that cripple as they catalyze to awkwardly lampoon obliviousness.

Even if Wiener-Dog elevates to disconcert by blending the tender loving with brutal flippancy, I still prefer John Waters.

Simultaneously admit uncontrollable bursts of laughter.

It's consistent the whole way through, although waiting 5 years for something this light as far as Solondz goes puzzles, as if he's disgusted with the possibility that someone may label this a comeback film.

Stronger than Café Society however.

You could say he loses sight of the story at times (little wiener-dog) but Wiener-Dog's more about extracting meaning from pointlessness than focusing on fluff, like engaged entropy that crushes the lives of wholesome loners.

Political correctness has changed so much recently this could be the new PC.

Archimedes.