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Yes, I wanted to be a girl but .......

Let me start by making it quite clear I utterly reject current gender fluidity and all the other associated nonsense on the grounds that it is in the best Emperor’s New Clothes tradition just utter stupidity. Of course everyone who wants to be trendy will be standing up cheering for rights that don’t exist before joining the flat earth society. Having got that off my chest I have absolutely no problem with those who have genuine gender dysphoria. I am so glad when I was ten or eleven no one had waltzed into my class asking if I wanted to be a girl. If they had I would have raised my arm in an instant. What a disaster my life would have been. I was clever, that made me stand out as a prime target for bullying. It carried on even to my first year at University. I was pushed out of primary school early graduated at 20 from University. No I didn’t fit in, I was different. I hated sport in particular football, again marked out as different and therefore a target. I knew nothing...
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The Nativity

Sky are showing the film The Nativity Story as part of the Christmas line up. It tells the Christmas Story as authentically as possible although it does begin with slaughter of all children under two something that happened some time after the birth of Jesus. It is quite brutal so if you are looking to have a warm cosy experience this is not the film for you. The poverty and subjugation to Herod and Roman rule is there to be seen. “Betrothed to much-older Joseph (Oscar Isaac), Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) must remain a maiden for one year, but she subsequently receives a visit from the angel Gabriel, who tells her of her destiny. When Joseph and now-heavily pregnant Mary journey to Bethlehem for the Roman census, they face a threat from King Herod, whose obsession with an ancient prophecy endangers soon-to-be-born Jesus.” The film was released on the 1st of December 2006 and premiered at the Vatican on the 27th of November 2006. It received mixed reviews on its release. I w...
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One Magic Christmas

One Magic Christmas is a 1985 American/Canadian Christmas fantasy film directed by Phillip Borsos. It was released by Walt Disney Pictures and stars Mary Steenburgen and Harry Dean Stanton. It was shot in Meaford, Ontario with some scenes in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. Harry Dean Stanton was one of my favourite actors who sadly died in September combine that with Mary Steenburgen and I had to watch this rather old Christmas film. Ginnie is not in the Christmas spirit at all and you can’t blame her, her husband has been out of work for six months, they are being evicted from their home after Christmas and she works as a checkout assistant in a supermarket where she has a miserable boss. Money is tight and she sees other people struggling without the wherewithal to make ends meet. Lurking in the background is an angel tasked with bringing her the spirit of Christmas. Enter, Harry Dean Stanton looking more like a serial killer than an angel. The children in the story are like so...
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Cinema Remembered

 The Magic of Cinema For as long as I can remember films have enthralled me. The first film I ever saw was Tom Thumb in 1958. A decade before that one of my all time favourite films was made and twenty five odd years before I saw Tom Thumb some of the most amazing films ever made at played to audiences. In 1946 a book was published in the USA that was a runaway best seller and a two years later the film version was on our screens. It was to be the third and last pairing of Cary Grant and Myrna Loy in the charmingly gentle, “Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House.” It’s seldom shown these days and hard to track down at a reasonable price on DVD. Remastered and released in 2004 it has been a treasure in my collection that never fails to reward me. Stifled by a small apartment in New York they buy a ruin in Connecticut and are gently fleeced by the country folk. Not a great plot but the house is finally built. By this time Myrna Loy was ceasing to be a draw at the box office, ...
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Upside Down

If they locate Hell in a kettle in Hull and discover two plus two makes £50 then you will get some idea of the asinine concept of the film “Upside Down.” A long time ago in the Golden Age of Cartoons they invented a rule called the plausible impossibility. This allows a cartoon character to run through wire and then fall apart like sliced bread. That’s a plausible impossibility. You can’t just do anything and get away with it, it has at the very least to make some sense. Many decades ago I was at a film club and we were watching a Jean Luc Godard film. After a reel change everything was upside down in long traffic jam. For some fifteen minutes a character walked from car to car with no dialogue, such strange cinematic effects are perfectly possible in Godard film it was only when the subtitles came on everyone realised the film had been inserted upside down. There is no such excuse for this film. I watched it because it said Sci Fi, romance, star crossed lovers and starred Kirsten...
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The Polar Express

Sometimes I can be very stupid and stubborn, I get an idea into my head and won’t budge. I guess I take after my Grandfather who long before I was born insisted he didn’t like tomatoes till it was discovered he had never tasted one. After his first bite he fell in love with them. And so I have to confess for thirteen years I have refused to countenance watching The Polar Express. I didn’t like it. Quite how I can justify that opinion having not seen it is best left to others to explain. I sat down and despite frustratingly numerous interruptions I saw it all over four hours, more than twice as long than the actual film. At its heart is a simple moral tale of a young boy learning about himself on Christmas Eve when he is on the cusp of not believing in Santa Claus.  Tom Hanks plays numerous roles in this strangely filmed story, a mix of animation and live action filmed as animation. If that sounds weird watching it will make it clear. The train journey to the North Pole and...
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Get Santa

There is something great about being able to watch a British Christmas film as they appear to be few and far between. If you throw in a bit of porridge and Jim Broadbent then you have an enjoyable film called Get Santa. The plot is delightfully playful with Santa (Jim Broadbent) crashing a new sleigh in London and ending up behind bars. This innocent old man has to survive. However help is at hand! Rafe Spall recently released from the same prison manages to get the barber, the excellent Stephen Graham to offer help to Santa while he is inside. The results are hilarious. Meanwhile Rafe Spall and Kit Connor (his on screen son) set about trying to get everything sorted out. I’ll tell you no more about the plot except to say it works well and is delight. When you have children it’s hard sometimes to know whether they ought to watch such a film if they still believe in Santa. This is a safe film totally watchable from that point of view yet hugely enjoyable for adults as well. Unl...
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