Written by Hannah McCarthy

Sitting down to a bit of New Year’s telly, I started to watch one of my mum’s favourite films, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and realised to my surprise that I’d never actually seen it before. I remembered some dancing and brightly coloured shirts, but that was about it. Watching it all the way through for the first time, I was slightly shocked at what I saw.

I’m not much of a feminist. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been born in an era where I’ve yet to encounter many obstacles because of my gender. Then again, as a woman, I recognise patriarchal authority when I see it, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers stirred some feminist instincts that must have been buried somewhere deep inside me. Who knew?

In a nutshell, the film tells the story of seven brothers who live in the woods out of town, and when one day the oldest brother brings home a wife, the other six decide they want one too. While the film appears to espouse values of gender equality and of treating women with respect, the story doesn’t necessarily follow suit. Admittedly the film was made in 1954, but watching it I got frustrated at its failed attempts to break the women out of traditional roles. Here is my rant, bare with me.

At the beginning of the film the oldest brother, Adam (Howard Keel), comes to town to trade and find a wife. He is swiftly rebuked by the vicar’s wife for treating women as goods to trade. So far, so good. But then he wanders into an inn and is served food by a beautiful young woman who immediately falls in love with him. Easy as pie. Adam takes said woman, Milly (Jane Powell), back to his cabin in the woods, where Adam’s brothers greet her with a degree of suspicion and curiosity. But pretty soon they’ve worked out that she’s there to cook and clean for them.

Milly is having none of it and storms upstairs to her room. Her girl power is for the moment reinstated. Adam, frustrated at not being able to take his new wife to bed, as one is supposed to, sings her a beautiful love song after which all is forgiven. All women are clearly suckers for romantic ditties. After this breakthrough, Milly realises that her role is in fact to cook and clean, and change the younger brothers from ignorant woodsmen into eligible young men.

It’s credit to Milly that she tries to educate the brothers to respect women, but all the while she’s busy giving their cabin ‘a woman’s touch’. The brothers eventually meet some nice town girls, who seem enchanted with these young rural men, but the girls already have suitors and the brothers become depressed. Adam, who’s stupid enough to use a story based on the Rape of the Sabine Women as a motivational tale, encourages his brothers to go out and take what’s rightfully theirs. So begins a horrifying sequence in which the six brothers kidnap the young women and haul them back to their cabin, all the while being pursued by the girls’ fuming families. Cleverly, or barbarically, the brothers block the pursuers’ path by using the girls’ screams to cause an avalanche.

Of course Milly is furious when six terrified young girls arrive on her doorstep, and orders the brothers out of the house. But abduction is a crime soon forgotten, and the girls develop Stockholm syndrome, pining after the banished brothers. After Milly gives birth to a baby girl, Adam soon learns the error of his ways and tells his brothers they must take the girls back to their families. But whaddyaknow, the girls don’t want to go back.

So begins another kidnapping scene, in which the younger brothers try to force the girls back to town. Amid all the hoo-ha the townsfolk arrive, the avalanche having finally cleared. Fighting ensues, naturally; but soft, the cry of a baby is heard sending terror into the hearts of the fathers who worry the baby might belong to one of their unwed daughters. When asked to whom the baby belongs, in an inspired stroke of genius all the girls cry “Me!” knowing that they’ll have to get married if they’ve had a baby out of wedlock.

The film ends on a multiple marriage scene, proving that no amount of violence, abduction or idiocy can keep a girl from her man. These young women were destined to be wives and that’s what they’ve become. Fair enough those were different times, but the brothers don’t seem to have learnt any lessons by the end. In between all the (very fine) dancing and singing, we see seven women plucked from their urban lives to be country wives. Happy ending? You decide.

Mary, a teenage girl growing up in Rome-occupied Nazareth, is betrothed to Joseph, a modest but kind carpenter. An angel tells her she will bear a child from God and after negotiating the anger and confusion of her family and Joseph at how this could be, she then finds that she, Joseph and the boy growing inside her must make the 100-mile journey to Bethlehem, as a result of a census ordered by Caesar. Meanwhile, Herod is troubled by prophesies regarding a king who will rise up against him and three astrologers from Persia are stirred by an aligning of stars and planets, promising the arrival of something, or someone, very special.

*****

Although The Nativity Story received a far from rousing reception on its original release, it cannot be denied that it has an important place in any Christmas Video Vault. After all, this is where it all started, this is why we celebrate this time of the year. But is the film itself any good? In a word, yes.

Although the film is very low-key in its approach (no sky-filling choirs of angels, no rousing set-pieces), this is entirely fitting and the film is stronger for it. Though the events now resonate with eternity spanning significance, at the time Mary was simply an unexpectedly pregnant teenage girl, riding to a census in Bethlehem on the back of a donkey. There is a welcome and involving sense of time and place to the scenes in and around Nazareth and the characters, so well known to us whatever our beliefs about Jesus himself, feel fleshed out and real. The casting is excellent across the board, with talented unknowns and a few bigger names littered across the principals (Ciaran Hinds as Herod, Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary, Alexander Siddig as Gabriel) and Catherine Hardwicke’s direction is attentive and considered.

Although everyone knows what is going to happen – no room at the inn, shepherds in the fields, wise men travelling from afar, the flight to Egypt – and correspondingly some dramatic tension is lost as Herod hatches his plan to wipe out the possible challenge to his throne, the story is beautifully presented and carefully and lovingly performed. As Jesus comes into the world and light shines down from heaven through a gap in the wall of the stone-hewn stable, the film becomes affecting and moving as the humility, simplicity and fragility of Jesus is presented front and centre.

This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, especially if you don’t believe that Jesus is “the reason for the season”, but there is much to enjoy here regardless, especially stand-out performances by Castle-Hughes as Mary and Oscar Isaac (Sucker Punch, Robin Hood, Drive) as Joseph. Try to track it down and remind yourself of why Christmas is celebrated.

George Bailey (James Stewart) is a tired, frustrated man. He had wanted to see the world, but the needs of his Savings and Loan company in the small town of Bedford Falls and his determination to keep local banker and miser Mr Potter from controlling all of the town’s lending have kept him from travelling as he had hoped to. One Christmas Eve, a mix-up by a colleague when paying money into the bank leaves the Savings & Loan company on the brink of ruin and George Bailey in despair. As he stands on a bridge over a swirling river, he wishes he were dead, indeed that he had never been born and so a kindly angel, Clarence, visits him to show him how life might have been for his friends and family.

*****

I suppose this perennial festive classic has been done to death  now, even on this site. It got the retrospective treatment earlier this year by Natalie and Jon reviewed the BD re-release little over a month ago. But it’s Christmas, so why not enjoy it all over again?

As Jon rightly notes, IAWL has invaded the collective consciousness like few other films, with everything from Nic Cage’s The Family Man, to episodes of pretty much every sit-com you could think of riffing on its themes of “what might my life have been like?” Even Friends mentioned it once, with Phoebe bemoaning that it should be renamed, “it’s a sucky life and just when you think it can’t suck any more, it does”, though she had to confess to not having seen the film through to the end, when, needless to say, all is set right in every conceivable way.

It is a film beautifully written, performed and shot, threading through darker elements (mental illness, bereavement, suicide, death, drunkenness, despair) with such aplomb you almost don’t notice how bleak many of its themes really are. It ends on so joyous a note, children will love it, yet its broader arcs will appeal to and resonate with grown-ups who will themselves at times have wondered, “how might things have worked out differently”.

With the spectre of financial ruin hanging over George Bailey and the prospect of him being worth more dead than alive (due to the payout on his life policy), contemporary relevance could not be more stark. With his children shielded from all that is happening to him, they are excited about Christmas, yet his devoted and loving wife sees in his eyes that all is not well. As he snaps at his kids, I find myself wincing, realising how often the pressures of life can cause me to be short with those dearest to me.

Given his imperious CV, it is saying something to postulate that Jimmy Stewart has never been better cast than as George, hitting all the right notes of hope, despair, youthful exuberance and world-weary cynicism. Lionel Barrymore is wonderful as the curmudgeonly Mr Potter and Henry Travers makes a wonderful Clarence, finally earning his much-deserved wings as the credits role. Much praise should also be heaped on Donna Reed as George’s beloved wife Mary. She is so beautifully supportive of and loving towards George, his anchor through all of the turmoil that threatens to engulf him. The film opens on her prayers (and those of others) for George floating up through the heavens, requiring a stonier heart than mine to keep from welling up.

The film is about restoring hope, loving the life you have and coming to terms with the choices you have made. It is not about grimly accepting your lot in life, rather it is about finding joy in all that is around you and recognising the worth of that. A beautiful film for a beautiful time of the year.

Ah, being a child in the nineties: GameBoys, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, early Pixar films, Batman: The Animated Series and Pokemon trading cards. But when it comes to Christmas films, one of my favorites as a youngster was Jingle All the Way, which was not only one of my first Christmas films at the cinema, but also my first Arnold Schwarzenegger film.

With this being a staple among the massive amount of films I watch for the holiday season each year (including The Muppets Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Elf), I thought that it would be a great excuse to write about this childhood film of mine and seeing how it stands as a festive treat after all these years.

The film opens up with a tacky-looking children’s action show featuring Turbo Man saving the president’s family from his arch nemesis, Dementor. The camera zooms out to reveal that Jamie Langston (Jake Lloyd) is watching the popular television show based on the Turbo Man character. After the show reaches the end credits, his mum Liz (played by Rita Wilson) takes him to his karate lesson and tells him his Dad will make it.

We then cut to a Christmas party at a big mattress company and Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is selling mattresses into the night to his loyal customers and after being late to get to his son’s karate lesson with Officer Hummell giving him some road tests in a traffic jam, he tries to make it up to his son by promising to buy him the biggest selling toy: the new Turbo Man action figure.

With only one day left before Christmas day, Howard is determined to get the new toy, having to compete against mailman Myron (Sinbad), a band of thieving Santas led by James Belushi, avoiding Officer Hammell and eventually getting caught up in a ridiculous scenario with a parade.

For those who have not seen the film yet and read this article so far, this is indeed one of the silliest Christmas films that I have seen and that is what still makes this watchable to a certain degree.
Sinbad’s character is extremely fast-talking and crazy that reminded me of Donkey from the Shrek films, which did become quite annoying at times to watch. However, there would be times where his character would be funny and not because of his character or the dialogue, but the fact that he would be competing against a famous action star, who previously faced off against a Predator and the T-1000, in such crazy situations for an action figure.

The scene where Howard finds himself in a warehouse filled with crooked Santas is one of the true highlights of the film, as it quickly gets into a fight between Schwarzenegger and the gang of crooked Santas, especially since there are encounters of some small Santas and Elves and a giant, bulking Santa that is so strong that his punch sends one of the small Santas literally flying across the room in a high pitched screech. The fight is only more ridiculous when you see close-ups of Schwarzenegger’s wide-eyed comedic reactions.

There are so much crazy stuff happening in this film that it would take up quite a lot of space just to explain this film: there is the questionably creepy neighbor Ted, Myron actually using a bomb without knowing it that explodes in Officer Hummell’s face (and lives!), Schwarzenegger punching a reindeer in the face and later giving it some alcohol, every small person making high-pitched noises for comic effect and everyone falling over with cross eyes. But along with all this crazy stuff the script does try to tell a story with a message that makes it that much watchable and funny to see the silly wackiness happening.

With a cocktail of Schwarzenegger, the young brat that is Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace and the most bizarre situations wrapped in a Christmas setting, Jingle All The Way is not the best film to watch during the holiday, but it is for sure one of the most fun to watch and if you have not seen it yet and found what you read interesting, you will be in for a treat! Oh, and “PUT THE COOKIE DOWN!!!”. Love the quote and just wanted to say it!

Before there was Jack Skellington preceding Christmas with nightmares, Billy Bob Thornton giving Santa Claus a bad name, or rare exports maiming innocent reindeer, it was the Grinch who first turned the tables on the festive season, daring to be indifferent (after Scrooge, of course).

The first of Dr. Seuss’ acclaimed children’s stories to be adapted to feature length – beating The Cat In The Hat and Horton Hears A Who to cinemas –  How The Grinch Stole Christmas is a staple of the holiday period and a triumph in passive-aggressive seasonal comedy.

The story revolves around the titular Grinch, a cynical misanthrope who has spent the majority of his life living in exile on the outskirts of Whoville. Bullied out of town as a child due to his green visage and general disregard for Christmas convention, the Grinch has turned his back on the occasion and declared war on merriment and cheer. When a local girl, similarly disenchanted by the season’s shameless commercialism, takes an interest in the Grinch, even going so far as to nominate him for an award in the local practice of Whobillation, he decides to steal Christmas from the community in a final bid to crush the town’s spirits once and for all.

Narrated by Anthony Hopkins and featuring a powerhouse performance from Jim Carrey, Ron Howard’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas dominated the charts in 2000 and earned itself the enduring title of the second highest-grossing Christmas movie of all time. Largely dismissed by critics, it nevertheless went on to be considered a Christmas classic and ultimately lead the way for subsequent cinematic expeditions to Whoville.

While the dated aesthetic of How The Grinch Stole Christmas might now pale in comparison with the effects-laden Horton Hears A Who, the film is still a massive achievement, the filmmakers duly realising the book’s unique stylings with invention and verve. Carrey is a revelation as the eponymous grouch, gurning and gumming his way through a series of apparently custom-made slapstick set-pieces with a commitment and abandon that proves utterly timeless. Unhindered by the extensive prosthetics (let’s face it, Jim Carrey’s features were pretty rubbery to begin with), the actor is such a delight in the role that you really must ask why he hasn’t done more with his talents in recent years.

The supporting players are similarly good-humoured in their portrayal of the Whovians, with the crowd scenes really selling the sets that they take place in and the community that they conspire to create. Jeffrey Tambor is suitably boo-hiss as the town’s Machiavellian mayor, his self-important streak as wide as the snowflake upon which Whoville is based, while the ever-dependable Christine Baranski delivers a performance so breathtakingly breathless that it is impossible not to feel swept up in her charisma and charm. If newcomer Taylor Michel Momsen disappoints as the mawkishly innocent and painfully tone-deaf Cindy Lou Who – and she does. She really, really does – it is to the film’s credit that it is so relentlessly enjoyable that her evident inexperience is all but forgiven the moment focus shifts back to Carrey.

The real star of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and the aspect which most stands up to scrutiny today, is its inspired script, a masterclass in black humour. Self-referential and wonderfully subversive, Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman’s adapted screenplay is a joy from start to finish. Comprised largely of rhyming couplets, their playful revelry in rhetoric – both articulated by Hopkins and attacked by Carey – is high on quotability, the writers making the most of Dr. Seuss’ ear for dialogue and embracing it as a means to have their say on a number of topics. Perhaps the biggest success of Howard’s film is that it is as much an indictment of Christmas as it is a traditional celebration of it.

A Christmas movie which dares to conform but not necessarily to concede; an adaptation which embraces its namesake while developing the story even further; and a career-best performance from The Mask himself, How The Grinch Stole Christmas is essential viewing this holiday season. Witty, fun and unafraid to have a quick pop at religion between consumerist critiques, I just wish the Grinch could steal Christmas every year.

‘Tis the season to wreck havoc. Joe Dante’s 1984 tale of that loveable and unique Christmas gift which turns out to be more trouble than he’s worth is now a firm festive favourite, and similar to Die Hard, it has earned a loving place on that list whilst using the holidays ostensibly as a hook to tell the story.

Produced by Steven Spielberg under his now legendary Amblin banner, director Joe Dante was apparently brought on board due to the Jaws auteur being a huge fan of his debut feature, The Howling. The director’s playfully sense of dark mischief alongside that more traditional, wholesome Hollywood outlook serves the story perfectly, and the film has a little more bite than some of the other fantasy features it shares a kinship with from that era.

Dante’s own love for Christmas is palpable throughout, and he litters the film with amusing references amongst the creature mischief and carnage. He also has fun subverting the traditions associated with the season, and this is particularly apparent when a main character reveals why she doesn’t join in with celebrations, owing to the death of her father who broke his neck whilst emulating Santa and attempting to climb down the family’s chimney.

The Gremlins themselves are a fantastically evil creation, and the air of menace and danger is much more evident here than in the sequel, which opted for a more comedic, knockabout tone. In the days before CGI, the model work on display is pretty impressive, even with the limitations that process brings. The Mogwai and their green transmutations all possess distinctive personalities and the strong creature design and puppetry really help bring out those characteristics.

In fact, the effects work sometimes threatens to overshadow the sketchily-drawn human characters and the actors who inhibit them. Leads Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates (fresh from being the object of lust for young American males in Fast Time in Ridgemont High) are appealing if a little bland, and the performance of the principal human villain (the spiteful and cantankerous town matriarch Mrs Deagle) is very broad and veers a little too close to out-and-out caricature at times.

It’s definitely the Gremlins show and it’s easy to forget just how vicious and deadly they can be during the scenes which are more slapstick and spoofy in nature. That the cinema turns out to be the only place where they are visibly (and hilariously) enraptured is a wonderful moment and a fun comment on the power of the moving image.

Gremlins was the fourth highest-grossing film of that year (Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and ‘Temple of Doom’ took the top three slots) and while it certainly hasn’t aged as well as Amblin stablemates, Back to the Future and The Goonies (it’s a very uneven film in terms of pacing and structure), there’s still much fun to had here, and it’s the perfect respite for those who tire of the overabundance of mawkish festive material which bombard our cinema and TV screens each year.

As the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington spends his entire year planning for the next Halloween.  As a matter of fact, his entire town of Halloweentown does the same thing.  His latest stint as king has Jack questioning his place in life and after the events of Halloween are over, a somber Jack heads out for a walk and comes across a gathering of trees, each marked with a different door representing a holiday.  Jack enters the door of a decorated tree and finds himself in Christmastown.

What he finds is a town full of colors, cheer and happiness, which is a polar opposite from Halloweentown.  With an idea in his head and excitement in his belly, he heads back to Halloweentown with a plan.  That plan consists of kidnapping Santa Claus and appointing himself as the bearer of joy and gifts in an attempt to recapture his zest for life.  The combination of the two holidays however, end with disastrous but hilarious consequences.

There is no doubt that The Nightmare Before Christmas came from Tim Burton’s brain.  It was however, not directed by Burton, but by Henry Selick.  Having two strong, creative minds behind the world of Jack Skellington only made this film better.  Burton’s films always have a unique look to them.  From the sets, to the landscape, to the characters, you just know when you’re watching one of his movies.  One of the things I loved most about Nightmare is that its world is unlike anything I had seen previously.

Aside from the typical things associated with Halloween and Christmas, the landscape of the film was totally unique.  I loved the townsfolk and the dark and dreary element to Halloweentown.  Dried leaves, and bare branches. Tumbleweeds and wind.  It’s all so perfectly Halloween (depending on which part of the world you live in of course) but it also managed to be rather charming.  It goes without saying that the world of Christmastown was just as great.  Instead of dried leaves and barren hills, we’re treated to a snowy, bright, joyful realm with elves making toys and children riding sleds.  The worlds are polar opposites but fit in this film perfectly.  At least until Jack starts making and handing out his own presents.  Things get a little weird there.

Chris Sarandon (along with Danny Elfman in the singing portions) brings Jack to life through his voice.  Jack is a typical Burton character, but by no means is he forgettable.  He’s just a guy who goes about his life, and begins to question that life.  He’s quirky and even though he’s the Pumpkin King, he’s a bit of a misfit and a bit misunderstood.  I love these qualities about him.  Even though he’s revered in his town, he wants to be better.  That’s something that everyone feels at one point in their life.

The one aspect that this film truly grasps (for me at least) was that feeling of wonder that only comes with innocence.  I remember feeling awestruck at Christmas when we’d go look at the houses that were decorated, or once the tree was finished.  That sense of wonder only comes when you’re a child and slowly fades to something else as an adult.  Jack looks upon Christmastown with that same look of wonder and wants to be a part of it so bad.  I think that’s something that all of us can relate to.

When Pixar released WALL-E, the biggest thing I heard was how they were able to convey so much emotion without using any dialogue.  With Nightmare, I was amazed to see how much emotion could be conveyed when the character didn’t have any eyes.  Actually he didn’t even have a face per se.  Just a skull, devoid of flesh.  His facial expressions speak volumes and you know what he’s feeling just by his brow line.  A furrowed brow goes a long way in getting his point across.

As if this film wasn’t lively enough, adding the other characters enriched to the point of being a classic.  Sally (voiced by Catherine O’Hara), Lock, Shock, Barrell, the Mayor, Dr. Finklestein, Oogie Boogie all added to the tapestry of the film, but my favorite secondary character, was that of Jack’s ghost dog Zero. Don’t ask me why, I just love him.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a sucker for dogs.

This is a film that holds up to time and even now, 17 years later (yes it’s been that long) it still holds its appeal.  Doesn’t matter what I’m doing at the time, if it’s on, I have to sit and watch it.  The soundtrack is catchy, thanks to Danny Elfman, and there isn’t a Halloween/Christmas season that goes by without a viewing.

Once I get through the annual 24 hour A Christmas Story marathon that airs every year here in the States, I’m moving on to The Nightmare Before Christmas once again.  If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend watching it.  If you have seen it, watch it again.  You won’t regret it.

After leaving their son Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) behind the previous Christmas, the McCallister family are determined to make sure that he comes on holiday with them this time. They all make it to the airport, but being in a hurry, they are split up and Kevin follows a different man with a very similar coat to that of his father.

The McCallisters head for Paris and Kevin finds himself in big bad New York, where the Wet Bandits (now renamed the Sticky Bandits) are on the loose, having escaped from prison. They have set their sights on a big toy store, which is holding a load of cash ready for a donation to a local orphanage. Can Kevin stop them, keep himself safe and inflict yet more damage on the increasingly injured and hapless Harry and Marv?

*****

“Like before, only more so” would tend to be the watch-word for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Kevin finds himself all alone in the Big Apple and after a brief stay at a lovely hotel (courtesy of his father’s credit card), he bumps into Harry and Marv and lures them to the townhouse of a relative, who is away while renovations are carried out, leaving loads of building materials to hand and even more in the way of opportunities for face-smashing action.

In all honesty, if it isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it. Yes, it is a little implausible that Kevin, Marv and Harry would all find themselves in the same place, with a conveniently placed house for a final showdown, but this was never supposed to be Ken Loach. This is Home Alone 2. Macaulay Culkin has grown up a little, but the set-up and relationships with his family and the Sticky Bandits still work just fine. He is still just as inventive, still making erroneous assumptions about kindly but slightly off-beat elderly strangers and still very good at booby trapping houses for maximum carnage. Harry and Marv are of course far too stupid to be real, but they were never intended to be convincing portrayals of criminals, rather they are there to suffer and suffer they do.

Let’s consider the roll-call of pain:-

• Slipping on beads on the sidewalk
• Bricks to the face
• A bag of cement to the head
• Slipping on a load of paint, into a shelf of paint
• Electrocution from an arc welder
• Slipping from a greased ladder
• Spanners and wrenches onto the head
• Head on fire
• Kerosene in the toilet
• Falling through a hole in the floor
• Steel bollard to the face
• Tool chest impact to the chest and face
• Burning rope
• Varnish – tarred and feathered

I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but you get the gist. It is genuinely laugh out loud funny, but as with the first film, this has the good sense to lace the mayhem with a story of protecting the money for the orphans and the lavish rewards that Kevin and his family enjoy in return at the hotel on Christmas morning. After all of the tomfoolery at the townhouse, Kevin being reunited with his mother in front of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza is genuinely touching and moving and brings matters to a warm conclusion just as the violence and destruction had reached fever pitch.

Culkin would never reach these heights again and neither would this franchise. Episodes 3 and 4 were desperately bad and sacrificed all of the charm of the first two. Partly that was down to the loss of all of the significant talent, partly down to lazy film-making. Thankfully, the reputations of the first two remain intact and rightly so. Enjoy being a kid again and laugh your socks off.

Due to a mix-up caused by his banishment to the loft and the family oversleeping on the morning of their departure on holiday, Kevin McCallister is left alone at home while the rest of his family jet off to Paris. A pair of burglars, the self-styled “Wet Bandits” are working their way through the neighbourhood and see the McCallister house as the crown jewel. Can Kevin overcome his fears and protect his home against Harry and Marv?

*****

The above synopsis seems redundant, so seemingly deeply entrenched in the collective psyche is this film. Macaulay Culkin, long since departed from our screens, was at the time the hottest child actor on the planet, for the most part off the back of the appeal and success of this and its first sequel.

In this, he was perfectly cast. Self-assured but not precocious, a trouble-maker but inventive and industrious with it and fundamentally a good (if far from perfect) kid, Kevin is an ideal character for kids to warm to and side with as they discover this festive treat for the first time. It helps of course that this film gives us a number of other elements that get the kids cheering Kevin on at every turn – a seemingly helpless kid up against mean grown-ups, comic-book violence inflicted on crooks, a misunderstood and ultimately very helpful scary old man and a genuine sense of wonder at Christmas.

The film is greatly aided by its impressive adult cast, indeed it shows a key way to help this sort of film succeed. Just look at Home Alone 3 and 4 – anonymous and talentless grown-ups and a charisma-free star-moppett. Instead in this (and to a lesser extent in the sequel) you get the best people you can get for the supporting roles and it helps carry the thing through – Joe Pesci, John Heard, John Candy, the desperately frantic and utterly lovely Catherine O’Hara. It all works really well.

Key to the film’s success then and its enduring appeal now is the pain inflicted on Harry and Marv as they attempt to get into the McCallister home. Let’s tick off the checklist:-

• Ice on the front and back steps
• Red hot door handle
• Air rifle through the cat-flap
• Tar and a nail on the basement steps
• Glass baubles inside the living room window
• Blowtorch inside the kitchen door
• Superglue and feathers
• Toy cars at the bottom of the stairs
• Paint tins on the stairs
• Trip wire on the landing
• Cut rope to the tree house
• Spider on the face

That’s quite a lot by anyone’s reckoning and the way it is all set-up and then executed is frankly superb. The mayhem and physical punishment build and build and yet the film ends with a sense of the enjoyment of Christmas, rather than just damage for its own sake.

A fantastic blend of laughs and tenderness and a firm favourite for the Christmas season.

Kris Kringle (Richard Attenborough) is a department store Santa with a difference – he’s the real thing. Due to some ill-tempered rivalry between competing stores and some deliberate provocation, he winds up in court on trumped-up assault charges, leading to a consideration by the judge as to whether he really is Father Christmas or not. Six year old Susan (Mara Wilson) desperately wants to believe, but her mother Dorey (Elizabeth Perkins) has become weary and cynical, while Dorey’s partner Bryan (Dylan McDermott) defends Kris Kringle in court. Is he just an old, confused man, or is he really real?

*****

Remade from the 1947 film of the same name, Miracle is a deliberate and enthralling throw-back. Whereas there could have been lashings of post-modern irony, cynicism and winks to the audience, instead this is played straight as a die. As Kris Kringle, Attenborough is perfectly cast; innocent, guileless, warm, affectionate and a dab-hand at sign-language in one of the all-time great “make a grown man cry every time” scenes. Yes, Wilson is too cute to be true as Susan, but her presence is absolutely essential, her arc towards heartfelt, unwavering belief the fulcrum of all that happens around her.

McDermott is excellent as the good-hearted and faith-filled attorney, trying to coax out of Perkins’ Dorey some of the wonder and innocence about Christmas that she seems to have lost on the way. Neither of them are mere ciphers, enjoying fleshed out characterisation and story-lines that have room to breathe, with convincing developments towards that wonderful finale.

As the court case that sits at the core of the story builds towards its conclusion, it seems unthinkable that the outcome would be anything other than what by that stage you are desperately hoping for and as one by one the citizens of Manhattan declare that they believe, you may find that something gets in your eye with alarming predictability.

In many ways, Miracle is the summation of all that Christmas movies are and should be. Commercialisation is held up for ridicule and the cold-hearted manager of the “bad” department store is consistently presented in the negative. Hope, wonder and belief are offered up as praiseworthy traits and rewarded with honour. The unashamed good nature of Kris Kringle is presented as an ideal and something to which we all ought to aspire and happy endings are shown to not merely be the stuff of fairy tales. Yes, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon are Christmas films and yes, Gremlins can be a welcome antidote to the sometimes lazy Christmas-themed films that are presented to us at this time of year. But Miracle on 34th Street is where it is at, alongside It’s a Wonderful Life as a perfect representation of all that Christmas should mean.

Watch it, feel free to blub a bit* and get yourself in the mood for the most wonderful time of the year.

* or in my case, a lot

Christmas is many things to many people; a time of happiness, a time of reflection, a time to be grateful for what you have. It is a time for a veritable barrage of films which literally cut-and-paste the same plot elements every. single. year. Now, I have absolutely no problem with Christmas, and I like to think I’m quite tolerant when it comes to giving films a chance, but when it comes to Christmas films, I’m a complete Scrooge. Christmas with the Kranks, then, represented something of interest to myself, given the plot is to Christmas what I am to Christmas films.

Luther (Tim Allen) and Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) decide to use their first Christmas without their daughter at home to escape on a cruise, a deal sweetened by the fact that their trip costs just half of what they normally spend on the holiday season. With these savings in mind, Luther takes the inexplicable and completely unexplained decision to create a self-imposed ban on Christmas for himself and his wife – no decorations, no cards, no Shrek the Halls (presumably). If Luther’s move to completely veto Christmas seems odd and extreme at first, it appears nothing short of suicidal when it becomes apparent that Christmas with the Kranks is set in a nightmarish parallel universe where the ritual of putting up Christmas decorations is enforced by a sort of neighbourhood-watch Gestapo.

Comparing decorating the street for Christmas with Nazi Germany may seem excessive, but Christmas with the Kranks really must be seen to be believed. Suspension of disbelief is not an option here. The neighbours spy, guilt trip, and intimidate, and the Kranks even make the front page of their local paper for skipping Christmas, but still they stick to it. In fact, Luther is so steadfast in his Christmas boycott that he refuses to make any charitable donations, and makes ice all over his driveway so he can stop the postman getting to the door (how dare he try to do his job?). Naturally, by the end of the film he has seen the error of his ways, but not before convincing the viewer that he’s a miserly, risible character.

If it’s not enough that the entire plot centres around an entirely avoidable situation (the Kranks are saving money by going on the cruise, not spending more, which would have been more understandable), essentially all the jokes and set-pieces do as well. One lengthy sequence has Nora and Luther crawling around on their hands and knees to try to avoid being seen by carollers. It’s never explained why they’re so desperate to get to the front of the house and thus as close to the people they’re trying to avoid as they can, rather than just going to the back of the house. In another scene, Luther appears having had Botox. Again, no reasoning is given as to why, other than a cheap visual gag, and it completely defeats the point of trying to save money by skipping Christmas. It’s lazy, formulaic stuff.

There are a couple of occasions where Nora believes her husband is propositioning her and ‘readies’ herself, which is not what you expect or want to see in a wholesome family Christmas comedy, particularly when the chemistry between the two leads is best described as slightly creepy. As Nora tells Luther ‘make sure you shut the curtains!’, you’ll be praying they shut the lens cap too. Allen and Curtis are both fine in their roles, but there’s only so much they can do with such a limited script and such unlikable, irritating characters.

Naturally, the film can’t have the Kranks succeeding in their revolutionary war against the police state ruling their street and going on their cruise, as that wouldn’t be Christmassy. Instead, the final hour of the film is dedicated to their efforts to pull off a complete about-face as their daughter announces she will be returning to surprise them for Christmas and expects all her favourite traditions. The two halves of the film contrast so violently (one avoiding Christmas at all costs, one the stock ‘need to get ready for Christmas with very little time’ plot) it feels as though two separate scripts have been forced together to make one whole.

The plot limps through the second half of the film, again relying on the audience not picking up on the various contradictions and frankly implausible situations. Given their relentless harassment campaign of the Kranks to put up their decorations, the Gestapo seem extremely reluctant to give Luther and Nora any help whatsoever and revel in their disorganisation. Christmas must just bring out the bastard in people. Luther is even arrested at one point, one officer (Cheech Marin) sneering ‘shoulda bought a calendar’. The key question the film poses is not ‘will the Kranks manage to avoid Christmas?’ or ‘will they have their party ready in time?’, nor is it about what Christmas ‘means’, but simply, ‘why the hell do they live on this street?’

Written by Matt Clough

For a director as venerable as Martin Scorsese, arguably the greatest living filmmaker, pinpointing one of his cinematic masterpieces as his best will always be essentially impossible.

Having covered such a wide range of genres over his career, there will never be a definitive consensus, however his 1990 film GoodFellas presents possibly the most compelling case to be considered Scorsese’s best. None of his other films have been as successful in blending his rich thematic subtexts and technical mastery with wildly entertaining plots and characters in what is quite simply the greatest gangster film ever made.

GoodFellas tells the story of Henry Hill’s (Ray Liotta) life from his humble beginnings in an Italian neighbourhood in ’50s New York, to his rise through the ranks of the mafia, and finally to his absolute capitulation. He is mentored by Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and partnered by Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci), and along with his wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) and head of the ‘family’ Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), when he goes down, he takes everyone down with him. No other film has quite encapsulated the classic rise-and-fall story, and Scorsese revels in manipulating the audience’s emotions, taking them from reverence for the gangster lifestyle to repugnance.

The overall performance of the cast is first class. Liotta has never bettered his turn as Henry Hill; he quite simply lives and breathes his character, and the makeup effects deserve special commendation for making the older Henry look so convincingly ravaged. De Niro is, as always, fantastic, oscillating from warmth to menace with breathtaking ease, but the true standout performance is Pesci, whose psychopathic performance won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

It’s a testament to GoodFellas quality that its run time, just under two and a half hours, feels over too soon. The pacing is a huge technical achievement – it never slows for lengthy, dialogue-driven scenes like those in The Godfather, and it never resorts to the hyperbolic violence seen in Scarface. It has also aged significantly better than its rivals for the gangster film crown.

GoodFellas stakes a great claim to have the greatest Scorsese soundtrack of all his film, even surpassing Bernard Herrmann’s classic score for Taxi Driver. It has everything from Tony Bennett to the Rolling Stones, and from Aretha Franklin to Sid Vicious. The music perfectly captures the essence of the eras covered in the film, going from the idyllic ‘Little Italy’ in the ’50s to the drug-soaked late ’70s. Scorsese ticks off every piece of gangster iconography you can think of – the classic cars, the guns, the suits, the food – and yet does so with such verve and energy that it makes it all seem fresh. Not bad for someone who describes his relationship to ‘the life’ as love-hate.

At the beginning of his final monologue in the courtroom, Henry states that he had it all, and the same is true for GoodFellas. As a technical achievement, it’s unparalleled. As a gangster film, it’s unlikely ever to be surpassed. It’s brutal and funny, alluring and repulsive, a stunning vision of what Scorsese has called ‘the America dream gone completely mad and twisted.’ At the end of the day, if you don’t enjoy GoodFellas, ‘in the fuckin’ oven you’re gonna go head first!’

Written by Matthew Clough

Having driven across the US to visit a closed theme park and tussled with continental Europe for Vacation and European Vacation, the Griswold family decide to stay home for Christmas. Clark (Chevy Chase) wants everything to be just so – the tree, the turkey, the lights – but between his uptight neighbours, his eccentric extended family and an expected visit from his problematic cousin (Randy Quaid) all is far from smooth. Added to that is his anxiety about his expected Christmas bonus, which he is banking on to meet the cost of a new pool for the garden.

*****

Partly because it is a Christmas film and partly because it is just a better film, Christmas Vacation has endured where the previous and later instalments have not (has anyone out there seen Vegas Vacation?). In many ways it is an assortment of clichés all bundled together in Christmas wrapping paper, but that description does a disservice to what is actually a really funny and at times heart-warming tale of a man who just wants Christmas to be perfect for his family.

The set-pieces are legendary. A trip out into the woods to find and cut down the Griswold family Christmas tree is first hampered by getting the car stuck under a logging truck and later by the realisation that the saw has been left at home. The bedtime scene where we discover just how much sap the newly felled tree has on it makes me smile just in thinking about it. Clark also polishes up a metal tray for a quasi-sleigh ride in the snow and seems to break the sound barrier in the process. He attaches what looks for all the world to be several miles of lights to his house and when they are finally lit the rest of the town blacks out until the local power station kicks in the auxiliary generator.

Added to that are assorted explosions, hysterical outbursts, disappointments, pratfalls and one-liners that have become a perennial feature of the Roper household in the run up to Christmas, having been a staple of my teen years and those of my wife before we ever met. Chevy Chase, who has increasingly fallen away from prominence in recent years, is splendid as Clark Griswold, refusing to give in to problems and obstacles until finally melting down in spectacular fashion. Randy Quaid, who has his own problems to contend with at the moment, manages to be incredibly annoying but good-natured and ultimately helpful, but none of the farce ever becomes so absurdly far-fetched as to distract or spoil the atmosphere of festive cheer.

Ridiculous, funny, festive and resonant on all of those days when I’m just trying to get everything right for my wife and kids, it may not be the most emotionally affecting Christmas film out there, nor the funniest, but it is one of the best and most enduring and I commend it to you wholeheartedly at this festive time.

In 2005, Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer were an unlikely pair to be headlining a film together. Downey Jr. was in the early stages of his comeback from years struggling with drug addiction, and Kilmer’s casting as a camp private eye seemed at odds with his reputation as a difficult and intense presence on set.

But put them with first-time director, and writer of Lethal Weapon, Shane Black, and you have one of the most delicious films of the last decade.

Based in part on the book Bodies Are Where You Find Them by Brett Halliday, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a neo-noir that comes complete with fast dialogue, an almost incomprehensible plot, and lots of corpses. Rather than being a Tarantino-style blood bath, however, Black’s film is a wildly hilarious farce.

Harry Lockheart (Downey Jr.) is in L.A. – a fantastical city at the best of times – for a screen test, after accidentally crashing into a film audition and impressing the casting agents. At a party he is introduced to ‘Gay’ Perry van Shrike (Kilmer), a private detective who has been recruited to give Lockheart some experience of the profession for Lockheart’s film role. Not long after they meet, Lockheart is embroiled in two murder cases and the bodies begin to pile up.

Black delights in taking reality, smashing it and throwing the distorted pieces back in your face. Lockheart, our narrator, can rewind or fast forward the film to refine his story, and ends the film with a straight-to-camera epilogue thanking us for watching. Downey Jr.’s quick delivery is perfect for Black’s smart dialogue, and his bemused expression throughout all the hi-jinks makes the bizarre turn of events even more entertaining. Next to Downey Jr., Kilmer is clearly having a blast as Gay Perry, always ready to bring a healthy dose of rationality to the situation. The often underrated Michelle Monaghan completes the unfortunate trio as Lockheart’s beautiful and intelligent childhood sweetheart.

You may not be able to follow the plot, but that’s not really the point. Just let the beauty of L.A., bathed in Michael Barrett’s glowing cinematography, and the glorious madness wash over you, and enjoy the ride. After all, with a film that includes a drunken robot, Elvis and urinating on corpses, it was never really going to make a lot of sense.

Wrriten by Hannah McCarthy

Our Video Vault column is normally devoted to those films that we love and that we’ve seen dozens and dozens of times.  I personally haven’t written one on what is considered to be a classic that I’ve only just watched for the first time recently.  Until now that is.

Recently it occurred to me that I needed to take two hours and visit the 1968 Steve McQueen classic, Bullitt.  Going into this film, my only knowledge of it, aside from it starring McQueen, was that it features one of the best car chase scene ever captured on film.  Well considering I’m all for a great car chase, that’s all the information I needed.  I had no prior knowledge of the plot, or the rest of the cast for that matter so when I sat down to finally watch it, it was all a surprise.

In what can be considered one of his most famous roles, McQueen stars as all-business San Francisco police detective Frank Bullitt.  Bullitt and his partner Delgetti are tasked with protecting a star witness for 48 hours and deliver him safely to the courthouse to testify against an underground crime lord.  However, while under their protection, the witness and Delgetti are gunned down.  Bullitt decides to investigate the case himself, much to the chagrin of Senator Chalmers (Robert Vaughn), who tries to shut down Bullitt’s investigation.

Directed by Peter Yates and released in 1968, this film does show its age, while still also remaining timeless.  This quality makes this film incredibly easy to watch without cringing at how different San Francisco was back then.  In an age where our films are visually busy with effects, lens-flares, explosions and the like, this film calls back to an age where none of those things were necessary.  Yates created a film where certain key scenes had no music, and little movement, yet those scenes were some of the most striking of the film.  His use of angles and the way he used lighting and framing all lend to the undercurrent of intensity that runs throughout its entirety.

That intensity also applies to McQueen.  He’s not so much playing a character as he is a presence.  I’m not well versed in the world of McQueen but it seems to me that this role might have been close to what he was like when he wasn’t in front of the camera.  On the surface he’s calm, cool and collected, but you can see a storm brewing just under the surface.

While there are some big names in this film, there is no doubt that this is McQueen’s film.  Robert Vaughn, as mentioned above, plays the Senator that original tasked Bullitt, then tried to shut him down.  We also get to see a young Norman Fell and Robert Duvall as well.  The one role that I could have done without however was that of Bullitt’s love interest, Cathy, played by Jacqueline Bisset.  It seems to me that this role was thrown in for that romantic aspect that wasn’t even necessary.  Perhaps it was an attempt to bring some warmth to the character of Bullitt, but I found her to be more of a distraction.

Shot on location in San Francisco, this film does a great job of shining a spot light on the iconic city.  With shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, the steep hilly streets and its personality at the time, San Francisco can also be considered a co-star of the film.  The one other thing the city ads with those hilly streets, is the formula for a classic car chase.

I spent a good portion of the film trying to figure out just where that car chases was going to pop up.  Finally about two-thirds of the way through, the wait paid off.  What I saw was nothing short of amazing.  To think that Yates was able to capture such an incredible chase scene like that in 1968 just boggled my mind.  Most chase scenes these days involve the foreign racing cars that you see in the Fast and Furious films.  Back in 1968, they used the hot rods of the time, a 1968 Dodge Charger and a 1968 Ford Mustang GT, both of which are good old-fashioned American muscle.  This was a time where CGI wasn’t an option.  This scene was filmed on a camera with the cars reaching speeds of up to 110 mph.  That’s unheard of on the streets of San Francisco.

McQueen originally planned on doing his own driving, however after one part where he overshot a turn and burned rubber while in reverse, a stunt driver took over.  That mistake however, remains in the film and lends itself to the fact that even though Bullitt’s a cop, he’s not an expert race car driver.  He’s just a guy trying to do his job.

The entire scene runs almost 10 minutes and is done without the use of any type of musical score.  There’s nothing more that engines revving, tires squealing and metal grinding as far as the soundtrack goes.  There isn’t even any dialogue between the two bad guys in the Charger.  To have a scene that contains so much, yet so little, be that entrancing is really something to behold.

Bullitt went on to win the Oscar for Best Film Editing, while also being nominated for Best Sound.  It captured the performance that went on to define Steve McQueen and also set the bar for action packed car chase scenes.  Looking at this film through fresh eyes made me appreciate the talent that went into making it.  While I’m ashamed to admit that this was the first viewing for me, I’m also happy about that fact.  Had I seen this film when I was younger, I may not have appreciated it as much as I do now that I’m an adult.

If you haven’t seen this film, do yourself a favor and rent it tonight.  If this sounds like your cup of tea, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.  Any and all film fans should take the two hours and watch it.  I’m glad I can finally say “Why yes, I have seen Bullitt” and I foresee this film making its way into my collection very soon.

Be sure to visit me at ReelGoddess.com for my take on all things film and television! You can also  follow me in the social media sphere!

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Long time readers of the site will have seen this before as I’m reposting my love letter to Stephen Volk’s Ghostwatch on the occasion of Hallowe’en. A year shy of its twentieth anniversary it remains a landmark of paranormal drama and has just been reissued on DVD at a ridiculously low price.

Things have changed since the initial (and only) BBC broadcast. Reality TV has infected almost every aspect of television and Most Haunted and the recent Paranormal Activity films simply would not exist without it. Familiarity with the presenters may have made he suspension of disbelief a little difficult initially but nineteen years on there is no such problem.

Ghostwatch joins The War Game, Orson Welles’ Hallowe’en broadcast of War of the Worlds, and the US TV programmes Special Bulletin and Without Warning as moments in broadcast history which signalled a shift in what was possible, and it’s still a damn scary yarn.

If you have a copy, or can find one in the shops today I implore you to watch along with the Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains National Seance (details here), that way – you wont be watching alone. And if you’re still in the mood for a scare I can recommend Volk’s The Awakening which he wrote with director Nick Murphy – my review is here and it’s out in cinemas on the 11th of November.

Here’s my Hallowe’en Video Vault for Ghostwatch.

On the 31st of October 1992 at 9:30 in the evening, as the BBC logo was spinning and the Announcer began to introduce Ghostwatch I was not watching, I was out somewhere, missing out on one of the scariest TV programmes ever broadcast.

It is seventeen years since the only terrestrial airing and it still has the power to convince and terrify. It can be set alongside Nigel Kneale’s Stone Tape and Barry Hines’ Threads as a singular event, a controversial landmark of Television broadcasting that was deemed so effective that it was banned from being shown again.

In the internet age, where iPlayer, iTunes and torrents mean that most tv programmes are readily available and easy to acquire, yet Ghostwatch wasn’t available, via a repeat or video release, for ten long years. The backlash against the programme was such that many believed it a deliberate attempt to scare seven shades of suburbia out of the general populace, and as it was linked to the sad suicide of an individual, the BBC complied and hid it from view until the 2002 BFI DVD release.

I was lucky not to have to wait this long however, as seventeen years ago this Halloween my video was turning, recording the moment, and the next morning I sat down to write an essay for school and put Ghostwatch on in the background. I wrote nothing for the next 90 minutes.

Ghostwatch, in many ways, was my perfect television programme. I became fascinated with the Enfield Poltergeist, a clear inspiration for the show, through the book This House is Haunted and poured over Harry Price’s tales of Borley Rectory; poltergeists and the domestic terror they inspired invaded my mind and not until Ghostwatch did I realise that I was not alone. The show touched a national nerve and set pulses racing long into the night.

Remember of course that the X Files hadn’t yet captured the global consciousness, the dubious stage of Most Haunted and the recent, Alan Partridge inspired, Ghost Hunting with the Happy Mondays was a long way off and TV productions regarding ghosts were limited to the occasional Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, but Ghostwatch changed that.

Taking the incredible success of the micro budget scare fest Paranormal Activity as a recent example of taking the clichéd pitch of a haunted house movie to a new level of effective terror through its manner of telling the story, Ghostwatch used the “˜modern idiom’ of the outside broadcast and the live program to draw the audience in, scare their faces off and leave them wondering “˜Was it real?’. The spate of horror films using the internet and documentary style footage in the early part of the 21st century, coupled with the rise of Reality TV, show how far ahead Ghostwatch really was. The directors of The Blair Witch Project both saw Ghostwatch before embarking on their film, and other films such as The Last Broadcast experimented with documentary techniques to nail their audiences to their seats in fear. Derren Brown’s recent Seance was, in part, inspired by the 1992 BBC Screen One production.

Part of what made the broadcast so effective was the use of ‘real life’ presenters, populating the programme with familiar faces and concepts such as a bank of phone desks to receive viewer’s calls (via the standard BBC number, which if you called played a message telling you it was just a TV play) gave the production a level of authenticity that belied its fictional nature. Sarah Greene was well known to the public and, controversially, to children as a host of many BBC programmes and it was her ambiguous fate that was to whip up a small frenzy of moral panic in the aftermath. Red Dwarf’s Craig Charles was on hand to ape and mock, usefully mirroring the audience’s skepticism, however it was the involvement of eminent TV personality Michael Parkinson (pre-knighthood) who fronted the programme, that gave Ghostwatch its authoritative foundation.

Ostensibly a live broadcast, similar now to Most Haunted and the like, from a house in North London that was allegedly haunted by an unseen spook, the investigation centred on the household consisting of the mother, Pamela, and her two daughters Susan and Kimmy. At first they appear as a family under siege and much of the early part of the programme deals with their experiences thus far. Tales of benign activity such as bent spoons and clocks stopping, familiar staples of poltergeist manifestations, gave way to scratches appearing on the elder daughter’s face and we hear incredible thumps coming from the walls. The programme cuts back and forth between Sarah Greene in the house and Parky in the studio discussing the events with a para-psychologist. Everything was done exactly as if it was a genuine investigation into the paranormal. It is a little twee, and at times fairly pedestrian, but don’t be fooled – this is simply the build up for an outstanding climax.

The writer Stephen Volk used the fundamental live programming vocabulary, such as the use of phone calls from the public, pre recorded interviews (with obscured faces) and outside broadcast to create a complete world in which the Early family allowed TV cameras into their home to try and document their poltergeist. It carefully lays traps (the incredulous American scientist, the young teenage daughter seeking attention, the phone calls making fun of the programme) for the unwary viewer, many of them convinced it was really happening, and slowly the atmosphere of expectation and dread intensified. Through scratched writing in a school book, the wailing of cats trapped in the walls, some eerie phone calls and the frantic activity taking place in such a small, and familiar, location the tension builds.

As the programme goes on it emerges that something is very wrong in the house, glimpses of a ghoulish figure are seen and a sense of real panic kicks in as the activity in the house takes a tangible, nasty turn. All the time we are looking for, as the resident psychologist has it, ‘faces in the fire’, some of the sightings of the ghost are so quick the video I had became worn with the amount of pausing it endured. The use of diegetic sound is perfect, as the walls rumble with thick, heavy thuds and the scratching of starving cats emanate from the floorboards smash through the portentous silences, and the screams, when they come, provide no relief.

There is a sublime moment when, after a volley of violent activity occurs and the genuinely unsettling events really start to unfold, the live feed to the house is cut, leaving the studio and the viewer watching static. After a moment it reappears and all appears fine, though there is no way to contact the house. The girls are all sitting and playing a board game, nothing untoward seems to have happened and yet the subsequent discovery by the psychologist in the studio sends a chill down your spine as we realise all is not well in the house.

Pipes, Mother Seddons, Raymond Tonstall. All names of entities that would seem tremendously clichéd if written into a film script, however the magic of Ghostwatch being set in the real world gave these names and figures menace, and we believed in them and their dark history. Ghostwatch used the conventions of live TV against its audience; programs of the era were often live, and bought a sense of excitement and expectation with it that today we take for granted. As the activity in the house turned darker and the programme ended on a sinister note the reality that the audience was so comfortable with had collapsed; the loss of control was immediate and the resulting backlash was inevitable. When people realised that they had been fooled the reaction was so extreme that it has took 10 years for Ghostwatch became safe to release.

Ghostwatch has been documented as one of television’s greatest hoaxes, but his is to misunderstand it. Hoax implies that it was a deliberate attempt to fool people, Ghostwatch never tried, it didn’t have to. The intrusion of cameras and crew into people’s houses was frequent in the late 80s and by the early 90s it was not anything special, but never before had it captured something so horrifying and the control associated with television was lost.

It is all about audience sympathy and involvement. The key to Ghostwatch was the use of the everyday. It could have been anybody’s house, anyone’s next door neighbours; it meant that it could be happening to you. Hysteria is so much more effective if it hits people directly and singularly, it’s a very isolating experience to be scared by yourself, and Ghostwatch’s strength came from the fact that for those 90 minutes you were watching helplessly as this house was overrun with something real and horrifying.

In the years following a group of my friends and I would crowd around the television and let it scare us all over again. We knew it backwards, we laughed in anticipation of Kevin Tripp’s phone call (the cheese and pickle sandwich? Come on”¦), we watched intently when the camera panned around the bedroom catching the briefest of glimpses of Pipes. Though we knew it was fiction we enjoyed losing ourselves in the programme, and despite the apparent paradox seeing Ghostwatch again and again always felt as if it  was live, and always exciting. We would put on the video, sit back and enjoy until one of us would see something half hidden in the background, or reflected in a mirror and the fear and excitement would come flooding back. It was a unique experience for us to see something that bore repeated viewings and managed to maintain a real sense of terror from images and obscured moments that could easily have been missed first time around.

While writing this Video Vault I watched Ghostwatch again, and though I knew it word for word there were moments when the feelings of unease and fear resurfaced. Scenes I had watched literally hundreds of times came back on and a chill went through me – after all this time. It takes great power to do something like this and though it has dated there has been nothing like it since. It is a truly inspired piece of television.

Nineteen years have dulled its effect slightly. The profusion of live TV and reality shows have resulted in an inbuilt cynicism for what we watch, and if Ghostwatch was to be realised today it would a harder task to convince the audience of its true, fictional status. In his book Dark Corners the writer Stephen Volk produced something of a sequel to the programme in his short story 31/10 and it is a fascinating read. Personally I’ve very much looking forward to the fan-created retrospective documentary Behind the Curtains which you can follow on their YouTube page.

Ghostwatch was an important part of my past. It was the first time a TV programme physically shook me, and I was so enamoured with it that for a long time I couldn’t see the, admittedly few, shortcomings. Now I can enjoy it as a true original, a programme so accomplished in execution and so effective in its purpose that it remains a Halloween classic which has never been bettered. As time wore on the acting got more ropey, the video tape was deteriorating, but for 90 minutes our programme was on, nothing on television before or since gave us this thrill.

Happy Halloween.

Today’s Video Vault has Hayley Stovold showing off the neighbourhood.

Although it was first released in 1989, The ‘Burbs is still as exciting and watchable as ever. Over two decades later, the film still confronts current issues, albeit slightly dramatised.

A black comedy/thriller, The ‘Burbs is set in a small suburban town, Hinkley Hills, and follows suburbanite Ray Petersen as he and his friends investigate the strange, new next door neighbours. Ray (Tom Hanks) starts to hear weird noises from The Klopeks’ house at night and, seeing as they never appear in the daytime, begins to investigate. Ray and his trusted friends start to believe they might be up to something untoward – cue 102 minutes of adventure that takes place simply in a cul-de-sac.

The cast line-up goes a long way in helping to make this movie so special. Tom Hanks is his usual self, bringing a healthy mix of sarcasm and charisma to the screen. His chemistry with on-screen wife Carrie Fisher is brilliant and they play a realistic, agitated married couple. She is pre-occupied with getting away from the suburbs for a holiday; he is completely enthralled and focused on what’s happening in his own backyard.

Bruce Dern plays the eccentric Lt. Mark Rumsfield, who is constantly dressed in his army gear and spends his days trying to keep his lawn pristine and safe from dog poop. Rick Ducommon is Ray’s slightly chubby best friend Art and Corey Feldman (The Goonies) is ‘rock wannabe’ Ricky Butler. The casting is so good because it is so awkwardly realistic. If I were to open my front door right now and look outside, I would see very similar characters trundling along with their daily lives. Taking out the rubbish, walking the dog or mowing the lawn – mundane daily chores are all covered throughout the movie. The mixture of personalities is just pure entertainment too. Ray is sensible but easily led astray, Art is simple, Mark is slightly mad and Ricky is just, well, Ricky.

There’s a good mix of light and shade during the film, with the Klopeks creating most of the shade. The family is quite spooky and made up of a doctor, a grumpy uncle and a pale, buck-toothed teen.

The movie is not only brilliant because of the cast but also because it manages to be highly entertaining despite its limited setting. The most adventurous shot in the movie involves Ray and Dr Werner Klopek (Henry Gibson) battling it out in a moving ambulance while their helpless neighbours watch on in disbelief. There are also some major action shots, including one of the last scenes where Ray and Art accidentally blow up a house. The majority of the film takes place within the cul-de-sac, on the street and in backyards. The scene inside the Klopek house is a rare insight into the strange neighbours. Despite the repetitive setting, the film has a way of making you want to join in with the conspiracies and uncover the truth.

The reason I love The ‘Burbs is not only because it makes me chuckle, it’s because it tackles so many endless themes. Normality, territorial threats, suspicion, paranoia and friendship are all explored. While there have been other movies based on suburban life (American Beauty, Neighbors, Moving) none of them do it as well. Joe Dante’s The ‘Burbs is laced with intricacy, humour and is slightly spooky – so for me it pushes all the right buttons.

Follo Hayley on Twitter here: @hayleystovold

And so it had come to this. Wearily yet with the obligatory expectation and excitement inherent in any new Star Wars film we walked into the cinema for the final chapter of the  saga to find out if the years of hope, which previously had given way to disappointment, would be worth it. I sat in the cinema with my parents for the first time in years, and my two best friends and we all had the same look on our faces, one which we couldn’t quite hide.  The one that said ‘I have a bad feeling about this…’

Flashing back a couple of decades and you’ll find the three of us gathered around the TV watching the credits roll on the new video of Episode IV: A New Hope. When the final name had scrolled upwards and the tape stopped it took us exactly three seconds to hit the rewind button and start it all over again. It was the defining film of our childhood and though we had no idea how big an impact it was having we knew, with a blissful unquestioning certainty, that here we had something truly special.

The world that flashed before our eyes was exciting, alien, morally uncomplicated and unabashedly heroic. Subsequent episodes in the original trilogy expanded the world and we became more entrenched in it, and at the final moments of Return of the Jedi, Ewok singsong aside, we were done and happy to be so.

Back to the cinema in 2005, with the recent double whammy of Prequel disappointment still smarting we watched the lights go down and hoped that our faith had not been misplaced.

It didn’t start well.

An enormous space battle opened the film, the likes of which we have never seen with hundreds of ships zipping to and fro avoiding mile wide laser blasts and swarms of fighters peppering the skyies above Coruscant with laser fire. It looked amazing, but had one fatal flaw. Despite the technical excellence here I had no idea who is fighting who, or why they are carving large chunks out of each other. During the rescue of the kidnapped Palpatine Count Dooku is dispatched by Anakin in perhaps the most uninspired way possible – the Dark Lord may as well have tripped on his robes and fallen down a flight of stairs. It was a shaky start and one which suggested that Lucas was keen to tie up loose ends in the most perfunctory way possible. But this was meant to be the end, with Anakin’s downfall leading to the thrilling final duel between Master and Apprentice which would lead to the rebirth of this petulant kid from Tattooine as the most feared warrior in the galaxy.

This was something Lucas almost got right. This scene here…

with Palpatine seducing Anakin to moral spasms that would lead to his fall to the dark side is a curious one. Ian McDiarmid is great fun, elongated the bizarre tale of Darth Plagueis and his death-defying forcery to suitably operatic heights while the-boy-who-would-be-Vader barely comprehending its not so subtle agenda. Once revealed as a Dark Lord of the Sith by Samuel L. Jackson and his fellow Jedi they are quickly dispatched by Palpatine and with the various battles raging on many different worlds Anakin stumbles into accepting his fate as a servant of evil, all because he has some dream about Padme dying in childbirth.

Then this happened.

A scene we really, didn’t need to see. He’s a bastard – we get it. That little kid can’t act for toffee but when he shudders as Darth KidKiller ignites his lightsaber it gets me every time. Even so this was a strange moment and an unnecessary one. I don’t buy it at all. If you want to serve evil to save the life of your pregnant wife why does it makes sense to kill children, surely destroying their Jedi teachers is enough. This is an ugly side effect of not having a solid foundation on which to base the downfall of Anakin.

Moving on, this then happened.

Then this.

And then this.

And finally this.

And we were back on the Tantive IV with the Jedi all but wiped out and Luke and Leia born and hidden from the newly besuited Vader. Bizarrely the entire visual landscape changes to evoke the original Star Wars film with bad hairstyles and Imperial officers in their grey outfits and silly hats. It seemed as if Lucas had slotted everything into place by taking a pair of scissors to the pieces of the puzzle and while the story was brought full circle it falls short of providing a logical and believable narrative. Anakin’s turn to the dark side was incredibly confused and made him out to be a bit of an idiot. All this promise lost in a haze of CGI and dreary political mechanics. But there was one moment that got me.

Having gone through the convoluted final duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin we have a legless Skywalker sliding into the lava and Ewan McGregor says the line:

“You were my brother Anakin. I loved you.”

That line saved the scene for me. It almost saved the whole damn prequel trilogy and it still gives me chills when I hear it. So much emotion in such a few words – emotion that is otherwise completely absent from the three films. I’m not ashamed to admit that there was a tear welling in my eye when I heard that for the first time. It is a line that strikes directly at the hearts of the young boys who sat watched the original trilogy, whose imaginations were afire with the mysterious Clone Wars and the days before the Empire. After nearly six hours of clinical plotting and bloodless emotional journeys we have a moment of passion and it is like a bolt of lightning in an otherwise pitch black night. Sadly that feeling was eclipsed by the moment Vader yelled ‘Noooooooooo’ and then a few minutes later we were done, it was over.

It’s hard to say where it went wrong, there are so many potential culprits but I have the feeling that if Lucas had a few more people challenging his ideas then we might have a more satisfying trilogy. It remains a difficult film to like, and as an accolade ‘Best of the Prequels’ is akin to ‘the mildest dose of Plague’, but it marked the end of an era, one which began in a long time ago and captured and informed our imaginations for years.

As I found myself sitting down to watch Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones for the first time in years, a familiar feeling washed over me.

I grew up with Star Wars you see; Return of the Jedi was one of the very first films I saw at the cinema and it still holds a special place in my heart (I kid you not, I will defend the Ewoks to my dying day). But that feeling I mentioned was that same one I had back in 2002 when I settled down to watch Episode II in the cinema, and the only way I can describe it is something approaching fear.

And that, as we all know, ultimately leads to the Dark Side.

I’m sure you know what I mean; for my generation, the generation who grew up with the original trilogy, the prequels didn’t exactly start off too well. Wait, I’m being kind there; I hated The Phantom Menace. I distinctly remember sitting in the cinema watching everything I loved about Star Wars crash and burn in a big CGI explosion. That being the case, I approached Episode II with extreme trepidation. But then, as now, I needn’t have worried because for the most part I loved it. OK, it’s by no means a perfect film, but where Attack of the Clones succeeded over its predecessor was in its ability to make that galaxy far, far away seem spectacular once more.

Picking up the story ten years after the events of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones finds the galaxy in increasing turmoil. A separatist movement led by the former Jedi Count Dooku (Christopher Lee, bringing some much-needed gravitas to proceedings) threatens a rebellion, and with the Jedi stretched thin the Republic are forced to consider forming an army to assist them. Of course, as we learnt with The Phantom Menace Star Wars doesn’t really do all that political nonsense terribly well so it’s just as well Attack of the Clones doesn’t dwell on it too long and instead throws not one but two assassination attempts in the direction of former queen, now senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), which in turn leads to a rather long but quite exhilarating action sequence as Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) chase the would-be killer through the bustling skies of Coruscant.

Our two heroes subsequently go their separate ways for much of the film; Obi-Wan disappears off to the planet Kamino to track down the killer of the would-be assassin, while the all grown-up yet rather scarily temperamental Anakin is assigned the task of secretly ferrying Padmé back to Naboo. Once there our horny young Jedi quickly makes his feelings known and begins wooing the beautiful senator, willfully defying the rules of the Jedi order in the process.

After that nothing quite goes to plan for our heroes; Obi-Wan discovers that a clone army has been secretly created for the Republic on Kamino before he ends up a hostage of Count Dooku on the planet Geonosis. Anakin and Padmé, meanwhile, stop-off on Tatooine where the young Jedi goes off in search of his mother and butchers some Tusken Raiders, before reconvening with Obi-Wan on Geonosis where their execution at Dooku’s hands is only thwarted by the arrival of the Jedi and their new army of clones.

What impressed me most about Attack of the Clones back in 2002, and what continued to impress me on this most recent viewing, is the scope of the film; from Coruscant to Naboo, Kamino, Tatooine and on to Geonosis, Clones just feels more epic than its predecessor, more in keeping with the adventurous, action-packed nature of the original trilogy. And for a franchise that thrives on action, Attack of the Clones has it in spades; the assassination attempt on Padmé’s life in the very first scene comes as an unexpected shock, while the fight between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett on the rainswept landing platform of the Kamino cloning facility is a well choreographed and thrilling duel.

The climactic battle on Geonosis, meanwhile, must surely rank as one of Star Wars’ most spectacular action sequences, as the mission to rescue Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padmé sees the fighting spill out across the planet’s surface as they race to stop Count Dooku. And let’s not forget, of course, that Attack of the Clones gives us our first, some would say remarkable glimpse of the diminutive Yoda wielding a lightsaber in anger.

While improving immeasurably on its predecessor, Attack of the Clones is by no means perfect; the dialogue is clunky throughout and the acting for the most part is woeful. Lucas’s dependence on CGI for everything from characters to locations also lends the film a strangely cartoony look that lacks the realistic feel of the original trilogy or, indeed, the somewhat more gritty look of Episode III, which just goes to show how much technology had advanced in the three years between films.

Still, aside from the battle sequences there are a number of other praiseworthy elements. While Anakin comes across as a petulant child for much of the film, it comes as a genuine shock when we realise that he intends to slay the sand people who captured his mother; it’s a defining point on his path to the Dark Side, and that the extent of his vengeance is only revealed in his confession to Padmé only heightens the shocking brutality of his actions. Elsewhere Lucas wisely reduced the much reviled Jar Jar Binks to something more like a cameo appearance, albeit one that plays a major role as the character is directly responsible for granting Chancellor Palpatine the emergency powers that are so pivotal to his plans to seize control of the Republic.

So, as the second film of the prequel trilogy is it as good as The Empire Strikes Back, the middle film in the original trilogy? No, let’s not be silly. But as a stepping stone from the mediocrity of The Phantom Menace to the brilliant Revenge of the Sith, Attack of the Clones is an enjoyable romp and served as much-needed proof that Lucas was successfully steering his franchise back in the general direction of pleasing its audience – and what more could we ask of a Star Wars film than that?

So yeah, George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy was one of the biggest pop cultural icons of all time. It was well-known early on that A New Hope, Empire and Jedi were part of a much longer story, so there were constant rumours that more movies would make their way to the big screen. Eventually came the announcement we’d all been waiting for – George Lucas was working on a new film, and it would be Part I.

Even if you weren’t caught up in it at the time, you can well imagine the frenzy this caused. Rumours ran rife. An army of Boba Fetts, an army of Wookiees, our first glimpse of their home planet of Kashyyyk, amongst numerous others. The first solid piece of news, as i recall, was that the first ‘all CGI’ character would appear, named ‘Jar Jar Binks’. Oh, how excited we were…

Anyway, without labouring the point, The Phantom Menace (Urrgh) was one of the most highly anticipated movies of all time. Yes, even more than The Dark Knight Rises (again, urrgh). So much hope, from so many people. Episode I could never possibly live up to all the expectation. As a result, it took as big a mauling as any movie ever released. Now, it comes to HD Blu-ray for the first time. Was it really the worst thing to happen a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away?

The galaxy is run by a republic of planets, all represented in a universal senate. There is, however, a dark shadow looming over the (relatively) peaceful galaxy. The usually meek Trade Federation have begun a blockade of a small, seemingly insignificant planet. The Jedi council have sent a couple of representatives to negotiate, but all is much more complicated and far-reaching than it seems on the surface. The Federation are under the orders of a Sith lord, and the Jedi are flying into a trap.

The Phantom Menace is, perfectly in keeping with the Star Wars tradition, a chase movie in essence. A young Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Jedi teacher Qui-Gon Jinn arrive just in time to escort the Naboo Queen Amidala to Coruscant, as the Trade Federation’ droid army invade the peaceful planet. Their journey to Coruscant to seek out a diplomatic solution does not go smoothly, however, as damage caused during their escape forces them to land on an outer rim planet, the desert planet of Tatooine.

That young Anakin Skywalker is an unassuming young man living out a dull existence on the same planet as his future son is poetic, though some complained it was all a bit too cute. It was important, however, to establish some canonicity with the original series. The vehicle designs in Menace are fantastic, but most are very, ahem, alien to fans of the original trilogy. A look at Tatooine, with some familiar locations and characters allowed the viewer to make that connection to Starwars and Jedi. The ensuing pod race is thrilling, if a little cheesy, and the character of Anakin’s master Watto is a great character addition to the universe. My biggest problem with the Tatooine portion of the movie is that whilst you can, just about, accept that Anakin’s force abilities enable him to fly his pod so well, too much obstacle is put in his way, making it that little bit too hard to swallow that he is successful. Having never even finished a race, and stalling on the starting line, it all just becomes a little too ridiculous, even for a Lucas movie.

The plot really kicks in on Coruscant, as Senator Palpatine’s political maneuverings and machinations begin to become clear. This is no simple tale of good and evil, the story is far more complicated than that, and whilst it is dressed up in and disguised by plasticine and slapstick, it is important to remember this. A film like Avatar receives great critical acclaim, but has a story that could be written by a Primary School child. The politics and subtle story set-ups in Menace are actually far more complicated, and intelligent, a fact that many conveniently forget.

Writer/Director Lucas clearly has to take some of the blame for this, of course, as that all then takes a back seat to the movie’s finale, which could almost be labelled an homage to Return of the Jedi, and has a fair amount in common with the afore-mentioned Avatar too. The more primitive indigenous population go to battle with a technologically advanced army, and though Jar Jar’s antics are cringeworthy, the battle itself is actually well choreographed, and the battle droids make satisfyingly disposable fodder, keeping your sympathies firmly with the sentient Gungans. It is Anakin’s antics in orbit above the planet that really grate, as he almost single-handedly wins the battle against the entire Trade Federation whilst seemingly being almost completely oblivious to it all. If his future arrogance had been hinted at from the very beginning,  and he had been shown to have been far more complicit with his own actions during the final battle, it would have been far more acceptable to the maturer members of the audience.

This is all probably so much more obvious as it is intercut with the best sequence of Menace, and the best lightsabre battle of the entire series, as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan do battle with the best of the newly introduced characters, the awesome Darth Maul, and his double-ended lightsabre. Backed up by the sounds of Duel of Fates, the only memorable new piece of music from the entire film, the action is breathtaking, and the outcome, though predictable for the most obvious of reasons, does pack some emotional punch. There were complaints that the speed of this fight made those from the original trilogy look pathetic, but there is logic to this. Luke Skywalker’s training was much abridged, and Vader hadn’t needed to pick up a lightsabre in anger for many years, so clearly neither were on top of their game. Conversely, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are members of a very active Jedi Council, and Maul has been intensively trained by the most powerful Sith lord specifically for the events that are transpiring.

The Phantom Menace is not a great film, by any means, but in comparison to comparable movies of recent years, of which there are very few, it is actually very good. An interesting and surprisingly complicated political plot as the backdrop, some beautiful locations. A fantastical underwater city, a high-speed chariot race, queens, sword fights, aliens. It combines the best of the adventure blockbuster movies that Lucas loved as a child, and packs in far more action, pace and sheer variety than any sci-fi movie in recent history. The Phantom Menace, despite all that has been said about it, is actually a very good Star Wars movie. It just isn’t the Star Wars movie that WE wanted. When the main character of a story is ten or eleven years old, it should not be a surprise that the sensibilities on show are more geared towards an audience of a comparable age. There are very few movies that combine infantile and adult orientated elements well, and whilst the combination here can be quite jarring, The Phantom Menace does have a bit of something for everyone.

So what is missing? The Phantom Menace very clearly shares much of it’s structural and storytelling DNA with Return of the Jedi in particular, yet is much more maligned. For me, perhaps the biggest problem is that everyone is following the rules. It is clear at the outset, as the leader of the Trade Federation, one of the main villains of the piece, puts it. This blockade is perfectly legal. Maybe not completely true, but this idea of playing it straight continues throughout. Jar Jar is allowed free of the Gungan’s because their law demands it. The Jedi can only protect Amidala, they cannot fight a war for it, as that would be against their code. The sole reason for the journey to Coruscant is to seek a diplomatic solution, in accordance with the laws of the land. Anakin is freed thanks to a convoluted series of bets and bargains that, whilst pretty shady, are clearly in accordance with the Hutt’s way of doing business. The whole political subplot of the film, Senator Palpatine’s manipulation of the political system, show’s the biggest villain in the universe stretching, rather than breaking the rules. You could argue Darth Maul, the most interesting character, is the only one not governed by regulations, but even he is following the boss’s orders.

Conversely, whilst the original trilogy had the same mix of Jedi, royalty and political intrigue, the one character who really caught the imagination was the one to whom the rules didn’t apply. The Phantom Menace, and indeed the prequels as a whole, do not contain a character with the strength or appeal of a Han Solo. It could well be this fact, more than any other, that works against the popularity and draw of the prequels.

Like most, I was disappointed when The Phantom Menace was released. I still am disappointed by it, and it has, in tandem with Attack of the Clones, diminished my interest towards the entire franchise. That is, however, my problem, and I know for a fact that there is a new generation of Star Wars fans that love these movies just as much as we enjoyed the adventures of a farmboy, a Corellian smuggler, an Alderaanian princess, a crazy old wizard, a Wookiee, and two robots every bit as silly and annoying as Jar Jar. Whether you spend the money on the prequel Blu-rays is your choice, and I certainly would not urge anyone to do it. I do think it is time, however, to let the anger go, and allow the prequels to find their place with whatever audience is going to find and love them.

Bazmann – You can follow me on Twitter at

www.twitter.com/baz_mann