Groundhog Day: A Movie About Second Chances...and Third...and 432nd...

In older times, tribes, villages, and towns, followed the seasons using nature's cues as to when to perform certain duties. Observing when certain plants appeared, or herds of animals migrated into or out of the area were a clock different than the hands that meter out every second of our modern day. It worked rather well; those kinds of deadlines actually meant something - because knowing when to plant crops meant the difference between eating and dying - whereas today...well, a lot of times we're just counting down the seconds until...what, exactly? Until the next presentation? Or sale? Or disturbingly short vacation time? Do you ever wonder if we're doing it wrong? If we lost something in our fervor to move on from the past? After all, the rest of nature had been getting by with those same clocks for millennia.

Now, sure, these observations get a little bit iffy, and at some point in the past, perfectly logical reasoning can often become insane ritual. Through the co-opting of tradition by conquering religions and cultures (not to mention the times when the past simply got it wrong), time can whittle away any sense of the past's logic and beauty till it appears ridiculous and comical, a grotesquerie of what it once was.

...And that's how you get to the point where you use rodents to tell you when winter will end. That's right. It's Groundhog Day. But Groundhog day may be more magical than we think.

Winter Movies: A Course in Survival

Well...it's over. The holidays and the mad rush that accompanies the last three months of the year, have given up the ghost for another nine months. The sparkly lights come down, the tree heads to the curb or the closet. And the elation and stress of the new year ebbs into a post-holiday malaise. 

Now, come this time, you fall into one of two categories:

• You love winter and will happily wallow in the icy darkness for its remaining months
• You've been wishing it was spring since October

I know of at least two people who may not have made it this far because they hate, nay, revile, winter so much. Perhaps next year, I will do a list of "warming" movies to get those folks through winter, but this year, I'm focusing on the wallowers. So, if winter makes you think of bleak cabins in the mountains, AT-ATs destroying shield generators, and gothic noir...and that doesn't depress you, read on....

The Big, Happy, Merry Winter Holiday Movie-List Post [EDIT]

The world is turning away from the sun here in the northern hemisphere. It gets dark sooner. Leaves have dropped. Bare limbs reach up like claws silhouetted against the pale gray of the sky. People have retreated from the unwelcoming chill of outdoors into the safety and warmth of the indoors. Winter is here. But it doesn't all have to be beheadings and Night Kings. There's always revelries to be had. And revelries need a good flick to accompany them.

Since many of my holiday movie lists have so far diverged from what most would consider "popular", "normal", or even sane, it should come as no surprise that my Christmas list would follow suit. Rather than the more treacly holiday fare, I find myself turning to the sarcastic, bizarre, and downright disturbing. Enjoy.

Solstice...and a word on the holiday monopoly

Did you know that there aren't any films out there focused on the Winter Solstice? Or Hannukah...or Kwanzaa...or Diwali, or any others. I looked. That's sad to me...but maybe it's not. As Westerners, and especially humans, we assume that our way should be others' way. Perhaps the need to express our ideologies through popular media is the province of Western religion, and Christianity in particular. Perhaps those of other faiths are okay with not having their own faith-themed movies or TV specials. And maybe they're not. Either way, the lack of representation is overwhelming.

So, here in the Northwestern hemisphere, don't count on finding any movies celebrating the darkest night or the return of the sun. Christmas, as you may have suspected, has the monopoly on this time. That said, you can always celebrate by watching films set in winter. I'll be doing a "winter" list come the new year, but in the meantime, I do have one pick for this dark, quiet little holiday:

Top Halloween Picks: A List For Just About Everyone [EDIT]

I've always sort of...shunned horror movies. Many of the plots carry the curse of formulaic contrivance. Rather than approaching things from a deeper psychological standpoint, too many focus on the two horror tropes I dislike most (Unnecessary Blood & Gore and the Jump Scare). On top of that, people are so stupid in these movies, that I find myself rooting for the monsters and serial killers. And what is up with the obsession with rape scenes? No, thank you. Worst of all, these movies still scare the bejesus out of me, no matter how crappy and unbelievable they are. And that means I suffer on multiple levels. [Je suis pas venue ici pour souffrir, ok?]

In fact, for the majority of my life, I could sum up my feelings about horror movies with this Eddie Murphy skit:

So I set out to do an alternative Halloween movie list, something for the non-horror movie fans like myself. But as I researched the movies I like, discuss, and would recommend at this time of year, I began to realize something: there are a lot of scary movies I do like. They may not be classified "horror," but they is most certainly an element of fear to them. More than that, I realized how connected to my fascination with darkness they are, and how my appreciation for them as an art form had grown since my younger years (you know, the ones where hiding under the covers with the tiny opening for air was still considered socially acceptable). The list kept getting larger, like some kind of blob monster. I had fallen down the ole rabbit hole, and this piece became one part sociological and historical treatise, one part incomplete "faves" list, one part anecdotal rambling...and one part referential metaphors.

...Which is pretty much how I talk, so... At any rate, I thought I'd warn you... like so many horror movies do right before everything goes terribly terribly wrong. Enjoy!

Fear: The Original Monster

Like for so many others, Halloween is my favorite holiday. That makes October my favorite month. Aside from All Hallows' Eve, October marks the true beginning of Autumn for the Northern Hemisphere. Leaves begin to turn in earnest. We go from the late summer heat of August & September to a crisp coolness and begin preparations for the long sleep of Winter. In short, the earth prepares for death.

For millennia, humans have celebrated the cycles of life on all sides of the planet. Autumn marks the final harvest and, while animals prepare for the long slumber of hibernation, plants enter their final stage of life. However, death is not the end. After the long sleep of winter, we have rebirth with the emergence of spring and a new breeding season. Early humans were aware of this and held rites to mark the various stages throughout the seasons. They celebrated and paid respects to the gods, ancestors, and plants and creatures that were a part of their very survival. Mostly, though, they told stories. These stories had everything: adventure, love, origins of the universe, heroes doing great deeds and making sacrifices, life and death....and fear.

The Legend of The Princess Bride: 30th Anniversary

I'm going to tell you a fairy tale.

Once upon a time, a somewhat obscure little movie was released to very little fanfare. It did its stint in the theaters, garnering a modest - though by no means unrespectable - box office for fall of 1987, and then began its trek to video stores and cable. 

It was called The Princess Bride. 

This movie was ridiculous. Based on a book by William Goldman (who also wrote the screenplay), the premise followed a grandfather's reading of a fairy tale story to his sick grandson. The story itself contained pirates, sword-fights, giants, giant rodents, a pit of despair (because who doesn't need one of those), true love, and a near Python-esque humor. It was too self-aware, too meta decades too early. (80's movies, with few notable exceptions, weren't generally well-known for awareness and introspection.) This fairy tale was lacking in magic & magical creatures and had an overabundance of dry wit, self-deprecation, and zaniness.

It wasn't a surprise that this movie hadn't been popular. One look at the poster probably told people too little to know what they were getting into, and movie trailers were still transitioning from the structure of yesteryear to what we recognize today, making it likely that it might have turned people off, rather than persuading them. Worse yet, that summer had a hellish release schedule, with Adventures in Babysitting, Innerspace, Full Metal Jacket, RoboCop, La Bamba, The Living Daylights, The Lost Boys, and sequels for Jaws, Revenge of the Nerds, and Superman, all opening in July alone. This was followed the rest of the summer by Stakeout, Can't Buy Me Love, Dirty Dancing, The Big Easy, Fatal Attraction, Hellraiser, and The Pick-up Artist.

People were exhausted. A weird little meta-comedy about fairy tales may have been too much as folks settled back into their autumn [read: school] routines. And that should have been the end of it.

But instead of fading into obscurity, something else happened to this funny little movie. It turned out that this peculiar fairy tale had not come and gone without notice. People who had seen it in the theaters had contributed to its numbers by telling their friends, co-workers, random people on the street, that they needed to see this movie. And when it came out on video, people caught on. They started talking about it. They started quoting it...and they refused to stop. And then it hit cable...

This is where I come in....