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 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....