Review – The Odyssey

Armand Assante heads a cast of B-listers who take four hours to tell Homer’s classic tale. The whole production has a distinctly made-for-TV look and feel, which tends to undermine the epic scope of the drama. The acting and the script are similarly mediocre. Though this originally aired on one of the broadcast networks, now it’s far more at home on the Sci Fi Channel. Mildly amusing

Review – Out of Mind

I’ve gotta admit right off the bat that this is video pretty much exclusively for Lovecraft nerds. Thus it’s getting a higher rating from me than it would for someone who isn’t a fan. The story here is a blend of a handful of Lovecraft’s tales along with a few modern additions. Like the author’s work itself, the lack of technical polish actually adds to the spookiness. The main feature is an hour or so long, but the disc also includes a handful of shorts that are also worth a look. Worth seeing

Review – Tron

If you’re a fan of The Matrix or any of its kin, then sorry but you’re going to have to sit though this Disney picture from the early 80s. To be sure, the effects are very basic by current standards, however state-of-the-art they may have been at the time. The plot is threadbare and the script weak at best. But the whole cyberspace thing here finds its first cinematic incarnation, giving it historical importance well beyond its mediocre execution. Mildly amusing

Review – Death Race

Obviously Hollywood makes a lot of movies with sequences that are thinly-disguised promos for the cross-marketed video game. Indeed, some become little more than 90-minute plugs for the game. But this is the first one I’ve seen that sacrifices all semblance of plot and character for the sake of the Xbox element. The production borrows just enough plot from Death Race 2000 to get the ball rolling, but from there on out it’s like watching someone else play the game they should have made out of Car Wars. Heck, the competition itself actually includes power-ups. My personal favorite moment was the introduction of the Dreadnought. While this thing worked just fine as a “boss level,” it made no sense within the story. Who the hell would pay to watch a “sport” in which all the contestants but two are deliberately murdered? If I’d lost money betting on one of the victims, I’d be pissed. The result here is loud, action-packed and almost completely substance-free. See if desperate

Review – Burn After Reading

This isn’t a bad movie, but the combination of espionage and the Coen brothers should have been better. Frances MacDormand and Brad Pitt both do great jobs as health club employees who stumble onto a disc full of government secrets. Their bumbling attempts to profit from their discovery bring them into contact with several “beltway insider” types and no end of screwball situations. The comedy-of-errors stuff is done to a Coen tee, but unfortunately that’s about all we get. If this had somehow involved some kind of actual spy drama running parallel to the comedy threads, it might have been more fun to watch. Mildly amusing

Review – The House Bunny

Revenge of the Nerds for girls. Anna Faris stars as a Playboy bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion and finds a job as sorority house mother to a pack of misfits. Yeah, most of the humor is pretty sophomoric. There isn’t much of a story, and what little plot it does have gets tangled in its own threads during the third act. But hard as it may be to believe, some of the jokes are actually clever. And somewhere along the way the picture manages to make a legitimate point or two about striking a balance between rabid contempt for and mindless adherence to social expectations for women. Mildly amusing

Review – Traitor

Don Cheadle stars as a three-dimensional character lost in a sea of cardboard cut-outs. Our hero is a former Green Beret and devout Muslim caught between paper-tiger Islamic fanatics and tin soldier government agents (headed by Guy Pearce doing some kind of truly bizarre American accent). More than that I really can’t say without giving away too much of the plot. However, overall this is unusually intelligent for an action thriller, focusing less on the usual parade of double-crosses and more on the value of faith and loyalty in a world full of people who seek to exploit both. Heck, a time or two it actually borders on genuinely thought-provoking. Mildly amusing

Review – War, Inc.

Put on your hardhat and prepare to be clubbed over the head with comedy for the next hour and a half. On some level this must have been an attempt to recapture the brilliance of Grosse Pointe Blank. But while the joke there was subtle and clever, this is anything but. John Cusack once again plays a neurotic hitman, but here his cover places him in charge of a huge media event in a corporate-run “emerald zone” in a fake version of Iraq. There’s a point to be made here about American cultural imperialism, but it swiftly gets buried when a giant pile of ham-handed humor falls flat right on top of it. Overall this is yet another example of the new brand of comedy that starts with a brain-dead joke and repeats the punchline over and over again until even the dumbest audience member is sure to get it. That might be a prerequisite for a TV sitcom, but it’s unwelcome at best in a movie that could have been a lot better if a different approach had been taken. See if desperate

Review – Wanted

Not by me. The premise has some promise: an ancient cult of assassins with super powers kills people who are “fated” to die. But before we even get that far in the set-up, the movie is already dead in the water. Our young hero suddenly discovers that his birthright is to be a member of the cult, which is lucky for him because it takes him away from his life of office drudgery where he has to suffer the worst of all possible white boy humiliations: his girlfriend cheats on him with a co-worker while he must remain at the office getting bossed around by a fat woman. Further, his ticket into his new, glamorous life of international slaughter is “training” that takes the form of elaborate hazing rather than disciplined acquisition of skill. Once again Hollywood inadvertently demonstrates the hollowness of power in the absence of character. See if desperate

Review – The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Hijackers take over a subway train and all they want is money? How sweet and innocent the 70s seem by today’s standards. Walter Matthau stars as a Transit Authority cop trying to cope with the criminals’ demands; he brings just enough dead-pan humor to this serious role to make the character interesting. On the opposite side of the law, Robert Shaw does a solid job as the cold-blooded mercenary in charge of the operation. In terms of look and feel, this is very much a creature of its time. But it manages to be entertaining nonetheless. Mildly amusing

Review – Wall-E

Eh, cute. Disney/Pixar once again produce a movie that’s charming without being especially inspirational. And as usual, story and character tend to take a back seat to technical quality. The story is simple enough: a robot is charged with the immense task of cleaning up the Earth after we clog our planet with garbage and then escape in a spaceship. Along the way he develops a personality and a penchant for collecting bric-a-brac. Then a scout robot arrives, resulting in robot romance. For me the real attraction was the parade of small touches and in jokes, though some of the physical humor worked for me as well. Mildly amusing

Review – The X Files: I Want to Believe

As with the first X Files movie, I suspect fans of the series will get more out of it than I did. In some ways I liked this better than the first one. The weird Russian transplant doctors were at least easier to believe (assuming one wants to) than space aliens. On the other hand, I thought the whole stem cell thing was an inappropriate intrusion of real world politics into what should have been escapist fantasy. Further, the romance between Mulder and Scully is strictly for the fans; it served no function for those of us who just wanted to watch the movie. Overall I’m not sorry I saw it, but then I wasn’t super inspired by it either. Mildly amusing

Review – The Incredible Hulk

The only entertaining aspect of this picture is the endless parade of Hulk in-jokes. In place of a largely-absent plot we get a constant supply of references to either the comics or the TV series from the 70s. Beyond that this is stupid stuff, though even so it’s better than the Ang Lee version. See if desperate

Review – The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

For awhile toward the beginning of his career Kurt Russell made a living by starring in live action Disney movies intended strictly for the kids. The formula for three of them was that a mediocre college student somehow gets enhanced by a mishap of science. In this one – the first of the three – a bolt of lightning zaps a computer inside his head. The upside is that it makes him great at Quiz Bowl. The downside is that the computer used to belong to a mobster (Cesar Romero) who isn’t too happy to learn that Russell now knows the details of his gambling racket. The target audience for this is composed almost entirely of people with just one digit in their ages. See if desperate

Review – The Strongest Man in the World

Once again Kurt Russell plays the protagonist in a witless Disney kiddie matinee picture. This time around he eats a chemical-soaked breakfast cereal that temporarily gives him superhuman strength. High jinks ensue. I was a bit surprised at how little screen time Russell gets in this effort. A lot of the drama centers around Cesar Romero and his criminal sidekick. Otherwise it’s unique to me only that it’s the sole picture in the set that I actually saw in its original theatrical release (back when I was eight years old, a much better age than 42 to appreciate this sort of a picture). See if desperate

Review – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

The first one’s still the best, but after that it’s a close call between the second one and this. The plots are sufficiently similar to be interchangeable. Cast-wise, Jet Li makes a better villain than Arnold Vosloo did (though Vosloo was good as well) but Rachel Weisz was a better Evie (though there’s nothing particularly wrong with her replacement). I liked the yeti in this one a bit better than the mini-mummies in number two, but once again it’s a near thing. So if you’ve seen the second one you’ve pretty much seen this one too, but if you liked number two you should get a kick out of this as well. Mildly amusing

Review – Redacted

Brian De Palma has done better work. I started out wanting to support his decision to tell his tale in a fragmented combination of home video, French documentary, news clips and security camera footage. But after awhile it becomes intrusive, particularly when canards about the voyeuristic nature of the omnipresent media start to creep into the story. But more than that, this is far too heavy-handed. In particular, the graphic rape scene was hard to take. I understand that it was supposed to be upsetting, but I think society is still a little too accepting of sexual violence against women for this to reliably demonize the bad guys without simultaneously providing a pornographic thrill for at least some audience members. Further, this good-soldier-bad-soldier approach is too simple-minded to do justice to a mess as complicated as the war in Iraq. De Palma’s heart may be in the right place, but it needs to find a way to drag his head along for the ride. See if desperate

Review – My Kid Could Paint That

Aspiring documentary film-makers should seek this out and watch it carefully, as it’s a fascinating picture of what can happen when a project abruptly switches gears. The subject at hand is Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old girl who paints gallery-worthy abstract paintings. So it starts out as an exploration of the nature of art, skill, talent and the like. But around midway through, 60 Minutes comes to town and points out that when the camera’s on Marla, she suddenly loses the ability to paint. Suspicion falls on her dad, who does come across as a little creepy. If nothing else, it’s an interesting exploration of the ethical dilemmas faced by a journalist who suddenly finds himself inside the story he’s trying to cover. Mildly amusing

Review – Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage

Well, at least it’s no worse than Kinkade’s paintings. For the most part this is Hallmark Channel treacle-y nonsense designed for people who can stomach the work of the so-called “Painter of Light.” The one bizarre anomaly here is the appearance of Peter O’Toole as Kinkade’s dying mentor. He’s supposed to be a kindly old gent, but age and hard living have taken their toll on O’Toole’s ability to portray normal human emotion. His smile in particular makes him look like he eats babies for breakfast. Though that doesn’t make this experience worth enduring (not much in the world can make up for even a brief appearance by Chris Elliot), it does lend an unintentional bit of delightful creepiness to an otherwise far-too-fluffy production. See if desperate

Review – Expelled

Let me start by saying something nice: this movie does raise at least some legitimate concerns about the role of cultural conflict in the proper exercise of academic freedom. Colleges and universities shouldn’t permit the whole “liberal versus conservative” thing to play any part one way or another in decisions about research, tenure and the like. And if it had stopped there, it might have been worth a look. But of course it doesn’t stop there. Fans of Michael Moore should be forced to watch this picture just so they can see what it feels like to be the target of this kind of irrational name calling thinly disguised as documentary film-making. The sight of Ben Stein getting all watery-eyed in front of a statue of Charles Darwin – after comparing the scientist to Adolph Hitler – is a grim reminder of just how out of control this kind of crap has gotten. See if desperate

Review – In the Valley of Elah

I need to add Paul Haggis to the list of “directors to avoid” next to M. Night Shyamalan. Crash was bad enough, but now he’s trying his hand at murder mystery. One of the things that make this so spectacularly unsuccessful is Haggis’s inability to put a story together. A big part of the fun of mysteries is joining the characters’ quest to figure out what’s going on. And that’s annoyingly impossible when one can’t distinguish between genuine clues, intentional red herrings, and illogical gimmicks intended solely to tuck a few boob shots into the picture. Tommy Lee Jones stars as a crusty ex-Army cop trying to shed some light on the circumstances surrounding the death of his son. To be fair, the picture does make some good points about the damage wars can do to the emotional lives of the young people who fight in them. But Haggis goes about his task in such an ass-backwards way that it’s hard to side with him even when he’s right. See if desperate

Review – The Spiderwick Chronicles

Though this is a pretty blatant attempt to surf the Harry Potter / Chronicles of Narnia wave, it isn’t entirely unsuccessful. The story is entertaining without being too challenging. Three kids and their newly-separated mom move into an inherited house in the country only to find that it’s a hotbed of brownies, fairies, goblins and trolls. The production design owed a good deal to Brian Froud, though I didn’t notice his name in the credits. Overall this was a reasonable use of a mid-to-high production budget. Mildly amusing

Review – The Other Boleyn Girl

Who knew there was an intersection between Masterpiece Theatre and Jerry Springer? Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, expensive costumes and gold-filtered lighting combine to make this a very pretty movie. Visual appeal aside, however, this picture portrays Anne Boleyn as a scheming tart from ye olde trailer park who schemes to bring about the Protestant Reformation just to get back at her sister for beating her in the race for Henry 8’s bed. The movie attempts to make a point about the evils of a society that forces women to use their sexuality in order to gain power over men. But then the only character who gets a happy ending is the only woman who meekly submits to the whims of men without a single complaint. Sexual politics aside, however, this is entertaining in a “yo monarch nasty” sort of way. Mildly amusing

Review – Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

This picture ping-pongs back and forth between self-consciously precious and uncomfortably depressing. Dustin Hoffman (when’s the last time this guy wasn’t annoying?) stars as the enigmatic owner of a magical toy store. After he forms an intent to die a cutesy death, he preps his assistant (Natalie Portman) to take over the joint. The movie’s relentless embrace-your-inner-child theme has been done to much better effect in other pictures. To be sure, this has a moment or two of visual entertainment. But after an hour and a half of this sort of thing, it’s less like eating a nice piece of pie and more like having a pie rubbed in your face. See if desperate

Review – The Untold

This should indeed have gone untold. Lance Henriksen picks up a paycheck for playing a millionaire who hires an eclectic expedition to search the backwoods for a crashed plane and his missing daughter (three months after the plane went down, no less). Naturally they soon find themselves menaced by an exceptionally pissed off Bigfoot. The acting is lackluster, the script ridiculous and the story implausible at best. The picture also gives up a star for the brutal, unnecessary killing of a bear. But the real idiot prize winner here has to be the editing. At first I thought maybe it was odd because it had been butchered for broadcast. But no, it swiftly became apparent that it had been deliberately put together in a manner so awkward that it looks as if it were assembled by someone who had never seen a movie before and tried running the bench with his elbows. Wish I’d skipped it

Review – Scared to Death

Bored to death is more like it. Seriously, just how scary is a floating blue mask supposed to be? This is yet another one of those awful hack jobs that Bela Lugosi specialized in after his studio career ended. The only real difference between this and the notorious work he did with Ed Wood is that this one is shot in “Natural Color,” a process that produces an effect somewhere between finger paints and black light posters from stoners’ dorm room walls. See if desperate

Review – El Topo

I’ll bet that back in 1970 this was something really revolutionary. However, nearly four decades later it plays more like what it really is: a mix of spaghetti western satire, bizarre art movie and celebration of sexual fetishes. Director Alejandro Jodorowsky has a good eye for color, but he puts it to such strange and tedious use that it’s hard to appreciate this as anything other than a relic of its time. Oh, and it’s extremely hard on the animals. See if desperate

Review – The Dark Knight

Here’s yet another example of a movie that never stood a chance to live up to its own hype. Heath Ledger’s final performance is emblematic: he does a solid job as the Joker, but it’s not the greatest acting job in all human history. Likewise the rest of the picture has its moments but overall just isn’t anything to write home about. I was particularly disappointed that Maggie Gyllenhaal didn’t turn out to be dramatically better than Katie Holmes in the role of Bruce Wayne’s romantic interest, though blame should most properly be laid at the script’s doorstep for that failure. Though this is by no means a bad movie, it’s just not as good as it should have been. With this cast, the Batman Begins approach to the characters, and Batman’s two best nemeses in the mix, The Dark Knight should have been the movie that critics said it was. Mildly amusing

Review – The Right Stuff

How can they start with a subject this fascinating – the early days of the U.S. space program – and come up with something this dreadful? I haven’t read the source book, but Tom Wolfe isn’t supposed to be this bad. The lion’s share of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of the director, who appears to have no notion at all whatsoever about how to pace a movie. The picture dwells at great length on apparently irrelevant detail and then zips rapidly past the interesting stuff. We also get treated to gimmicks, such as an annoying clicking noise that shows up on the soundtrack every time there’s a reporter on screen. But the flat attempts at humor are what really slays this stinker. The antics of the fighter jockeys and test pilots who served as our early astronauts might amuse the former fans of The Man Show, but most other audience members will be disappointed at how crude and dumb a lot of our “best and brightest” apparently were. If you want to see a parade of actors such as Ed Harris and Scott Glenn back when they were still young and handsome, here’s your chance. Otherwise this is likely to disappoint. See if desperate

Review – Sabotage Agent

Here’s a rarity: a World War Two propaganda picture that actually doesn’t suck. Like a lot of movies from the first half of the 1940s, this is fun to watch purely as a relic of the time. But it also turns out to have a script, some passable acting, and above all else a twisting, turning plot worthy of a spy movie. Robert Donat stars as a British soldier whose chemistry background and fluency in German and Romanian makes him an ideal candidate to sabotage a Nazi poison gas factory. But after his contact with the local resistance is arrested, he finds himself on his own against the Germans and the naturally-distrustful Czechs. In other words, this actually has a bit of espionage realism to it. Certainly it isn’t as realistic as some of the Cold War pictures a couple of decades later, but for its time and place it’s a genuinely interesting movie. Worth seeing

Carols from Hell

I’m highly in favor of Christmas carols, at least in principle. I’ve got a perfectly dreadful singing voice, which I exercise as little as humanly possible. That always makes for awkward moments during sing-alongs, because I simply do not sing along. However, just because I can’t do it myself doesn’t mean I have to hate it when other people do it. As long as it’s a good – or at least heartfelt – attempt to “make a joyful noise,” it’s got my support.

With a handful of exceptions. Though the vast majority of the carol catalog doesn’t do much for me one way or another, a small set of Yuletide songs absolutely set my teeth on edge. Here’s a quick list of the culprits:

 

We Wish You a Merry Christmas – Actually, I’m fine with this one as long as the singers know when to cut it off. It’s got a bit too much of the Dickensian English flavor to it, but I learned a long time ago that I just have to be a good sport about that aspect of the holiday. If it’s sung too fast it gets a little eerie (we’ll get to “The Carol of the Bells” in a minute). But as long as it’s a simple wish for a happy holiday, it’s hard to reply with anything but “thanks, you too.”

However, if the performance lasts long enough we get to the trouble spot. It’s all happy this and good tidings that, and then suddenly it gets pushy. “Bring us a figgy pudding,” the wassailers demand. “And bring it right here.” How should one respond to such a shameless corruption of the give-without-expectation-of-reward theme of the season? “I don’t have any freakin’ figgy pudding, whatever the hell that is. And if I did, I’d be giving it to my family instead of feeding it to yodeling beggars.”

But then it gets worse! “We won’t go until we get some. We won’t go until we get some. We won’t go until we get some. So bring it right here.” Not going, eh? Okay, how about this: “Get your asses off my sidewalk. Get your asses off my sidewalk. Get your asses off my sidewalk. Or I’ll spray you with the hose.” There, now the whole Christmas spirit is ruined.

Sleigh Ride – You know the old joke about Job? The one I have in mind finds our hero bemoaning his fate and asking God why he’s made to suffer. “I don’t know, Job,” God replies. “There’s just something about you that pisses me off.”

That’s sort of how I feel about this song. Actually, if I had to put my finger on it, what really gets me is that I love Christmas for its underlying values, not for its superficial trappings. And this song’s all about the latter. Sleigh rides, Currier & Ives prints and the like are all things we can buy. To be sure, this is a glad-hearted celebration of such stuff, as opposed to the grim mania of Black Friday shopping riots. Nonetheless, it detracts from the simple spirit of Whos who can have Christmas even without the parties and presents.

Besides, if we can do away with this one then orchestras will no longer be forced to purchase the two-boards-slapping-together instrument that probably has to be made from special acoustical boards imported from the Black Forest. The only piece besides this one that actually uses it is J.S. Bach's little-known, seldom-performed Ausfahrt Nacht Die Kitchen Und Fetchen Sie Meine Weinerschnitzel in the original German.

I Saw Three Ships – Same gimme-presents deal here. Ooh, ships full of stuff for us! This song reminds me of the passage in Amadeus where Salieri accuses his father of praying to God to protect commerce. That’s a “why are you bothering God with this?” moment at any time of year, but in the Christmas season it should be considered particularly inapt.

O Come All Ye Faithful – If I ever get around to making a list of my favorite carols I’ll include “Adeste Fidelis” on it, so the problem here is entirely in the translation. I like the emphasis on the “Happy birthday, Jesus” aspect of the holiday. But then the original Latin gets twisted into some genuinely awkward English. I spent a year in high school unsuccessfully trying to learn Latin, but I’d rather go back and give it another try than sit through lines such as “Now in flesh appearing.” Sounds like an ad for porn. And don’t even get me started on “Lo! He abhors not the virgin’s womb.” Ick. Is this a Christmas miracle or an anatomy lesson?

Jingle Bell Rock – Somewhere in the 30s or 40s the world’s talent for producing Christmas carols abruptly pulled the croak chain. Though I admit I don’t care for the likes of “White Christmas” as much as some of the older, more religious stuff, I’d sit through Bing Crosby for hours before willingly enduring a single performance of bubblegum like this. It’s like “Sleigh Ride” retooled to climb the charts. The moment phrases such as “high rotation” apply to a song, it ceases to be a Christmas carol in any meaningful sense of the word.

And the same goes for “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” and other songs of this general ilk.

The Carol of the Bells – A stand-up comedian – sorry, I don’t remember who it was – once called this “The Christmas Psycho Theme.” That hits it right on the nose. I can just imagine Janet Leigh showering off when suddenly the curtain is yanked aside, this song starts playing, and she’s killed with a butcher knife by a fat guy in a red suit. The frantic pace and the minor key just don’t say Christmas to me at all.

Even if I liked the song itself, it’s got some bad associations. For obvious reasons, it’s a perpetual favorite of bell choirs. Bell ringers are like professional table tennis players or people who make houses out of playing cards; though I admire their skill and dedication, I’d prefer not to be called upon to appreciate them while they practice their art.

Then of course there’s the inclusion of this tune in the infamous Sweeney Sisters Christmas medley on Saturday Night Live. Once the Sweeneys do a song, it belongs to them forever.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town – After I bashed the Jolly Big Fat Lie last year, I couldn’t let this whole list go without at least one entry from the vast catalog of Santa songs. Of all of them, this one is by far the creepiest. Every time I hear it, I’m brought mindful that the loose translation of tonton macoute is “uncle with a bag,” an evil spirit who stuffs children into a sack and carries them off.

“He sees you when you’re sleeping”? “He knows when you’re awake”? Is this guy the joyous spirit of Christmas or a KGB operative? The whole thing has an eerie, Orwellian flavor. It gives me nightmares about Big Santa and the Ministry of Elves making a list and checking it twice to find out who’s been doubleplusgood and who’s going to get a ticket to Room 101 in their stockings this year.

The Twelve Days of Christmas – This song suffers from a host of fatal flaws. First, it is absolutely, positively, entirely too damn long. If you start with “On the 12th day of Christmas …” and just do one run-through, no problem. But when you have to sing each bit over and over just for the sake of trudging through to the end, it becomes a “99 Bottles of Egg Nog on the Wall” experience.

This problem is magnified a thousand times when one has to sit through an instrumental rendition. Years later, I still vividly recall a pre-Vespers performance of this ditty by KU’s xylophone choir. By the time they were done, I could have sworn we’d just sat through “The 247 Days of Christmas.” Indeed, the only thing that stopped them from tinkling merrily away was the need to clear the stage so the actual concert could commence.

The next question, naturally enough, is just how much you’d end up with if your so-called true love really gave you all that junk on all those days. Here’s how it breaks down:

            12 partridges in pear trees (1 bird/tree combo per day for 12 days)
            22 turtle doves (2 birds x 11 days)
            30 French hens (3 x 10)
            36 calling (or collie, if you prefer) birds (4 x 9)
            40 gold rings (5 x 8)
            42 geese a laying (6 x 7)
            42 swans a swimming (7 x 6)
            40 maids a milking (8 x 5)
            36 ladies dancing (9 x 4)
            30 lords a leaping (10 x 3)
            22 pipers piping (11 x 2)
            12 drummers drumming (12 x 1)

That’s 364 things you now have to find a place for, making your true love almost as bad as a stalker who gives you something every blessed day of the year.

Of course you can probably get rid of some of it. Unless you just happen to have a huge lake in your back yard, the geese and swans will probably depart on their own. And with a little chasing, the rest of the birds can probably be persuaded to leave. The gold rings can be pawned. But if you think regifting a fruitcake is tough, wait until you try to fob 40 milkmaids off on a friend or family member. Not even Goodwill is going to take that many lords and ladies. And by the time the neighbors have phoned in several noise complaints about the pipers and drummers, you’ll likely find yourself in search of a true love with either less money or more common sense.

Next, as Eddie Izzard points out, once you get past the five gold rings the rest of it is hard to remember. I won’t try to re-create his version of what you can sing if you don’t remember the actual words. If you haven’t seen “Dress to Kill,” quit reading this and go rent it right now.

Beyond how hard the whole shopping list is to recall, however, is the sheer strangeness of the gifts themselves. It’s such an odd set of choices that it leads me to suspect it’s one of those secret kabala or Masonic things that laypeople like ourselves aren’t supposed to know about. Are nine ladies covertly dancing over gateways to other levels of consciousness? Are the French hens actually supposed to be the architects of Solomon’s temple? Should we be scouring the backgrounds of DaVinci paintings in search of swimming swans and laying geese?

Still, the greatest and most enduring problem with this song would still be there if the gifts were limited to a gold ring and an orange with cloves stuck all over it. Yet again the prime purpose of Christmas is getting presents. This song doesn’t even bother with the notion that one should give in return. There’s no “and in exchange I gave my true love a bowling ball and a can of Simonize.” Just gimme gimme gimme.

If I’ve gotta sit through a carol this long, I insist that it be more morally uplifting than that.

Review – My Favorite Spy

But not exactly my favorite spy movie. Bandleader Kay Kyser plays himself in this dumb screwball musical from 1942. As part of the war effort, our hero is recruited into a counter-espionage operation that seems to mostly involve getting into embarrassing situations for no particular reason. Despite some well-known costars – Jane Wyman and Robert Armstrong – this has too much war-effort spy stuff to work as a musical and too much silliness to work as a spy movie. See if desperate

Review – Flawless

Whew, is this movie ever inaptly titled. Demi Moore stars as a career woman in the 1960s, frustrated by her inability to climb the corporate ladder at a huge diamond trading firm in London. A janitor (Michael Caine) takes advantage of her frustration to lure her into a plot to steal uncut diamonds from the company vault. Things twist and turn for awhile but don’t ever get particularly interesting. If you’re in the mood for a mediocre caper movie you’ve come to the right place. Mildly amusing