Captian America, The Great American Iconoclast

When the blockbuster Captain America movie first hit theatres throughout the world in the summer of 2011, some countries released the movie not under its original title of Captain America: First Avenger but under the truncated title, First Avenger.

The underlying concern was that the name “Captain America” might negatively impact international box office numbers in some countries due to Anti-Americanism and a general distrust of American foreign policy- notwithstanding the potential brand recognition attached to an over 70 year old comic book hero.  

Paramount Pictures reportedly gave international distributors a choice: Call it Captain America: The First Avenger or truncate it to The First Avenger - but no other variations. In the end, only Russia, Ukraine and South Korea opted to shorten the movie's title.

Given the true history and nature of Captain America's character, however, no country should have had to change the movie's name: Far from being an icon of American jingoism, this superhero often has been one of his nation's most trenchant critics.

On the surface, the reasons for concern are understandable. Outside of comic-book fandom, all that most people think of when they hear the name "Captain America" (or even just look at the guy) is an over-the-top American propaganda figure. Let's face it: Cap's costume is heavily dominated by stars and stripes. It's like Betsy Ross and Edna Mode teamed up to design the outfit. Many observers simply assume that he is a creature of the Pentagon spin machine. Indeed, an informal survey of media coverage of the upcoming Captain America movie found news outlets from CNN to Fox News to the BBC stating that the superhero with the star-spangled shield was created as a propaganda tool for the U.S. war effort during the Second World War.

That is a major misconception: The first issue of Captain America was published by Timely Comics (later Marvel Comics) in December 1940, a full year before America's entry into World War II.

At that time, the American mood towards the war in Europe was largely isolationist: There were still many Americans who wanted the United States to stay out of what was then seen as a European war and none of America's business.

Of course, there were also a number of Americans who took the opposite view. One of them was FDR. Others were hawkish media figures who led a subtle push toward military involvement through movies, radio, newspapers and, yes, even comics.

In the latter case, the push was not always so subtle: The cover of the first issue of Captain America featured a splashy full-colour rendering of the red, white and blue clad superhero punching Adolf Hitler right in the face. Believe it or not, it was a controversial image back in the day.

For Captain America's creators, the legendary Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, both the character and the punch were no accident. Like many Jews in America at the time, Kirby and Simon were concerned with the news coming out of Nazi Germany. The political message behind an American superhero who was ready, willing and able to take on the Nazis was intentional. Simon said in an interview years later that, "the opponents to the war were all quite well organized. We wanted to have our say, too."

After its initial publication, the now-famous Hitler-bashing cover resulted in threats and hate mail for the authors. The underlying patriotic wartime themes of Captain America were embraced by official government propaganda only much later - after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Sales of Captain America comic books trailed off significantly after the end of the Second World War, and it eventually ceased publication. But 20 years later, the character was revived by another comic-book legend, Stan Lee, who concocted a story about Cap being frozen in suspended animation since 1945, and revived by a newly formed superhero group, The Avengers, in 1964.

In the February 1970 issue, Cap is seen wandering the streets of New York, contemplating the then-current social revolution. Thinks Cap in a classic Marvel comics thought bubble: "And in a world rife with injustice and endless war . Who is to say the rebels are wrong? But, I've never learned to play by today's new rules! I've spent a lifetime defending the flag, and the law! Perhaps I should have battled less, and questioned more!"

Later, Cap bolts out of bed and says of the establishment: "It was the same establishment that gave them a Martin Luther King, a Tolkien, a McLuhan, and a couple of brothers named Kennedy! We don't claim to be perfect . no generation is! All we can do is learn to live with each other - learn to love one another."
Not exactly gung-ho American conservatism, that. It was the kind of nuanced reflection that was a rarity in the anti-establishment era.

A little later in the 1970s, when Watergate rocked America, the Marvel Uni-verse produced its own fictional version of the scandal - and Captain America was front and center.

A subversive terrorist organization known as The Secret Empire attempted a coup d'état against the United States. The group was stopped by Captain America. Later, Cap learns that the leader of the Secret Empire was none other than the president of the United States (who, at that time, of course, was Richard Nixon). The actions of The Secret Empire and their connections with the commander-in-chief were covered up. Like Joe Simon and Jack Kirby many years before him, writer Steve Englehart openly admitted the political intentions of the story; it was definitely meant to be an allegory to Watergate.

Captain America, disillusioned by the whole affair, dumps his American red, white and blue costume, and takes on the identity of Nomad (the man without a country - get it?). It was around the same time that Cap took on The Falcon, one of the very first African American superheroes in mainstream comics, as a sidekick. Captain America was no Archie Bunker in tights.

Fast forward to the George W, Bush era, and you find that the Marvel Universe in general, and Captain America in particular, were still commenting on the times. In a story-line that mirrored the real-life Patriot Act, the fictional U.S. Government passed the "Superhuman Registration Act," requiring all persons with super powers to register with the government as "a human weapon of mass destruction." The superhumans also were required to reveal their true identities and submit to government training. The creed of the post-9/11 era was: "You are either with us or against us." Captain America was most decidedly on the "against us" side: He opposed the Act and refused to register, arguing that such legislation was an infringement of American civil liberties.

Actually, he didn't just argue. He fought. Hard. And a lot. And against his former friends and allies such as Iron Man. Captain America, the onetime "sentinel of liberty," finally went into hiding as a mall cop.
Finally, and begrudgingly, Cap did "the right thing" and surrendered, preferring instead to fight the rest of his political battles in court. But while Cap was being brought into the court house, he was shot by a sniper. Then, Sharon Carter, a SHIELD agent and Cap's former lover, also known as Agent 13, finished the job and killed Captain America.

She was, of course, under the influence of the bad guys at the time. Nonetheless, the circumstances are telling: Captain America was killed by a federal agent while defying the actions of his government in a time of war. The story behind the death of Captain America certainly did not reflect the mainstream jingoism of the post-9/11 Bush Era.

All of which to say: Anyone who understands Captain America's story should understand that the title of the movie should not have been changed - because he is the farthest thing from an icon of unthinking American sabre-rattling. Doing so serves only to fortify misconceptions surrounding a character who has wrestled, more than most real-life thinkers, with the question of what it means to be "American."

Reprinted courtesy of the The National Post

www.national post.ca

James Cagney, Martial Arts Master

Long before Bruce Lee came to Hollywood and introduced martial arts to western pop culture, the silver screen had an earlier, lesser known martial arts master.

That master was James Cagney.

The movie is Blood on the Sun from 1945. James Cagney is an American reporter in Japan in the 1930's. The story follows his attempts to smuggle the Tanaka Memorial document out of the country. The document was supposedly the Japanese version of Hitler's Mein Kampf (the book in which Hitler laid out his plans for world conquest, among other things). Only the Tanaka Memorial document was later revealed to be a fraud, largely a creation of the Western allies for propaganda purposes.

None of that mattered to martial arts master James Cagney though.

He had to get that document out of Japan and into American newspapers, no matter what. The Japanese were ready to throw anything in his path to stop including a femme fatale, a murder frame-up and even their own martial arts master, Captain Oshima.

I am far from an expert on martial arts but I really can't figure out what style this fight is supposed to be in. It seems like mash-up of Judo, Jujitsu and maybe Karate. But there's also plenty of punching and kicking on Cagney's part (I guess the idea there was that they didn't want to have our hero fighting with techniques too closely associated with the enemy). I'd have to say that Mixed Martial Arts is probably the closest equivalent to whatever this is.

Enjoy.


SPOILER ALERT: This is the climatic fight scene of the movie.

Until next week, Sayonara!
(see what I did there?)

 PS: You can watch the whole movie by clicking here.

Remembrance Day and....GI Joe?

Stick with me here on this one folks.

While putting Remembrance Day and a toy in the same sentence may seem frivolous and inappropriate to some, there is a very strong personal connection between the two for me. It is a connection that has created a love-hate relationship with extremely popular and fondly remembered line of action figures known as GI Joe.

Those of you who may have read my Remembrance Day blog last year, know about my grandfather who fought with the Canadian Expeditionary force at Vimy Ridge in World War I. I had a Great Uncle, Pvt. James Bowman (my father was named after him), who was gassed in the trenches of World War I. Having survived the war, he later died of complications from the gas, but not before a long and drawn out illness. I had another uncle who was killed in World War II during the Italian campaign of 1943. Yet another uncle of mine survived both Dieppe and D-Day but, I'm told, he was never really the same person after that.  My own father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. The veterans were many in my family. So the  Remembrance Day tradition was a strong one. 11 AM every November 11 was a solemn and emotional moment in my house.

In 1971, at all of seven years old, I found myself very interested in a toy many of my friends at school had. That toy was called GI Joe. I was particularly interested in the talking astronaut figure. It was just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life. There was just one problem. The overall military nature of GI Joe did not sit well with my WWII vet dad. My older brothers had already been denied playing with the toy a few years earlier for the same reasons.

I knew some other kids that were not allowed to play with GI Joe but for completely different reasons. In the early days, GI Joe's were thought of as "dolls". Back then, the whole concept of an  "action figure" (the coining of that term has got to be one of the greatest marketing triumphs of all time) had only been around for about 6 years. It still being a new and socially revolutionary concept at the time, many dads back in the day, to put it mildly, were uncomfortable with the idea of their boys playing with "dolls".  Though, as far as I know, my father was the sole  conscientious objector to GI Joe.

As luck would have it for my seven year old self, the GI Joe line had recently seen an interesting shift.

My dad circa 1940.

In the early 60's, Korean War veteran Ted Levine, who is largely credited with creating GI Joe, came up with the idea of a poseable figure that would be aimed at an entirely new market for such things, boys.  There was a great deal of skepticism at Hasbro, the company he was working for, that a "doll" for boys would never sell. In fact, some thought the idea could potentially be the biggest disaster in toy business history. So Levine then coined the term "action figure" and suggested that they use it exclusively in marketing GI Joe. They went pretty hard core on that idea too. Any retailer that used the word "doll" in reference to the figure was cut off from the line completely.

Even that was not enough. Hasbro felt that the toy needed to be masculine in the extreme in order to overcome the whole "doll" PR problem. Cowboys, athletes, knights, pirates and policemen were considered but finally everyone agreed that you just can't get more masculine than the military .

They borrowed the name GI Joe from a 1948 Robert Mitchum movie titled The Story of GI Joe (with no official permission, BTW, a copyright infringement that no one could get away with today). The term GI Joe itself was coined during WWII by legendary American war correspondent, Ernie Pyle.

The 1964 GI Joe "doll'.

Originally consisting of just four figures all named Joe (one each for the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines), the 12 inch "action figure" was a massive hit. It was the first toy in history to run TV ads outside of the Christmas season. The whole "action figure" vs "doll" thing (despite the objections of a few socially reactionary dads out there) did not hurt sales a bit. As was the case with a lot of pop culture aimed at kids from the 60's, the original Joe's seemed innocent enough but had some disturbing undertones. The talking GI Joe Marine, for instance, had the cold blooded line, "Enemy patrol sighted. Fix bayonets!".

By the late 60's those undertones became uncomfortable overtones. The war in Vietnam had escalated and thus had become incredibly controversial. The sales of GI Joe were greatly impacted. It's hard to believe today but all things military were very unpopular at the time, most especially when it came to toys for young kids. My dad was definitely an early adapter on that front.

Rather than cancel the line, Levine and the guys at Hasbro came up with a new concept for GI Joe: The Adventure Team. They dropped the military angle completely. Instead of army, air force and navy, there was now Land Adventurer, Air Adventurer and Sea Adventurer. It was, in fact, a very clever way of redressing the already existing army, air force, marines and navy uniforms and accessories. The new line of GI Joe's also came with groovy, fuzzy 70's "like like hair and beard".

My dad still took quite some convincing. These adventure guys seemed to have a pretty major military vibe going on and, worse still, they were still armed. Sure, their rifles were now supposedly loaded with tranquilizer darts but every member of the Adventure Team did still carry a side arm (for self defense purposes only, my dad and I finally agreed). Much to the chagrin of my older brothers, my dad finally relented.

With the Adventure Team, GI Joe was now a bunch of bearded guys who devoted their machismo energies to saving endangered species (though, usually dangerous ones like tigers and giant apes), recovering lost treasures and artifacts (usually from dangerous locales like shark infested waters or ancient Egyptian tombs during an earthquake) and launching daring rescue missions. GI Joe in the 70's never had a single human enemy.

The shift was just what GI Joe needed. The Adventure Team became the hottest selling toy of  the early to mid-70's, surpassing even the original 60's line. The new breed of bearded 12 inch men of adventure were, and still are, some of the most cherished toys of my childhood. I will still will grab the odd vintage Land Adventurer when a good price comes up on eBay.  Some members of the Adventure Team share my office even as I write this.

By the late 70's, and by the time I had grown out of them, the Adventure Team sales began to falter. They were being beat out by action figures based on the enormously popular TV series The Six Million Dollar Man and by a line of figures based on superheroes from both Marvel and DC Comics (made and marketed by the same company -egads!).

Before the 80's, there were no TV shows or comic books based on toys. Both Canadian and American broadcast regulations back then put limitations on the amount of advertising children could be exposed to. So what basically amounted to a weekly 30 minute ad for a toy was not allowed. Nor was it seen as an appropriate way to advertise to impressionable children. TV toy promotion was limited to 30 second appearances during breaks from other children's shows.

The only GI Joe comics at the time came with the toys themselves.

The toy industry, including Hasbro, was lobbying to change the regulations on advertising to children. Hasbro, in particular, argued that they were being clobbered by the competition. The competition being mainly companies that were producing licensed toys  based on TV shows and comics. They felt it was unfair that they were not allowed to produce TV shows based on their toys in order compete in that arena. Still, the rules held firm.

After several unsuccessful attempts to retool GI Joe, the line finally died out in 1978.

Action figures, though, were still going strong. Particularly well selling were a line of action figures made by Kenner based on the ground breaking hit movie Star Wars (which, then, BTW, was still just one movie). In order to save money on plastic prices (late 70's -oil crisis, kind of an issue), they reduced the standard action figure size from usual 12 or 8 inches to a relatively tiny 3 3/4 inches.

When the Reagan Administration came into power in the US in the early 80's, there was a great amount of deregulation in many different industries, not the least of which was the media. Many broadcast regulations in the US were discarded or changed. One of those regulations was the one that concerned the limit of promotional material that was allowed to appear in children's television programs. In other words, TV shows based on toys were now A-OK.

This worked out nicely for Hasbro, who had been looking for a viable way to relaunch one of their most successful products. They took advantage of the situation to introduce a whole new GI Joe line.

The GI Joe "Real American Hero" line launched in 1982. The line blazed the trail for a new era of toy marketing. The figures were launched in conjunction with a TV series (originally just a mini-series)  and a monthly comic book published by Marvel Comics. They also took their cue from the successful Star Wars series of figures and took advantage of the much-cheaper-to-mass-produce 3 3/4 inch format. By 1985, GI Joe was the top selling toy in the US, surpassing even sales records made by GI Joe in both the 60's and 70's.

The nature of GI Joe had shifted significantly by the 80's. Gone were the bearded adventurers of the 70's. Gone also was any sense, either amongst the general public or the toy companies, that military-themed toys were in any way inappropriate for young children. GI Joe was now unapologetically military in nature.

We were definitely living in a changed world.

In the 80's, the cold war started to heat up again. There was also a major swing back  to American jingoism at a level that had not been seen since the early 60's .

It was now also legal to cross-promote toys advertising with TV series and comic books in a manner unheard of in my childhood years. Along with GI Joe there were toy-based TV shows  for The Transformers, The Care Bears, He-Man and My Little Pony, to name a few.

I remember coming back home to my first apartment when I was a student at Concordia and turning on my little 15 inch CRT TV (with rabbit ears, natch). In a fuzzy, staticy picture off of one of the US border stations suddenly came this assault of action music, constant movement, explosions, uber-macho guys running around with guns, followed by a stars and stripes themed logo and the prominent words, "Real American Hero", next to the title "GI Joe".

I was so shocked and stunned, I spilled Kraft Dinner all over my crappy second hand couch.



I know that many of my younger friends don't get my animosity toward one of their most cherished and beloved childhood icons. To be clear, my reaction to the 80's GI Joe incarnation was not just about disliking the significant changes they made to my cherished and beloved childhood icons. No, my problems with the new Joe's consisted of much broader personal, social and political issues than just a plain old bit of geekery.

For adults at that time, the idea of TV shows that were basically 30 minute toy ads was something of repellent concept. The ethics of the new marketing concept were questionable. Parents and educators were up in arms over this new brazen approach to advertising to children. I remember 60 minutes doing a major segment on how and why the advertising for children regulations were changed. While I often feel that the media and such parental lobby groups are just a tad alarmist, I could see their point. The line between entertainment and advertising had become blurred. Younger children generally don't understand the persuasive nature of ads, least of all when they are disguised as a TV show.

Even as an young adult, the whole concept was a shock to my system. The 80's saw a new era of even more coordinated advertising and market strategies, not just to kids but to everyone. It was the first time the word "demographics" entered the lexicon. The baby boomers had stowed their idealism of the 60's. One of the catchphrases of the 80's was, as Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone's Wall Street said, "Greed is good.".

To be fair, I understand that a kid growing up at the time, though, would most likely have had no sense of any of these issues. They would not even know that things had ever been any different.

It's interesting to note that the Canadian regulations regarding such children's advertising activities as TV shows based on toys never changed. GI Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony et al ran only on American border stations. However, they were still on the toy store shelves here so the Canadian broadcast rules made little difference in the overall scheme of things. I guess the concession that the Canadian editions of the many of the "Real American Hero"  action figures had maple leafs on their uniforms where their US counterparts had the stars and stripes was supposed to make it all okay.

Then, of course, there was the overt militarism of the 80's Joe's. Again, I came from a family background of veterans who had either been killed, wounded or psychologically damaged in two world wars. The Vietnam War and the protests against it were on TV just about every day when I was kid. War was serious shit, even when I was a kid.

It wasn't the militarism in and of itself that was so much the issue for me, it was the age at which the militarism was aimed. And it wasn't even solely about the militarism, either. The 80's GI Joe seemed incredibly jingoistic to me. I mean, c'mon, they had a character named Sergeant Slaughter (albeit borrowed from the WWF). We were living in the time of Reagan, Mulroney and Thatcher. I saw stuff like the 80's GI Joe's,  The A-Team, Rambo and Top Gun as disturbing pop culture indicators of a sweeping ideological shift.

For me, the sum total of the new GI Joe's was just a little too disturbing.

I was a student in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal in the early to mid-80's. One subject I studied was propaganda. So when the assignment came up to write a paper on some current propaganda, you'll never guess what I chose.

I watched about a month's worth of the daily installments of GI Joe series, frantically taking notes on the whole thing. I took this approach because something that really bugs me, both then and now, are critics, academics, pundits and so on criticizing or commenting on a TV show or movie that they have never even seen.

While I remember appreciating the writing  by some of my favourite Marvel comics writers like Gery Conway, Steve Gerber and Marv Wolfman, the show did not do much to dissuade my initial negative impressions (to be fair, I did not nor have I ever read all that much of the GI Joe comics). I found that the GI Joe TV series held much in common with the tenants of most war propaganda movies.

The good guys a classic war propaganda movie, for instance, are always extremely individualistic, often from multi-ethnic backgrounds. The bad guys, on the other hand, are usually a mass of faceless inhuman automatons with absolutely no individuality. The GI Joe team sure lived up to that point. They didn't even seem to have consistent uniforms. Even when they did, the uniforms were filled with individualistic variations like football jerseys, sunglasses, and cowboy hats. There were also Native Americans and Latino's on their team. The Cobra soldiers, on the other hand, all had exactly the same uniforms and all wore the exact same inhuman faceless masks.

In most war propaganda, the enemy was often shown as disjointed, bickering and generally not unified in their efforts. This was never more true than with bad guy characters of Cobra Commander, The Baroness and Destro. They were consistently arguing with each other within their obvious Axis Powers paradigm.

Each episode would end with one of the Joe characters appearing in front of some random kid about to climb an electrical fence, swallow household cleaners, swim in dangerous waters or do some other dumb risky thing. The Joe character would explain why the given activity is a bad idea (there were also the occasional social lessons), concluding that "Now you know and knowing is half the battle". It's like the whole segment was there to say "So there, upset parents and educators. Now will you get off our backs?".

As the professor who graded my paper asked, were the toys, the TV show and the comic books really propaganda? Were they pushing a particular political or ideological agenda? The answer is no. First and foremost, they were trying to make money. And, in the process, they invoked much of the popular zeitgeist of the time in which they were created.

Was the whole approach somewhat ethically reckless? In my opinion, yes.

Yikes!

The post -1982 GI Joes now almost totally dominate the brand. The new movies and the TV series revivals are all based those incarnations. Nobody but guys over 40 even know what the Adventure Team is. Google GI Joe and it's 9, count 'em 9, pages before you see any reference to anything pre-82. Walk into a comic book store and there are like 11 different GI Joe titles, all of them based on 80's and beyond incarnations. I mean, would it kill you to put out just one comic book or even a movie based on the GI Joe Adventure Team?

Now, GI Joe may seems like an odd and even inappropriate topic to discuss on Remembrance Day. I bring it all up to point out what the values that were to handed down to me by family background and the historical context of the time in which I grew up. The idea is of Remembrance Day is to remember the wars and those who fought them and those who have fallen. Most importantly, though, the underlying message of the Remembrance Day poppy is, to me, "never again".

I do believe that, sometimes, military force is necessary. Those times, in my opinion, should be exceedingly rare. Due to the flaws of our political systems and in our very nature, military force is a power that is all too often abused.

Now I know a bunch of people who grew up with those toys and they have not (to the best of my understanding) gone on to become war mongering fascists. And, if there's one thing I've learned from expressing my issues with the 80's GI Joe's to people who grew up them is that you never fuck with a geek's beloved childhood icons.

But war is always looming, especially in a post-911 world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the list goes on. We need to be cautious when it comes to culture of war (pop or otherwise). These days there is often a tacit agenda attached that culture.

As DC comics (and I think The Bible) used to say, "Study war no more".

10 "It's Ain't Always Such a Wonderful Life" Christmas Movies

10. A Midnight Clear (1992)

A Midnight Clear is one of the most underrated war movies out there (and ditto that on Christmas movies too).

This indie 1992 movie features an all star Brat Pack of The 90's cast: Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinse, Kevin Dillion, Peter Berg and Arye Gross. They play an American Intelligence unit isolated in the Ardennes Forest during The Battle of The Bulge in World War II.

The Battle of the Bulge was a last ditch attempt by the Germans to turn the tide of the war back in their favour. It almost worked. The offensive was launched on December 16, 1944 with much of the bloodiest fighting taking place over Christmas and New Years.

In the midst of the fighting, the American soldiers are approached under a flag of truce by a lost German platoon. The war is pointless for them by now and they just want to surrender. Far removed from the fighting, the "enemies" find themselves celebrating Christmas together.  Then tension mounts when the war once again reaches their doorstep and the two enemies are lead down a path from which there is no coming back.

A Midnight Clear is one of those films that doesn't hit you over the head with messages. The anti-war sentiments are there, to be sure, but they just lie there subtly, allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions.  The same is true of the film's sympathetic and ambiguously heroic deception of these particular men who fought in World War II.

The film was made at a time when WWII was not in vogue in Hollywood. The war movie genre was still under the shadow of the lingering 80's obsession with movies about the Vietnam War. Even the box in the video store compared the movie to Platoon. It would be another six years before Spielberg and Saving Private Ryan would make WWII cool again.

A Midnight Clear is a lost gem, an underdog in the combat film genre, a great alternate Xmas flick and well worth seeking out.

9. The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1960.  It was one of those Best Pictures that actually deserved the honour. It was directed by Billy Wilder, legendary for directing one of the best film comedies of all time, Some Like it Hot. Wilder plays things a bit more dark and real this time around. He once again casts his Some Like it Hot favourite, Jack Lemmon, along with an unrecognizably young Shirley Maclaine and Fred MacMurray in what was probably his last non-family friendly role.

Set in the final week of the 1950's, The Apartment follows the story of a mid-level insurance company drone, played by Lemmon, trying to work his way up in the company. He has a unique strategy to achieving that goal. He lends out his apartment to four different managers so that they can use it as secret hideaway for all of their many extramarital affairs (and you thought Mad Men did it first). Chief among the managers is head honcho Fred MacMurray.

Things get a little complicated when Lemmon starts to hit it off with one MacMurray's main squeezes, played by Maclaine.  Over Christmas and New Years,  there's love, betrayal and attempted suicide. Yet Wilder manages to keep even the darkest moments both appealing and funny.

The Apartment features a performance from MacMurray that is so incredibly creepy you will never watch My Three Sons or Son of Flubber (yep, those stupid Robin Williams Disney things were remakes) the same way again.

The Apartment is a more realistic take on Christmas. Life goes on during the holidays; it's not like all your issues and conflicts just go on an extended Christmas break like the banks do.



8. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Stanley Kubrick is quite possibly the greatest film director who ever lived.  His films have a visual language and meaning all their own. Kubrick is many things but he is not a panderer. Either you keep up with his audacious storytelling methods or you don't. It's that simple.

That may explain why Eyes Wide Shut still remains Kubrick's most maligned and misunderstood film. Some critics went so far as to say that Kubrick must not have finished editing it at the time of his death (he never lived to see the film released) or that he caved into studio pressure to tone down the extensive amount of orgy scenes. I don't think those critics understand Kubrick all that well. It's a much more complex film that they are giving the legendary director credit for.

And, oh yeah, it all takes place around Christmas.

Eyes Wide Shut is a story of sex and betrayal, both real and imagined. Kubrick does for Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut what he did for Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon: makes him look like a much better actor than he is. Cruise, after a confession from his wife Nicole Kidman (both real and movie version at the time), heads out into the streets of a backlot in London made to look exactly like New York City. He embarks on a a dream-like journey of sex, surreal experiences and well, more sex, really.  He encounters an elite orgy of anonymous sex that reflects the inner world of his psyche run wild (See Stanley? I'm keepin' up). The orgy scenes are not about being shocking, sexy or caving or not caving into the studio censorship. Those scenes are much more oneiric in nature than any of those things.

And, oh yeah, they take place around Christmas.

One of the things I love about Eyes Wide Shut is how Kurbick (like the candles in Barry Lyndon) lights entire scenes with Chirstmas lights. I have never seen another movie that has used holiday lights as artfully and beautifully as Eyes Wide Shut.

And ya just gotta love any movie that ends (SPOILER ALERT) with Nicole Kidman standing in the middle of a crowded toy store on Christmas Eve saying the words, "We have to fuck."

I suggest that any of the maligners who may be reading this out there take another look at Eyes Wide Shut. I mean, who has ever really liked a Kubrick film on first viewing?

And, besides, Christmas is a time for forgiveness.


7. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

It was only after seeing this movie three times and reading the book that I realized it's a Christmas movie. It's as close as James Bond ever gets to anything yuletide. Well, aside from Sean Connery calling his attache case with a pop-out knife and exploding gas canisters in it, "A nasty Christmas present" in From Russia With Love. K....um...that was really geeky, wasn't it?

In this Bond outing, George Lazenby fills Sean Connery's shoes (for just one movie, as it would turn out). Lazenby is no Connery. In fact, he's barely even a Moore (and certainly not a Craig or even a Brosnan or a Nelson or Niven or....okay, I'll stop now). Though he does nail the last line of the movie, which in this case, is pretty damn important. Yep, this is the one were Bond gets married. Given that he is definitely not married in any other subsequent Bond movies, well, um, I think that's a spoiler alert.

In Lazenby's inexperienced hands, Bond comes off as a more vulnerable and less confident than any another 007 in cinema history (and I"m including Woody Allen's Bond from the 1967 comedy version of Casino Royale).

Back to the Xmas connection.

Ernest Stavro Blofeld, Bond's only multiple movie arch nemesis (played this time around by Telly Savalas -it wasn't just Bond they kept recasting), threatens to launch a major biological attack on the free world on Christmas Eve 1969, unless his demands are met.

James Bond spends Christmas Eve in a car chase on solid ice and in one of the greatest ski chases ever put on film. Bond launches an all-out assault with a group of mercenaries on Blofeld's remote complex high in the Swiss Alps on Christmas Day (again, you gotta be an eagle-eyed Bond fan to catch the references to the actual days).

At one point, Blofeld  manages to capture Bond on Xmas eve. "Merry Christmas, 007" says Blofeld to Bond as 007 awakens. The first thing that comes into view as Bond's vision de-blurs in a POV shot, is Blofeld's Christmas tree.

Let's just pause on that for a second.

Blofeld is a guy who shoots his own henchmen in cold blood just to make a minor point and kills associates who bother him with lethally electrically wired chairs in the middle of bad guy board meetings. Just a movie before, Blofeld attempted to destroy most of the world with thermonuclear weapons. The man is the CEO and founder of an organization called the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Yet,  in the middle of planning and executing a massive complex plot to attack the free world with a horrific plague , he still takes time out to go and pick out a Christmas tree, transport it back to his remote complex in the Swiss alps and decorate it.

There is hope for the world after all.





6. Batman Returns (1992)

Outside of some wrapping paper I manage to track down every year, Batman makes a rare connection with the yuletide season in this movie. Batman Returns is the second and last Tim Burton directed Batman film and my personal fave of the 1989-97 caped crusader franchise.

Christmas is a back drop for the action in this story and it is a backdrop Burton takes full macabre advantage of.  There are giant exploding presents, screaming women thrown off roofs into Christmas trees and lethal brightly colored candy cane weapons. In the back story for Danny Devito's wonderful take on The Penguin, the "freakish" baby is both born and abandoned by his wealthy parents at Christmas. Michael Keaton's acceptable Batman and Michelle Pfeiffer's incredible Catwoman (and I am not just talking about the costume) have a twisted mistletoe-inspired rooftop fight.

Few directors can utilize childhood imagery with such twisted juxtaposition to darkness the way Burton can. Yet somehow Burton is, at the same time, always able to somehow create a sense of security amongst the dark visions of evil elves and bat-infested Christmas trees.

That in itself is a Christmas miracle.

5. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang(2005)





Before Robert Downey Jr.'s being fired from Alley McBeal for a heroin bust and his big Iron Man renaissance, he kinda drifted around in a random array of under-the-radar roles. This is one of them.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a great movie.  The story follows Downey's small time NYC crook as he literally runs from the cops into an audition that just happens to be going on at the time. In the heat of the emotional moment of the chase, he actually lands a role in a Hollywood movie. Downey is then sent to LA where he is to prepare for the role of private eye by hanging out with a real private eye played by Val Kilmer (in a wonderful performance).

Downey finds himself in LA cruising around with Kilmer at Christmas time. Downey also manages to stumble across Michelle Monaghan as a struggling actress. Monaghan's role in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is sure to satisfy anybody's sexy Santa's helper fetish. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang uses the classically surreal setting of Christmas in LA to maximum effect.

Also used to great effect are the legendary hard boiled detective writings of Raymond Chandler. His work is heavily referenced and integrated into the film. The movie is broken up in to chapters that borrow the plot, themes and titles of Chandler's The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, Farewell My Lovely, Trouble is My Business and The Simple Art of Murder. Though the movie does not take itself quite as seriously as any of those books. In fact, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has a great deal of fun with the pulp detective fiction genre.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang marks the directorial debut of Shane Black, the Hollywood screenwriter who gave us the first two Lethal Weapon movies, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout, The Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodbye. Four of his screenplays use the backdrop of Christmas in LA. 

Xmas in LA is quite a popular setting for the non-Christmas Christmas movies, as our next selection undoubtedly demonstrates.



4. Die Hard (1987)

This scene is about as into the Christmas spirit as Die Hard gets

A perennial favourite on just about every alternative Christmas movie list out there, Die Hard is also a movie that forever redefined the action genre.

It's Christmas Eve in LA. New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) is town to try and patch things up with his ex-wife.  In the middle of her company's Xmas party, heavily armed men storm the tower and take control of the company's massive skyscraper. McClane, who happens to be out of the room at the time, finds himself  the lone hero who must.....okay, if you've read this far I really don't need to go on.

Die Hard is a massively entertaining piece of escapism. I say even though the screenplay displays some of the laziest writing I have ever seen. Everyone in the movie but the bad guys, Willis, his ex-wife and Urkel's friend's cop dad is unnecessarily stupid, arrogant and just plain unlikeable. It's as if the only way screenwriters Jeb Stuart and Steven E. De Sousa could make Willis a sympathetic character was by making everyone around him an asshole. Nonetheless, Die Hard is (even on the umpteenth viewing) full of great one-liners, exciting and genuinely suspenseful, despite the massive amounts of gratuitous violence.

Also Willis displays the most innovative use of Christmas packing tape I have ever seen. I'm still waiting for that one to turn up on Martha Stewart's show.

Die Hard 2 also takes place on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, the story is set in Washington DC so there is tons of snow and winter tableau's everywhere.  That automatically makes it too Christmassy for this list.

A screening of Die Hard around the crazily busy holiday season is a great way to unwind. Die Hard also nicely counteracts all the nice and happy yuletide images the media feeds us constantly throughout December.

A wonderful bit of Christmas movie-tie in marketing

3. Black Christmas

When I was a kid, they ran a trailer for Black Christmas during The Flinstones. It scared the hell out of me so much that my father, understandably, wrote a letter to the CRTC regarding the inappropriate airing of horror movie trailers during freakin' cartoons (some of those are his exact words). I think it was that negative memory and my perceived silliness of the premise that kept me away from Black Christmas for many years to come.

Until a few years ago, to be exact. One Christmas, IS, the wonderful love of my life, and I got not only to spend our first Christmas together but also to host all the yuletide festivities in our own home. It was almost midnight Christmas Eve and I was busy putting out and organizing the army of presents generated by two families. IS was watching TV at the time.  Suddenly, the sounds of the Pope's midnight mass from The Vatican was replaced by low budget 70's horror atonal piano horror movie music and screaming with Silent Night echoing in the background. I found it both distracting and mood breaking. I looked up at IS and asked her why she was watching, of all things, Black Christmas now. She calmly responded, "This is my 'It's a Wonderful Life'".

I gained an immediate new-found respect for Black Christmas at that moment.

It has grown on me in the years since.  It's a very well directed and well crafted horror thriller. Black Christmas pre-dates the holiday themed slasher movies trend begun by John Carpenter's Halloween by four years. It's also the first movie to use the much subsequently overused and quoted line, "The call is coming from inside the house!".

Black Christmas was directed by one of Canada's finest directors, the late Bob Clark. Clark also went on to direct the massive hit sex comedy, Porky's. Those two movies alone have made Clark a pariah among Canadian culture elitists who believe that this country's culture begins and ends with Pierre Burton and Farley Mowat. Even Clark's excellent Sherlock Holmes mystery, Murder by Decree, can't turn that perception around. It may also rub a lot of people the wrong way 'cause it has many a horrific murder set to the strains of holiday music (also one of the first horror films to use the ironic music juxtaposition device). That and both movies were made on Canadian Government Tax Credit programs.

Black Christmas is one of those horror movies that is actually a pretty good movie. Clark uses strategically placed silences, slow motion and accompanying slowed down sound effects and aforementioned juxtaposition of murder in the midst of tinsel and colourful blinking lights to create a film that is genuinely creepy, tense and scary. Black Christmas also features a great deal of that 70's "Hey, we can swear in movies now!" dialogue, including one scene in particular where the "C" word is thrown around so much that it would render the film virtually unreleasable in today's market. Oddly, the violence, though, is considered tame by today's standards.

Black Christmas stars a pre-Superman,pre-mental breakdown Margot Kidder, a pre-SCTV Andrea Martin, a post-Zeffereili's Romeo and Juliet Oliva Hussey and a post-2001, pre-2010 Keir Dullea (my guess is that they took advantage of the fact the he was in Toronto shooting the embarrassingly low budget Canadian Sci-Fi series, The Starlost, at the time) . Cementing its classic B-movie status is the appearance of John Saxon as the initially disbelieving cop turned last minute savior.

You can always count on some Canadian cable network running low on their seasonal Cancon to run Black Christmas at least once every December.

The recent "all 70's horror movies must be remade" craze gave us a 2006 version of Black Christmas (with Andrea Martin as the only returning cast member).

Avoid that one at all costs.






2. Joyeux Noel (2005)

One of the brutal realities of war is that war doesn't just stop because it's Christmas.

Or does it?

Joyeux Noel is an amazing trilingual (English, French and German, everybody speaks in their native tongue-none of this Hollywood "the entire world speaks English with an accent" silliness) film that explores just that idea. The story is based on a number of true incidents of unofficial spontaneous cease fires, yuletide and otherwise, that happened during World War I. They were more than just cease-fires. Soldiers from both sides would climb out of their horrible rat infested trenches and actually celebrate the holiday (or just hang out) together.

There is one particularly moving scene in Joyeux Noel. One of the German soldiers hears the Scottish troops over in their trenches playing Christmas Carols on the bagpipes (they often fought in very close quarters in that war) on Christmas Eve.  Silent Night played on the bagpipes might not be most people's idea of easy listening music but it does inspire the German soldier in question. Turns out the guy was an opera signer in civilian life (yeah, it's a bit of a conceit but run with it). He makes the incredibly brave move of climbing out of the trenches singing the "O Come All Ye Faithful" . He stands right in the middle of "no man's land", just belting out the carol. It is this act of pacifistic bravery that inspires the other British, French and German troops to get out of their trenches as well.

In the case of the these impromptu cessation of hostilities, the festivities were often stopped not by the soldiers themselves but but by commanding officers as soon as they got wind of the activity. This is what happens in Joyeux Noel. All of the soldiers are severely punished for acting contrary to their job description.

The punishment the German troops receive is immediate reassignment to the Eastern Front.  Yes, the Eastern Front was infamously awful in both World Wars. The film ends on a chilling line. As the German soldiers are being transported to the Eastern Front by train, one of them says, "I'm Jewish. I don't even care about Christmas". 






1. Meet John Doe (1941)





Meet John Doe is the darker, more realistic version of It's a Wonderful Life. The two films are both directed by Frank Capra. Meet John Doe was released in 1941, five years before It's a Wonderful Life. Meet John Doe was a big hit in its initial release and has now faded into obscurity while the opposite is true of It's a Wonderful Life. The two films contain many of Capra's recurring themes but feature very different treatments of those themes and ideas.

Now let's talk about Meet John Doe on its own terms.

In 1941 before the US entry into WWII, the Great Depression was still dragging on. A newspaper columnist, played by the wonderfully underrated Barbara Stanwyck, is laid off. In response, she writes a letter to the editor under the name John Doe stating that Mr. Doe will jump off the roof of City Hall on Christmas Eve (still several months off) to protest the current state of the country's social and economic ills. The letter causes a sensation and Stanwyck is hired back. In a effort to keep sales up, the paper's editor concocts a plan to create an actual John Doe. They find a former baseball player played by Gary Cooper. Cooper is now homeless (or a "hobo" as was the term then) and agrees to pretend to be John Doe 'cause he needs the money to fix his bum arm that's keeping him out of the major leagues.

It's not long before John Doe creates a massive grass roots movement of common people. The movement is funded by the paper's owner and publisher played by Edward Arnold. Arnold's character is an early 1940's version of a media mogul, owning multiple newspapers and radio stations. Arnold is, of course, putting up the money to back John Doe  in order to serve his own political ambitions. His jackbooted-motorcycle-riding private security force and lines like "What this country needs is an iron hand" betray Arnold's crytpo-fascist leanings. In 1941, fascism was on the march (to put it mildly) in Europe and Asia. The US was still predominantly isolationist and, really,  no one was really sure whether fascism would catch on in America or not.

As soon as Cooper and Stanwcyk (who is both Cooper's speech writer and his love interest) clue in to Arnold's true ambition, they stand against him. Arnold, in turn, reveals to the media that he owns that John Doe is really a "fake". The exposure of the "fraud" is in an incredibly emotionally powerful scene set in a stadium full of Doe supporters.

Now thoroughly publicly discredited, Cooper decides that the only way to save the John Doe Society (as the movement is now called) is to follow through on the message of the original letter and jump off the roof of City Hall on Christmas Eve.

Highly regarded by film academics, directors and screenwriters, Meet John Doe is an otherwise forgotten film. You really gotta look to find a TV airing, even around Christmas. The DVD is put out by small time companies and usually has bad sound and not the greatest picture.  It is still worth seeking out, especially at this time of the year and especially if you're starting to get a little tired of It's a Wonderful Life.

Take a look at this scene.



(and that's big WTF? on all that Dead Zone stuff)

There are no angels in Meet John Doe. God is often referred to there is no evidence of His divine intervention like in that other Capra Christmas classic. Edward Arnold is not Lionel Barrymore.  He does not make speeches and judgments. He is not curmudgeonly. He is quieter, more scheming and a lot more powerful than Barrymore ever was (and I'm even counting when Barrymore is seen running the whole town in an alternate reality).  Much much scarier, in other words.  Gary Cooper is a bit more morally ambiguous than Jimmy Stewart. The bad guy is more powerful, we're not really sure if the good is really good and there is no tangible morally superior force in the universe. It's not the kind of movie you want to watch while wrapping your presents on Christmas Eve.

Meet John Doe ends on note of hope but not one of certainty. That's kind of what Christmas, and life, is really like.


Merry Christmas,
Happy Holidays,
Season's Greetings,
and Happy Whatever Else We're Supposed To Say Now,
All The Best for 2011!

TB

The Date Which Shall Live in Infamy

For those of you unfamiliar with the historic speeches of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, this blog is not about some terrible experience from my single days.

No. I'm referring to the second in the trio of dark early December anniversaries: the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It was 69 years ago today that Japanese pilots sounded the "To hell with Babe Ruth!" battle cry that would set into motion a series of events that would transform the world.

When I was in Hawaii a few years back, I made a point of visiting Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial.

This is the view from the boat approaching the memorial:

 

Pearl Harbor is pretty shallow in places so the smoke stack of the USS Arizona still pokes up from the water:

Keeping in mind that I come from a family filled with World War II veterans, I must point out that the commentary and general attitude at the Memorial in those early post-911 days was a tad heavy-handed to say the least. With all due respect, they talk about the USS Arizona like it was the only battleship ever sunk in the history of warfare.

Don't get me wrong, the Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial are amazing historic sites to behold. They really should just let them speak for themselves.

Remembering My Grandfather: Veteran of The Great War

My grandfather was a veteran of the The Great War.

The Great War is also known as Word War I.  And, yes, you read that right and, no, it's not a typo. World War I, not II. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the The Great War was that it had to be renamed because of the bigger, more horrific war that broke out just 21 years later.  Whatever the name, my grandfather was there.

I dwell on this point because it still amazes me that a 46 year-old guy living in the year 2010 has a grandfather who participated in a war that ended in 1918 ( some 92 years ago to the day, in fact).

I have, of course, long been familiar with my dad's WWII service in the Royal Canadian Air Force, my uncle who survived both Dieppe and D-Day and of another uncle who was not so fortunate and was killed circa 1943 during the Italian Campaign . However, I'd heard comparatively little about my maternal grandfather and his time in uniform during what was often naively referred to as "The War to End All Wars".

I never knew the man. He died when I was three. There is picture of me with him when I was a baby but I have no idea of its whereabouts now. Luckily, though, a lost of photo of my grandfather and his Canadian Expeditionary Force Discharge Certificate were both recently unearthed.

Take a look:

You now know about as much as I do.

Richard Edward Rist enlisted in Ottawa on April 13, 1915. He served in Canada, England and France with The Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was discharged in Hamilton Ontario on May 19, 1919. What happened in those four years no one really knows.  My mom tells me he spoke very little about his time in the army.

The certificate tells us that Richard Rist served with The First Field Company of Canadian Engineers. A quick Google search reveals that there were some 14, 000 troops of the aforementioned company in Europe between 1914 and 1918. It also states that these particular Canadian engineers dug tunnels and laid mines during  The Battle of Vimy Ridge. Vimy Ridge, of course, being one of Canadian military history's most significant and bloodiest battles. Who knows if he was actually there or not.

His rank and date of birth are both smudged out on this certificate and so lost to the ages. My guess is that he was about 35 when he signed up.

We do know one very important detail. Whatever the soldier named Richard Rist's experiences, whatever horrific things he may or may not have witnessed or lived through, he came back alive and in one piece.

Shortly after the war, my grandfather worked in some capacity as an iron worker in Toronto. We can see him with his co-workers in this photo. He was nice enough to be the only guy in the shot wearing a white fedora. That's him in the second row.  Most likely, this photo was taken sometime in the early 20's, about  three to five years before my mother was born. He would have been close to the same age I am today.

For those of you who may not know, my full name is Terence Richard Bowman. I was named for Richard Edward Rist, veteran of The Great War.

Many of the details may be missing but, nonetheless, we do still remember Richard Edward Rist and that he lived through what was one of the most brutal conflicts Canada has ever been involved with.

And isn't that the whole point of of a day like today?