Robin Williams Christmas Movie Review: ***^ A Merry Friggin' Christmas (2004)

 This movie is an irreverent look at Christmas and the family get-together.  Boyd Mitchler (Joel McHale) does not like his father (Robin Williams) who did allow him Christmas spirit as a child.  He does not go home for Christmas.  But this year is different.  His brother, Nelson (Clark Duke), has a new baby and asked Boyd to be Godfather.  The baptism is Christmas Eve.  Boyd and his wife (Lauren Graham) head home, four hours, for Christmas.  He really wants his youngest son, Doug to have the spirit of Santa Clause.  His mother's (Candice Bergen) Christmas dream is that the whole family be together.  This includes sister, Shauna Weinke (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and her husband Dave Weinke (Tim Heidecker) and their two older children, who do not believe in Santa and are pretty rowdy.

When they get there they discover they left Doug's present home.  Boyd decides to go home to get it.  If he hurries he can just make it.  His car breaks down and dad comes to rescue him.  Dad is a porta-potty delivery man.  They discover Nelson in one of the potties.  He had fallen asleep.  A police men pulls him over a few times as he speeds.  Last time he doesn't stop but the policeman lets him go, it is Christmas.  They run over a drunk hobo Santa Clause (Oliver Platt).  He appears dead, but just as they are going to chop him up to bury him he wakes up.  They take home home, arriving too late for gift opening, ao the hobo Santa takes thre gift in, a sleigh.  They have no snow, but a different gift pleases Doug.  

Some chuckles, but not the greatest film.  It does display Williams' wit and humor but as a grouchy old man, who is overcoming addiction.  There is some growth as Boyd interacts with his father, and gets past some of his childhood trauma.

Christmas Movie Review: **** Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

 Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) writes a cooking column for a magazine.  In her column she talks of her farm in the country, and her cooking skills, her husband and baby.  Problem is these are things only in her column and not in real life.  Her boss, Alexander Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet) wants to host a returning seaman, Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), for Christmas.  He was shipwrecked for sometime with little or no food and needs Christmas with a family with good food.  After inviting the seaman, the boss also invites himself.  

In coming up with a solution she decides to marry a friend, John Sloan (Reginald Gardiner) who has been asking her about marriage, and spending Christmas at his farm in Connecticut.  She also invites her uncle, who is a chef, Felix Bassenak (S.Z. Sakall) to come and cook.  The baby will be handled by an actual baby who is tended by Sloan's maid.  The preacher will marry them before anyone arrives; but the others arrive too soon and they are not married.  

As she gets to know the sailor, Lane is more and more stricken.  However she lays her part as a married woman with a baby.  Comedy comes in as Lane doesn't know cooking, or caring for babies.  As she gets to know Jones better, she also has to postpone the wedding,  Felix helps her in this regard.  

Except for her budding love for the sailor, things are going well.  However she and the sailor get in a sleigh, and the horse takes off with them.  They are arrestrd for horse stealing.  Felix is left to ten the baby.  When the mother picks up, she is observed by Yardley, who proclaims kidnapping and calls the police.  Everything now has to come out.  She is fired, but then rehired with a raise as Felix tells hr boss she is going to a different magazine.  

I found this movie to be fun.  The humor is nice and there are some slapstick situations.  Felix tells Jones what has been happening and he funs fun chasing her around while she pretends to be married,  but really wants him too.

Music Review: Celtic Thunder: Christmas Voices

 Celtic Thunder is a male answer to Celtic Woman.  The album Christmas Voices was released in 2013 by Celtic Thunder.  There are six singers, Colm Keegan, Keith Harkin, Ryan Kelly, Neil Byrne, Emmet Cahill and George Donaldson.  The each perform a solo, and then they do several group songs.  Neil sings Mary Did You Know?, Ryan, In the Bleak Midwinter, Colm Away in a Manger, Keith Comfort Ye from the Messiah, George Mary's Boy Child and Emmet Oh Holy Night.  I particularly like Mary's Boy Child with its upbeat rhythm.  It was brave do do Comfort Ye.  Ensemble numbers include O Come All Ye Faithful, God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen, The Christmas Song And Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.  

DC Movie Review: ****^ Batman (1989)

 Watching Batman again reminded me how much I loved this movie the first time through.  Batman/Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton struggles with his need to fight crime, after the murder of his parents at the hands of Jack Napier/Joker (Jack Nicholson).  Napier becomes the Joker after he is dropped into a bat of acid when the crime boss (Jack Palance) sets him up.  Batman befriends a photographer, Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger).  There relationship develops, but Joker also wants to possess her.  Joker does get even with the crime boss, and takes over as the boss.  He has developed a poison which makes laugh before they die.  He has plans for a city wide gassing at a party.  Batman interv ees and sends to balloons filled with gas into the atmosphere.  The Joker has a big gun with which he shoots down the Bat plane.  This leads to a big fight.
This movie is very good.  Nicholson is good as the Joker, and Michael Keaton is also very good.

Theater Musical Review: The Notebook

The Notebook is playing at the Orpheum.  I have never seen the movie.  So the entire story was new to me.  There were three actors to play each of the main characters at different stages in life, youth, middle age (ten yeas later) and geriatric.  I really like the effect.  Sometimes the character would be singing a duet or a trio with themself.  Noah, older-Sharon Catherine Brown, Alysha Deslorieux, younger Chloé Cheers and Noah, older Beau Gravitte, Ken Wulf Clark, younger Kyle Mangold.

This musical also delves into the consequences of Alzheimers.  Allie the lead has lost her memory which she does not want to do.  She wrote a notebook of she and her husbands love story, and asks her husband, Noah, to read it to her, and she will come back to him.  The action portrays the things he is reading.

The love story is very interesting.  Her parents do not approve, and move her when they are young so as to separate them.  He goes to war, and writes daily but never hears back.  Ten years later she is engaged and goes back to the same town where she sees in the paper he has remodeled a house he said he was gong to buy and fix up for them.  She goes back to him, and the house.  Mother also visits, and admits to having hid the letters.  She gives them to her daughter now.  The song My Days is where Allie has to decide what future she is going to have, one based on love as she really loves Noah.  It is quite a struggle however.

Warning, there is one part where the young lead characters disrobe to their underwear, and then their bed is pulled off stage.  I haven't decided if this adds to the story or not.  It does match the movie.  
 

Christmas Movie Review: Timepiece (1996)

 This is a made for TV movie based on the novel of Richard L. Evans.  David Parkin (Kevin Kilner) falls for his secretary, Mary Chandler (Naomi Watts).   Problem is she is pregnant by a soldier who was killed.  Parkin proposes marriage anyway and he shortly becomes a father.  Lawrence (James Earl Jones) is a friend of the family.  Lawrence works with clocks, and Parkin collects.  He gets a special clock for his bride.  A few years later when the baby girl develops meningitis, Lawrence insists on coming over to keep her company.  He seems to lift her spirits.  The fever finally breaks and she survives.

There are some rough people in town.  One is the son of a customer of Lawrence.  He has alcohol addiction and is always seeking money.  The customer leaves a nice clock to Lawrence when she dies, rather than her son.  She lives her estate and money to the church.  The son confronts Lawrence with a gun in his store.  There is a struggle, the gun goes off and the son is killed.  Parkin comes on them a moment later.  He takes responsibility saying the struggle was with him and the son died in self defense.  He does this because he does not think Lawrence will get a fair trial as he is African American and there is a rascist tone in town.  Lawrence hesitates, but then goes along with it.

Court finds Parkin not guilty for self defense.  However friends of the son do not buy it.  They go to Lawrence's store and beagt him up, and then throw a molotov cocktail in the upper window of the Parkin home.  The daughter who survived meningitis succombs to smoke inhalation as the gas bomb lands in her room.  The family struggles, and as a coule they become more distant.  Father leads them to a family in need.  Turns out it is the wife and children of the man who killed their daughter.  That man is in prison.  Parkin and his wife are able to take them Christmas and forgive in their heart.  In the meantime Lawrence, who was given an angel for an unpaid debt, takes the angel and places it as a memorial to the little girl who died.

This is like a Hallmark movie with lots of trouble and pain and then feeling better at the end.  

Music Review: Simon and Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

 This album was declared by Rolling Stone to be the 202nd  best of all time.  It begins with Scarborough Fair, which is of course a classic with the harmony of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.  I also really enjoy the concluding song, 7 O'clock News/Silent Night.  The feel of this song is very much like O Holy Night with the piano playing an arpeggiated counter melody with the duo singing Silent Night.  Then they put news excerpts over the top of this, with the Viet Nam War, and murder and death.  It is very effective.  Other popular songs are Homeward Bound and 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy).