Читать книгу The Completely Useless Guide to Christmas - Martin Pullen - Страница 14
ОглавлениеIF ONLY you could just sit and watch TV all through Christmas. Time to escape the rush, snuggle under a blanket and relax in front of the TV…
The Wizard of Oz
Toto the dog, munchkins, a cowardly lion, Scarecrow, Tin Man, a pair of ruby slippers and a yellow brick road, the Wicked Witch of the West and five different directors and you have the perennial Christmas favourite, The Wizard of Oz.
Twelve-year-old farm girl, Dorothy, is knocked unconscious by a tornado, and along with her dog Toto and the farmhouse, swept up in a storm and deposited in the magical Land of Oz, where she befriends a few social outcasts, sings ‘Over the Rainbow’ and sets out on the yellow brick road to Emerald City to ask the Wizard of Oz to return her to Kansas.
Based on the novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, story tells that the book’s author, L. Frank Baum, arrived at the name of ‘Oz’ from the letters on the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. Had he chosen the top drawer we would now all be familiar with the perennial Christmas favourite, The Wizard of An.
Up against Gone with the Wind at the Oscars, The Wizard of Oz still managed to win two statuettes, and has since been named by the US Library of Congress as the most-watched film in history.
Life of Brian
Perhaps not a film you would immediately associate with Christmas, Life of Brian does, of course, recount the life of Jesus.
Well, not exactly Jesus.
Written and directed by the Monty Python team, the film tells the tale of Brian Cohen, a young Jewish boy born on the same day as – and next door to – Jesus Christ, a coincidence that leads to him being mistaken for the Messiah.
Trying to hide from his ‘fame’, along the way Brian meets such characters as Judith Iscariot, Naughtius Maximus, Sillius Soddus, Biggus Dickus and the revolutionary group, The People’s Front of Judea, The Judean People’s Front, The Judean Popular People’s Front and The Popular Front of Judea. The film was financed, to the tune of £3 million, by ex-Beatle George Harrison, who co-founded the production company, HandMade Films, after the original backers pulled out at the last minute.
Amongst accusations of blasphemy and protests from religious groups, Life of Brian was banned from cinema release in many countries, with New York screenings said to have been picketed by both nuns and rabbis.
Banned by a number of local council authorities in the UK, it wasn’t until 2008 – 29 years after its initial release – that Torbay Council in Devon finally allowed the film to be screened. The following year the ban was ‘mistakenly’ lifted in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth; mistakenly, as it was subsequently discovered that the council had never banned the film in the first place.
Despite localised protests, Life of Brian enjoyed UK box-office success, and has since been cited as one of the greatest of comedy films.
Meanwhile, ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, sung by fellow crucifixion victims to cheer Brian up whilst left nailed to the cross, reached number three in the UK singles chart, and has since become one of the most requested songs at funerals.
It’s a Wonderful Life
In the early days of black and white films, falling snow was created using cornflakes painted white. Being noisy under foot, when it was snowing cornflakes, dialogue in films had to be later added in a voice-dubbing studio. Frank Capra, producer and director of It’s a Wonderful Life, wanted to record the actors’ voices live on set, and so a new snow effect was created using soap and water mixed with the fire-fighting chemical foamite, pumped under pressure through a wind machine.
Capra used over 27,000 litres of the ‘silent’ snow, and the RKO Effects Department received a Technical Award from the Motion Picture Academy.
Nominated for five Oscars, It’s a Wonderful Life failed to win a single coveted gold statuette. It also failed at the box office, only growing in popularity after 1974, when an apparent clerical oversight led to Frank Capra’s copyright expiring. Passing into the public domain, American television stations were free to air the film repeatedly without paying the director any repeat royalties.
With muppet-creator Jim Henson long gone to the great puppet show in the sky, we’ll never know for certain whether he named Bert and Ernie, two of his Sesame Street characters, after the policeman and taxi driver in It’s a Wonderful Life, though it was thought to have been one of his favourite films.
The moving story of George Bailey, dissuaded from committing suicide by guardian angel Clarence Odbody, It’s a Wonderful Life will melt even the iciest of snowmen.
The Snowman
Talking of snowmen… Drawn with pastels and crayons, Raymond Briggs’ illustrated book, brought to life in animation, tells the story of a young boy who, upon waking up and realising it’s snowing, leaps out of bed, pulls on his clothes, and bounds outside to build a snowman.
That night, on the stroke of midnight, the snowman comes to life. After jumping onto a motorbike and attempting to ride over a few pheasants and several other animals, warm around the groin area from the heat of the bike…
…the snowman climbs into a freezer.
Before long the young boy and the snowman set off on a magical adventure, flying to the North Pole. On the way, they fly over Brighton’s Royal Pavilion and Palace Pier, before crossing the ocean, where they swoop past penguins and narrowly avoid getting walloped by the tail of a giant whale.
Reaching the North Pole, the young boy and the snowman watch the northern lights, attend a party of snowmen and meet Santa Claus. Before returning, Santa gives the boy a snowman-pattered scarf.
The next morning, with the sun out, the boy awakes to find the snowman has melted. He begins to wonder whether the night’s events were all a dream, until he discovers that he still has the scarf given to him by Santa.
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Based upon the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schultz, the animated special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, first aired on American TV in 1965 and has, like The Snowman in Britain, become a perennial US Christmas favourite.
Getting involved in directing the school nativity, Charlie Brown decides the play would benefit from having a Christmas tree. With friend Linus by his side, he sets off to get a ‘big, shiny, aluminium tree’.
At the market, Charlie Brown spots the only remaining real tree and, despite its small and scraggly appearance, he decides that that’s the one.
Returning to the nativity, everyone pokes fun at Charlie Brown’s choice of tree. Not to be discouraged, he decides to take it home, where he can add decorations and prove their laughter unfounded.
On the way, Charlie Brown and Linus stop at Snoopy’s decorated doghouse. After placing a bauble on top of his scraggly tree, the branch flops to one side and, thinking he’s killed it, Charlie Brown runs off.
Linus returns to the nativity and informs the others what Charlie Brown has been up to, and they set off for Snoopy’s doghouse. Linus wraps the sagging tree in his security blanket, whilst the others place the remainder of Snoopy’s decorations on the scraggly branches. Charlie Brown returns, and cannot believe his eyes.
Seen as shunning the over-commercialism of Christmas, in the United States A Charlie Brown Christmas has become one of the most beloved animated Christmas specials of all time. To this day, Christmas trees that grow in the wild, with thinner foliage and fewer branches than farmed trees that have been pruned to keep their thickness and shape, are referred to by American Christmas tree farmers as ‘Charlie Browns’.
