Yes, it’s that “most wonderful time of the year” again. And unless the scent of pine turns you on or you’ve got a fetish for glittery objects (like the crazy queen who must have designed this year’s Macy’s window display after watching A Beautiful Mind on acid – there’s even a borderline creepy ode to the “diva Tinsel” stenciled on the glass. Check it out if you’re in NYC, it’s a must!), you’re probably feeling about as sexy as eggnog right now. But don’t despair. If Macy’s can turn a stalwart tradition into an LSD trip I can find the perversion in The Sound of Music. So without further adieu, here are some sexy, family-friendly suggestions for gathering around the DVD player with the clan.
Heavenly Creatures
Dashing Cary Grant stars in Henry Koster’s 1947 The Bishop’s Wife, about an angel sent down to earth to help a holy man (played by the delightful David Niven) build a church – and recover his shaken faith in the process. Only problem is the bishop’s got a hottie wife in the form of radiant Loretta Young who the charming angel takes under his wing as well. Grant’s studly Dudley, a cuckolding do-gooder, is every bit as ambiguous as Grant himself was in real life.
If your relatives are especially warped, have a double feature with Pasolini’s 1968 Teorema, in which an otherworldly knockout played by the breathtakingly beautiful Terence Stamp seduces the entire family kids included.
And if you still haven’t gotten your fill of sexy spirits, throw in Warren Beatty’s and Buck Henry’s 1978 Heaven Can Wait, a remake of Alexander Hall’s 1941 Here Comes Mr. Jordan, in which steamy Beatty turns tasty Robert Montgomery’s boxer Joe Pendleton into a quarterback who prematurely gets called to the big leagues upstairs as a result of angel error.
The fanboys are so serious about The Dark Knight being the best film of 2008 that if the Academy snubs the comic-book adaptation for a Best Picture nomination, they’re liable to storm the Kodak Theatre on February 22 in protest. But why should anyone be worried that it won’t get the nomination? It wouldn’t be much of a coup for the year’s top-grossing blockbuster to be named one of the five Best Picture candidates. In fact, since the very first Academy Awards, the top award has often been handed out to films that were #1 at the box office in their respective year. And the last time it happened was as recent as 2003, with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Thanks to popular and talented filmmakers like D.W. Griffith, Walt Disney, David Lean and Steven Spielberg, it’s hardly uncommon for films to make money and earn critical respect. But this isn’t an opportunity to spotlight overrated top-grossing Best Pictures like Titanic, Rain Man and Rocky, which were decidedly not their year’s best films. Rather, this is a chance to ease the minds of fanboys just in case The Dark Knight doesn’t get the nod. Some of these blockbusters were indeed nominated for Best Picture, and a few even won the award, but some of them were both their year’s biggest moneymaker (in the U.S.) and best film (from the U.S.) without gaining proper Academy recognition.
Of course, like many others I would wish for them to have never existed, because millions of lives are more important than any number of classic movies. But the Nazis did happen, and they continue to populate cinema for better or worse. We all know about the latest product of Hollywood’s Nazi fetish, Valkyrie, and we’ve seen a ridiculous trailer for a new Russian Hitler farce titled Hitler Kaput!, which shouldn’t be confused with Germany’s recently announced Hitler comedy Mein Kampf, based on a play by George Tabori (I Confess). And now, because we still need Nazi sci-fi, there’s Iron Sky, for which a teaser trailer (see above) has just been released.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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