The Grace Pages

Christmas pick no 2: Gremlins

I'd be the first to admit Gremlins (1984) isn't everyone's first choice for a festive movie treat. If you're pretty warped, and with a deliciously dark sense of humour like mine, however, it will be right up there on your Christmas watchlist.

Joe Dante's comedy-horror pays homage to a hundred different movies, including Frank Capra's  It's a Wonderful Life (1946), which you'll be pleased to hear is also to be one of my Christmas picks. The fictional Kingston Falls is itself an homage to Capra's Bedford Falls, with the hero's run to work past the shopfronts of his hometown affectionately reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart's final parade down the streets of Bedford Falls in Wonderful Life. And Mrs Deagle has definite shades of Lionel Barrymore's cantankerous Henry Potter, even if she is mostly Margaret Hamilton aka the Wicked Witch of The Wizard of Oz (1939).

The film is only really about Christmas in a nostalgic, sentimental way. The whole film is a nostalgic, if heavily ironic, tour-de-force, an old-fashioned type of entertainment that celebrates "the way things used to be" -- unsurprisingly, given Dante's obsession with old Hollywood cinema. But it's an obsession I share, and so I heartily enjoy the warm nostalgia and almost primeval form of storytelling on offer here. It's all goodies and baddies, slapstick comedy and pantomime reactions -- but delivered with tongue firmly in cheek.

I suppose one of the reasons this has become such a seasonal favourite for me is because I first saw it at Christmas. It was coming up to New Year sometime in the late '80s, and the venue was the Green Park Hotel in London. My parents were in one room; my sister and I were in the other. After ordering perhaps the world's finest homemade hamburgers ever (room service), we curled up on our beds in front of the TV to watch the movie we were too young to see when it first came out.

Gremlins 2 was out in the early '90s, and by then I was old enough to see it in the theatre, which perhaps took some of the thrill away. It was a slicker, more sophisticated effort, but the studios could never hope to beat the homely appeal of the original.

Christmas pick no 1: Scrooged

One of my favourite things about the Christmas period is the opportunity to set aside sacred time to reflect on the true meaning of the Incarnation of our glorious Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ the chance to get out all those old films you don't get to watch the rest of the year. This year I'm sharing with you some of my top movie picks for the festive season.

My first pick is the 1988 comedy Scrooged. I'd actually place it among the three or four best adaptations of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and there are literally dozens. It was the first of my Christmas DVDs to make it out of the case this year, and I really enjoyed it, despite my enduring memory of the year I watched it in fifteen-minute blocks, since I kept having to go to the bathroom to puke (dodgy fish-and-chip supper that night).

Scrooged updates the famous tale to the '80s, with Bill Murray as selfish TV tycoon Frank Cross. A dictionary definition emblazoned across the wall of his gym reads cross n. a thing you nail people to. Murray plays it deadpan as usual, but manages to put just enough humanity in the character to make it credible. The story follows the basic outline of Dickens's story: Frank is visited by the ghost of his old business partner (a heavily made-up John Forsythe) who warns him to repent, and then receives visits from the spirits of Christmas past, present and future.

It's all very funny, and Murray's dry, tongue-in-cheek style evens out what could easily have descended into a horridly saccharine, sentimental mess.

One of my favourite Christmas albums, by the way, is the late Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. I have to make a confession, though -- I was playing it as early as November. It's a crime to let an album that great collect dust!

This is not me

Really, this is not me. I was being ironic by putting it in my post last week.

British readers will have recognized the character as Dafydd, "the only gay in the village", from the BBC comedy Little Britain. It wasn't until an American friend alerted me last night to the potential for confusion that I decided I ought to clarify.

For those who are familiar with Little Britain, have a read of this excerpt from The Independent. As a one-time fan of the series, it is with regret that I have to admit that Mr Hari's full article was, in general, true.

There's a but...

So as of today, gay rights have turned a corner in the UK. The law now allows gay partners to register their "civil partnerships" and enjoy most of the same rights as married couples:

They can inherit from each other without a will, benefit from each other's national insurance contributions, are exempt from inheritance tax, are treated as married for immigration purposes, have the right to financial support from each other and can make financial claims on each other if the partnership is dissolved.

I say "most" because the one thing that is still missing -- and that will keep activists fighting for more change in the law -- is the word itself, "marriage". The new law in effect says you can have all the benefits of a marriage, except the societal recognition that it is a "marriage". I think it is disingenuous of anyone to claim that gays can now stop pressing for gay marriage, or that they now have it. Isn't that societal acceptance a core function of marriage and the wedding ceremony for many straight couples? Isn't the public declaration and affirmation of a sexual love and commitment between two people what marriage is really all about for many people?

It's been a step in the right direction, but there is more to be accomplished; onlookers should expect gays and lesbians in the UK to keep making themselves heard.