Dream Christmas Movie Memorabilia!

A few weeks ago, Ryan over at Invaluable sent me a little email inviting me to join in to share my favorite movie memorabilia.  I took a quick look over at Invaluable.com and they are an auction website with many items spanning from movie memorabilia and props to fine art and even Asian antiquities. Classy stuff, my friends. I love movies but while this is very much probably the highlight being Star Wars items being requested the most, I decided to take a different angle. After all, we are in December and Christmas is right around the corner so how about talking about some Christmas movie memorabilia? I do love me some Christmas/holiday movies!

At first thought, it took me a little while to get together something because I LOVE animated Christmas movies so props are hard to think of for that, as is memorabilia.  So lets say, the movie is in real life and these were models of what created the item they had, then it’d be easier but this is a “dream” Christmas movie memorabilia so anything could work, right? If I had the money and the space, these items are what I’d want based on Christmas movies.  They might exist and I just didn’t know about them before…

Arthur Christmas — Reindeer Slippers with Glowing Eyes

I love cutesy things like this.  Arthur running around to deliver a kid their gift in his goofy slippers which causes a ton of crazy that goes down is awesome fun. Those slippers are legit adorable with the googly eyes that are lit up and the furry texture.  It feels cozy and cute.

Polar Express — Bell and Believe Golden Ticket

I love Polar Express.  The animation and the message is just brilliant.  There’s never enough Christmas spirit to spread around.  That ticket punched with the word “Believe” and the bell which only rings for those who believe is one of the most magical moment I’ve experienced in Christmas movies.

A Charlie Brown Christmas – Droopy Christmas Tree

If you venture on this site when I first started, I talk about Charlie Brown a lot.  I love it to bits.  My favorite part of A Charlie Brown Christmas is the sad-looking Christmas Tree.  Its symbolizes so much about Christmas spirit and the holiday being more than the appearance of everything.  While I might not want a real tree that looked like that, I would love to have an actual decoration of it.  It would be so adorable.

The Holiday – Magical Tent

Let’s take a break from animation for a second and hit a holiday movie.  One of my favorites is The Holiday.  I watch it ALL THE TIME. One of the best moments was when they open the door to look at their little magical tent.  I’m sure it can be recreated with some cloth and decorations with some effort and all that but how great would it be to have one of these? This tent is so beautiful and its like having a fort where you can dream and kind of escape reality a little.  But then, if I had one of these, I’d just sit in there and read all day long and then nap when my eyes get tired.

Mickey’s Christmas Carol – Concept Art

I’m going a little different with the last choice.  I’m kind of an artsy sort of person.  I can’t draw to save my life unless you want a lovely picture of stick people but Mickey’s Christmas Carol (and How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Garfield Christmas) hold a special place in my heart and its a must-see every single year for the Christmas holidays. All that to say, Disney concept art or production sketches or whatnot would be absolutely cool to have.  Like just recreating even the beginning credits scene on top, something simple like that would be awesome or like a memorable heartwarming family scene like the second one up there.  Imagine hanging that up on the wall, it would be so pretty! 🙂

What do you think about these Dream Christmas/Holiday movie memorabilia? What would be your choices?

Christmas Marathon Double Feature: Arthur Christmas (2011) & Happy Christmas (2014)

Christmas is here in only a few days and I have a TON of stuff (tentative) that I want to put on, so I’m going to do a double feature.  Now, Arthur Christmas really deserves its own post BUT I’ve already reviewed it once HERE when I saw it on a flight back in 2012.  Except, I felt that it deserved a rewatch because when I’m on the flight, at a certain point things just feel really blah because I feel really blah and I think that affected my view of the movie. And then, there’s the issue of the second movie Happy Christmas but I’ll go more in detail below.

Lets get this started!

ARTHUR CHRISTMAS (2011)

Director: Sarah Smith & Barry Cook

Cast (Voice): James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Ashley Jensen

December 24th is a busy day for Santa and aside from popular belief, its not a one man show.  Santa (Jim Broadbent) has a whole group of support helping him be the most efficient possible to make sure every child isn’t missed. The biggest help comes from his older son Steve (Hugh Laurie) who is hopeful in being the next Santa.  Santa’s younger and much more clumsier son, Arthur (James McAvoy) is a full believer of Christmas and admires his father but is sent to take care of Letters.  When he realizes that a child was missed, he is determined, even though his father and brother believe it is impossible to deliver it on time to the child, to get the gift to there with the help of GrandSanta (Bill  Nighy).

Arthur Christmas is a brilliant animation and believe me, its a lot more engaging and entertaining to watch it on a bigger screen than the plane screen (obviously). The dynamic characters and the fun approach of a modernized Santa versus the traditional Santa works out to be a lot of fun.  Its full of hilarious moments intertwined in some awkward but still funny ones. It takes what we believe and adds a new little twist and its completely believable.

The voices are done so well. Arthur Christmas makes Arthur out to be so different, scared and abnormal in his family but also its him that makes this so heart-warming, fun and contributing to what makes this absolutely funny.  Arthur is a lovable character because he is unique as the clumsy worry wart who doesn’t believe that he can do anything other than worry and be scared. But he has the purest of hearts and that makes him awesome 🙂

I’ve already reviewed this once before but second viewing in a normal setting definitely accentuated the awesomeness in Arthur Christmas and in my last review, I said its not one I’d go to for Christmas every year, well, I take that back.  This one is definitely worthy for annual viewing 🙂

Have you seen Arthur Christmas? What did you think about it? 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (2014)

Director: Joe Swanberg

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Lena Dunham, Mark Webber, Joe Swanberg

After a breakup, Jenny (Anna Kendrick) moves in with his older brother (Joe Swanberg), his wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) and child.  Jenny is irresponsible and not very trustworthy as they learn about it quickly but while she is getting over her breakup and moving forward, Kelly is also dealing with having a hard time finding the inspiration for her next novel.  With the help of Jenny and her friend, Carson (Lena Dunham), she starts finding that she needs to create a balance between her career, her family and her husband in order to feel more motivated and happy with her own life.

First things first, other than being set during Christmas, do not let Happy Christmas fool you with its title.  It has nothing to do with Christmas.  In fact, its pretty much an indie drama to the core.  Its a lot of low-key issues piling up together and moving in a realistic way of just watching a family interact with each other.  I’m not particularly a fan of movies like this especially since they always end in this somewhat weird abrupt fashion.

The cast did well with what they had and I could get on board with what the story was trying to say but in the end, it felt like I watched 82 minutes of really not much going on.  Maybe I’m too emotionally stunted to watch these things. Or maybe, I just don’t like to watch such profound movies with some deeper meaning to it, which kind of makes me feel really bad (like I have no depth) when I say that.  Except its the truth.  It just feels so meh.  The only thing I liked was the characters but the story itself didn’t have much going on.

I don’t know how to review something like this.  Reason for the double feature. I wasn’t exactly impressed with the movie but Anna Kendrick is fantastic in this so that kind of works out 🙂

(I’m kind of cheating to put this in Christmas marathon but it was part of my rundown and the title has Christmas in it, so it kind of works, right?)

Have you seen Happy Christmas? What did you think about it? 

Santa Claus Around the World

Last Friday, I had a little lunch stroll to take some pictures around the area.  I made it a point to stop at the World Trade Centre Building because every year they have a fantastic exhibit of Santa Claus.  Its from the traditions of all over the world and how they came to be.  Its pretty neat actually.

As a part of Christmas celebrations, I’m taking you on a Santa journey around the world.  Sounds fun, right? Lets go!

Father Ice

The first one we have is Father Ice (also known as Dedt Moroz) and his legend is originated from Siberia.  The story is that a kind and gentle girl was pushed from her own home by her (Evil) Stepmother to the Frozen Forest during a storm.  Father Ice appeared and showered her with diamonds.  The stepmother learns about this and sends her own daughter to do the same.  Disgusted by this, Father Ice froze her for eternity.

21st Century Santa

Santa Claus is rocking it in the 21st Century here with his gadgets and staying fit.  It seems 21st Century Santa is doing what we saw in Arthur Christmas. Cellphone to keep in contact with the North Pole headquarters and he even has a tablet to track the gifts for the children.

Black Peter

Black Peter helps St. Nicholas in taking care of the bad children.  He is more known in Central Europe through different names such as Butz and Hans Trapp in different parts of Germany and Pere Fouettard in France.  If you’re a naughty one, he’ll be the one dropping off that lump of coal.  Apparently if the naughty child’s behaviour has changed, he will deliver a gift instead.

Russian Saint Nicholas

Russian Saint Nicholas is actually a Ukrainian version of Saint Nicholas from the growth of belief in Christianity into Russia.  By the 1800s, it had established this figure as the Russian Saint Nicholas that gave birch rod switches as punishment and a reward of gift symbolized by the christmas tree.

Saint-Nicholas- Bishop of Myra

This is seemingly where it all started.  Saint Nicholas was a bishop at the church in Myra, a city in Asia Minor.  He has a deep understanding of the church at a young age and this made him a church high official and was called “Boy Bishop”.  There aren’t many written stories about him as they were mostly passed on generation after generation secretly by families.  We know him by all the names around Santa Claus, Kriss Kringle,  Pere Noel, Father Christmas, etc but he remains a symbol of unselfish generosity, good cheer and joy.

Medieval Santa

Medieval Santa was known to be around the twelfth century when there were kings and castles and wizardry and so on and so forth. During the Christmas season, the castle gates would remain open and Medieval Santa would give out gifts by foot and spreading good cheer.  The folklore goes that when his load was too heavy, he would have merry gnomes helping him out.

Bavarian Santa

The Lutheran Church in Bavaria saw Santa in a different way. They saw him as the messenger of the Angels.  This Santa would bring the requests of the children up to heaven and then would descend to give the gifts from the angels.

 North Pole Santa Claus

So we finally arrive at the one that is most widely known and its North Pole Santa Claus to end things off.

Its a nice little exhibit on Santa Claus all around the world.  Which one do you like the best? Have you heard of any of these before?  I’ve only heard of North Pole Santa and Saint Nicholas-Bishop of Myra, the other ones are actually quite new to me.

Arthur Christmas (2011)

Arthur Christmas is a pretty alright animation.  I had not intended on watching this in advance but it seemed like my brain after 8 hours straight in a plane really couldn’t watch anything else.  I had started then left 15 minutes into the movie Seeking a Friend For The End of the World.  It just wasn’t doing much for me.  So I figured maybe a Christmas movie would do the job. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

The plot is quite straightforward. Arthur(James McAvoy) is the son of the current Santa(Jim Broadbent) and he is clumsy and dysfunctional most of the time so he is just responsible of  replying to Santa’s  mail.  He also has the Christmas spirit that most of the family seems to have lost.  He just simply praises what his father does.  On the other hand, Steve (Hugh Laurie)is Santa’s other son and he is very competent as he has now upgraded the Santa mission into a modernized way with the help of technology and space ship and the elves are all there to help make the mission flow smoothly.  It’s pretty impressive how they set it up.  What causes problems is when one of the elves realize that one of the gifts was not delivered but Steve and Santa both don’t feel the need to do it and if anything, would do it later. However, Arthur disagrees and with through help of grandsanta(Bill Nighy), Arthur’s grandfather, they run through the night filled with obstacles to try to get the gift to the leftout child.

This one is a fun adventure. The first half was a bit slow and generic but the second half was fun.  On top of that, the voices for the characters are amazing. I have never heard any of them do voice over in animation but have huge respect for Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent.  These are decent actors to get to do this, so the movie has a good foundation.  James McAvoy in my book is pretty cool as well. I”ve seen him in Atonement and more dramatic movies, but as a teenage comedic boy, I’d say it was a good change.

I’m not sure it’ll be my top 10 of Christmas movies but I really liked it in the second half.  Generally, I like most Christmas movies, so already this one won some points before it started.  The main turnoff is the fact that Justin Beiber sang the theme song and I really don’t have much love for it, so I just skipped the credits. Problem solved!

All in all this is a modernized Christmas movie which reminds us that Christmas spirit doesn’t change and shouldn’t change with time. It’s like in the part where they all want to be Santa. Grandsanta wants to prove that being Santa the old way was the way it’s supposed to be, current Santa is just tired and enjoying the glory and praise, Steve wants to be the next in line and take over his father and not just be behind the scenes taking care of operations. They all want their own and goal but no one really kept the spirit that Christmas and beliefs need to be kept that no child is left out on Santa’s list. I’m paraphrasing Arthur here but he says, it doesn’t matter how it gets there, what matters is that it gets there in time.

It’s a nice animation and tis full of talented voices and a really good plot. Of  course it cant compete with all through Christmas classics out there, but it certainly does alright overall. I would definitely stop on the channel to rematch if it was on TV.

I haven’t heard much about this movie before seeing it on the plane. Has anyone seen it? Did you like it?