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?

Daily Prompt/Tug of War: Fun Fiction or Pointless Lie?

I’ve been meaning to do a Daily Prompt for a while but this week has been really crazy…with the not using one letter..I was stuck staring at the screen all lunch hour and cursing that I didn’t carry a thesaurus with me ALL THE TIME.  Then the last few days, it was all topics that I could’ve answered with one paragraph.  Thursday’s topic I almost wanted to do but it would get a bit personal and I’m not one for jinxing a good situation, which I’m pretty happy with, although with seven days of nothing to do and $10,000 in my hands, I already know what I’d do it.  My 6 months plan could be immediate.  Doesn’t that sound vague but still quite sweet? In time, this will be revealed if all things go as planned.  You just have to stick around for a few more months.

Anyways, so we come to today (or yesterday) topic and I had almost deleted it, when afterwards, DJ Matticus launched the second Tug of War in his awesome kingdom, using exactly that topic.  I’m always up for some fun and games. 🙂 Last time I had blast even though I really went the going out on a crazy limb and (almost) everyone came around to tell me I was crazy and disagreeing…I love the response!

Here is the topic worded in two ways:

Daily Prompt style –>The Tooth Fairy (or Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus . . .): a fun and harmless fiction, or a pointless justification for lying to children?

Matticus Kingdom style –>Is telling your children stories about the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus anImportant Part of Childhood/Growing Up or is it Not Important/Lying?

I’ve probably discussed this briefly before or at least I think I did.  *runs off to check past blogs* Okay, I was right..its right here! I’m not going to make you run to check it out unless you want to but I talked about it during my Christmas Marathon in the Polar Express review.

Here’s the excerpt from there:

Before that, I’d like to talk about the belief in Santa.  A child’s belief in Santa may be naive but it keeps that childhood happy spirit going.  It gives them hope and joy to find surprises.  Its magical how a little belief can make the little ones so happy.  Every year I watch my boyfriend’s niece and nephew open their presents.  When they were younger, they would have my boyfriend disguise as Santa Claus and play out the whole Santa Claus scene, now we just scurry them off into another room and have all the women make lots of noise to cover up while the guys move everything up and pretend that Santa visit. Its just amazing to see their faces light up when they walk into the living room and see a surprise pile of gifts for not only them but EVERYONE in the room.

So okay, maybe you can argue with me now and say, well, all the excitement is from the increased desire for gifts and thats why they look happy and amazed.  They get to open gifts and piles of them.  Which kid doesn’t want that? Its a dream come true, right?

Now, I want to talk about my mom.  I know you don’t care about my mom but hear me out.  My mom is one of those Chinese ladies whose been through a lot, just like a lot of other people.  At her age, she’s seen and learned from her past mistakes and experiences.  As I grew older, I started seeing my mom as being a very realistic person.  She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, the magic of Disney means nothing to her…life is about being happy but happiness is  in direct proportion with the amount of money we have.  Money may not equal happiness but it will equal comfort and being able to do most of the things one would like to do.  Its normal, I understand all that, even if I don’t really go by that with my life choices.  So you see, she is a very realistic woman.  But even though she knows its a bunch of baloney, she still brought me to see Santa every Christmas, even after I knew it wasn’t real either, she would still get me a little surprise something in the stocking hung on the fireplace.  I remember my eyes lighting up also because its the thought of surprising me and making me happy from my mom that made me feel amazing.  My mom actually did the whole thing with me: Easter had the local Easter egg hunts and chocolates, Hiding my tooth under my pillow and she’d actually save it in a jar and then put a dollar in its place.

All these characters, Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy are all just fun and harmless.  Its all about the power of belief, faith with a touch of imagination.   Every child should experience the naivety of being able to believe in innocent characters.  There is no harm if it brings a smile on their face, especially if it can be turned into another family event.  If I have kids in the future, I would do that also.  Let them learn to believe 🙂

What do you think? Is these characters harmless fun or just pointless lies? If you do write up a post, link back to DJ Matticus and help your team win and earn respect in The Matticus Kingdom 🙂 I have the link up there! But I put it here on his name also.  Of course, if you can link back to mine so I can read your entry if you’d like or leave me a comment.  Love to hear your thoughts!

Christmas Marathon: Polar Express (2004)

After an extremely late night partying on Christmas eve with my family and finally getting back to sleep at around 3am, which is extremely late for me, my boyfriend and I both sat down to watch this beautiful flick.  One of the two we always leave for Christmas Day to see.  While he has decided to nap a bit to continue our feasting tonight, I’m taking a moment to sit down and write this.

Before that, I’d like to talk about the how the belief in Santa.  A child’s belief in Santa may be naive but it keeps that childhood happy spirit going.  It gives them hope and joy to find surprises.  Its magical how a little belief can make the little ones so happy.  Every year I watch my boyfriend’s niece and nephew open their presents.  When they were younger, they would have my boyfriend disguise as Santa Claus and play out the whole Santa Claus scene, now we just scurry them off into another room and have all the women make lots of noise to cover up the guys moving everything up and pretending that Santa visit. Its just amazing to see their faces light up when they walk into the living room and see a surprise pile of gifts for not only them but EVERYONE in the room.

This movie ties in exactly to that feeling, the idea of believing.

POLAR EXPRESS (2004)

Director: Robert Zemeckis (A Christmas Carol)

Cast: Tom Hanks, Eddie Deezen, Nona Gaye, Peter Scolari

Its Christmas Eve and we zoom into a little boy (Tom Hanks) and his family.  We learn through a conversation with  his parents and his younger sister Sarah that he doubts Santa’s existence.  In the middle of the night, he hears a loud sound and goes outside and there he sees a magical train called Polar Express.  He is invited by the Conductor (Tom Hanks). Unsure at first, still he decides to board the train that is supposed to reach North Pole.  There he meets a little girl (Nona Gaye) who believes in Santa and thinks its the most wonderful experience to go and Billy (Peter Scolari), a little boy who feels lonely and scared.  During the path, they meet have obstacles to get to the final destination to actually witness Santa’s liftoff to start his night long task of delivering gifts.  Its a story of belief, faith and trust.

A movie that amazes me every time because of its values that it tries to carry out.  Even as an adult now, its so crucial to believe and have faith and trust even though it can be hard at times.  Especially when we have something as imaginary as Santa Claus, who appears to accomplish the impossible.  However, this flick attempts to bring this whole idea alive to show that when you believe, thats when you will feel and sense certain things that could fade away.  It shows us that belief can easily be forgotten if we don’t hold on to it.

Aside from that, this one has beautiful animation and a wonderful plot to add to all the characters they introduce.  The majority of the characters don’t have a name and we only know them for the roles they do.  Tom Hanks voices 6 of the characters and does a phenomenal job at it.  He can be a palette of different emotions portrayed on all the characters.  There was a bit of singing and music everywhere which helped lift up the mood.  One word on the director though, he’s also the director of another movie I watched for this Christmas marathon.  Also starring one actor voicing multiple parts in an animation, called Disney’s A Christmas Carol (you can click HERE to see that). He seems particularly skilled at doing Christmas movies and using this one actor multiple parts concept.  Very fun and unique way to arrange the voices of an animation.  Plus the animated characters actually sometimes resemble a bit of the actor voicing them.

One of my favorite characters in this has to be the Conductor of the train.  That character seems to be so insightful.  I’d like to quote a few that I liked:

“Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.” -Conductor, Polar Express

“The thing about trains… it doesn’t matter where they’re going. What matters is deciding to get on.”- Conductor, Polar Express

Was the belief of Santa a part of your childhood?

 

Christmas Marathon: Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009)

DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2009)

Directed: Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future trilogy, Polar Express, Cast Away)

Voices by: Jim Carrey, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Robin Wright

Based on the classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Robert Zemeckis both write and directs this full-length animation.  The story is about a man called Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) who is very uptight about his money and doesn’t care about the people around him, much less the ones who he sees regularly like his employee, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman) or his nephew, Fred (Colin Firth).  On Christmas eve, he goes home and is visited by his former deceased business partner, Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman) burdened with heavy chains.  He tells him that these were from all that he had done while he was alive and that he would be visited by three ghosts: Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (all voiced by Jim Carrey).  These ghosts bring him to visit memories and visions that he has chosen to ignore and made him realize all his wants had lead him to his ignorance.

The first thing that pulled me to this movie was the idea that Jim Carrey does 7 different voices.  Four are from different stages in Scrooge’s  life: Young boy, Teenage, Middle Age and finally the one we see, as an elderly stingy man.  He also does the voices of the three ghosts.  Jim Carrey and his voice was what drew me to him originally when I first saw him in The Mask.  He does a decent job in that area for this movie.  I have no problem with it.  The voice work was pretty good actually.  I like Colin Firth a lot and his distinct voice was quite himself as Fred.  Gary Oldman did a great job with this one also.  I’ve never heard him doing voices in an animation.

The second aspect of this movie is that I truly love the story and it looked to be really visually stunning.  It did turn out to be quite detailed.  My boyfriend commented about the detail of the reactions and expressions.  The experience was definitely geared towards being seen in 3D, however, I have a normal Blu-ray so it had to do.  It seem had exciting moments.

However, this flick is probably not primarily geared towards young children.  It had a lot of spooky moments near the end.  Although they do try to balance it out with a lot of funny moments to lighten the mood up.  I’m do enjoy this movie a lot.  Its not my absolutely favorite but whats Christmas without a little bit of Christmas carol, right?

There is a CRAZY amount of Christmas Carol adaptations both in animations, or themed like Disney’s, for example, and in real life. Which ones have you seen? Are there some you enjoy more than the others? I heard Muppet’s Christmas Carol is pretty good also.