infinitely subtle devices
(Prior to writing this entry, I wrote an entry for my SE7ENTH ART movie blog on the new movie Whiplash —comparing it to a romantic comedy if you must know—and I just finished watching Bad Santa . Despite its blatant disregard for decency, that movie— Bad Santa —has a lot of... heart to it, the kind of thing you expect from a Christmas movie. And, oddly, I think it involves the actual holiday (I don’t mean the literal day, of course, even though Home Alone barely gets to it and Christmas Vacation never makes it there. I mean, the setting is less arbitrarily Christmas... Well, that’s unfair to Christmas Vacation , I suppose, what with its focus on the whole capitalism thing and the Christmas gifts, even if we don’t get the denouement of anyone actually receiving gifts— (Hell, maybe that’s my problem with Christmas Vacation —not to harp on that more as A Christmas Story gets started; it’s not about the giving of gifts, per se, or the receiving of gifts, either. It is somehow about t...