Posted in Brain Dump, Real Life, TV, video

Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?

I’ve decided to finally wade into the whole “is die hard to Christmas movie” thing. I had never seen the entire movie, so friends and family arranged for a viewing party. I can now have an opinion on this topic.

Before getting to my hot take, let me state I understand these things can be subjective. Your experiences shape your perception, and a huge number of people consider it a “Christmas movie” based on those experiences. To me, the key is differentiating between a “Christmas movie” and a “Christmas tradition.”

A Christmas movie should be about Christmas. The primary plot or plot-drivers are Christmas-based, whether it’s about the traditional nativity story, Santa, celebrating the holiday(s) or the more difficult to pin down “Spirit of Christmas”.

Leonard Maltin said cannot just be set at Christmas, it has to be about the Spirit of Christmas. Others say they should be movies the whole family can watch together, which clearly this one isn’t, but we’ll leave that aside for this discussion.

Die Hard is a movie set on Christmas Eve, with all the holiday decor and music. There is a big holiday office party (which would never ever ever happen on Christmas Eve but that’s for another essay) but it’s not about Christmas. They could have set it in June and you would only need to change the reason for the office party and why John was traveling to CA. There are all kinds of Christmas visuals and references, such as the name Hans Gruber being painfully close to the name of Silent Night composer Franz Gruber. They are great, but don’t make the move about Christmas. It’s about robbery, violent killings and the need to NEVER TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!

Now, everything I just said does not negate the fact that the movie is a beloved Christmas tradition for tens of thousands of Americans. And those folks insist it is a Christmas movie. However, just because something is one of your holiday traditions doesn’t make it a Christmas movie. Countless Americans watched The Sound of Music with their families every December, thanks to the network that owned the rights. Plenty of folks still consider it a Christmas movie because of that, but obviously it’s not.

I watch Little Women every Christmas season. Because of that I think of it as a Christmas movie, but really it’s not. While a few scenes are set at Christmas, the primary plot isn’t Christmas-specific.

When we were young, my sister considered Neil Diamond’s 12 Greatest Hits a Christmas record because we would pull it out and listen to it in December. That timing imprinted on her, and one time she referred to it as a Christmas album. Clearly it’s not, but decades later we refer to it as a Christmas album to tease her. (She’ll be pleased I included this anecdote, but it’s important to illustrate my point.) While you can call anything a Christmas [thing] if that’s how you think of it, it doesn’t make it objectively true.

In conclusion, Die Hard is a Christmas tradition, but it isn’t a Christmas Movie. If it’s yours, by all means seek it out and watch it every December. Keep (or make) your holiday traditions as best you can, and watch anything that makes you happy, whenever and wherever you’d like.

Yippee-ki-yay to all, and to all a good night!

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Posted in TV, video

Merry December 25th

It’s been a full year, eh? If you still have a burning need to keep watching Christmas programs and you have Prime, I suggest two of the shows I watched today.

  • Tudor Monastery Farm at Christmas – I love documentaries, especially those explaining what normal life was like for our ancestors. Or other people’s ancestors. The part of the show that makes this a more atypical holiday show is the amount of time spent covering butchering a pig and cleaning and pickling the head.
  • Winter Wonderland Train Ride – The “story” is that your train has to deliver ham, wine, bread and toys to some location, maybe on a mountain? In a snowy place. This is a 4 hour video (!) of the view from the point of view of the engineer. Nondescript Christmas carols play along for the full, nearly-endless 4 hours of endless video following track wending through the snow-covered countryside.

I could lie and say we watched all four hours of the train video, but fast-forwarding was our friend, and the 15-20 we did watch was just enough. Also, we’re entirely unsure why they needed the ham/wine/bread/toys backstory as not once did you ever “drop it off”. We did pick up passengers with suitcases. Unsure if the suitcases contained hams.

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Posted in coolness, parenting, Real Life, video

My Kid Razzle Dazzles ‘Em

My son starred as Billy Flynn in Chicago over the weekend. I took video of his three big numbers.

(Quality: taken with my iPhone from the back half of the theater, surprisingly not horrible, but not flawless.)

We Both Reached For The Gun (live, this number brought the house down)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykkipCi-47E

Razzle Dazzle (This one is stuck in my head) http://youtu.be/J3heVAVjyuo

All I Care About Is Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ROEuy2WHU

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Posted in stuff, video

We’re Alive and Well

Irene is filling my yard with water and leaves, but nothing more dangerous than that. I did take a video of our sump pump with my iPhone, just to show you how much water is pouring into my basement right now.

Soon, we will start eating our emergency food supplies, burning candles and using anything that requires AA batteries. Just because we can. I think we can make the switch from the local news to the marathon of Power Rangers movies that Fox Movie Channel is featuring today. I mean, if anything is going to make one feel better about the current weather situation, it’s knowing that you don’t have to worry about Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd as long as the Power Rangers are on the job!

For those of you looking for exciting video, I present a brief video of my sump pump saving my basement.

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