Christmas movies (and murder)

I am not a big fan of repeat movie viewings (unless you count Newsies when I was 8, in which case I like watching the same movie every day while not only singing along but reciting every line). So every year, when Josh is hard-pressed to find a Christmas classic I'll watch (no It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, or Charlie Brown Christmas for me if I can avoid it) he ends up renting the latest Christmas offering from Tinseltown instead. If there is one thing Josh likes to do in December, it's watch Christmas movies--almost as good as scary movies in October for him.

Why are these movies so bad? The only movie in this genre that's good is The Ref--and it's from 1994. I guess they're bad because the studios know that suckers like me and Josh will rent them.

Well, this year we've already watched one of the better and one of the worst Christmas offerings in a while:As long as you must watch a Christmas movie, you won't hate yourself, everyone else, and Christmas after watching this one. How's that for a ringing endorsement? (And this movie was good compared to most in the genre). But really, I enjoyed both Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti in their roles. And Kevin Spacey is never a bad thing. And the conflict was somewhat believable. And I cried when they showed the kids at the end, but I think that had more to do with thinking about Zoë's first Christmas than anything else.

This, on the other hand, was beyond boring:
You know how sometimes people will describe movies as a hybrid of two other movies that "meet" each other?

(Josh regularly does this with lists of 5 of 6 movies: It's Goonies meets The Godfather meets The Sound of Music meets Rushmore meets Clockwork Orange.)*

Well, you could say that 12 Days of Christmas Eve is Groundhog Day meets The Central Lesson of Every Christmas Movie Ever Made except that would imply that 12 Days brings something more to the table than those two things. It doesn't. It literally is Groundhog Day with the main character learning . . . wait for it . . . that family is more important than material possessions. It's made worse by the fact that you know in advance you're going to have to get through 12 of these movie days. I was literally counting down (between begging Josh to fastforward, which is not something we ever do).

However. The reason we didn't just turn the stupid thing off was this. The English subtitles (we're addicts, especially with a baby sleeping) were absolutely hilarious. These subtitles were so far off I thought one of those voice-recognition software programs had written them at first. We finally settled on a European with not-so-hot English instead (the 24-hour clock times--e.g. 13:00--gave it away). A few gems: "hard case" (repeated often in the movie for some reason) became the perhaps more appropriate "heart case," "let her rip" was "clear rib," and "nobody's perfect" became "irregardless, it's perfect." In other words, don't recommend this movie to a deaf person unless you want them to think that the main character has a case around his heart, which is located next to his see-through rib in an otherwise perfect body.

While offering the only source of entertainment, the subtitles also vindicated me as a sometimes copy editor of movie subtitles. A certain director decided to override my suggestion to change "alright" to the more standard "all right" in his movie's subtitles and ever since I have only seen that word written in movies as "all right" until 12 Days, where "alright" is all over the place. And now that I think of it, that director was European . . .

Wow, that got technical and boring. If you've made it this far, enjoy this crazy news article. It is literally a plot from our favorite TV detective show, Monk. They both are about an actor who unknowingly uses a real weapon rather than a prop to "kill" himself and is seriously injured. If it was foul play, do you think the perpetrator got the idea from Monk? Because out of all the unblievable plots on Monk, this one is about the most unbelievable of all. I would never have chosen it as my model.

*If you can think of a movie that fits such a description, you and Josh would really, really get along. In fact, you should maybe have married him instead of me.