Archive
REVIEW: I’ll Be Home for Christmas (1998)
Directed by: Arlene Sanford
Produced by: Robin French, Justis Greene, David Hoberman, Tracey Trench
Written by: Michael Allin, Tom Nursall, Harris Goldberg
Edited by: Anita Brandt-Burgoyne
Cinematography by: Hiro Narita
Music by: John Debney
Starring: Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Jessica Biel, Adam LaVorgna, Gary Cole, Eve Gordon, Lauren Maltby, Andrew Lauer, Sean O’Bryan, Lesley Boone
Inspired by the song by Bing Crosby
Year: 1998
Remember how big Jonathan Taylor Thomas was? Thanks to his role in the TV show Home Improvement as the wisecracking middle child Randy, “JTT” as he was popularly known, even managed to snag himself a role in one of Disney’s most enduring and popular films from the 90s (and, indeed, probably of all time), The Lion King. Many of the girls I knew loved him, as did apparently all the rest of the world. Luckily, unlike a lot of the childstars we see, Thomas at least had knack for comedic timing and managed to actually earn his right to being the funny one on the TV series that made him popular. At the end of the 20th century, however (Doesn’t that sound so apocalyptic still?), JTT left Home Improvement and began his journey into not just academics, but also to that corner of fame where people suddenly remembered you existed and ask aloud, “Where is he now?” Read more…
Review: “White Christmas”
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Produced by: Robert Emmett Dolan
Written by: Norman Krasna, Norman Panama, Melvin Frank
Cinematography by: Loyal Griggs
Editing by: Frank Bracht
Music by: Irving Berlin
Starring: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger, Mary Wickes, John Brascia, Anne Whitfield
Year: 1954
You would think that a film called White Christmas would have Christmas as a more prominent subject. Though I’d recognized several sequences, having likely seen the film with my mom when I was much younger, it had been so long since the last time I really sat down to watch it, this time was like my first all over again. Needless to say, the lack of prominence of Christmas as the primary subject in the film was surprising. (It may also surprise some to know that White Christmas wasn’t the first appearance of the titular Irving Berlin song, either — the song was originally released as a single before appearing in another Bing Crosby Christmas film, Holiday Inn.) But that’s not to say that the old proverbial Christmas spirit isn’t present in the film — by the film’s big final musical number, the meaning behind the film’s title becomes immediately clear. Read more…
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