Xander's Film Registry Admittance

Good news, everyone! You'll be making a suicide run to the Popcorn Planet!

Sorry, I got in a Futurama mode for a second. Ahem. Moving on....

The real "good news" is that Xander's Film Registry, consisting right now of sixty films you must see before you die, is becoming a permanent thing. New films will be admitted on a regular basis (well... not new new, necessarily), under the qualification that they are either movie essentials, wonderful things to show your children/grandchildren/nieces/nephews, or utter and complete garbage that you should never see without being prepared to throw yourself off an unduly high balcony. Today, a few members of the first two categories.

Exodus (1960)
(See review in earlier post)

Flower Drum Song (1961)
The first movie to cast people of Asian ancestry as serious, legitimate, three-dimensional characters, this long-lost Rodgers/Hammerstein musical features some hilarious songs, including the outrageous early-60s household fantasy "Sunday," the irony-riddled "The Other Generation," and the preposterously funny "Gliding Through My Memoree." It also includes very little of the songwriting duo's famous maudlin-ness: with the exception of the operatic "Love, Look Away," it's pure comedy.

Pete's Dragon (1977)
Despite the presence of the obnoxious Helen Reddy, this heavy-on-the-charm Disney musical pits a witty orphan and his selectively-invisible dragon pal, Elliot, against the confusing moral issues of acceptance, friendship, and child slavery. And it's rated G!

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
It has only been hours since I saw this movie, but I can't let it pass without comment. It is without a doubt one of the funniest, most offbeat and most enjoyable animated comedies ever to emerge from the human imagination. In terms of serious credibility/urgency, it's no Exodus. In terms of sustained comedy, it's no Flower Drum Song. But it is probably one of the best films of the year, and I love it, love it, love it. Go see it at once!

A Few Thoughts on the Past Week

I hope you all survived Thanksgiving and (especially) Black Friday. Hopefully nobody was killed by a greedy, moronic mob this year.

But speaking of greedy moronic mobs, there are a few news stories from the previous week that amused me so much I had to comment on them: stories of greed, idiocy, and angry mobs. I mean that last word in the "Frankenstein" sense, more than the "Godfather."

Adam Lambert's Performance Shocks the World
Come on, people. If he were a woman, you wouldn't care. Well, you would, but not in the same way....

Wannabe Reality Stars Crash Obama's Party
I wouldn't have commented on this. I'm trying not to give these lunatic freaks the attention they want, but our wonderful American news media did that when they printed the flipping story. The trick with wackos like this is to ignore them. Remember that next time you read a story about a boy in a balloon.

Black Friday Sales Start the Night Before
Twas the night before Friday and all through the mall, not a creature was stirring-- but bargain freaks all. Seriously, peeps. If the sales matter so much to you, at least go out decked in armor plating and armed with a broom. If you're lucky, the half-crazed shoppers will mistake it for a machine gun.

"New Moon" Opens
This is the eleventh Biblical plague-- the one God promised to Ramses, but canceled after seeing how much devastation he wrought with the locusts and scourge.

To much less fanfare...
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" Opens
Okay, for a second I had to make sure I was still on planet Earth. But, luckily, I am! You know how I know? 'Cause the brilliant, inventive, clever, and, ya know, entertaining "Mr. Fox" seems to be bombing while millions upon millions flock to see the pop culture crack that is "The Twilight Saga."

10 Great Thanksgiving Moments from Film & Television

If you ignore the uncomfortable overtones to the Thanksgiving holiday (the entire Mayflower/Indians backstory), it really is a great time of year. One day out of 365 we get to stuff ourselves with food (woo-hoo!) and reminisce about all the things for which we're grateful. In a dreadful year like this, such a holiday is necessary.

And there's been no shortage of fictional Turkey Day festivities. If you're like me, you love to watch movies and TV episodes for special occasions (I'm tempted to look up Israeli Independence Day just to have a specified date every year to watch Exodus). But you don't want to make the season drag on, right? Like... ahem, Christmas? So how do you choose a small pantheon of Thanksgiving classics that'll only take you through about a week to watch?

Never you fear. Xander's blog is here! Here is a countdown of the ten undisputed greatest moments this bizarrest of holidays has in the pop culture ouevre.

10) Drunken Santa at the Parade, Miracle on 34th Street.
Okay, so the movie itself is about Christmas, but the fan-freaking-tastic opening sequence takes place at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when the man (Edmund Gwenn) who claims he's Santa has a hilariously hostile run-in with a giddily inebriated, fake St. Nick. Just make sure you stick to the 1947 original.

9) Where's Grandma? "Thanksgiving," season 1, That 70s Show.
The Forman family settles down to a nice turkey dinner, but matriarch Kitty just can't help the gnawing feeling that she's forgotten something... but what? As the phone rings, the stark terror of the realization dawns on her: she's forgotten Red's abrasive, oblivious mother!

8) Dinner, Across the Universe.
It is on this lovely occasion that slacker Max (Joe Anderson) decides to tell his parents he's dropping out of college. Right in front of his aunts, uncles... and English newcomer Jude (Jim Sturgess), who watches in a sense of bewilderment fully befitting a character in a Beatles musical.

7) "A rather tender subject," The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Logically speaking, I'm sure it was Thanksgiving: the narrator placed the time of Brad and Janet's adventure in late November, and alien host Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) served his guests up quite a feast: Eddie, played (ironically) by Meatloaf. Particularly great is the segment when we see Columbia run screaming from the room, then a cut to see Furter carelessly dumping ketchup on his disobedient entree.

6) End-of-the-summer pageant, Addams Family Values.
With the obnoxious, popular snobs all cast as pilgrims, Wednesday and her fellow outcasts as the Chippewa, and Pugsley as the turkey, the stage is set for a spectacular confrontation between perky and tolerable.

5) Dinner is popped, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
The thing that really irks me about this 1973 special is Peppermint Patty: she invites herself to a Thanksgiving feast Chuck never intended to have, and then has the nerve to complain about the results. But it's certainly one of the most intriguing T-Day dinners ever conceived: popcorn and toast.

4) Thanksgiving, Bing style, "The One Where Underdog Gets Away," Friends.
Poor Chandler reveals the reason why he doesn't celebrate this harvest holiday in a hilariously un-hilarious monologue about his parents' decision to reveal their divorce during the feast. As he points out, Thanksgiving dinner no longer holds any thrill for him: he's already seen the re-runs.

3) Biblical quotation, "The Little Atheist," All in the Family.
Concerned when Mike and Gloria reveal their baby will be allowed to choose his own religion, ignorant father figure Archie reads from the Bible: Romans 13, two dots 23.

2) Archie's conspiracy, "The Little Atheist."
Two list-worthy moments from the same episode? Fully deserved. Archie tells Edith they'll ensure the baby is a Christian if they have to break every commandment to do it. And when telling Mike he's won this battle, he lifts his head to Heaven, winking at God.

Drumroll, please....

Okay, seriously, stop now.

1) Alien mating dance, "Gobble Gobble Dick Dick," 3rd Rock from the Sun.
After the Solomons' first Thanksgiving on Earth, Harry (French Stewart) and the sultry Vicki Dubcek (Jan Hooks) clean up the leftovers in Mrs. Dubcek's kitchen. In the most bizarre (and laugh-out-loud funny) seduction in television history, Harry dons the turkey carcass like a hat, gives himself a gravy mustache, and throws Vicki down on the table.

Well, there you have it. The Thanksgiving best, whether heartwarming or... just plain disturbing.

Now please wait until after Thursday's dinner to start your Christmas celebrations. You'll be doing yourself a favor.

A Couple Candid Messages

Dear Mrs. Palin,

You are ruining our flipping country by your very presence! Please leaaavve and trouble someone else with your wacko views for a change! You are a hypocrite of the worst kind, you have absolutely no clue what's going on in your own country, and you are misinterpreting everyone's morbid curiosity in your demented doings to be signs of love and respect! Please go away now!


Dear Stephenie Meyer,

Your books are trash, the movies adapted from them are even worse, and they're making the world unsafe for those of us who want to tell vampire or werewolf stories in the future... from now on, anything with either of these mythological creatures will be berated as a ripoff! A ripoff of what?! Words on pages that smell like the scent of the decay of American literature! I am not even kidding! Enough already!


Dear Makers of Chia Pets,

A Chia Obama? Really?! What the frack were you thinking?!?!


Ahhh. Felt good to get that out in the open.

But a little clarification on that last one: It doesn't specifically refer to the Obama pet. It refers to everything they've ever made.

And consider that first bit a plug for Palin's new book. As in, accept it as a gift, then catapult it into the air and shoot it mid-arc. I'm sure Miss Moose Hunter 2009 will appreciate the irony.

Watch This Movie. Like NOW.

It has been noted by many cynical (and ignorant) people that the suffering of the Jewish people has been a gold mine in Hollywood for decades. Actually, on the surface, the statement is not entirely untrue. Films depicting the repression and bullying of an entire race/religion (often with horrifying, genocidal consequences) have frequently been big moneymakers. But what makes a movie with this subject matter good is that you can tell it's not done for money, but a genuine belief in the depth and validity of the content.

One such film is Schindler's List (1993), an utterly fascinating and well-made but (to me) unwatchably brutal film by Steven Spielberg. Another is Fiddler on the Roof (1971), which balances Jewish oppression with the familiar conventions of the musical dramedy.

Still another is Otto Preminger's incomparable 1960 masterpiece, Exodus, a film I only recently discovered, and shall now review for the pages of Xander Candor.

Exodus is, despite what the title may suggest, not taken at all from the pages of the Bible. It's actually based on a twentieth-century story from a novel by Leon Uris. Set in the days immediately following World War II, it is the story of a group of people who survive the Holocaust only to be corraled in a "safe area"-- basically a British-run holding pen on the island of Cyprus. They're stuck there because they have no place to go-- in the 40s, there was no Jewish homeland. Fed up with this fact, cynical hero Ari Ben Canaan (played phenomenally by the late Paul Newman) poses as a Gentile British officer to rescue hundreds of the refugees and break through a blockade to bring them where their people rightfully belong: Palestine.

Of course, the trouble is only beginning when Ben Canaan and the others-- accompanied by a young American widow named Kitty Freemont (Eva Marie Saint)-- make it to Palestine. The Arab government wants nothing to do with the Jewish survivors, and threatens violence if the UN's vote to partition the region passes. One passenger, Dov Landau (an excellent performance by Sal Mineo) joins the Irgun, a freedom-fighting group that resorts to blowing up buildings to get the message across. This is bad news for Karen Hansen (Jill Haworth), a young refugee from Denmark, who loves Dov and wonders why he has such an intrinsic hatred and distrust of anyone who isn't Jewish. And Kitty, who has tried to adopt Karen, finds herself falling not only in love with Ben Canaan, but into the middle of a fight that isn't her own.

At over 200 minutes, Exodus feels not a second over 120. Preminger brings a visceral you're-actually-there quality that mingles pleasingly dissonantly with the faraway mysticism of the content and photography. The editing is ahead of its time, and Ernest Gold's unbelievable music score is one of the best-- even when it sounds suspiciously like the work Miklos Rozsa did for 1959's Ben-Hur.

The script is by Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era for his "Communist affiliations." In 1960, Exodus was one of two films-- along with Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus-- that utilized his raw and dignified scribe talents in open defiance of the blacklist. The American Legion even sent letters to all its posts across the nation urging members not to see the movies.

Obviously, it didn't work. These films are with us to stay. And for good reason.

Very rarely does a film resonate this much. Usually, at least in my case as a critic, only certain scenes do-- the "Trial Before Pilate" in Jesus Christ Superstar, the out-the-window climax of The Exorcist, and Spartacus' tearful, stand-up-and-cheer finale with the cross. But from the moment the credits are ignited (literally) against the auditory background of Gold's powerful music to the unforgettable dual funeral at the film's ambiguous conclusion, Exodus is one triumphant moment after another. I can't remember seeing a film like that since... well, a long, long, long time. Watching Exodus is legitimately the best thing you can do with three and a half hours of free TV time.

No, even better.