This is a sign I saw yesterday when I went to the Arclight movie theater in Santa Monica yesterday.  Apparently they have a Family Christmas film festival running through the month.  I looked at this sign and wanted to start singing the song from Sesame Street, "One of These Things is Not Like the Other."
​

I'm always sort of amazed that somehow Die Hard has become seen as a "Christmas movie."  It takes place during Christmas, and I guess it's a Christmas party going on, and they a Christmas song at the end, but...well, it's a pretty violent (and very entertaining) action thriller that really has next to nothing about Christmas.

​That aside, it makes an whimsical addition to the list...

Once again, we have another version of "The Little Drummer Boy," but honestly that's not the point here.  That's just background music -- and hugely effective background music, that impacts the scene magnificently -- for one of the more moving, wonderful scenes from a Christmas episode The West Wing.  And the episode, "In Excelsis Deo" was one of their best.  Which is saying a lot, though something you could say a lot, as well...

The scene is pretty self-explanatory, but quickly the episode concerns a homeless veteran who had died, and the business card of one of the West Wing staffers was found in the coat he was wearing because it had been donated to a shelter.

A week ago, I wrote here about a new documentary that has been getting overwhelmingly spectacular reviews, They Shall Not Grow Old.  It's from Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and focuses on the British foot soldiers in World War I, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the armistice.

The film, which uses material from the BBC and Imperial War Museum archives, was made for the BBC but had such a profound effect that Warner Bros. is releasing it in very-limited release theatrically,  And by "very limited" I mean there are two days scheduled.  I suspect they're hoping for an Oscar nomination (actually, they're probably hoping for a win) and then I wonder if they may release it a little wider.  But I don't know that for sure, and I wouldn't count on it.

I say that because I saw it yesterday, and there's only one other day left to see it for certain, and you will do yourself a great disservice by missing it.  Yes, it's that tremendous.

I'll keep this description reasonably short because of a bonus that goes along with the documentary.  I'll dive in a bit more when getting around to that.  But as for the documentary itself, what makes it stand out so much is how Jackson physically crafted it.  Using the latest technology, he and his team restored the footage to a quality so remarkably pristine that it almost looks like modern-day footage.  Additionally, they manipulated the speed of the film so it doesn't look the way old silent movies generally do, sped-up and jerky, but instead is all fully natural.  They colorized it using the highest quality efforts so, although the process is often controversial, here is completely justified and all looks fresh and lifelike.  Perhaps most fascinatingly, they brought in expert lip-readers to determine what soldiers are saying in the footage, and then dubbed the voices to add a sense of realism to the material.  They also converted the old material to 3D in a way that doesn't get in the way with anything splashy, but brings subtle depth to the landscape so that at times you almost feel you are there on the battlefields.  And much more.  And making it all the more touching is that there are no historians or WWI experts narrating -- instead, all the narration is from archival interviews that soldiers did 40-50 years later.

It's really quite remarkable.  

Which brings us to the bonus.  Following the 90-minute documentary, there is another half-hour film that runs afterwards with Peter Jackson explaining and showing all the amazing work that they put into crafting the film and bringing everything to life.  In some ways, it's surprsingly almost as moving at times as the documentary itself.  And if They Shall Not Grow Old does get a wider theatrical release at some point, I wouldn't think it would be with this special half-hour featurette.  It seems like that was solely for this limited theatrical release. (Or the DVD, assuming one gets released.)

Here's an example of the level of detail and effort the filmmakers went to.  When they dubbed the soldiers, they team tracked down which divisions the men were in, and they found actors who spoke in that same dialect, to make it authentic.  Also, they often found footage that all other WWI documentaries most-certainly ignored because the footage had degraded, or was deeply underexposed or overexposed and therefore unusable -- but they were able to restore it, and much of what they ended up with was a treasure.  

Jackson also explains the decision to colorize the footage.  He said that the focus of the movie was on the foot soldiers and their experience, how they saw the war.  And they saw the war in color.  He notes, too, that had color been available at the time, there's little doubt that the original filmmakers would have used it.  He explains, too, that the quality of colorization depends in large part on the time spent on the process, and so they devoted a great deal of time getting it to look right and natural.

One of the more fascinating things of the featurette has nothing to do with the war, but the filmmaker himself.  It turns out that Peter Jackson wasn't approached merely because of his acclaim as a director, but rather both that and because he is a true, massive aficionado of World War I.  When talking about the impossibility of getting some footage for the movie of hand-to-hand combat, Jackson says he remembered that he had a few copies of old war magazines he'd collected as a kid that had original drawings from the time which might be useful -- and when he went to check, he found out that he didn't still have a few copies, but several hundred.  Also, when they did the colorizing of all the old uniforms of the many divisions, their efforts were made significantly easier because...Jackson had his own collection of old World War I uniforms, which got a growing chuckle from the audience.  But what got the biggest laugh is when Jackson (who clearly found it a bit bizarre himself) said that they wanted the sound of the artillery movement and explosions to be authentic and so -- yes -- in a bemused voice said, "I had my own collection of WWI artillery...as one does."  And so the featurette shows them rolling out Jackson's own canons and other artillery out to fields to be properly operated.

Both of these films are showing one more time, for certain.  That will be on December 27.  If this is even of remote interest to you, try to see it.  It's very special.  Here is the page where you can enter your zip cod and see where it's screening in your area.  Just click this link.

And here's a very brief trailer, which I posted before.  It doesn't begin to do the documentary anything close to justice -- but -- it absolutely gives you a touch of an idea of how unique this is.

​Today's song comes from what I believe was the first season of the animated series South Park.  It was their initial Christmas special, centered around the adventures of Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo, which brought the show even more attention.  I have a tangential story connected to the song, "It's Hard to Be a Jew on Christmas."  I've told it here before, but it bears repeating for the holidays as you gather around the snowman... 

As I think I've mentioned, back in my dark days of P.R. I was the unit publicist on the movie BASEketball, which was directed by David Zucker (of the Airplaine! and The Naked Gun series, which was why he brought me along) and starred Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who did -- and still do -- South Park.  During the movie's production, which overlapped with them being in production on South Park (so, in essence, they were doing two jobs at the same time), Matt and Trey mentioned that the only reason they signed to do the movie is because they were sure the TV series would be canceled after 10 episodes, and they'd have plenty of time to make the movie.  Ha.  So much for the best laid plans.  It was during the movie's production that the TV series started peaking -- for instance they made the cover of both Time and Newsweek during the film.  They said that if they had any idea that the TV show would still be going on, they never would have agreed to be in the movie.  It was a crushing schedule -- including having an editing trailer for them on the set every day, and going back to their production offices after the day's filming -- but they handled it seriously impressively.

Anyway, going back several months, we had a read-through of the movie script one night, and given that it was the "South Park guys," families and kids were invited.  And as it happened, the read-through took place the night after their Christmas special aired.

In the milling around phase of the evening, I went over to Trey and Matt to introduce myself, and I also wanted to tell them how much I particularly had love this specific song.  Given the fame of South Park at that time, they were not surprisingly surrounded by a bunch of young boys gushing about the show.  But in particular, they were gushing about another song in the TV special.  So, I stood off to the side and waited for their fans to finish.

The other song in the show as sung by the character 'Cartman," and lasts about 30 seconds, with the words basically being, "Kyle's mom is a big fat b*tch, she's a b*tch, b*tch, b*tch, she's a big fat b*tch," over and over for half a minute.  The little boys just loooooved that.  And one after another, they enthused to Matt and Tray about it, singing the song.

After they all departed, I finally walked over.  I said hi, we chatted a bit, and then I said how terrific I thought the song, "It's Hard to Be a Jew on Christmas" was.  That the lyrics were so funny, yet touching, and the music was wisftul, and it was just really nicely crafted.  And what was hilarious and memorable was how their faces suddenly filled with a smile of relief.  They completely understood why the little boys all loved the "Kye's mom is a b*tch" song -- but this other was an actual song.  And one they took great pride in.  So, they were SO relieved to have someone praise it, rather than the one getting all the attention.

I also had one question for them.  About a minute into the song, the character Kyle singing it mentions some Hebrew phrase which I couldn't make out, words from some Hebrew Hanukkah song he has to sing instead of getting to sing "Silent Night."  I asked what it was, since I didn't recognize the song, and if they did research to find it or what.  Trey broke out with a big laugh, "Oh, that," he said, "we just made the words up.  We didn't know any Hebrew, so we just wrote some gibberish that sounded right."

(Note:  Though this is the audio track of the song from the special, it's only a still of the scene.  I couldn't find a full video of the song.)

I've decided to have a Trump-free Zone this morning.  I've been writing SO much about the growing depth of his egregious scandals lately that one does need some time to decompress and let others cover the topic for a while. So, instead, we're going with beneficence. 

When my father passed away a couple years ago, I packed up a lot of items and shipped them to my place in Los Angeles.  A couple of the bigger boxes I left packed because I knew at some point I'd be moving and it didn't make sense to unpack so much stuff that I had no room for, only to repack it reasonably soon. 

For reasons I'll write about soon, I finally opened one of those big boxes the other day, and started going through what was inside.  Among many other things, There were some books, and I couldn’t figure out why I’d saved this one in particular.  It was very old, wasn't in great shape, and didn't seem like something I'd have any interest in reading.  Then it occurred to me to check the face plate and see if there was in inscription of some sort.  There was. 

The inscription was from my grandfather, Morton Leviton, who was born in Odessa in the Ukraine, but came to the United States early on and got his naturalized citizenship in 1912 at the age of 27, where he later became an architect though he passed away long before I was born.  He was my mother’s father, and she absolutely, totally adored him, in fact she would still tear up in her 80s when talking about him dying when she was in her early teens.  (My brother John’s middle name was after him.)  As I said, I never knew him, but his wife, my Grandma Rose, was one of the utter joys of my life.  Under any circumstance, the inscription is glorious.  Considering the times we're in right now, it is all the more so.  But given the profession and career I've chosen, it reached an even higher level for me. 

What I also just noticed, going through some papers to fill out some of the details here, is that he and my grandmother were married in May 26, 1922 -- which means the book was something he gave her two weeks before their wedding.  This is what he wrote to her (in such beautiful penmanship…) and very understandably is why I kept the book –
 
 
To my beloved Rose
 
Life is serious, but at
the same time it is full of
fun and humor.
 
Happy and blessed are
those who possess a sense
of humor (“S.O.H.”) and can
see the funny and cheering
side of Life.
 
Morton
May 13, 1922

And today we have a wonderful, little-known ​Christmas song, "All I Want for Christmas is You."  But wait, I hear you cry, didn't you have that song yesterday, and didn't you say it was very well-known??  Yes and yes.  But this is a different song with the same title.  And actually, though some of you may not know it, really isn't "little known" per se -- just little known compared to the Mariah Carey song with the same title.  But it was a massive hit on country music radio about 20 years ago and still gets played a great deal there.  (In fact, it was written before Marah Carey's, in 1989.)  It was recorded by an odd group, Vince Vance and the Valiants, with Lisa Layne as the leader singer.  Whenever I've heard the song, this has been the only version, in large part because the rendition is so vibrant -- but as it happens, finally last year, while wandering the grocery store, I heard it for the first time in a cover version piped in with their other holiday music, and the singer (whoever it was) did a very good job.

But -- this is the version.  While Mariah Carey's version of her song may be most people's favorite, so many others have recorded it and done it very well.  But as good a pure song as is the Vince Vance Version, it's Lisa Layne's gut-powerful performance that ratchets it up for its popularity.  How big a hit was it on country radio?  I remember the year it finally caught on (it had been written a few years before) the country station in Los Angeles would literally tell listeners when they would next be playing it -- usually within the hour.

The Valiants have an official video of the song, but they have a model in it lip-synching the song.  So, on her own without the Valiants, I decided to post a video of Lisa Layne singing it on camera in a concert.  She softens it a bit for the live audience, compared to the grittier (and better) version of the recording, but it still has her rasp.  And is still terrific.

Which of the two songs is the best?  Oh, who knows?  The joy is that they're both wonderful.  Mariah Carey's is probably the most fun.  Lisa Layne's performance is probably the best.  Or vice-versa.

The guest contestant on the 'Not My Job' segment of this week's NPR quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! is Candice Bergen.  It's a lively, very fun conversation with host Peter Sagal that includes a lot about growing up with her father (and a fave of this website) Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

This doesn't remotely qualify as a little-known Christmas song, "All I Want for Christmas (is You)* by Mariah Carey.  But this version -- even with her -- is not only less-known, but for my taste the best rendition of the song.  Yes, it starts quietly with her and James Corden as part of his Carpool Karaoke series, but then goes to lovely heights.

Continuing with our re-posting of Rachel Maddow's excellent 7-part podcast, Bag Man, about events surrounding the resignation of former Vice President Spiro Agnew, here's Part Five.

(If you've missed any of the earlier episodes and want to catch up with it, here's Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4.


Episode 5:  Double-Header
With his own Justice Department on the verge of indicting him, Vice President Spiro Agnew attempts a last-ditch effort to survive. A Constitutional crisis-inducing argument that even if prosecutors have evidence of his crimes, he can't be indicted anyway... the power of the White House protects him. With President Nixon himself about to go down in Watergate, it's now on one man's shoulders-- the Attorney General-- to come up with a way to remove a criminal Vice President... before he ascends to the Presidency