It's that time of year again. The Christmas tree is up, the presents have been wrapped, and Santa will soon be on the way. But while we wait, what has Sky Cinema and Now TV got in store for us?
The film that's definitely worth seeing is the brand new Sky Original, A Boy Called Christmas.
It's a reimagining of the story of Father Christmas, Nikolas is a boy who sets off into the snowy white north in search of his father. “I wrote this story to cheer myself up,” Haig wrote in a recent Instagram post of the film’s star-studded poster. “A story of hope in the dark. Never expected this to happen.”
We follow an ordinary young boy called Nikolas who sets out on an extraordinary adventure into the snowy north in search of his father who is on a quest to discover the fabled village of the elves, Elfham. Taking with him a headstrong reindeer called Blitzen and a loyal pet mouse, Nikolas soon meets his destiny in this magical, comic and endearing story that proves nothing is impossible.
Downton Abbey’s Maggie Smith stars alongside Kristen Wiig, Jim Broadbent, Sally Hawkins, Michiel Huisman , as well as newcomer Henry Lawfull, who will play protagonist Nikolas. The story is framed as a bedtime story, relayed by Smith’s reliably crabby Aunt Ruth to three wide-eyed children on Christmas Eve. It’s familiar stuff — a wicked aunt, scary encounters with bears and trolls, a tyrannical despot, flying-through-the-air antics, lots of life lessons — but the film isn’t as marred by its predictability as you might expect. That’s thanks largely to its genuine sweetness.
Next up is The Last Train to Christmas, another Sky Original movie that'll debut on Sky Cinema and Now TV in December 2021.
On top of these two must-see new entries in the Christmas movie niche, Mark Gatiss, co-creator of Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch, brings us a new version of The Amazing Mr Blunden.
Then there's the familiar favourites like National Lampoon's Vacation, Scrooged, and Miracle on 34th Street.
A Christmas Number One, a Sky Original is produced by Sky, Genesius Pictures, Lupus Films and Space Age Films. The film will release in on Sky Cinema in December 2021. Starring Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones), A Christmas Number One is produced by Debbie Gray (Genesius), Camilla Deakin and Ruth Fielding (Lupus Films) and Robert Chandler (Space Age Films).
Fresh from a breakup with the world’s hottest popstar, music manager Meg Rai (Frieda Pinto) leaves New York for London to manage a boyband, 5 Together, who are desperate for a Christmas hit after their latest self-written album flopped. Meanwhile, Blake Cutter (Iwan Rheon), persuaded by his Christmas obsessive niece, Nina Cutter (Helena Zengel), puts his thrash metal band, Scurve, to one side to write Nina the ultimate Christmas song. When Meg discovers the hit in the making, will this be the Christmas number one the boy band desperately needs or will Blake, the song, and Nina show Meg what truly matters?
Following the final departure of Sean Connery in 1971, late English actor Roger Moore took over the role from 1973 to 1985. To date he is the second longest-serving James Bond actor, after Daniel Craig, spanning twelve years in the role. He is also the oldest actor to play Bond; having begun the role at 45 and retiring from it at the age of 58. The character was doubled by stuntmen Vic Armstrong, Loren Willard, Rick Sylvester, Willy Bogner, Jake Lombard, Martin Grace, Richard Graydon, Rémy Julienne, and Paul Weston.[2][3] He appeared in Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985).
Roger Moore's first out as James Bond came in the 1973 film Live and Let Die
Live and Let Die (1973)
After a successful mission in Rome, Italy alongside Italian agent Miss Caruso, James Bond is sent to investigate the murder of three British MI6 agents, Dawes, Hamilton and Baines (who in fact shared the same bootmaker with Bond), all of whom have been killed within 24 hours. He discovers the victims were all separately investigating the operations of Dr. Kananga, the dictator of a small Caribbean island, San Monique. He also establishes that Kananga also acts as "Mr. Big", a ruthless and cunning gangster in the United States.
Upon visiting San Monique, Bond determines that Kananga is producing two tons of heroin and is protecting the poppy fields by exploiting the locals' fear of voodoo and the occult. Through his alter ego, Mr. Big, Kananga plans to distribute the heroin free of charge at his Fillet of Soul restaurants, which will increase the number of addicts. Bond teams up with Kananga's womanservant, Solitaire to foil his plans, but is captured by Kananga, but they escape, killing Kananga and destroying the drug crops.
Teenage rebellion is a part of human development in adolescents in order for them to develop an identity independent from their parents or family and a capacity for independent decision-making.[1] They may experiment with different roles, behaviours, and ideologies as part of this process of developing an identity.[2] Teenage rebellion has been recognized within psychology as a set of behavioural traits that supersede class, culture, or race;[3] some psychologists, however, have disputed the universality of the phenomenon.[4] According to Terror Management Theory, the child's allegiance to parental authority and worldviews can weaken after the discovery that parents, like themselves and everyone else, are mortal. This realization creates an unconscious need for security that is broader than what the parents alone provide. This can lead to new cultural allegiances, in the search for a more enduring sense of meaning. Teenagers seek to perceive themselves a valued contributor to aspects of culture that more convincingly outlive or transcend the mortal individual's lifespan. However, since the parents also instill their cultural beliefs onto the child, if the child does not come to associate their parents‘ mortality with their cultural beliefs, the chances of rebellion decrease
But what films have displayed this act of rebellion in the most authentic and compelling way?
Coming in two years after the sappily titled “Pretty in Pink,” “Heathers” is a darkly comic satire on the brutality of high school cliques. Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder, in one of her first roles), a relatively normal middle-class girl with an above average IQ, has been adopted by the popular girls, all called Heather, but isn’t sure she can hack the moral ambiguity and all-around vapid bitchiness that comes with the crown. Everything changes when she meets the new kid J.D. (Christian Slater, aping Jack Nicholson), whose disdain for the high school hierarchy, and readiness with a weapon, provides her with a way out: offing the popular kids. J.D. deceives Veronica and funnels her adolescent fury into violent action. Painting their murders as suicides, Veronica and J.D. get revenge and attempt to upend the social order, however little changes at the high school, as suicide becomes a trend (with number one single “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It)” by Big Fun, playing in the background), while the Queen Bees at Westerburg High (named for the frontman of The Replacements) are quickly replaced. Veronica manages to foil J.D.’s dramatic plans to blow up the school, create “a Woodstock for the 80s,” and simultaneously usurp and break free of the Heathers, taking up instead with the school dork Martha Dunnstock, and striking a blow for teenage misfits everywhere. The script is a sarcastic gold mine for made-up teen quotables, from “What’s your damage?” to “How very” and the cynically romantic “Our love is God, let’s go get a slushie.” The out-of-touch teachers and parents all make hilarious straight men, whether they are ignoring the events or going into overzealous touchy-feely smother-mode, as one hippie teacher earnestly informs the kids, “Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.” Its hard to believe that Winona Ryder was just 17 when she made “Heathers” — the world weary one-liners and simultaneous eye-roll seem like second nature, and the combo-release of “Beetlejuice” that same year made her the object of outsider adoration the world over. “Heathers,” though a box office dud, became a cult classic and source material for a spate of black high school comedies in the future.
if.... won the Palme d'Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.[3] In 1999, the British Film Institute named it the 12th greatest British film of the 20th century; in 2004, the magazine Total Film named it the 16th greatest British film of all time. In 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine ranked it the 9th best British film ever.[4] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 92% approval rating based on 48 reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. According to the site's critical consensus, "Incendiary, subversive, and darkly humorous, If.... is a landmark of British countercultural cinema."[5]
Nihilism in cinema is hit-or-miss for me normally, but Anderson’s 1968 psychological drama film exceeds my expectations in every aspect. When ruminating on it as a whole, I can comprehend how the English public school life and religion that it satirizes is conveyed through a cerebral fever dream.
When it was released in 1968, Lindsay Anderson’s bellow of righteous outrage was described as “a hand grenade” of a movie. Some critics and many politicians were made thoroughly queasy at its apparent message of total, uncompromising revolution. The fact that, across the Channel, the student population was busy building the barricades can’t have helped.
Malcolm McDowell heads the cast as Mick, a teenage schoolboy who leads his classmates in a revolution against the stifling conformism of his boarding school. Facing up to the bullying prefects and the incompetent teachers, Mick and his crusaders attempt to destroy the stagnant system of petty viciousness and an out-dated belief in the importance of the institution over the individual.
Anderson captures the spirit of youthful rebellion beautifully, linking it with the sweeping political changes that were dominating the headlines through the photos of Mao, Che Guevara, and Vietnam that adorn the walls of Mick's bedroom (shooting started just a few months before the May 1968 riots in Paris).
The years may have robbed it of some of its power, but "If..." still deserves the reputation as one of the best films to have come from these shores, a subversive, anti-authoritarian masterpiece that stands alongside Godard's "Weekend" and Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel" as a blistering attack on the morality and values of the middle class. To rework that famous Parisian cry of 1968: "Under the schoolyard, the beach!"
The film's greatness lies in its surreal take on these events. As the schoolyard revolution slowly kicks into gear, the film itself begins to disintegrate. The photography switches restlessly between colour and sepia, and the narrative becomes increasingly elliptical as reality and fantasy merge.
A modern classic in which Anderson minutely captures both the particular ethos of a public school and the general flavour of any structured community, thus achieving a clear allegorical force without sacrificing a whit of his exploration of an essentially British institution.
"Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), now on national rerelease, is an elegant, sinister and scalp-prickling ghost story – as scary in its way as Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist. It has to be the most sure-footed screen adaptation of Henry James, taken from his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, clarifying some of the original's ambiguities and obscurities, but without damaging the story's subtlety. Deborah Kerr plays Miss Giddens, a governess hired to look after two children in a country estate: Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens). Miss Giddens finds something she describes as "secret, whispery, and indecent": the house is haunted by the souls of Peter Quint, a drunken, disreputable valet, and Miss Jessel, the former governess whom he seduced. Without admitting it, the children can see the ghosts as well; the spectres have become their secret, parasitical friends. Flora's pertly knowing innocence and Miles's insolent adult hauteur show how the children become possessed and corrupted by them. Clayton brilliantly uses slow dissolves to create ghostly superimpositions, and the harmless squeals of bath-time fun, or squeakings of a pencil, suggest uncanny screams. The most disturbing scenes take place in daylight: Quint's appearance in the garden is heralded by the sudden silencing of the birdsong. It's a moment that makes your blood run cold. The whole film does that."
John and Laura Baxter are in Venice when they meet a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom claims to be psychic. She insists that she sees the spirit of the Baxters' daughter, who recently drowned. Laura is intrigued, but John resists the idea. He, however, seems to have his own psychic flashes, seeing their daughter walk the streets in her red cloak, as well as Laura and the sisters on a funeral gondola.
—James Meek <james@oz.net>
Fast-forward and we have the work of James Wan in films such as Insidious and The Conjuring.
"Directed by James Wan and scripted by Leigh Whannell, the Australian co-creators of Saw, and produced by Oren Peli, the Israeli writer-director of Paranormal Activity, this is a supernatural horror flick by and for horror buffs. A pleasant, apparently American couple and their three small children move into a new house where things go bump in the night and the eldest child experiences a three-month coma. They get even bumpier when the family moves elsewhere and the situation become more problematic than that in The Amityville Horror. The build-up is slow and sure, the shocks are exponential, Barbara Hershey as the husband's mother is even creepier than she was in Black Swan, and a bad time is had by all. The film cost $1.5m to make and has taken $45m at the US box office." Source: The Guardian
What are your favourite movies about ghosts and haunted houses?
