The Illusion of Depth

Thursday, the 15th of December marks the final film night of the year at the Victoria Park Baptist Church (we will be starting up again on the 12th of January) and for our final film of the year, I plan to break the habit of a lifetime. That's right, folks. This Thursday, for the first time ever, I will be showing... a Christmas film . The Christmas Movie is basically a film genre in its own right. There have been more Christmas Movies (by orders of magnitude) than, say, Easter movies, Yom Kippur movies etc. (I did briefly consider showing Chanukah at Bubbe's , but I'm not going to...) In fairness, there are many, many Diwali movies, but we can save those for some future film series devoted to the magic of Bollywood. When it comes to classic and beloved Christmas Movies, there is one film that emerges time and again as THE Christmas Movie; the one that everyone comes back to without fail; the one that is guaranteed to bring joy to the hearts of everyone who sees it (and no...

Part the First:  Where is the Music Coming From? This Thursday (the 8th of December) I plan to screen the 1962 film version of Meredith Willson's Broadway classic, The Music Man . Before I get into that  however, take a look at this cartoon: It may seem a little odd to begin my discussion of The Music Man with a "Far Side" cartoon, but that's just the way it's going to be. This is my film series and I can do what I like. There is an old story about Alfred Hitchcock that is probably apocryphal. Hitchcock was working on his 1944 film Lifeboat (which takes place, appropriately enough, entirely in a lifeboat) and decided not to use any music at all during the film.  When questioned about this, he said,  "It's the middle of the ocean. Where would the music come from?" The composer Hugo Friedhofer is alleged to have responded, "Where did the cameras come from?" Who knows whether this exchange actually took place, but it does serve to illustrate ...