Overlooked Specials 11th Day of Christmas

11^th Day of Christmas:

The Little Matchgirl

In less than seven minutes this mesmerizing piece of animation exudes more emotion and character than over half the Disney films, which isn’t to insult Disney by any means. This short was made by Disney, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story and is both warming and genuinely heartbreaking. Told with no dialogue and with gorgeous music, it’s about a poor little girl attempting to sell matchsticks in Revolution-era St. Petersburg during a harsh winter. I won’t say much more but the animation is absolutely stunning, easily among the best I’ve ever seen in the hand-drawn medium. It’s colour scheme that alternates in some instances, sets the mood perfectly and captures what bleak winters often seem to look like. Though it’s only explicitly connected to Christmas through brief imagery, the central theme is very heavily a Christmas one, and has been ever since Dickens emphasized it in A Christmas Carol. If you’re willing to be moved possibly to tears by an exquisitely crafted, beautifully told little story, watch this hidden gem the first chance you get!

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Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....

The Subtle Sensitivity of the Cinema of Wong Kar-wai

When I think of Wong Kar-wai, I think of nighttime and neon lights, I think of the image of lonely people sitting in cafes or bars as the world passes behind them, mere flashes of movement; I think of love and quiet, sombre heartbreak, the sensuality that exists between people but is rarely fully or openly expressed. Mostly I think of the mood of melancholy, yet how this can be beautiful, colourful, inspiring even. A feeling of gloominess at the complexity of messy human relationships, though tinged with an unmitigated joy in the sensation of that feeling. And a warmth, generated by light and colour, that cuts through to the solitude of our very soul. This isn’t a broadly definitive quality of Wong’s body of work -certainly it isn’t so much true of his martial arts films Ashes of Time and The Grandmaster. But those most affectionate movies on my memory: Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together , 2046 , of course In the Mood for Love , and even My Blueberry Nig...

The Prince of Egypt: The Humanized Exodus

Moses and the story of the Exodus is one of the most influential mythologies of world history. It’s a centrepoint of the Abrahamic religions, and has directly influenced the society, culture, values, and laws of many civilizations. Not to mention, it’s a very powerful story, and one that unsurprisingly continues to resonate incredibly across the globe. In western culture, the story of Moses has been retold dozens of times in various mediums, most recognizably in the last century through film. And these adaptations have ranged from the iconic: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments; to the infamous: Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings . But everyone seems to forget the one movie between those two that I’d argue has them both beat. As perhaps the best telling of one of the most influential stories of all time, I feel people don’t talk about The Prince of Egypt nearly enough. The 1998 animated epic from DreamWorks is a breathtakingly stunning, concise but compelling, ...

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