A Murrier Christmas

Thanks to Netflix, many people had A Very Murray Christmas this year.

But ours was even Murrier.

Taking the risk of its potential inferior quality in our hands, we saved the Netflix original holiday special A Very Murray Christmas for Christmas Eve. The next night, violating my own personal rule of no longer watching Christmas movies at any point after December 24th, we watched the Bill Murray vehicle Scrooged, which my wife had never seen and which I hadn't seen since it came out in 1988. (Twenty-seven years ago. Jesus.)

So our Christmas was definitely chock full of Murray. But was that a good thing?

Let's called it a mixed bag. The Murray jury is still out.

Mixed not because one was good and one was bad, but mixed because both were kind of bad ... but also kind of good.

Actually, only one moment from A Very Murray Christmas really stood out as being genuinely funny, and not half-funny and half-cringeworthy. That moment came when (spoiler alert) George Clooney, scheduled to appear as part of Murray's holiday variety show that gets ruined by a blizzard that shuts down New York City, does actually appear in a dream sequence. He provides an expected dose of glitz and glamour as he dances with Miley Cyrus, but he also does something very unexpected. In the next song, kind of a jazzy, R&B-inspired number where Murray is the lead vocalist, Clooney pops out from behind a Christmas tree and sings: "Santa Claus wants some lovin'. Santa Claus wants some lovin' - yow."

My wife and I might have been forcing tepid laughs earlier to try to get ourselves in the swing of this special, but we both erupted here. There was just something so absurd about a) the voice in which Clooney delivers this line, and b) the way he leans stiffly out from behind the tree, then back behind it once his lines are finished. The tuxedo makes it all the more wonderfully goofy. We loved this moment so much that it has already become a meme in our family in just over 24 hours since we watched it. It made the whole disappointing affair worthwhile.

Scrooged actually has more in common with A Very Murray Christmas than just being holiday-themed. In this movie Murray is also involved in the preparations for a live holiday special, though this is a version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol titled Scrooge that the IBC network advertises with a fire and brimstone campaign of Murray's character's choosing. The network president has to search his soul to go on the same path to redemption as Dickens' most famous character.

Scrooged dates really easily -- there was one joke about throwing ice water on somebody because they thought he was Richard Pryor. That apparently relates to a long-forgotten episode in which Pryor set himself on fire in 1980, which even then was eight years before the movie came out. I'd say that's probably typical of what passes for humor in this movie, though it does also get a lot broader than that. But I was surprised that the moments with heart still worked on me -- sort of.

I was interested to note something else the two pieces have in common -- they both feature a guy I had completely forgotten about until I saw him last night. One of the "special guests" for Murray's new Christmas special was David Johansen -- so not all that special, since I'd forgotten entirely about his existence until I recognized his name in the credits. Looking him up, I determined he was the singer who once went by the name Buster Poindexter, and a person I hadn't thought of in 15 years suddenly popped back into my consciousness. Lo and behold, Johansen also played the ghost of Christmas past in Scrooged -- you know, the one that drives the taxi cab -- hence probably explaining his presence in A Very Murray Christmas. (FOM -- Friend of Murray.)

If Christmas is not yet past for you, have a merry one.

Or I guess a Murray one, if you are prepared for some lumps of coal mixed in with your gifts.

Chart toppers

For the 19 years I've been ranking all the movies I see each year, I have always been curious when a director would top the mountain a second time. It's almost happened twice. Cristian Mungiu and Spike Jonze have each scored movies that landed at #1 and #2 on my year-end list in different years -- Jonze with Adaptation (#1 of 2002) and Where the Wild Things Are (#2 of 2009), and Mungiu with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (#2 of 2008) and Beyond the Hills (#1 of 2013). If I were ranking today, I'd rank 4 Months as #1 of 2008 as well, but I'm not ranking today, am I?

So a couple days ago, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu became the 19th different director to achieve top honors for the year. In case you're keeping track at home, the other 16 beyond Jonze and Mungiu are Al Pacino, James Cameron, Todd Solondz, Tom Tywker, Michael Almereyda, Robert Altman, Sofia Coppola, Michel Gondry, Craig Brewer, Alfonso Cuaron, Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Duncan Jones, Danny Boyle, Asghar Farhadi, and Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris.

However, I noted that a creative talent other than director did top the chart for his second time in 2014. That's cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, pictured above, who shot my #1 movie of 2006 (Children of Men) and now again my #1 movie of 2014 (Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)). With the work this guy is doing (he also shot The Tree of Life and one of last year's top ten, Gravity, which won him an Oscar), I wouldn't be surprised if he has his sights set on another of my future #1s.

That got me thinking about others who have been involved with more than one of my top-ranked films. There had to be some during nearly two decades, right?

I knew I could figure it out with some quick research ... knowing also that even with something as thorough as IMDB, it would be difficult to determine multiple appearances by technical crew and the like. I'd have to know what I was looking for already.

So I scanned the top-listed cast and some key crew on each movie, and came up with the following, in alphabetical order:

Jane Adams
Contribution: Actress, Happiness (1998) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Significance of contribution: Minimal. Although you could argue that she was one of the key members of the Happiness ensemble, she's a side character in Eternal Sunshine, possibly only appearing in that one scene.

Paul Dano
Contribution: Actor, There Will Be Blood (2007) and Ruby Sparks (2012)
Significance of contribution: Performances kind of cancel each other out. Dano's work can be described (and has been described by many) as one of Blood's few true weaknesses, and even though I don't necessarily agree with that, there's no doubt this opinion colors my perception of the performance. However, I think he's perfectly cast in Ruby Sparks and plays a big role in why it works so well.

Charlie Kaufman
Contribution: Screenwriter, Adaptation (2002) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Significance of contribution: Major. Talk about a streak of good work. Kaufman's sensibilities are entirely key to making these movies sing. I dare not think how the end-of-year-rankings in 2008 might have turned out if I'd seen Synecdoche, New York in time to rank it that year.

Bill Murray
Contribution: Actor, Hamlet (2000) and Lost in Translation (2003)
Significance of contribution: Sizeable. Perhaps this will make up for me naming him as one of three who had a bad year in Saturday's post. Murray is "only" Polonius in Michael Almereyda's adaptation of Shakespeare's most famous play, though he's quite funny. But Lost in Translation is all about his performance.

Clive Owen
Contribution: Actor, Gosford Park (2001) and Children of Men (2006)
Significance of contribution: Kind of like Murray's. The ensemble is massive in Gosford Park (I seem to have a fondness for ensemble films), so one couldn't chalk up Owen's role to anything truly significant in my overall affection for the film. But I think of his work as indispensable to Children of Men.

Kevin Spacey
Contribution: Actor, Looking for Richard (1996) and Moon (2009)
Significance of contribution: Sneakily important. I saw Looking for Richard, my first-ever #1, only that one time, so I have no memory of the size of Spacey's role. But as the voice of the moonbase robot in Moon, he's basically the closest thing Sam Rockwell has to a co-star, and helps enable Rockwell's dynamite performance.

Kate Winslet
Contribution: Actress, Titanic (1997) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Significance of contribution: Major. Both of these movies are tragic love stories, in very different ways, and Winslet's performances are undoubtedly key to the extent to which we invest ourselves in them.

Incidentally, that means Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind boasts three different contributors who appeared in previous #1s. No wonder I loved it so much.

Thank you for tuning in to Another Post Written Entirely for My Own Amusement.