I admit it. I am one of those people who are hard to buy for at Christmas, if you dare to stray from the list. Yeah, every year we are requested to make out a list of things that we want/need for Christmas. I must say, that I am extremely grateful to have gotten everything that I wished for, aside from a Christmas morning visit to the local emergency room (that's another story). You know, I am really glad to have spent this time with my family, and yes, I am concerned about world peace, the environment, Aboriginal land claims and such. But to step aside from the important and look at the more trivial, and fun, I really did appreciate receiving a DVD player and a couple of DVDs.
The player was a surprise. I was hoping, but was prepared to save up for one in the coming year.What I really wanted were action flicks that contained it all; explosions, fireballs, mind-boggling body-counts. I got Grease and A Knight's Tale.
Disheartened? Of course not. Yeah, according to my brother, Grease is a chick flick. So what? At a time where musicals were pretty much gone the way of the bomb shelter, it was a welcome movie to those big fans of the musical. Travolta? Amazing. Newton-John? Not too shabby. Moreso than the movie, the music is what did it. The music not pulled from the charts was original and true to the era. Who doesn't know the words to Greased Lightning or Summer Lovin' now?
And A Knight's Tale? Sure it was never going to win any awards, but tell me that it didn't make you ask 'Who was that naked guy?' and what a way to insert Bowie's Golden Years into the movie. Heath Ledger was fine, as was the rest of the cast, but ultimately, it was released when there wasn't much else worth seeing. What an unexpected surprise.
Merry Christmas.