Special Events 101

The Library of Congress has an official Film Registry on which they include films that are a notable part of American culture and have played a lasting and meaningful role in the development of American film.

Each year twenty-five titles are chosen for inclusion in the registry, though most are not well-known. This year’s better-known films include “Forrest Gump,” “Bambi,” and “Silence of the Lambs.” American classics like Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” and John Ford’s “Iron Horse.”

“Each year, we do try to pick one of the titles that the public nominated the most, and ‘Forrest Gump’ was way up there on that list,” said Stephen Leggett, program coordinator for the National Film Preservation Board told AP. “Everything on the list is subject to dissenting opinion.”

More than 22,000 films were nominated this year before being pared down by the National Film Preservation Board. Final decisions, based on the Board’s short-list, are made by Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.

Billington comments to AP, “”These films are selected because of their enduring significance to American culture…Our film heritage must be protected because these cinematic treasures document our history and culture and reflect our hopes and dreams.”

The registry currently includes 575 films, which are not intended to represent the “best” of American film, but those films that have had the broadest influence or most cultural significance in terms of innovation, artistic development or social movements. Some films are silent, some of the films are home video and some are rarely-watched but groundbreaking production innovations, like one of this year’s inductees: “A Computer Animated Hand” by Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull—produced in 1972, and representing the first documented computer animation.

These films are set aside for preservation and the honor that comes with being one of the few chosen each year.

Many families have traditions of watching holiday movies around Christmas time. I recently got married, and so we’ve been trying to figure out what our traditions will be as a new family. We wanted a movie to watch after we finished putting up the Christmas tree, but we didn’t want something cliché that we’d get sick of after watching a couple times. So, we decided to make a list of movies that would get us in the Christmas spirit but had more to them than just being a “Christmas movie.”

Love, Actually
This is the one we ended up choosing—a favorite romantic comedy/drama of ours that takes place in the months leading up to Christmas and culminates in the Christmas spirit—perfect! Exactly what we needed. It’s not a big dose of fake Christmas cheer, it’s much more relatable and enjoyable than that.

Gizmo: A symbol of Christmas?

Gremlins

Think about it—yep! This movie is definitely an alternative “Christmas movie.” The whole plot is set around the Christmas season and provides and offbeat sort of freaky twist on the traditional “magic of Christmas” sentimental movies.

Home Alone
A good one if you’re looking for something to watch with the kids. This is probably the most explicitly “Christmas” movie on our list, but I feel like it gets overlooked as a Christmas movie, so it still makes the cut.

While You Were Sleeping
Perhaps one of the most least appreciated Christmas romances of all time. What could be better than accidentally falling in love with someone else while your fiancé is in a coma? Christmas cheer, of course!

Sleepless in Seattle
A more well-known romance, a classic in fact, but not one as heavily associated with Christmas as it should be. This movie is set at Christmastime and brings a heavy dose of Christmas magic and romance to any holiday tradition.

In the new movie In Time, Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried save the day in the thriller where time is currency—the rich have enough time to live long, leisurely lives and the poor die young because they have so little time to spend. The movie is getting mixed reviews, ironically split between young and old audiences.

The verdict: Not J.T.'s best work.

One college aged audience member was overhead commenting, “Why would Justin Timberlake take that offer? He’s so much better than that movie. Bad move, J.T.” as she left the theater. But older audiences seem to be eating it up.

“There’s a lot of things to notice” one mother explained to her teenage daughter. Among the things that audience members have been pointing out are that the poorer characters run all the time. “They have to run all the time to make the best use of their time—poor people run and rich people don’t have to because they have leisure time to spend moseying around,” my own mother explained to me. “So you can tell who the poor outsiders are, they walk fast, and it’s obvious they don’t belong amongst the leisurely rich.”

Seyfried commented that although her character wears tall heels in the movie, costuming did provide her with look-a-like shorter heels for scenes where she had to do a lot of running. I’m still impressed that she ran in heels, but I guess 2 inches kitten heels are easier to run in than 4-inch stilettos.

I personally disliked the movie. It’s hard to keep track of everybody because they’re all young and beautiful. Unless you know the actors it’s a pretty impossible movie to watch. The plot is stretched just a little too thin—they take it a tiny bit too far, so it’s completely unbelievable and therefore feels contrived. In my opinion, In Time is a waste of time.

The third in what feels like a never-ending saga.

I have yet to meet someone who enjoyed the new Twlight movie that doesn’t also enjoy recess, a weekly allowance or the occasional visit from the tooth fairy. Yet somehow, it grossed over $139.5 million opening weekend, baffling rational adults and critics.

No one with an ounce of knowledge about film, literature or even just common sense enjoyed this movie, yet it’s the second highest grossing movie of the year after the second part of the Harry Potter finale. Those of us who know better hear the numbers and we just think, “why?!” and shake our heads at the things these people are choosing to spend money on.

I’ll admit that I’ve gotten a perverse pleasure from reading the reviews of it as critics jab, mock and decry the film for poor dialogue, bad acting and sub-par message and storyline. Then again, most of this movie’s audience are young and perhaps just fail to understand what a failure of a franchise it should be, so I suppose I should just take it easy on them… Even though they insist on perpetuating the bubblegum fiction that kills really great literature and film each year.

But I know for a fact that the audience for “Breaking Dawn” wasn’t just these young Robert Pattinson obsessed girls. My own mother, a mature and sensible woman, attended a midnight showing of the film. Again I asked, why?

“Because it’s so engaging,” she told me and added, “and it’s a defining series of this era. Your kids will recognize it as being an important part of the decade.” That’s scary, and I hope it’s not true. She compares it to Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Star Trek. I see a key distinction: The critics could at least stand those, for the most part, and that’s something this series will never be able to claim.

I went to see the Ides of March, prepared for a political thriller (a genre of film only understood by nerds, history buffs and polic-sci academic types) and left relatively satisfied. The film had all of the elements necessary for an engaging, believable, intellectual story line without crossing the line out of the world of fiction. It had a strong cast and likeable leading man, George Clooney, as the star politician of the film. You fall in love with Clooney’s character almost as quickly as you do with Ryan Gosling’s sweet but motivated and slightly cynical character, an employee on Clooney’s campaign for the Presidential nomination.

The story turns out to be quite dark—like most good political movies—and is, more than anything, a critique of the type of people who get into politics and how they stay there at the expense of everyone else. The film makes good use of Ohio as a believable and relatable campaign battlefield during the primaries in the fictitious race and uses both Clooney and Gosling’s unmistakable likability as narrative leverage.

The end really leaves you hanging—between not realizing that the run-time of the film has been reached and wondering how a tense situation will resolve, the sudden conclusion leaves room for speculation and retrospection. I sat in silent, stunned consideration of the possible scenarios. It was a well-built storyline and a perfect place for the story to end. After all, in real life, we usually only see half of the story in politics, right?

After giving the weight of the film a minute to sink it, I gathered my coat and bag and headed out of the theater. The group of college girls who had sat in front of me during the movie stood in a dazed stupor directly outside the theater doors. I had to laugh when I overhead one of them comment, “That was the most beautiful love story I’ve ever seen. Ryan’s always a hero.”

See the movie and you’ll laugh too at the apparent misreading of the storyline. Overall, I think that’s good news for Gosling—welcome to the world of films made for adult consumption, pretty boy… Here, you can be a multi-faceted character and not just a heartthrob.