My girls would love to watch endless varieties of good holiday rom-coms, but multiple factors work against them. We don’t have a TV service to feed us the Hallmark Channel or network broadcasting (also the reason we don’t catch the full Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade). We don’t have Netflix anymore. And, fundamentally, “good holiday rom-coms” are as common as good, ugly Christmas sweaters. They call them “ugly” for legit reasons, so to find good ones you have to take up a particular mindset.
This would have come up even without Molly K advocating for The Spirit of Christmas (2015) as the best of bad Christmas movies. Moving on.
Animator Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, is coming out of retirement again with a “grand-scale” fantasy idea based on a 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino called How Do You Live?
Remaking Notre Dame Cathedral: “Newly released plans for reconstruction of the Notre Dame Cathedral will incorporate what some describe as a ‘politically correct Disneyland,’ reports the Telegraph. Christophe Rousselot, the director-general of the Notre Dame Foundation, says the intent is to make the cathedral and Christianity accessible for those not raised in a Christian society.”
Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, who worked with Oscar Hammerstein as a youth, died on Thanksgiving Day. He was 91.
Willa Cather wrote, “I think even stupid people like to puzzle over a book. A slight element of mystery is a great asset.”
Adam B. Coleman asks, “To the people who would insinuate that I am being used by white conservatives or that I express ‘right’ leaning viewpoints for white acceptance, I have a question: Would you say this to a black liberal?”
Movies in China: “One of the last vestiges of free speech in Hong Kong is now gone. The result is self-censorship by filmmakers who now have to question what might run afoul of the new rules and increased scrutiny by financiers and distributors who now must consider that very same question.”
From “Snow Day” by Billy Collins
In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.
Photo: Southampton Theater, Montauk Highway, Southhampton, New York. 1989. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.