What type of dinner should you eat while watching Love Actually?

1. Kebabs

2. Canapes, strictly canapes

3. Indian

4. Portuguese

5. Guacamole


Opinions?

It's almost that time

Yes, yes it is.



Soon, soon I'll do my giant viewing of this classic. 

How is it possible

that in today's highly interconnected world there is no way for me to legally watch the 10-minute sequel to Love Actually, Red Nose Day, Actually?  I'd pony up a few pounds/dollars/whatever to see it, but alas, I cannot.  Now, the news is that the U.S. version will be different from the UK one, which makes this travesty even more intolerable.

I am not amused.

What will I be trying to watch on May 25?

Why, the Red Nose Day, Actually broadcast, of course.



I know it's just a 10-minute film and likely to have all the depth of any cast reunion, but it's from Richard Curtis, and it's about Love Actually, so I'm unreasonably excited about it.

Of course, if I were back in London, I could watch it on BBC One tomorrow, but I'm not, so I can't.  Lucky Brits!

Finally, a new Richard Curtis movie

Long-time readers may well recall that I am a stone Richard Curtis fan.  The two movies he's previously directed, Love Actually and The Boat That Rocked, are among my all-time favorites, films I watch at least once a year.  He's written so many wonderful screenplays that I couldn't reasonably list them all, but by way of example I'll point you to Notting Hill and the "Vincent and the Doctor" episode of Doctor Who.  Curtis wears his heart marvelously on his sleeve, and I adore his work.

On November 1 in the U.S., his latest film, and the third he's directed, will open.  Check it out.



I am unreasonably excited about seeing this movie.

It's almost time...

...to watch this movie again. Yeah, I know it's not Thanksgiving yet, so I'm not putting up any holiday decorations, but that doesn't mean the movie isn't in my thoughts.

You see, Sarah will be home in about five weeks, and she's already decreed we'll watch it that first night.

Hell, yeah.

That's my daughter.

Bill Nighy is amazing

Though I've linked to this video before, I simply must do it again. Even if you've never watched Love Actually (though, as I wrote yesterday, you really should), you will be amazed by Bill Nighy as aging rocker Billy Mack in this video. The video as a whole never appeared in the movie, which showed us only snippets, but Richard Curtis was wise enough to make it anyway and use it as an extra on the DVD.

I can't get a firm count of all the videos Curtis is lampooning here, though "Addicted To Love" is clearly the most prominent.

Watch Nighy's hands, which he uses more oddly than any actor I know.

Enjoy.

Is it Love Actually time already?

Why, yes, it is. Thank you for asking.

As long-time readers know, around this time each year, I hold a dinner and viewing of this fine Richard Curtis film, one of my very favorites movies. Tonight, we watched it again, and I found it as powerful and charming and moving as the first time I saw it years ago.

What amazes me about Love Actually is that even though I know what the director is doing, even though every tug on my heart strings is abundantly clear, it works, it just works. The magic parts--and there are many, many of those--retain their magic no matter how many times you see it. Just as importantly, the characters are real enough and there is enough pain sprinkled among the happy segments that the film, at least for me, never cloys.

And the plotting, ah, it is a joy to behold. Many details that pass by almost undetected prove to be important, and at the end you realize you've watched a masterful construction.

I also greatly admire director Richard Curtis' utter and complete dedication to pursuing the magic of love no matter where that chase leads him. If the story's logic calls for an otherwise insanely improbable event to occur, you can bet that event will come to pass--and it will make sense, story sense, that it does.

If you haven't seen Love Actually, I can't recommend it too highly. If you have, now is a grand time to watch it again.

More sentimental than you might believe

After yesterday's post about Love Actually, I had a brief email exchange with Lynn in which she asked which parts of the film caused me to choke up with emotion. She mentioned the touching scene of never-to-be-fulfilled love when Mark (Andrew Lincoln) expresses his feelings for Juliet (Keira Knightley) via handwritten signs as a Christmas carol plays on a boom-box; the beautifully acted scenes when Karen (Emma Thompson) has to cope with her sudden realization in her bedroom and then later confronts her husband, Harry (Alan Rickman); the sight of Sarah (Laura Linney) sitting in her office at night talking to her brother as Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), the man she loves, walks away; and many others.

None of those scenes, however, nor any of the others in the movie that explore the complexities of love are what most move me.

Instead, the bits that most touch me are those in which writer and director Curtis deliberately ignores reality and focuses instead on instants of impossibly perfect love. To me, the most powerfully touching of them is the scene in the restaurant in which Jamie (Colin Firth), in halting and frequently incorrect Portuguese, asks Aurelia (Luciz Moniz) to marry him. The build-up for this moment is perfect: a long and ever-growing parade through the streets of Marseille as rumors emerge and mutate about the purpose of the insane Englishman. The music swells and alerts us that something majestic is happening, that what comes next matters, that what we are about to see is powerful.

Conventional wisdom makes clear that the proposal is too soon and the marriage unlikely to last. Jamie and Aurelia have known each other less than a month, they know nothing significant about one another, they have no common language--nothing about it makes any sense.

Except that they love each other.

In most movies or books, this scene might annoy me. Here, though, it stands as one among many tributes to the power of not only love, but of choosing every now and then, however briefly, to focus solely on love.

Those moments, when Love Actually steps into fantasy and shows us the potentially redemptive power of love and of seeing only love, even if only for an instant, those are the ones that choke me up.

Every Christmas

I watch Love Actually and Bad Santa. Tonight, in a wild and crazy move, we watched both on Blu-Ray. Damn, but they do look better in high-res.

Every year, the first fills me with emotion, and the second cracks me up. I am such a sucker for these two films.

I am also such a sentimental fool. The same scenes in Love Actually make me tear up and choke up each year, though I know them as well as old friends. I cannot recall another movie that makes me as happy as Love Actually.

Tonight, after watching it, I was thinking about why that was, why this film can affect me so strongly after so many viewings, and I decided it was this: Curtis, the director and writer, commits fully to a vision that he knows goes too far but that he invites us--nay, entices us--to share nonetheless. He is not saying that everything always works out, or that love conquers all, or that all romances will last forever. What he is saying is that love is out there, every minute of every day, happening in big ways and small all over the world, and that's it so powerful and so real that we should take hope from it and never forget it and know that always, always people will love no matter what.

It's Love Actually time again

Tonight, we watched this movie, as we do each year at Christmas time, and once again, I loved it. The relentless optimism is infectious and touching. At several moments during the film I am not (too) embarrassed to admit that I tear up and that my heart pounds so hard in my chest I can barely stand it.

I know there are bad people in the world, and more importantly, I know that even good people often do bad things for reasons they deem to be good. I firmly believe, however, that most of the time on most days most people are just trying to live their lives as best they can, to care for those they love, to do their jobs well, to be decent to others, to love and be loved. Love Actually celebrates the power of love in a form that is so clearly and unabashedly a fantasy that I cannot help but cheer for it over and over. As I did last year, I recommend it highly.

I want to believe

Last night, as is our tradition, Sarah got to choose dinner and what we watched; she was the one, after all, who had performed. She choose any old episode of The West Wing, and after much discussion about all the wonderful options, we settled on "Let Barlet Be Bartlet." At the end of that episode, there's a great moment in which the president finally stops playing it safe and decides to pursue his ideals. It made me tear up, but not from sadness; the scene just deeply touched me.

That reaction set me to thinking, and I realized that there are many moments in art that affect me powerfully enough to bring a few tears to my eyes, even though I am a man who doesn't know how to cry. Some of them, of course, move me because they tie in some way to my life. Many, though, simply hit me hard without having any particular connection to me. A few from movies, off the top of my head and in no particular order, should serve to illustrate that second group:

* James Earl Jones' "they will come" speech on the bleachers in Field of Dreams

* Michael Douglas' speech at the end of The American President

* In L.A. Story Steve Martin's musings about magic and love as he stands at the window in the storm near the end of the film

* Multiple points at the end of Love, Actually

You can certainly accuse me of a certain sappiness and vulgar sentimentality, and I'd have to plead at least somewhat guilty, but I think there's more going on than that. I think these and other scenes touch me because I want to believe, I want to believe in getting over your fear and pursuing your ideals, in a dream touching everyone who comes into contact with it, in fighting for what you believe even if it costs you enormously, in love so powerful that it can bring on storms and affect compasses, in love being so pervasive and so powerful that humanity will always have hope because of it. I want to try to live a life worthy of those desires, though I mostly fail at it, and I want to deliver some of those moments in my fiction, though I mostly fail at that, too.

I want to believe.

I hope I always will.

Love Actually

is one of the two movies you must watch every Christmas season, so tonight we gathered for it and a vaguely British dinner (Shepherd's pie, Welsh Rarebit, and some bread and cheese). All present seemed to enjoy the film, including the few who had not seen it before.

What I adore about this movie is that writer/director Richard Curtis unabashedly sets out to find and celebrate the love in a large group of connected lives. He certainly shows pain, both from love betrayed and love unrequited, but he focuses most of all on the joy of love. He presents completely improbable (if not impossible) love of all sorts with absolutely no shame, and in the end you want to believe they could happen. Comic moments abound, but Bill Nighy as an aging rocker with a truly crass Christmas song is pure genius. His performance alone makes the movie worth seeing.

If you don't know this film, find it and watch it. If you've already seen it, get the DVD and plan a few happy hours this holiday season.

Next Friday night, we're planning to watch my other essential Christmas movie, a very, very different beast indeed. If you don't know already what it is, you'll have to wait until then to find out. (Hint: One actor appears in both it and Love Actually.)