Just as The Nightmare Before Christmas has become the essential Halloween movie, so Addams Family Values--for its five-minute "Pilgrim Pageant" sequence--has become the essential Thanksgiving movie.
Posted by DeLong at November 28, 2004 11:56 AM | TrackBackWe kicked off the Christmas Season by watching A Christmas Story last night.
You'll shoot your eye out!
Posted by: Hank at November 28, 2004 06:06 PMThe ultimate Thnksgiving movie is, in fact, "Trains, Planes and Automobiles".
Posted by: Steven Rogers at November 28, 2004 06:47 PMThere is a beautiful Thanksgiving sequence, if I remember correctly, in "The Ice Storm." Perhaps idiosycratically, it felt to me very much like a cinematic equivalent of Thanksgiving in Philip Roth's American Pastoral, a novel which in fact has always seemed very cinematic to me. And virtually perfect as a piece of writing.
Posted by: Jeff L. at November 28, 2004 09:10 PMBad Santa warms the cockles of my heart.
Posted by: delecti at November 28, 2004 09:50 PM"Thank you, O Lord, for this food, which we were helped in raising by these Native Americans, who also gave us this lovely tobacco plant. Thank you for seeing to it that their generosity does not go unrewarded, as we give them alcohol, syphillis, and smallpox in Your name."
Posted by: Ken Houghton at November 29, 2004 05:38 AMI see belatedly that Max S. put it into proper Economics context:
http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/000954.html#more
Essential Christmas Movie: "The Ref" -- Kevin Spacey, Dennis Leary, Judy Davis. Directed by Ted Demme.
Wonderfully dysfunctional.
Posted by: Silent E at November 29, 2004 08:14 AMI'll second "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."
Posted by: Nancy A Kirsch at November 29, 2004 09:25 AM
Oh yeah! Christina Ricci was born to play Wednesday Addams.
Posted by: LarryB at November 29, 2004 09:34 AM"Pieces of April" !
Posted by: Rob L at November 29, 2004 12:30 PMAlcohol they had in Mexico and Peru, syphillis everywhere, and tobacco almost everywhere. We did give them smallpox, chickenpox, measles, german measles, tuberculosis (we think), influenza variants, and mumps. Maybe Malaria.
Black Plague came over from China quite recently. Not our bad, except that we brought the Chinese over, or the rat infested ships, or however it got here in 1900 and something.
Alcohol they had in Mexico and Peru, syphillis everywhere, and tobacco almost everywhere. We did give them smallpox, chickenpox, measles, german measles, tuberculosis (we think), influenza variants, and mumps. Maybe Malaria.
Black Plague came over from China quite recently. Not our bad, except that we brought the Chinese over, or the rat infested ships, or however it got here in 1900 and something.
I've always considered "Nightmare" a Thanksgiving movie. It's too Christmasy for Halloween and too Halloweeny for Christmas, so I split the difference.
Speaking of movies with Danny Elfman scores, FOX had "Spider-Man" on this past weekend, likely the start of a new holiday tradition. All because of one brief Thanksgiving scene.
Posted by: Grumpy at November 29, 2004 03:43 PM