Movies for Christmas

Okay, so you will have time to yourself during the Christmas season and you don’t want to watch a typical Christmas movie. Here’s a small selection of movies I enjoy watching, during Christmas season and during other times. Let’s have a look at the list, shall we?

“Clue”: I know, this is a love/hate movie. Either you really love it or you really hate it. Personally, I love this one. It has a great story, great actors, great lines - and it’s the only crime story I know with three plausible solutions, too. I love seeing Tim Curry as butler and quite a host of great actors as the guests. It’s also one of the few movies in which I can actually bear seeing Angela Lansbury.

“Despicable Me 2”: I love the second one even a little more than the first one (but if you’ve seen neither, you should definitely watch the first one, too). Brooding Grue is a great character, but he’s even better when seen together with bubbly Lucy. Not to mention he’s a fun dad to watch with his three girls.

“Hot Fuzz”: They say the middle of a trilogy is always weakest, but I like the middle of the Cornetto Trilogy more than beginning (“Shaun of the Dead”) and end (“World’s End”) together. I just love this over-the-top police story.

“Kingsman - The Secret Service”: Agent movie doesn’t have to equal James Bond, you know. Kingsman has all the Britishness of James Bond, but with a lot of interesting characters. IMHO, you just have to love a movie where the instructor training the possible future agents has them jump out of a plane only to tell them afterwards that ‘one of you has no parachute.’ Merlin rules! Plus, in the light of recent movie events, Mark Hamill actually is in this one, too.

“Black Butler”: This one is the real-life movie, not part of the animated series. It changes a couple of things (among them the gender of one main character), but it does keep the basic idea. And no matter whether he’s animated or real, Sebastian remains a devil of a butler.

These are a couple of movies I might watch during Christmas season, if I get around to it. I might also give a few seasons of “Mein Leben & Ich”, a nice TV series, another go.

Merry Christmas

It’s the morning of the 25th of December and that means it’s Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all readers of my blog!

Resolution

Today, Christmas starts in Germany. And, as last year and the year before that (and so on), today my ‘No bitching until the 2nd of January’ resolution will be renewed. In the time ‘between the years’ – as they say in Germany – I will not bitch (though I didn’t do all that much bitching this year, did I?), but write little posts about this and that.

Let the time between the years begin!

We have snow!

Due to our area in Germany, my hometown does rarely get a white Christmas. We’re on the border between the valley of the Rhine and the Black Forest. As the valley is always a bit warmer, we don’t often get the low temperature for Snow – at least not before January (just like this year).

But this year seems to be special, not only did it start with lots of snow, we’ve even gotten snow right at the moment. As we had a very warm November, nobody really expected any snow close to Christmas. But it has gotten very cold over the last two weeks or so and yesterday in the evening, snow started to fall.

There’s not that much snow on the ground right now (lucky me, I have to keep the sidewalk in front of my house clean this week … until today, that is), but we have snow and very cold weather (well, cold for our area). And it’s close to Christmas.

Will we have White Christmas this year? I don’t know, the snow could be melted until then. But chances have definitely risen.

Snow!

It's the 21st of December and we have snow:

I wasn't all that happy this morning, though, because I was going do drive to a mega-market today and imagining the roads being treacherous. I was wrong, luckily.

Outside my hometown, it turned out, the streets were all nice and free of snow and dry. Perfect driving through forests with snow-dusted trees. Well, there's fog - and it's still not lifting -, but apart from that everything was quite nice.

So I've got a few more snow-impressions I did this morning from my window.

Unfortunately, it's probably not going to hold until Christmas.

My Christmas Books

Christmas is approaching and it's time for me to decide which book(s) to read this year throughout the holiday season.

I do have very few favourites for this time of the year - and might manage to read them all:

• "Rest you merry" by Charlotte McLeod (first of the "Balaclava"-series)
• "A Christmas Guest" by Anne Perry
• "Hogfather" by Terry Pratchett

"Rest you merry" and "A Christmas Guest" have two things in common: they're crime stories and not too long. "Rest you merry" has about 225 pages (German paperback) and "A Christmas Guest" has about 160 (English paperback). "Hogfather" is quite a bit thicker (445 pages, English paperback), but Pratchett's novels are a quick read for me. I might also consider "The Greene Murder Case" by S.S. van Dine, but the book is - despite not being as long as "Hogfather" quite a long read. The language of the 315 pages (German paperback) is difficult, it has footnotes, too. I've nothing against footnotes (I didn't go to university for nothing, after all), but all of them gathered at the end of the book and usually 'fake' themselves (pointing to other novels by the same author) is a bit too much. "Dracula" actually is an easier read (and might be a good idea ... it has been some time). Or maybe I'll read a completely different book ... who knows.

Christmas is approaching and I'm starting to plan everything. And I will put in place a new "No Bitching between Christmas and New Year"-resolution.

Preparations

As I've decided to go through with my 'no bitching between Christmas and new year' resolution this year as well, I'm currently preparing myself - and hoping both for good ideas (and I'll surely copy the games from last year again) and not too many bad things to happen. Last year, Saddam Hussein was executed during that time and I had to wait until posting about it. Bad thing.

Between December 24th (Christmas Eve is when Christmas starts in Germany) and January 1st I will not rave or rant about anything, I'll just write nice things. Well, it's going to be easier this year because I've already done it over the year, as I decided during the last 'no bitching' resolution. And I'm sure the new site with funny animal pictures I've found (and used already) will help as well.

But I can't promise January 2nd will be nice as well. There might be quite some bitching posts coming around then...

It's Christmas

Now it's Christmas ... finally. Or should I say 'already'?

I can still remember how it was when I was young. Every day I would open a little window on my calendar (I don't know whether other countries know the tradition of 'Adventskalendern', advent calendars, as well) and receive a little piece of chocolate shaped like a star, a little teddy bear or some other thing you'd associate with Christmas. So the days slowly ticked off and Christmas was drawing closer. Like every other child in a country that celebrates Christmas, I was waiting for the day I would get my presents (in Germany children get their presents in the late afternoon or evening on Christmas Eve instead of the morning of the first day of Christmas, it's traditional). Admittedly, ever since I was old enough to read, a lot of my presents have been books of different kinds - and I liked it.

But behind it all was the magic, the magic of the dark time of the year - which I still feel is the real time of renewal, not spring when everything comes back to life. It was the magic of the shortening days, nicely counteracted by the lighting of more candles than during the rest of the year. It was the magic of the Christmas cookies I would help my mother make ... even though as a kid I couldn't really do much. It was the magic of waiting for this date, for Christmas Eve, the 24th of December. It still is, to a certain degree.

I can still remember how long it used to take - at least in my mind. The 24 days of December seemed to last longer than any other days of the year - except, maybe, for the last week before the summer holidays. And today? Sometimes it seems to me as if we just had the 1st of December yesterday. It's even worse a couple of days before Christmas Eve, while I'm still trying to figure out what to give to my parents. The problem these days it not money, not really, it's finding the right thing. My mother is a hands-on person who likes building things, tending to her gardens and trying out new things to create. Getting something for her is never easy, because in the middle of the winter I can hardly buy her some sort of plant for the garden. My father on the other hand is a little bookish just like me. But he doesn't read as many different books as I do and has a good library to himself already. In the end, though, I always manage it somehow. It must be guidance, whether from God or another form of divine force, I can't say. Once I've got all my presents, I'm quite relaxed and the original Christmas feeling returns.

No White Christmas this year ... that much is obvious by now. I don't mind, even though I still think it's romantic to have White Christmas. But it's gotten cold which - while not exactly what I like most about winter - is a good way to get me into the right mood for Christmas.

Now it's Christmas ... and that's wonderful!

Christmas is approaching

Christmas is approaching, but this year I've got some difficulties in getting into the right feeling. It's not the idea of the holiday as a such, I'm pretty content with the Birth of Jesus Christ and Peace on Earth. It's the weather.

Last year around this time we've had snow - lots of snow, far more than I deemed necessary, actually -, this year we've had temperatures usually associated with early spring even in December (while we've had snow until late in March). Only currently - and I'm writing this on December 18th - the temperature has dropped to the normal level, more or less.

I can still remember the past couple of years and how thrilled I was (even though I'm hardly a kid any more, nor am I a teenager) when I woke up around December 20th and could see the snow on the roof opposite to my room through the window (I can't any longer, though, because I no longer live at home and due to the street lamps have to draw the curtains at night). I still remember one rather funny Christmas when it seemed as if we were not going to get "White Christmas" and I played "WarCraft II" on Christmas Eve (even one of the snow maps) and suddenly looked up to find the roof opposite covered in white snow - it was almost magical. That might look like a childish behaviour to you - and probably is -, but it's not the worst case of childish behaviour I have to offer (I can still spent a long time watching a spider build up its net or other things most grown-ups don't even notice). To me snow coming unexpected on Christmas Eve is a little bit of magic in a cynical world - even though I usually am a member of the cynical fraction myself.

So deep in my heart I still hope we'll get "White Christmas" - though preferably not before December 24th, because I have to mind the street this week and am not thrilled by the idea of shovelling snow every morning. What I also hope (because it slowly gets on my nerves by now) is that someone will 'mislay' all the copies of "Last Christmas" by WHAM!.