Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
Sometimes movies aren’t just a way of celebrating a holiday, they are a reason to have one: a movie holiday of sorts.
John Carpenter’s 1980 The Fog takes place very plainly on April 21st, so April 21st is the day we watch The Fog to celebrate the anniversary of Antonio Bay.
April 8th is Rex Manning Day! Because sometimes movies create holidays of their own. This year, Rex Manning Day just happens to coincide with a solar eclipse. So why not pair a rewatch of Empire Records (1995) with The Awakening (1980).
We embrace the academic calendar milestones as defining moments in our year, so why haven’t we celebrated spring break with Holidays in the Movies? During our most recent celebration of the start of the school year we noticed that two movies on that list were set during spring; spring breakish even. So we have grabbed them from schools-in and will be doing a spring break watching:
We’ve gone on the hunt for more to fill the week, at least until St. Patrick’s Day. If we are lucky, we might get our hands on a few more:
For Holidays in the Movies, no holiday is too little acknowledged for us to celebrate with a movie. The only real challenge is finding the movies that definitely place themselves on a holiday of some kind, especially those that don’t have large cultural celebrations attached. Well, lucky for you I noticed when Coraline’s mother, in the 2009 movie Coraline, said that it was President’s day. So, for President’s day, until I find more, I will watch Coraline.
Of course there are plenty of thematic lists to rely on as well if you want to go that route as we have for Earth Day and the like. If you are feeling the theme you will not be spoiled for choices of movies about presidents.
Lunar New Year, based on the lunisolar calendar, is fabulously visible in the multi-cultural city we live in. To mark its passing, the way we do with every holiday, we have identified a couple of movies to help us celebrate:
Much like our Halloween watching, our Christmas watching is such that it is getting its own zine at some point in the near (I hope) future. In lieu of a Holidays in the Movies post for Christmas, I just want to spotlight An American Christmas Carol.
Henry Winkler plays the stingiest man in town in this version of a Christmas Carol. His name is different; but the beats of his story are the same. Though, perhaps he modernizes the cruelty of Scrooge in a way that makes him seem an even worse person. Which makes his redemption even more effective. The acting in this TV movie is comfortable with a few shining moments. Unique is that, instead of being a specter of death, Dorian Harwood’s ghost of Christmas future walks into the scene with costume, music, and demeanor of someone decades ahead of the story line. This too, makes this interpretation very incisive.
Weird that we haven’t already covered Hanukkah in our movie watching. This year we will be taking some first steps toward addressing this.
We haven’t been completely lucky finding acceptable movies that took place on Mother’s Day, so this is another holiday where a thematic selection of movies will come to the rescue. There is a glut of mother themed movies to choose from, and so this year we might:
I may have mentioned before how our lives revolve around the academic year, so the end of schools is essentially our beginning of summer, even though it happens in May for us. Early May. In Florida, though, summer may have well been in place for months already, weather wise.
For Earth Day, April 22nd, we have a mostly thematic list. I’ve already talked about Aerial America, and it is a great way to be awed by the earth, and disturbed sometimes about what we are doing to it. If you are into apocalyptic futures then Water World (1995) and Mad Max (1979) might offer the right kind of vibe.
So far we have found one movie that specifically calls out Earth Day, and, yes, we will be watching it:
There are plenty of thematically appropriate and dramatic representations of Passover in the movies. We will be taking a slightly sleepier and round about approach with Phenomena (1985) because sometimes we just need a comforting and familiar horror movie. What? Didn’t know that a European horror movie set in a girls school had anything to do with Passover? It’s easy to miss.
We may also track down “A Rugrats Passover” (1995). I am a sucker for cartoon holiday specials.
Labor Day is one of those holidays for which it is especially difficult to build a comfortable, celebratory, collection of watching. It is very close to the end of summer/back to school celebration, and also lacking in a dearth of movies taking place during or about the holiday.
Last year, when I initially embraced marking time and celebrating all holidays with movies, there were many holidays that I didn’t even consider. Memorial Day was one of those, along with a small handful of others that I plan to get to this year.
I have experienced the popular Memorial Day family barbecue, and I have also undertaken a road trip to the cemetery where my grandmother, grandfather, and great-grandmother are buried. Considering the sweltering heat in Florida by the end of May, both of these activities require a certain amount of psyching myself up each year.
While I will remember to honor the soldiers who have died for my country this Memorial Day, I am happily going to stay out of the hot Florida weather and watch Memorial Valley Massacre (1989), which was originally planned for release as Memorial Day.
And of course, I will also watch What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? , because Charlie Brown brings the holidays, no matter what holiday.
May Day, celebrating the vibrancy of spring, is directly preceded by Walpurgis Nacht. So our movie watching in celebration will be taking both of these holiday’s into account with a couple of pairs:
Admittedly, the Wickerman and Wicker Tree movies do not get all that much play in our house, so to make up for that we look for comfortable filler like the Hetty Wainthropp Investigates “Widdershins” episode and Midsomer Murders “Straw Woman” (thematically appropriate, though not sure if it is actually based on May Day)
May Day also happens to be Gorgon’s birthday – decided by mathematical estimate, though not witnessed. Happy birthday Gorgon!
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