JAMES GARNER’S DAUGHTER OPENS TRIBUTE SITE TO HER AWESOME FATHER

The Mighty James Garner’s daughter, Gigi Garner (a successful talent manager in her own right), has opened a tribute website to her father. She seems to be updating it fairly regularly with a number of terrific family photos and excerpts from Garners’ new memoir “The Garner Files,” which I loved and reviewed here.

Please check the site out.

Anyone who’s been reading me for any amount of time (or who has seen my Twitter wallpaper), knows of my all-consuming affection for all things James Garner, most especially “The Rockford Files.” You can imagine how much this tweet meant to me.

Tell me how it gets any better than that. You can’t, because it doesn’t.

The only bad news is that if this photo on Ms. Garner’s site displays the actor’s real signature, that means I got robbed on Ebay.

Cue my well-rehearsed of-course-I-got-swindled-again Rockford face.

FINALLY: AN HONEST ASSESSMENT OF HOLLYWOOD’S BOX OFFICE BLUES

With all of Hollywood and most of their sycophant entertainment media blaming box office and DVD woes on everything but bad product, this is the rare break from that absurd narrative:

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Recently, the LA Times carried a column in which Steven Zeitchik tied the absence of new Christmas films to a lack of interest on the part of filmgoers. To bolster his point, he referenced “a sack full” of Christmas movies that came out in 2006 and drew lackluster audiences at best. The examples he provided included Danny DeVito’s comedy, “Deck the Halls,” and a horror movie, “Black Christmas.” (If these are the kind of examples on which he’s going to rest his case, he might as well cite 2005’s disastrous “Dukes of Hazard” as proof that movies marketed toward good ol’ boys are dead and gone too.)

It simply makes no sense to uncover low audience figures for films that ought never have been made and then use those figures to argue that making Christmas films is not business-smart.

Earth to Zeitchik: The audience for Christmas movies is alive and well, the problem is that Hollywood has essentially said bah humbug to the idea of making one. When they do make them, we go.

Do you need proof? Consider Christmas movies that have debuted since the awful 2006 season Zeitchik cited: 2007’s “Fred Claus” made $72 million domestically, 2008’s “Four Christmases” made $120 million domestically (another $44 million overseas), and 2009’s “Christmas Carol” made $137 million domestically (another $187 million worldwide).

And perhaps an even stronger indicator that there’s an ongoing audience for Christmas movies is the fact that “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” air multiple times every Christmas season. (Would television stations be carrying these same two movies time and again every Christmas were they not popular enough to attract advertisers, and thereby make money?)

It seems Zeitchik’s piece was really nothing more than a strained attempt to provide cover for Hollywood producers who are not in the mood to do a new film about Scrooge, because they’re too busy being a Grinch themselves. (more…)

When growing up in Los Angeles, a singular delight was getting the TV Guide in the Sunday paper and scouring it, pen in hand.  My movie search.  In the sixties, Los Angeles had the greatest number of TV channels in any city: 2-4-5-7-9-11-13.  In trips to San Diego, the Mid-West or anywhere else, you’d be lucky to get two, maybe three channels.  And not very good ones.

Some years ago, my daughter asked: “…so in the olden times, Dad, when did you see movies?” Hmmmm.  Olden times.  As if the wheel, the pen, writing, music, and entertainment were invented with her generation.  I explained that there were two places to see movies.  Theaters and Television.  That was it.  No DVD, VHS, iPod, or Hulu.com.  My TV Guide search was essential to find the right movies and straighten out my schedule for the week by circling and grading the films.  After all, if a movie came on at 11 p.m., you’d be up for two hours to “The End.”

But each week, when I got the TV Guide in my young hands, it was like opening a present.  Before the internet, I explained to my daughter, we had this ancient forum called a “library” where you could get books on movies and famous actors.

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So Disney spends $200 million on the production of screenwriter/director Robert Zemeckis’ computer-animated adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” a story of redemption, reconciliation and forgiveness proven to have strong universal appeal. And what do they let Zemeckis go and do in their big-budgetted holiday tentpole aimed at families excited about celebrating this most holy of seasons…?

Add his own piece of dialogue trashing organized religion.

First off, I want Zemeckis to know he didn’t get me. Oh, hell yes I was ready for it. After a decade of watching this industry crap on its own art and box office in order to childishly get off on insulting their customers, you need not be a genius to understand that there was no way a story with a number of overt positive Christian moments could survive intact.

Oh, Zemeckis gave it everything he had to lull me into thinking this one was safe: A soundtrack loaded with classic carols about “Christ being born” and all that, but I’m not Charlie Brown with the football, and sure enough… (more…)

When it comes to celebrating Christmas, actor Jim Carrey says he prefers the “Christian” traditions he and many other people in America grew up on as children.

“I’d hate to miss Christmas,” he added.

Carrey, who gives a remarkable performance in A Christmas Carol, the new brilliant masterpiece of the beloved novel by Charles Dickens from Disney and Writer/Director Bob Zemeckis, spoke about the movie at a recent press conference Movieguide attended in Los Angeles.

At the conference, Carrey also noted that he loves redemptive stories like A Christmas Carol.

“Everyone loves a good transformational story,” Carrey said. “You know, somebody who sees the light, who finally finds out what’s important in life. And, this is one of the greatest ones ever written. It’s just a beautiful story of redemption.” (more…)

Generally after a story has been told as a book, play, musical, numerous animated, live, made-for-TV films, and Muppets movie, its content is completely exhausted. But Disney’s latest, “A Christmas Carol,” by writer-director Robert Zemeckis of “Forrest Gump” and animated films “Beowulf” and “The Polar Express,” resurrects the classic tale through vibrant visuals while sticking to the classic story.

Briefly, “A Christmas Carol” is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), a miser who hoards his money and pays his single employee, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), the bare minimum. Scrooge lives alone in a huge, dark mansion, leading a lonely life. When his nephew Fred (Colin Firth) invites him to Christmas dinner, Scrooge berates him for being happy when he has so little money. When local charity representatives ask for support, Scrooge tells them that he supports the poor through paying taxes. “Are there no work houses? Are there no prisons?” Scrooge asks. To him, taxes are all the dues he owes to society. (more…)