Trollheart

“A Christmassy Ted” Special Christmas edition of the comedy series “Father Ted” (Channel Four, 1996)

There are probably few people who have not seen at least one episode of the successful series based on an isolated island off the Irish coast and featuring the late Dermot Morgan, the series running for three seasons before the lead actor’s untimely death. This is the Christmas episode, often simply referred to as “The Father Ted Christmas special”, and though it pushes the endurance just a tad at over twice the normal length of an episode, clocking in just short of the hour, it packs an awful lot into the story.

There’s a major crisis averted when Ted, Dougal and six other priests all find themselves in the rather unlikely position of having wandered into a department store’s lingerie department --- “Ireland largest lan-jer-ay selection, I understand”, as one of the other priests informs Ted. Rather uncharacteristically taking charge, and fearing yet another scandal in the Catholic church, Ted leads the priests out of the department and nobody is the wiser. Or so he thinks.

His quick thinking and assertive actions have not gone unnoticed by the higher-ups, and he is to be awarded a Golden Cleric, one of the top awards the priesthood can bestow on one of their own. Reverting rather more to form though, as he prepares to accept his award on television, Ted is more interested in drawing up a damning list of all those who have wronged him over the years and gets so caught up in his petty act of revenge that he rather spoils the moment.

There’s more of course, and it does give the impression over time of being overstretched and padded out, with a fairly weak ending, but it’s still definitely worth watching. Notable scenes: wounded in the line of duty. “Ah Ted! It’s me own fault! I was fiddlin’ with one of these bras and it went off and hit me in the eye!” The priest with the most boring voice and Ted running down his list --- “And now, we come to liars.” Classic.

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Ms Scrooge (1997)
Of course. Dickens’ classic has been overdone so many times, sometimes well, sometimes badly, sometimes just plain awfully, and in every possible permutation, from muppets to CGI, from Bill Murray to Bill Nighy and from olden times to the far future, so why not do a female version of Scrooge? And while we’re about it, why not make it an “urban update” and make the woman black? Check all the boxes at once. Well I could tell you why not, but you’d understand better if you have the fortitude/stupidity to watch this movie, eh IMDB?

IMDB? Hello? Anybody there?

Hmm. Seems they don’t have a synopsis, despite having the movie on their list. Odd. Oh well, not to worry: luckily there’s one I can transcribe from the True Christmas digital movie channel.

A wealthy, miserly woman learns the true meaning of Christmas in this urban update of “A Christmas carol”. A story everyone can believe in.

Er, yeah. Nobody in it that I know, but I suppose you can assume most of the cast is black. Probably. But no famous black people. No, not even Whoopi or Queen Latifah. Hey, it MUST be a bad movie if the Queen turned it down!

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The Christmas gift (1986)

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed “Oh God” and even its sequel, so I know he can act (sort of) but any Christmas movie starring Country crooner John Denver has got to throw up the warning signs from the start. Remember those Humbleton figurines in “The Simpsons”, and how Flanders eventually found the town they came from, and everyone was just like them? Welcome to the Christmas version, or, given that this was written about two decades before that episode, to the genesis of Humbleton!

A widowed New York City architect and his young daughter take a Christmas vacation and end up in a small mystical town in Colorado where everyone believes in Santa Claus.

Of course they do. And that’s why they live in a small, mystical, magical town which no doubt only appears on Christmas Eve and after the Christmas period returns to the sickly-sweet saccharine dimension from whence it sprang. You know what to expect, and I’m sure ol’ John gets in more than one of his favour-ite choons too before the thing mercifully draws to a close, no doubt with some big moral and message for the holidays about how Christmas is with us in our hearts every day, or some such nonsense. Stick to the singing, cowboy!

Other than Denver there’s Jane Kaczmarek, from “Malcolm in the middle”, someone called James T Callahan --- presumably the “t” is in case we mistook him for the former Labour Prime Minister! --- and someone entertainingly named Twirp. Says it all really.

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The night they saved Christmas (1984)

Oh it had to happen, didn’t it? Santa takes on Big Oil: who will win? Well in reality the old guy would either end up drowned in paperwork and lawsuits or else literally drowned, found floating facedown somewhere off the North Pole. But this is Christmas, after all, and so of course Santa and his helpers will win. IMDB, it’s over to you…

An oil company is exploring two Arctic sites for oil. The needed blasting at the first site rocks Santa Claus' North Pole village. He realizes that any blasting at the second site will destroy his home. He enlists the aid of a woman and her children to convince her husband (who works for the company) that the first site is where the oil they want is. Along the way, Santa explains all his secrets in delivering presents all around the world.

I’m sure this went down great with the children of executives from Exxon and Mobil! No doubt along the way the heartless oilmen learn the true meaning of Christmas (seriously: does NOBODY know the true meaning of Christmas any more? Everyone’s having to learn it in these movies. You’d think they’d understand by now!) and probably licence the oil site to Claus Industries LLC for a seven-figure sum. Ho ho ho. I don’t think.

Amazing thing is that one of my alltime TV crushes, Charlie’s Angel Jaclyn Smith, agreed to star in this! Must have needed the money. AND the story and screenplay were written by David Niven Jr. Surely not THE David Niven’s son? You know what? I’m too depressed to look into this further. Let’s just leave it at that, huh?

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muyoy

I never realized that so many stars from the series had passed away.

Trollheart

As we all rush through our Christmas preparations, picking up the turkey and ham, checking off the gift list (better not leave out Uncle Seamus: not going through THAT embarrassment again this year!) and queuing in the cold and rain for hours and hours outside that one shop that promised --- faithfully --- it had just a small number of PS4s in stock, let’s not forget what Christmas is really about: the birth of Santa Claus.

Seriously, once in a while it’s nice to just take a step back from all the secular madness that surrounds, informs and often overwhelms the holiday season and just go all spiritual for a bit. Well, it IS a religious holiday at its heart, isn’t it? What do you mean, you didn’t know that?

Well, while nobody would ever accuse me of being the most religious person, I do like the story of Jesus and love to see movies about it. Christian fundamentalists would have us all believe that God created everything, and that may be true. If so, then he also created movies. But in another strange, kind of roundabout way, movies could be said to have created God, at least for the big or small screen. As far back as 1905 they were making silent movies about Our Lord, and of course with the advent of colour, 70mm film and things like Cinemascope and Technicolour, it was only natural that the sixties would see some of the biggest, baddest and most over-the-top movies about Jesus ever made.

That’s what this section is all about then: deciding which is the better. I had originally intended this to be a three-way fight, but the third contestant, 1953’s “The Robe”, turns out not to be about Jesus at all. He’s in it, but only peripherally, and really it would be unfair to put such a movie up against the other two, so we’re down to a proper head-to-head, a real slamdown and a fight for the title of the Classic Christ Movie.

In the blue corner, weighing in at 260 minutes and with a budget of approximately 21 million US Dollars, we have

Originally a four-hour-plus epic, drastically cut back in later releases and eventually shortened to 2 hours 17 minutes, “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (you’ve got to capitalise the lot, don’t you really?) was based on a novel by Fulton Ouster, itself based on a radio play that ran in the US in 1947 episodically. George Stevens was the man who intended to bring it to the big screen, but it was a slow process. The screenplay took over two years to write alone, and by 1961, four years before its release date, costs had already spiralled to a staggering 2.3 million US Dollars, which even back then was a boatload of money, considering not one scene had yet been shot! So concerned were they with the rising costs involved in making the movie --- or more correctly, preparing to make it --- that backers Twentieth Century Fox dropped the project, and Stevens had to be saved by United Artists, who eventually released the picture.

Like most of the movies about the life of Jesus, this sticks fairly closely to the “facts”, as they were, which is to say, the version described in the Bible. It’s almost a direct telling of the story from that revered tome, and doesn’t deviate much if at all from the accepted version. Interestingly though, it was a general unknown who was offered the top role, indeed the very man who played Antonius Block, the knight in recently-reviewed Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”, Max von Sydow, and for my money he did a good job. Apparently Stevens wanted someone not already linked with any role or character, someone US audiences would not know. I must say though, Charlton Heston in the role of John the Baptist comes close to stealing the show, and that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re up against the Son of God!

The version I watched clocked in at just under three hours and twenty minutes, and even at that reduced time from the original it seemed long, slow and boring in many places. Definitely a case of being overstretched. I shudder to think what the full version was like! The film also suffers from a “me too!” syndrome, with film stars all wanting a bit part, some of which make no sense. The most famous and well-known of these is of course the sudden appearance out of nowhere by John Wayne, who drawls “Truly this man was the son of God!” in his characteristic, laconic and almost bored manner, but Martin Landau fails to shine as Caiphas, Roddy McDowell as Matthew is almost anonymous and David McCallum is completely wasted in the role of Judas, a one-dimensional, flat and uninspiring character compared to the one played in the other movie. Others of note include Pat Boone, Shelley Winters, Angela Lansbury and Sidney Poitier, though what any of them are doing in the movie is anyone’s guess. Even Star Trek’s Sarek, the late Mark Lenard, gets a look in!

The music is of course stunning and evocative, as you would expect, and Alfred Newman’s score was one of five Academy Awards the film was nominated for. Whether it won any of them I don’t know. The sets are also very impressive, though I do wonder about Stevens’ insistence on shooting the whole thing in America? Sounds a little like trying to prove God was born in Queens to me! Mind you, our other movie didn’t head to the Holy Land either, but with a budget of twenty-one mill you would have thought they would have, literally, gone the extra mile. Or few thousand miles, I guess. Nonetheless, I have to admit that when they show the scene ostensibly taking place in the desert where Jesus faces forty days and nights of temptation and fasting, I would never have guessed it was Death Valley, and similarly, the sermon on the Mount actually takes place in Utah, so it’s not like it’s obvious, but still, you do feel a little bit cheated that they’re not actually walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Unless he ever visited California, which I find unlikely….

All quibbles aside though, and remembering that the movie never grossed even its freakishly huge budget, and so was seen as a flop and an expensive failure, I did enjoy “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, with certain reservations, which I will detail later on in this article when I compare the two movies and put them up against each other. But what about its classic opponent?

Well, in the red corner, ladies and gentlemen, will you please give it up for


Not to be confused with the earlier movie of almost the same name from the twenties, which just added the definite article to its title, this was the other “blockbuster bible movie” of the day, and the two are in many ways very similar, and in other ways poles apart. Interestingly, while George Stevens was flying to Rome to consult the Pope on the making of his movie, this one slipped in under the radar and got released four years before his made the big screen, which must have been annoying for the great filmmaker, as this would have been the first “real” movie about Christ since 1935’s “Golgotha”, unless you count “Ben Hur”, which I don’t, or indeed “The Robe”, which I also don’t, as neither focus on the actual figure of Christ and he is basically incidental, although instrumental, to the storyline. But poor old Stevens: that’s what you get for farting around with 352 oil paintings as your storyboard and retaking every scene a zillion times: someone else beats you to it!

Starring Jeffrey “I could have been Kirk” Hunter in the top role, it’s something of a different take on the story, though again it sticks very closely to the writings of Scripture. “King of kings” details the birth of Christ, the journey to Bethlehem and the exile to Egypt, whereas this is brushed over in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, which is odd, considering the latter is the longer picture by about an hour and would have easily been able to accomodate such a surely integral and important part of the plot, as it were? But like its rival, “King of kings” mainly concentrates on Jesus’s life from age thirty or so, from the time he begins to preach, gathering his disciples to him and generally getting up the noses of the Romans. That’s not surprising, as really, up to that point there’s little in the Bible about Jesus the man, leading to speculation on what exactly he did for those twenty-odd years between childhood and manhood, but that’s another story. Any film or series focussing on Jesus will always be firmly set in this short period of his life.

There are, as I said, things I like about TGSET that I don’t like about KOK, and vice versa of course. One of the former is the way Jesus’s miracles are handled. In this film, we see things like Jesus approaching a blind man who bumps into him as just a shadow on a wall. He stretches out his shadowy hand and the man drops his stick, obviously (I guess) cured. A madman is not portrayed as very mad (did you see the guy in “Jesus of Nazareth”? THAT was scary!) and in general the miracles are not quite glossed over but definitely not given the sense of drama and power that TGSET lavishes on them. Contrast the scene outside Lazarus’s tomb in the other movie with the one here --- oh no wait, don’t. “King of kings” doesn’t feature that miracle. What? Jesus’s biggest feat, his crowning glory, his piece de resistance, when he proves even Death can’t hold sway over someone he calls forth, and they don’t show it?

Yeah. The movie suffers from a massive dearth of miracles, and those that are shown are treated in an almost offhand, matter-of-fact way. No angels singing, no shafts of sunlight bathing the Saviour’s face as he performs these wonders, no crowds gathering to watch in amazement and then spread the word that the Messiah has come. Very drab and humdrum. Maybe there was a reason, maybe director Nicholas Ray didn’t want to focus too much on the miracles aspect of the story, but come on! The guy raised the dead! He healed the blind and the lame! He cast out demons! You have to show those, and make them an important part of the story.

But where “King of Kings” fails in respect of its opponent --- Miracles: Greatest Story Ever Told 1, King of Kings 0 --- it walks all over it (I know: I was going to say something else but figured it wouldn’t be appropriate when dealing with these movies. Gotta have respect, even if you don’t believe!) on another score, and that is the portrayal of Judas Iscariot. From an early age, we Irish were brought up on the notion that Judas was evil. He betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, but we were never told why. We never asked. It was just accepted, the same as any religious dogma in Ireland at the time was. WHY had you to fast before receiving Holy Communion? Why could you not touch it if it got stuck to the roof of your mouth --- as it always, without fail, did --- and why were you supposed to (in my parents’ day, not mine) genuflect if you met a priest in the street? Nobody asked these questions: they weren’t even rhetorical, they just weren’t accepted as questions. They just were, okay? Accept it and stop asking stupid questions. In the very same way, Judas was a betrayer, a coward and a traitor and you should hate him.

It wasn’t till I watched “Jesus Christ Superstar” (already reviewed) and Martin Scorsese’s excellent “The last temptation of Christ” (to be reviewed soon) that I got the idea that Judas was not just an evil figure, he was a person; a person with ideals and hopes and dreams, and that he betrayed Jesus for a reason. This made more sense, and indeed this is the tack that “King of kings” takes. Judas is a revolutionary when we meet him, fighting alongside Barabbas, his leader, and he believes he can turn Jesus to their cause, convince him to fight for Judea and call down hosts of angels, or at the worst, lead his hosts of followers against the Roman oppressor. When he sees this will not happen of its own accord, that Jesus is dedicated to peace, Judas tries to force his hand, hoping that if he is arrested he will spring into action and defend himself, and become an ally of he and Barabbas, leading the Jews to glorious liberation.

At last, someone gets it. I’m no connoisseur of movies about Jesus, but I think I’m safe in saying that “King of kings” was the first of this genre to look sympathetically at Judas. Tim Rice would do so ten years later, and others would too: even in “Jesus of Nazareth” I seem to recall him being a more rounded, less cartoon-villain figure, but this was the first time I think anyone had voiced the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Judas had a reason, excuse or agenda in betraying his master. Played by Rip Torn, he’s certainly a better character here than in George Stevens’ somewhat pompous oversimplification of the man. In TGSET Barabbas is only mentioned at the end, when he gets his freedom at the expense of Christ’s, and he has no other role at all to play in that movie. Here, he is a pivotal if not central figure, laughing at then briefly sharing Judas’s hope that they might ally with the Messiah, finally using his speech at the temple to launch an abortive attack on his enemy. When he realises later that Jesus is dying in his place (not that he has a choice of course, but the people have chosen Barabbas) he asks “Why? I never did anything for him.” He truly can’t understand it, though Lucius, the Roman general, scowls “Your people shouted loudest”, obviously at pains to make the rebel leader realise it is only simple good fortune that has secured his freedom, and his life.

Although much shorter than its later companion film, “King of kings” gets pretty much the whole story in, which of course you would expect and demand, but also manages to presage it with the arrival of Pompey as he claims Jerusalem and sets up a garrison there, and adds in elements of the later Jewish struggle for independence and freedom, as well as alluding to the Roman governor, Pilate’s wife being somewhat sympathetic to Jesus, or at least his message. Again though, the two movies differ vastly when it comes to the crucifixion scene, with TGSET losing out as it watches much of the action from far off, down the hill at Golgotha. I’m not saying I wanted closeups of the nails going into Jesus’s hands or anything, but there’s a more personal, intimate feeling to the scene in this film, with the action all taking place in front of you; you see Christ nailed to the cross (tastefully done) and raised up, you see people moving about below him as he hangs there, you see the two thieves talk to him (although in fairness you see this in the other movie too, but I think this one just about edges it in terms of drama) and best of all, there’s no John Wayne!

Resurrection, I’d say there’s very little between the two movies, though this one does just end with the shadow of Christ falling across the apostles, who then sort of wander aimlessly offscreen in the final scene; where it actually shows Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb in this movie, in TGSET she just meets the angel inside the tomb once Jesus has risen, so again I think this one is slightly more personal. Not to mention that in the closing scene of this we see the smiling, radiant face of Jesus while in the other movie he’s just a shadow and a voice. Interestingly, the very same end hymn is used, though it seems to be quite appropriate and was probably the only one that could have been used.

So, both movies represent the story of Christ’s birth, life and death reasonably well, and certainly better than some have down the years. But each has its own flaws, and while in one category TGSET triumphs, in others it’s KOK that lands the killer punch. So, which movie is better? How can we even choose between two such classics? We probably in reality can’t, but for the purposes of this article we have to: to quote “Highlander” --- there can be only one. So how do we do that? Well, let’s list off the main points and compare like for like, and see how we do. For each scene, aspect or fact considered I’ll award a score out of ten, explaining along the way how I arrived at that score. Then we’ll total them up and see who comes out on top, or if this ends up being a dead heat. Even I don’t know at this point. Oooh! Exciting, isn’t it?

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Allright then! One of the most important things for any movie is its budget versus its box office. In other words, how much did it cost to make and was that amount recouped, or, as would be highly expected, seriously exceeded on its release? Let’s see.

(For handiness’ and laziness’ sake I’m referring to each movie by a single letter. See if you can guess which is which!)

G: Budget 21 million, Box office 15 million. (Naturally these are estimates, and if they’re wrong blame Wiki…)

K: Budget 5 mill, Box office 13 million.
Now on the face of it it would seem that K made less than G, but on the other hand, taken as a percentage of its final costs, K came close to tripling its budget, so definitely made money, whereas G failed to even make its budget, coming in with a definite, and quite substantial loss, almost twenty-five percent in fact. So on pure figures for its return, and indeed on its initial budget too, K did better, costing less to make and earning more in the long run. Though both movies were considered commercial failures, one failed at a cheaper rate than the other. So “King of Kings” wins this easily.

Scores
G 3/10
K: 8/10 (It wasn’t a blockbuster success, which is why I’ve given it a less than perfect score)

Next up, length of movie. Now, this can be a good or a bad thing. Long movies can pack more story in, or they can just get boring and feel long-drawn out. But when you’re dealing with a Biblical movie I think you really work with the maxim “the longer the better”, as long as there’s enough there to keep your interest. Though G dragged in places, overall it was relatively well-paced and didn’t seem too overlong. It’s certainly longer than K. Here are the stats.

G: 240 mins (original) down to an eventual 137 mins for the US release, with the one I watched being a total of 200 minutes.

K: 168 minutes
There’s no contest. Though K filled its brief well for its overall shorter length --- longer than the eventual US release though --- the original cut of G has over fifty minutes on it, so it’s a clear winner for G.

G: 9/10 (Only awarded less than top score due to the different lengths, and the fact that it dragged a little in places)
K: 6/10

In terms of being “first to the post”, ie the first major Biblical film to hit the screens since the thirties, and therefore essentially the first “real” movie about Jesus, George Stevens’ faffing about and eternal procrastination, along with his perfectionist nature and a ballooning budget that saw his original backers walk away from the deal allowed his rival to get in a full four years before his film saw the light of day, so it’s not even close.

G: Released 1965 --- 4/10
K: Released 1961 --- 9/10 (Again, not top score because it was not the first EVER movie about Jesus, but close)

And now we come to the main man, as it were. The face-off between the stars, the top men who played what was not a title role but really was, the two actors who brought Jesus to the big screen. In K, we had Jeffrey Hunter. I only know him as the original Captain Pike from the pilot episode of the original Star Trek, the man who turned down the recurring role to pursue a “proper” movie career. I hated him in Star Trek but I must say he did this role proud. With a warm, gentle smile and a humbleness seldom seen among actors he may not have been the ideal choice for Jesus, but he sure was better than Ian Gillan in “Jesus Christ Superstar” the stage production, a decade later (shudder!) and I think he did really well.

Max von Sydow was more or less unknown to US audiences and fans outside of Sweden, or those who followed the films of Bergman, so for him to take on such a major role must have been a hell of a challenge. Interesting that in the other movie I saw him in recently, “The Seventh Seal”, he was a knight doubting the existence of God, who says at one point to Death “Why can’t I kill God within me?” and then a mere six years later he’s playing the son of that very God. But he plays the role well, his slight Scandinavian accent adding to the, if you like, foreigness of Jesus and making him less the all-American blue-eyed boy that could be seen at times in Hunter’s character. Probably not as charismatic as his rival, von Sydow exuded for me more a sense of friendliness, calm and love than did Hunter, but even so it’s hard to choose between them.

I think in the end, von Sydow had more to prove, being an “unknown” to most cinema-goers at the time, so I’ll shade it slightly on his side, and award him the higher score, though there’s not that much in it really.

G: Jesus portrayal by M. von Sydow 9/10
K: Jesus portrayal by J. Hunter 8/10

Then we come to Judas. This isn’t even close. As related in the synopses of the movies above, the far stronger character is the one in K, where Judas is seen as a rebel, a freedom fighter and has a good, if slightly skewed, reason for betraying Jesus. The part is also better played by Rip Torn, though we know what a great and accomplished actor David McCallum is; he just had a really weak role to work with, and through most of the movie looks unhappy, and so he should be. His Judas could have been so much more, but he’s left playing a cardboard cut-out.

G: Judas role (This does not reflect on how the character was played, but how he was written, as it would be unfair to blame an actor for simply carrying out the role he was asked to play) 2/10
K: Judas role 9/10

Music score: Again, there’s little to choose here. Both Miklos Rosza’s Oscar-nominated music and that of Alfred Newman are stirring, grandiose pieces of music that make your heart swell and at times, in certain scenes, bring the odd tear to the eye. I can’t choose between these so I’m going to call this a dead heat and award the very same to both.

G: Score by Alfred Newman 9/10
K: Score by Mkilos Rosza 9/10

Awards/Nominations: From what I’ve read, though both movies were commercial flops, G was nominated for awards but I can’t find anything about K. Five awards in total, whether it won them or not I’m not sure, but even the nominations have to allow G to knock K flat on its back and perform a, at least temporary, victory dance on its body.

G: Awards (5, or at least nominations for 5) 8/10
K: Awards, none 0/10

Some other characters in brief, compared. Herod in K I found more evil, though cartoonishly evil, whereas in G he was more coldly evil and sort of like a snake, quietly evil as opposed to loudly evil, Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter as opposed to Dafoe’s Green Goblin. It sort of depends on what you’re looking for in a villain I guess, but for me I actually preferred Frank Thring’s portrayal of the evil king of Judea as opposed to Jose Ferrer’s version. It’s hard to choose: one was evil on a megalomaniacal scale, which was quite satisfying if a little one-dimensional, and was clearly harbouring ungentlemanly and unfatherly affection for his stepdaughter, Salome (King of Kings) while she was only alluded to in TGSET and the link between her demanding the head of John the Baptist and Herod’s decision to put him to death was made much muddier and not at all clear. Hmm. Because I like cartoon villains, and because he played the part so well, I’m going to go for Thring in “King of kings”, but as I say, it’s close, almost too close to call. I am calling it, though.

G: Herod Antipas portrayal (Jose Ferrer) 8/10
K: Herod Antipas portrayal (Frank Thring) 9/10

Yeah, I know I said in brief, and that was hardly brief, but you know me. Anyway, there’s one or two other main characters I want to look at, but in brief (and I mean it this time) here are some lesser ones.

Mary, mother of God. The version in K bugged the hell out of me with her eternal beatific smile that became almost that of an idiot and just made me want to punch her in the face (sorry), while the one in G was much more restrained and to be fair, hardly in the movie at all. But for her less-than-angelic portrayal Dorothy McGuire takes it for me.

G: Mary, Mother of God portrayal (Dorothy McGuire) 7/10
K: Mary, Mother of God portrayal (Siobhan McKenna) 4/10

Mary Magdalene. Surprisingly (or perhaps not; her time on film had not yet come) in both movies she’s almost anonymous. Yes we see the famous stoning scene in both, but after that, other than being seen washng Jesus’s feet in one movie and being the one to go to the tomb after three days in both, we see little of her, so there’s not an awful lot to choose from. I’ll have to take it from her performance in the stoning scene, and in this case I’m giving it to Carmen Sevilla in K.

G: Mary Magdalene (Joanna Dunham) 5/10
K: Mary Magdalene (Carmen Sevilla) 7/10

Barabbas. Well like Judas, and as mentioned in the section on him, there’s no contest. In G there is no role for Barabbas, apart from the traditional one at the end, when he is allowed go free for Passover in place of Jesus, while in K there’s quite a little backstory built up around him, allowing him his own identity and role in the movie, and also giving a proper and understandable reason for Judas’s eventual betrayal of Jesus. King of kings wins this by a country mile.

G: Role of Barabbas 1/10
K: Role of Barabbas 8/10

Pilate. Though he’s central to the story of Jesus --- he is, after all, infamously remembered as the man who sentenced the Saviour to death --- there’s very little real substance to the role played by him by Telly “Kojak” Savalas in G, and I for one couldn’t stop expecting him to pat Herod’s cheek and say “Good boy! You do what you're told, nobody will get hoirt, capische?” Sorry but that’s just me, who only knew him from that role on TV. But even apart from that he puts in what I consider to be a poor performance, while the lesser-known (to me) Hurd Hatfield makes a much better fist of it, projecting the true persona of a man who is somewhere he does not want to be, is there because the local king couldn’t keep order and also knows or suspects that he is being punished by being sent to this remote outpost, far from the empire and any chance of advancement. It doesn’t help that his wife is sympathetic to the message of Jesus. Also it comes across in G that Savalas is only there because he’s a big-name star, and not because he’s best suited for the role. In fact I think he completely fluffs it. I think Hatfield plays Pilate best, so I award the high score to him.

G: Portrayal of Pontius Pilate (Telly Savalas) 4/10
K: Portrayal of Pontius Pilate (Hurd Hatfield) 8/10

And one more character whose portrayal makes the difference between the two films is John the Baptist. Central to the first half of the movie, he bestrides both like a colossus, but in G he’s played by the walking ego, Charlton Heston, who tends to bring more of the macho, self-confident and arrogant posturing to the character than does Robert Ryan in K. His take on John is far more humble, a tough, principled and godly man who knows he is just marking time on this planet, waiting for the arrival of the one whose coming he heralds. Heston makes it more about Heston, Ryan makes it more about John, and has rightly been cited as the best John the Baptist you will see in film, so he easily gets the nod.

G: John the Baptist (Charlton Heston) 5/10
K: John the Baptist (Robert Ryan) 8/10

Actually, that’s not it. There’s one more character I forgot to include. Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name! Yeah, it’s the Devil. The only real role Satan plays of course in the story is when Jesus is out in the desert and he’s being tempted by the Evil One, but in G he’s personified by a strange dark hermit Jesus meets, played by the wonderfully evil Donald Pleasance, while in K he’s nothing more than a disembodied voice, the actor not even credited. So the best Devil has to be the one from G, hands (or talons) down.

G: The Devil (Donald Pleasance as “the dark hermit”) 9/10
K: The Devil (uncredited, voice only) 3/10

This just leaves us really with two last sticking points. Both have already been mentioned but here I’m going to go into them in some more detail. The first is the handling of the miracles Jesus performs. In K they’re almost alluded to, with shadows on walls, notes in despatches and the like, while in G they’re made much more of. The best is where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, which isn’t even mentioned in K, but Stevens gives it the full Hollywood treatment and you really feel impressed, awed and even a little frightened at times. Similarly, his curing of the lame is carried out in a very personal way, one-to-one as it were, and the blind man who he makes see is arranged beautifully. Jesus, urged by the sceptical people of Nazareth, who find it hard to credit that the carpenter’s son is in fact the son of God, to cure an old blind man and prove his divinity, refuses. But later he comes back and cures him in private.

It’s a lovely cameo, showing how although he would not be tempted into performing for the crowd, Jesus was still not prepared to let the old blind man suffer for his own principles. In the corner, away from the crowds where nobody can see, he performs a miracle and the old man has his sight back.I feel the miracles are given better weight by Stevens and his way works much better. I guess Ray could have claimed he had not the time for his movie as his rival director had, but the miracles are still in his movie, just not handled so well. Therefore it’s no contest, and G wins this round by a knockout.

G: Portrayal of miracles 10/10 (This first ever top score is awarded due mostly to the awe-inspiring scenes outside the tomb of Lazarus)
K: Portrayal of miracles 5/10

Finally, perhaps one of the most crucial scenes in the film, either of them, the crucifixion of Jesus. While nobody wanted to, or was expecting to see a Mel Gibson-style gorefest, the way K handled it was much more up close and personal, and gives you a real feeling of being involved. You can hear the nails being hammered in, watch the almost workmanlike industry as the Romans bustle here and there, this just another day, another execution for them. You see Jesus’s cross being raised, and hear him talking to the two thieves on either side of him. In G, much of the actual crucifixion, the attaching to the cross and its raising, are viewed from far down the hill, so it’s too impersonal and could really be anyone getting crucified. After a short time the camera does go back up the hill, but it’s grimly unsatisfying and almost seems an afterthought on the part of the director. Badly handled I think, and so K gets the nod here, without question.

G: Crucifixion scene 4/10
K: Crucifixion scene 8/10

Before I total up the score and see who the winner is, there are a few more points I want to raise. Firstly, for such a long and epic film, the opening titles to G are pedestrian and very small, and don’t evoke the kind of drama and majesty that those of its sister movie do, despite the stirring music. The ending too, seems a little rushed, odd considering how long the film is. These two disappointments earn G an automatic deduction of 20 from whatever score it ends up getting.

Secondly, K has a narrator, and it’s Orson Welles. I’m not sure whether I prefer this sort of movie with or without a storyteller, as everyone should already be familiar with the plot anyway, but for securing the services of such a star and using him well I’ll add an extra 10 points to its score.

K also gains an extra 5 points for being the first film in cinematic history to show the face of Jesus onscreen.

And so, the tally. After everything has been added up, here are how the initial scores stand:

The Greatest Story Ever Told: 97
King of kings: 109

Now for the adjustments: G loses 20 for boring titles, opening and closing, as above, which brings its already losing score down to 77. With 10 points added for Orson Welles and another 5 for getting to the post first as above, K gets a total additional 15 points, bringing its final score to a whopping 124!

So, 124 plays 77. Bit of a knockout there for the King! Even without the adjustments K had it over G by a good 12 points. Now, with the adjustments taken into account, there’s a gap of 47!

And so, with a final score of 124, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the winner of the contest, the victor of the Battle of the Classic Christs, the first movie to show the face of Jesus on celluloid, give a big hand to

The undisputed heavyweight champion of classic Jesus movies! (Well, of these two, anyway!)

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Twice upon a Christmas (2001)

Now this is more like it! Santa’s evil daughter plots to destroy Christmas and sell the North Pole! Yay! You go girl!

Santa's first born daughter, Rudolfa, is secretly selling pieces of the North Pole, and eventually take over where she attempts to ruin Christmas, and replace Santa's workshop with a brand new casino. But Santa's lost daughter Kristin returns to the North Pole with her two children who are desperate to save Christmas, and rebuild the shattered village.

Now wait just one snowflake-covered, yuletide log-burning minute! Santa’s daughter? Santa doesn't have sex! The very idea! Surely he and Mrs Claus are far too busy all year round overseeing their army of toy-making elves to have time for any of that! And the contention that he could have an EVIL child? Well, it just beggars belief, doesn’t it? Ah… unless … could it be that Santa’s playing away from home? Being Naughty rather than Nice? Might he find himself left off his own Christmas list this year? Does anyone care?

Nobody of note stars, though I laugh heartily to see an actor whose parents actually decided to call him James, even though his surname is .. Kirk! Ah, hilarity! Star Trek fans or just a really bad piece of decision-making, we’ll never know. The poor guy must really have had a great time in school. Also happy to see it’s directed by a guy called Tibor. Hey Tibor, where is the key to the men’s room anyway? Always blame it on the guy who doesn’t speak English…

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“Xmas story” Futurama episode (Fox, 1999)

A homicidal robotic Santa who charges around on Xmas Eve in a sled powered by huge, snarling, fire-breathing reindeer and whose main objective is to kill everyone seen as “naughty” on his list, ie everyone: what’s not to like? Once again “Futurama” take a well-known and loved character and evil him up, turning the whole premise of Santa and even Christmas on its head. In this episode, Fry is looking forward to Christmas (now officially called Xmas) but everyone else fears being attacked by the robot Santa, something he does not understand until he foolishly gets caught out on the streets after dark looking for a present for Leela…

This may not be an actual staple of Christmas TV but it should, and if you get a chance to see it make sure you do. Lines like “Their mistletoe is no match for my TOW missile!” and “Santa Claus is gunning you down!” in addition to the appearance of the mad robot Santa, an army of homeless robber robots led by Bender doing a passable Fagin, and some iconic movie scenes recreated all make this worth seeing. Truth is, though nobody has confirmed it, I think the robot Santa made his first real appearance in the Simpsons episode “Homer’s phobia”, when John, the gay toyshop owner, used one very similar to rout the reindeer that were attacking Homer.

There was a followup story “A tale of two Santas”, in which Bender takes over the role of the robot Santa, but for my money this is the best, being the original. Mind you, if you get a chance to see that one don’t miss it either.

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Season One, Episode Seven
"Passage to Pernambuco"

The Onedins have finally made enough money to be able to buy their own house, and move out of the warehouse they've been living in, but James is off to Lisbon again. He leaves Anne with instructions to "have the banns read" (see under "History lessons") for Daniel and Elizabeth's wedding without delay, trusting no-one else in the family with such responsibility. Seemingly heedless of her plight though, and with not a thought for Fogarty in her mind, James's sister is again flirting with Frazer. He asks her to marry him, but she says she can't, though not why. He then floats the idea of their eloping, and the romantic in her is stirred.

She speaks to Anne, saying she is thinking of marrying, but Frazer, not Fogarty. She says she can say nothing about the child, and when it's born Albert will believe it his. The fatal flaw in this logic seems to escape her. In Lisbon, Senor Braganza shares his worries about the destruction of his vines, thanks to a ravenous beetle which eats the roots. He says it has already been causing devastation in France and he fears Portugal is next. He must somehow get new stock from the United States to graft onto his vines and protect them from the insect. But there are no ships available that can make the trip, and it needs to be one trip only; the Charlotte Rhodes would need at least three. He mentions a ship called the Pampero, which he had hoped would take the charter but it already has a cargo and is bound for Pernambuco, in Brazil.

James's mind is working. As the ship is already bound for the Americas, he tells Braganza to buy the ship, cargo and all. He will take half a share in it, sail it to the USA, sell the cargo and return with Braganza's vines within sixty days. He proposes a partnership, to run over five years, during which he and Braganza will split the profits of every voyage. James will try to buy Braganza's share out within five years, and if not then the wine merchant will become the sole owner of the ship and can sell it if he wants. If he succeeds though, Onedin will have a second ship in his fleet.

Before he can leave though some passengers come onboard, part of the original charter which James has now assumed ownership of. A Portuguese gentleman --- a caballero --- and what look like his servants, dowdy and ill-fed and clothed mostly in rags in harsh contrast to the fine clothes of the gentleman. Onedin does not want them onboard but he has no choice, and so they set sail, bound for Pernambuco. Don Vasco, the gentleman, tells James that the other passengers who travel with him (and do not, certainly, eat as he does, at the captain's table and partaking of the finest wine) are troublemakers, criminals who are being transferred to the vineyards of his master in Brazil, as punishment for burning his vines in Lisbon.

The "criminals", however, tell a very different story to Baines, down in the hold. They say they owned the land they now have to work on as slaves, that the gentry took their vineyards and treated them like dirt. One of them, Felipo, has very good English, his grandfather having been a soldier serving in Wellington's army. He tells Baines they will kill Dom Vasco; they must, before he kills them as he killed his wife's father. But Baines warns them not to attempt it onboard the Onedin ship. Elizabeth sends word to say that she has taken up with Frazer, and Robert, seeing this as a better match, is happy to let it lie. He has convinced himself (as has Sarah) that the pregnancy was nothing more than "a young girl's fancy", that there was no baby orignally. Anne on the other hand is not fooled and does not agree with him. She calls him an ostrich, and so he is.

James decides, taking an instant dislike to Dom Vasco, to sail direct to Baltimore where they hope to sell the Pampero's cargo. But the auction has been boycotted by the dealers, who have formed a cartel and make sure that nobody sells but through them. But James is never one to back down from a challenge, and he goes to see the master of the railroad, offering him his salt at a knockdown price, in return for labourers for one day to cut the wild vines that grow everywhere, and which no man can stop him from harvesting if he can muster the manpower. Soon he has all he needs but his plan backfires as his crew, enticed by the railroad and promises of riches and glory all desert. Now he has to try to recruit a new crew, but it's the same story everywhere. This is the age of railroad expansion in America, and everyone is working on the biggest project the country has seen in its history.

Once again though the canny shipowner has the answer. He asks Don Vasco's prisoners to serve onboard his ship, and when the cabellero protests he has one final humiliation to heap upon him, making him the cook. Dom Vasco takes his revenge though, when the grain they're carrying catches fire, and as they try to dump it overboard he pushes Felipo in. Baines tries to save him but cannot, and the boy dies a painful horrible death. As they near Lisbon on the return trip, Dom Vasco gains a measure of his old swagger, knowing he will soon be in control again, and determined to make James pay for the insult he has paid him. However James has other ideas. He hails a passing Portuguese ship, and finds it is heading for Pernambuco. Telling Vasco that if he does not board the ship alone he will be open to charges of murder --- for which there are witnesses --- he forces the caballero to leave his prisoners behind, and they continue to Lisbon. It's small justice for Felipo, but it is justice.

QUOTES

James: "Robert has all the qualifications of a jellyfish and Sarah stops her ears at anything that smacks of an indelicate nature."

James: "Marry the master, not the servant, if marry you must".

FAMILY
ELIZABETH AND ALBERT
It would seem Daniel is now forgotten, no longer a part of Elizabeth's life, despite the fact that she knows she is carrying his child. She tells Anne that she only let him have his way with her because she felt sorry for him, and probably knew they would soon part. Her new plan, to marry Albert, seems to be working on the surface, and for once she could not be happier. Albert, of course, is beside himself with joy, even if his father does not seem to have taken to the young Onedin girl. For appearances' sake, Robert and Sarah go along with the idea that perhaps there was no baby, that Elizabeth just imagined she was pregnant, and anyway, now things have worked out how they --- or more precisely, James --- wanted, and they have an alliance with Liverpool's biggest shipbuilder, which can surely only benefit the company as it grows.

ANNE
The only one to see disaster on the horizon is James's pragmatic wife. She is sure the pregnancy is real, and wonders what Albert will say when he finds out. She knows that the manipulative Elizabeth plans to pretend the child is his, but surely he will figure out that they have not been together long enough for that to be true? But she knows that in the end it is not her place to interfere; she tries to advise Elizabeth, to get her to see sense, but after all, if the girl's mind is made up there is little she can, or should try to, do to change it. It is, essentially, not her problem, and she has enough concerns of her own to be worrying about.

CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY
When faced with James's multiple instructions as to what he must do while his brother is at sea with the Pampero, Robert is overwhelmed. He wonders where the money is supposed to come from to pay wages, buy cargo and send the Charlotte Rhodes on its way again, fully provisioned and with a cargo that will bring profit. Anne proves to be the more business-minded, telling him that as he is a director of the Onedin Line he need only make out a draft on the company, she will advance him the money from the firm and the draft will be redeemed on James's return. As for cargo, she tells Robert he is after all a shopkeeper: "Buy large quantities of something you know to be in demand and ship it to a country in need", she tells him. Alan Sugar couldn't have distilled the simplest idea of trade down to its most basic components better himself.

HISTORY LESSONS
As Don Vasco basically sees and treats his prisoners like slaves, we are shown an uncomfortable reminder that such ideas are not as outdated as they seem, at least not in America. When they reach Baltimore Baines goes to paste up a poster advertising the sale of the cargo onboard their ship, and the notice he papers over with theirs is the offer of a reward for the return of an escaped slave ---- "Bears the mark of the lash," screams the notice, "Branded R". A cruel time.

There is also reference to the building of the first railroad across America, which changed the country forever (watch "The men who built America" for some great insights on this) and which has become the single largest employer in the country, so much so that James's own crew abscond to work on it. It would seem steam is certainly the future, at least in the New World: Frazer would surely approve.

Explanation of the phrase "read the banns" can be found here Banns of marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


TIGHTFIST
Despite the gruesome death of Felipo, James is of course more aghast at the loss of a tenth of his grain, which will cost him about three thousand dollars, he calculates. Though he does cheer himself up with the thought that he will only have to bear half the loss, as Senor Braganza will be liable for the other half. "The man who expects to share in the profit", he philosophically tells Baines, "must also expect to share in the loss."

Anne lands Robert with a shock when he comes back from his less than successful trip to France with the linoleum he had bought, unable to shift it for much profit. She reminds him that they owe interest to the discount house, and the crew have yet to be paid, so small as the profit he has made is, it is in fact smaller than he thought it was. A shopkeeper he may be, but there's a lot more to trading than just running a shop, as he's beginning to realise to his chagrin.

James is annoyed when he arrives in Baltimore and finds he cannot sell his salt without dealing with the middlemen, who will of course take their cut. So he goes direct to the railroad, offering the man in charge a substantial discount, making a deal with him for labourers and also getting information as to where he can buy a thousand tons of grain cheap. The old maxim never fails: "deal not with the monkey but with the organ grinder!"

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