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Movies & TV

Welcome a new Christmas classic

This time last year, I was arguing for the certification of Jon Favreau’s Elf as a modern Christmas classic – and privately grousing that I couldn’t come up with a more recent example of a decent holiday movie than a seven-year-old Will Ferrell comedy.

This was no slight to Elf, mind you – it’s a delightful little picture – but more about Hollywood’s inability to crank out anything worthy of comparison.

Fred Claus? Not hardly, though the casting of Paul Giamatti as a working-stiff Santa is something close to genius. Robert Zemeckis’s creepy motion-capture version of A Christmas Carol? Yes, it’s kind of cool that the technology allows Jim Carrey to play Scrooge and all the Christmas Ghosts, but you also get a dead-eyed Colin Firth as Nephew Fred and Gary Oldman’s face peeping out of a hobbity Bob Cratchit.

Fortunately, 2011 has provided us with a movie I hope will become a holiday classic: Arthur Christmas, a delightful CG adventure from the cracked walnuts at Aardman Animation – the people who brought us the stop-motion wonder of the Wallace & Gromit series, and smoothly transitioned to digital with the underrated Flushed Away. This one continues their tradition of idiosyncratic British humour, charming character design and oddball world-building.

Arthur Christmas is a generational workplace comedy where the family business is located at the North Pole. The current Santa (plummily voiced by Jim Broadbent) is debating retirement, and his eldest (Hugh Laurie) is ready to step in at a moment’s notice … and reedy, overenthusiastic younger son Arthur (James McAvoy) is mostly happy working in the letters department. But when a present is overlooked on Christmas morning, it’s Arthur who convinces his half-senile Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) to accompany him on a last-minute run to deliver it … which, of course, is not nearly as simple a job as it sounds.

It’s your basic holiday quest picture, but throw in Aardman’s signature flourishes – like a crack gift-wrapping elf named Bryony who serves as Arthur’s sidekick and conscience and an elderly reindeer that follows Grandsanta everywhere sporting a veterinary cone – and we’re well on our way to something weird and special – and especially weird. I expect Arthur and his movie will be zipping around for years to come.

If, after all that, you’re still not sold, you can always do the grown-up thing and make yourself a Christmas present of 2001: A Space Odyssey, back screening nightly at TIFF Bell Lightbox in glorious 70mm from Dec. 25 through Jan. 3, 2012 (with the exception of Friday Dec. 30). I caught the large-format engagement this time last year, and can recommend it without reservation Kubrick’s futurist masterpiece should be seen in the best presentation possible, and this glorious print is as good as it gets.

In other 70mm news, TIFF is holding a Christmas Day matinee of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at 1 pm … but I’m not entirely sure I can recommend that. I mean, have you seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang lately? That movie is seriously weird.

Happy holidays, everyone! Don’t let the Child Catcher bite!

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