Screen time

It's a holiday tradition in my household to see at least one movie in a theater between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. The film industry, for reasons having to do with marketing, always seems to hold the kind of movies that interest me until the end of the year. In 2007, the holiday movie was No Country For Old Men. This year, the holiday season releases that look interesting are numerous, and I've already been able to see two movies on my list.

My daughter's husband is another movie lover; he sees many more movies and knows a lot more about them than I do. When R and A come to visit, it's often an opportunity to see a good movie at a theater. One of the movies I wanted to see, Valkyrie, was on A's list as well so we went to see it Friday. Valkyrie is a reasonably accurate account of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944; Tom Cruise plays one of the instrumental figures in the plot, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.

I first became aware of the assassination plot depicted in Valkyrie during my public school years when I saw The Desert Fox, in which James Mason played Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. I wasn't sure a movie dramatizing historic events would hold my interest since I'd already know how everything worked out in the end, but Valkyrie plays well as a suspense film. Bryan Singer also directed the excellent crime movie The Usual Suspects, so he obviously knows his stuff.

Later that day, A and I rounded up our wives and went to an early-evening presentation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This is another picture I can recommend without reservation, a feel-good movie with an unusual premise, adapted from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. David Fincher directed this film; his earlier work includes Seven, Panic Room, and Zodiac, but Benjamin Button is the diametrical opposite of the dark, deeply depressing Seven. Brad Pitt plays the title character, a man whose life is a process of reverse aging. Like all the best movies, this one mixes elements of humor and tragedy, with some funny moments and some that produced a lump in my throat. Anyone who liked Forrest Gump or The Green Mile will probably enjoy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, none of which could have succeeded without the artistic use of computer-generated effects.

There are several movies in current release that I'm still looking forward to, including Doubt and Revolutionary Road.

Looking back at 2008, I watched the HBO miniseries John Adams last summer. I wrote about it at the time, and believed it was the finest television production since Lonesome Dove. This was a special Christmas for me because R and A gave me the DVD set of John Adams, and now I can see it over and over again.

Another outstanding HBO show was Black and White Night, a 1987 performance by Roy Orbison with what was probably the greatest group of supporting musicians ever assembled. When Bruce Springsteen and James Burton start trading guitar moves, it causes chills to run up and down my spine. Anyone who believes that 1960 to 1980 was a fertile period in American music needs to see Black and White Night. The local PBS station usually shows it during their fund-raising drives, and I'll watch it, pledge breaks and all. This year's Christmas gift to myself was the DVD edition, meaning that I now own DVDs of the three best things I've ever seen on television: Lonesome Dove, John Adams, and Black and White Night. Sometimes, I have to admit, life can be good.