The images in this article are of stop motion animator Hiroshi Tabata working on some of my very favorite Christmas movies. Super cool, and I felt appropriate for this article. You can find all sorts of awesome Rankin/Bass ephemera at the Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass website.
Happy holidays from The Movie Advocate!
Ahh…Christmas. The synthetic tree is coming out of storage. The non-traditional Mexican fiesta dinner is being organized. The magic elves at Amazon.com are wrapping my gifts as we speak. With all this holiday nostalgia in the air – not to mention the impending deluge of “Top Movies of 2010” lists in January – we’ve invited our favorite movie advocates around Denver, in the blogosphere, and other writers I admire to share a few words about their favorite movies of all time, the movies that shaped their growth as movie fans, that they just absolutely couldn’t live without. The response so far has been amazing, and over the next few weeks, I look forward to sharing with you the impassioned outpourings of writers great and small, but movie geeks all.
Of course, your trusty Movie Advocates Justin and I will be participating as well. Our task is slightly trickier, as we’ve already written a great deal about many of our favorite movies on the site. To kick off The Movie Advocate’s “Favorite Movie Series,” I’ve collected the stories we’ve already written about our favorite movies. The list at the end of this article is comprised of movies that Justin or I would have written about for this series had we not already done so.
My hope is that by inviting movie fans from all walks of life to participate in The Movie Advocate Favorite Movie Series we’ll spread a wide net of cinematic passion and good cheer. It’s appropriate for the season, I think. I am beyond ecstatic about the list of confirmed participants, and I think you will be, too. Thanks for reading The Movie Advocate this year. I hope you enjoy this series, our Christmas gift to you, beginning tomorrow with Justin’s write-up of one of his all-time favorite movies. If you’ve seen it, I can almost guarantee it’s one of yours, too.
-Ben
p.s. If you, dear reader, have a favorite movie you’re just dying to shout from the rooftops about, send a write up to martinba-1@hotmail.com and we’ll try to include it in the series!
Justin on some of his favorite movies:
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
THE RULES OF THE GAME
BILLY JACK
LONE WOLF AND CUB
Ben on some of his favorite movies:
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
DAYS OF HEAVEN
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
OLIVER TWIST