Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 81

#FridayFlash - Abandon Hope

The church bell stopped tolling two days ago. Mother thought it meant that the distemper had left us, and would plague our city no more. Father thought that the churches had become overwhelmed, and we would be left to rot in vast pits sunk into rotten ground. Father was right - even now, I can hear the cries of the infected drifting through my window. Two of the houses in our street have been shut up, their inhabitants dying or dead. Three houses in our street lie empty; two because their owners fled into the country when the sickness approached our parish, and one because the entire family perished. Should ours be next?



My sister fears the cries for help that go unanswered and begs me to close the casement, but I cannot bear the stuffiness of our house. Our two maidservants and my brother have caught the distemper, and lie in their sickbeds. The whole house smells of the preservatives my Father bought from a gentlemen physician in Whitecross Street, and I cannot bear their stench. Yet I may not stir out of doors as we have been shut in to prevent the sickness spreading. My brother begged us to remove him to the attic, along with the maidservants, and none are allowed near them save the nurse. My brother remains thoughtful even in his illness.



Father brings me a preservative and begs me to take it, yet I cannot see what this poultice can do in the face of God's wrath. He tells me that it came highly recommended by the physician, a new arrival from the city of Naples, and I asked if it came also at a high price. He reminds me of the sickness within our house, but I believe that if it is God's will that I be spared, then spared I shall be.



Mother asks that I visit the watchman outside our door, placed there to prevent our escape. We have heard rumours of other houses being shut up to contain the sickness, but the inhabitants have fled under cover of darkness, even with the distemper upon them. We none of us wish to die, or sicken, but Mother refuses to leave her son. "We will leave when he does," she says. "Aye," adds my father, "either on foot or in the dead-cart." Mother asks me to give an errand to the watchman; our supplies of bread run low, and we shall need more.



I run down the stairs and knock three times on the door. After the scraping of bolts, the door is pushed ajar, and the watchman peers inside. He asks if I require the dead-cart, and smiles when I shake my head. The watchman knows my brother, and wishes him well. I ask if I may step outside for air while I relate my errand, and the watchman hesitates but a brief moment before allowing that I may do so.



I step into the street and take in the sight. This thoroughfare should be thronged with people, and children should play between the feet of the crowds, but only hunched figures, their faces shrouded with cloths, venture along our street today. The watchman sees my distress, and engages me in idle conversation, asking after my sister while entertaining me with snippets of gossip from the alehouse, now lying quiet as the distemper grips our parish. Time passes and Mother calls down the stairs. Life returns to me, removing my momentary escape, and I give the watchman the message from Mother. He asks me to return inside the house before he leaves for the market. I turn, and look at the door.



A cross, a foot high at least, is daubed upon the door in red paint. I cry out at the reminder of our plight. The watchman ushers me inside, and bolts the door behind me. I sit on the bottom step of the stairs, and I allow a sob to escape my throat.



Father shouts down to me. My brother's sores have broken, and his fever wanes. He is weak, but awake. I run up the stairs, calling his name.



May God have such mercy on us all.



Inspired by Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, which is my current reading material.

A to Z - The Plague of the Zombies

I used to be a fan of zombies until they went mainstream, but I have to admit, I will always have a fondness for the old school 'voodoo' zombies. After all, it's where the sub genre started - long before viruses and radiation from space got blamed, cinema was using voodoo to explain its fascination with the undead. First came White Zombie in 1932, then I Walked With A Zombie in 1943, and then the idea went quiet for a bit, until Hammer decided to have a crack at it in 1966 with The Plague of the Zombies. By this point, Hammer had exhausted its own versions of the 1930s Universal classics, and were trying out new ideas to see what might stick in order to create a new movie monster. They'd had a go in 1964 with The Gorgon, a rare attempt at a female monster, and had another crack at things with the zombie.



The Plague of the Zombies is set in rural Cornwall, where Sir James Forbes (André Morell) and his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) go to visit one of James's old schoolfriends, Peter (Brook Williams). Things are badly amiss in Peter's village - young men are dying in their prime, and the people are under the thrall of Squire Hamilton (John Carson). When Peter's wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) dies, James sets about uncovering what's really going on. I'm not going to spoil it by telling you that voodoo is to blame, and the young men are disappearing to provide cheap labour.



I was half expecting this to be terrible before I watched it, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's a well-paced little horror film, but I think part of its success lies in its reliance on voodoo as the cause. I don't know how plausible it is but it can't be any worse than a virus caused by monkeys being exposed to violent imagery. There has been a lot written about the mindless zombie horde as being a representation of fears surrounding the working class, but I can't help seeing that as being somewhat derogatory. True, the idea of a sole individual wielding power over a subjugated mass is essentially feudalism, but I think I prefer the concept of that sole individual since they become a very human antagonist to foil the protagonist. With a zombie horde, the protagonists are essentially just running about trying to survive. The conflict is simply "get eaten/don't get eaten". With a voodoo priest, you have someone to defeat. I'm aware that raises questions around a closed or open narrative, as well as the so-called 'secure' or 'paranoid' horror, but that's beyond the scope of this post.



What I like about it is the fact that Hammer took their tried and tested period Gothic setting and tried to inject a different form of horror. Zombies weren't fashionable, and I'm still unsure whose idea the film was, but it's almost an entirely new type of film for Hammer. It's not a remake of a Universal classic, nor is it one of the interminable Dracula or Frankenstein sequels. True, some of their 'stabs in the dark' really don't work (like The Witches) but this one really did - and it's such a shame that they turned their back on the idea, and never did zombies again. Instead, the idea was taken up two years later by an American filmmaker named George Romero...



Anyway, I'll leave you with this particular clip, in which Sir James and Peter go to check on the grave of young Alice...

A to Z - The Others

I appear to be continuing the horror theme from yesterday's Nosferatu , moving on to a much later horror film from 2001, The Others. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar and starring Nicole Kidman, The Others is an old-fashioned ghost story set in an isolated house in Jersey in the years after the Second World War. Kidman plays Grace, a widow with two children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). The children are photosensitive and they dwell in a perpetual twilight as they contain the darkness within the house. After the previous servants leave, Grace manages to hire three more, who know a lot more than they're telling after strange disturbances begin in the house. Grace can't decide if her children are playing tricks, or if the house is haunted, or if she's going mad. Which is it to be?



I absolutely love this film. I'm refusing to say much more about the plot because I don't want to spoil it, but it's one of the few genuinely chilling films of the last fifteen years or so. Ghost films don't seem to be privvy to the same cycles of popularity that affect other horror films, and they often crop up in ones or twos before disappearing for a few more months. I think 1999 was the last 'big' year for ghosts, with The Sixth Sense, the godawful remake of The Haunting and Stir of Echoes being the biggest names on release, so The Others had a couple of years for paranormal fever to die down.



One of the real draws of the film is its setting. Jersey is trying to reestablish its routine following the Nazi occupation in much the same way that Grace is trying to adjust to life without her husband, presumed killed in action. The costumes are gorgeous, and the constant mist outside the house helps add to the air of enclosure, and entrapment, generated throughout the film. Grace's insistence that one door must always be closed before the next is opened to ensure that no light leaks into the rooms where her children are turns the house into a strange space full of shadows and secrets. Disembodied piano playing becomes threatening, and Grace pursues the intruders with a shotgun.



It's perhaps her relationship with her children that really make the film. Child actors can be a mixed bag, but Mann and Bentley are perfect as Anne and Nicholas, hitting the right balance between sibling bickering and protectiveness to make them plausible as brother and sister. Anne's somewhat strained relationship with Grace reaches breaking point when Grace thinks Anne has been possessed by an old woman, and Nicholas becomes torn between Anne's insistence that something is wrong, and Grace's assurances that everything is fine. This is a family on the brink.



It's a wonderful film, with a delightfully creepy atmosphere, and I highly recommend it if you like things that go bump in the night...

A to Z - Nosferatu

There were plenty of films I could have chosen for N, and indeed one of the problems I've faced for this A to Z challenge is choosing particular films. Why should I choose one film over another? Well I know a few vampire fans read this blog so I thought that for N, I'd choose one of the classics - Nosferatu.




Directed by F. W. Murnau and released in 1922, Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauen) is a loose adaptation of Dracula - Bram Stoker's widow was notoriously protective of copyright, and as this was an unauthorised adaptation, the names were changed to protect the guilty. So Harker becomes Hutter, Mina becomes Ellen, and London is swapped for Bremen, and Murnau adds a few little touches of his own, casting Nosferatu as the cause of the 1838 outbreak of plague in Bremen.



The plot is essentially a streamlined form of Dracula - an estate agent, Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), is sent to see Count Orlok (Max Schreck) to help him with a purchase in Bremen. Turns out the Count is buying the dilapidated houses directly opposite where Hutter lives. The Count develops a fancy for Hutter's wife, Ellen (Greta Schröder) and heads to Bremen, bringing with him the plague. Hutter naturally wants to stop the Count, but can he? The likes of Dr Seward, Arthur Holmwood and even Van Helsing are excised from the plot to make room for the larger than life Count Orlok.



Nosferatu is usually figured with Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari has being one of the Big Three of German Expressionism (Metropolis sometimes replaces Der Golem), a film movement that grew out of the art movement of the same name after the First World War. These films are sometimes referred to as the first horror films, and they certainly had an effect on later filmmakers, most notably for their use of light and shade, and the manipulation of shadow through careful lighting. One thing that should be noted is the fact that most of the early German Expressionist films were made in studios, so filmmakers could control the filming conditions, but Murnau took Nosferatu outside. The coach trip through the woods as Hutter travels to the castle is filmed in negative, using stop motion animation, to give a jerky, otherworldly feel to the journey. It looks unreal because Hutter is in an unreal space.



Other visual devices have cropped up throughout the years, from Count Orlok's incredibly creepy way of standing up to the distortions caused by projecting his shadow across a wall. Plus, this is not the sexy, romantic vampire of post-Anne Rice fiction - Orlok is an ugly, ratty creature who brings only death and disease. There is no promise of love and everlasting life here. Later portrayals of Dracula show him as being a charismatic figure, if not necessarily physically attractive, but here we really get the sense of the vampire as being something abject and monstrous.



The film is now in the public domain so I've embedded the link to the full film below.

A to Z - The Mummy

Well I'm continuing the black and white classic theme from yesterday, which was L for The Lodger, and going onto possibly my favourite horror movie, The Mummy. No, I don't mean the 1999 action adventure starring Brendan Fraser, I mean the original 1932 version, starring Boris Karloff as the Mummy. Set in the 1920s, a decade which saw fevered interest in ancient Egypt following the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the film tells the story of Imhotep, an ancient priest who is awoken by the mysterious Scroll of Thoth that has the power to grant life. He encounters Helen (Zita Johann), the woman who was Anck-sa-namun in a previous life - basically, she's the princess he used to love. Helen ends up subject to a tug of war between Imhotep and her 1920s boyfriend, a slightly insipid Frank (David Manners).



What I love about The Mummy is that the monster, here the ambling mummy now posing as an archaeology enthusiast named Addis Bey, essentially becomes the romantic love interest for Helen, and while Frank is the pretty boy son of a sir, she's given the choice between Beauty and the Beast. Trouble is, the Beast is far more interesting. Karloff is positively magnetic in this role, and we're treated to close ups of those mesmerising eyes as he works his magic on various characters. I think I sometimes get a bit cross with the implication that the mummy is a monster when really, he just wants his old girlfriend back. Plus, when he shows Helen a dream sequence of their life together in ancient Egypt, I just wonder how on earth Frank thinks he can possibly compare - Imhotep has had a passionate life with her already, and the best Frank can do is wring his hands with worry.



Karloff and Johann (herself a rather exotic beauty) make a much better couple, and I found myself rooting for them throughout the film. OK, so Imhotep wants to kill Helen so he can resurrect her to the same state of immortality that he himself enjoys, but what's so wrong with that? People always bang on about wanting to spend eternity together - these guys actually have the chance. Frank doesn't even really get to save the day - Helen pretty much has to save herself. Yes, he's that useless.



One of the things I love about the early Universal films is their length. They're quite short (The Mummy runs at 73 minutes) but they tell their story perfectly, without recourse to lengthy padding or pointless dialogue exchanges. I'm no fan of 3D cinema, and films like these just prove that you don't need fireworks and fancy visuals to tell a good story well.



I couldn't find any decent clips, and while I would recommend watching the whole movie, I'll leave you with the trailer...

A to Z - The Lodger

Wow, we're onto 'L' already! I couldn't not choose this 1926 silent classic by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ivor Novello. The film is based on a 1913 novel by the same name by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes, and concerns a hunt for a Jack the Ripper style serial killer in the London fog. This killer, known as the Avenger, favours blondes (much like Hitchcock himself) although he opts for strangulation as opposed to ripping. The idea for the novel actually concerns that of a landlady who comes to believe one of her tenants is Jack the Ripper - incidentally, the artist Walter Sickert stayed in a room which his landlady believed had been let to the Ripper previously. (There's also a conspiracy theory that he painted the Camden Town Murders paintings about the case, and people think he was the Ripper himself). In the film, Ivor Novello plays the suspected lodger.



I'm being very good to you today because I actually found the full film on YouTube (see below) and I really do recommend watching it. Silent films can be a difficult watch for modern audiences since we're so used to the majority of plot being delivered via dialogue, so strip away the speech and the handful of cue cards aren't enough to convey story. Instead, we have to read the whole film, include facial expression, set design, and even the soundtrack, to get the story. Personally, I love silent films (which is one reason why I almost did The Artist for 'A') and I think there's a lot to be said for them, but I understand why they're not everyone's cup of tea.



Thing is, you really get to see the 'birth' of Hitchcock's creativity in this film. My favourite scene occurs when the landlady and her family are crowded in a downstairs room, listening to Novello pace back and forth upstairs. But how do you convey the sound of pacing footsteps in a silent film? Easy, you employ visual trickery to show it. Hitchcock might have been a rotter towards his leading ladies but the guy was certainly inventive with cinema. It also demonstrates the start of Hitchcock's themes to which he returned throughout his career. The wrong man? Check. The icy blond? Check. Ineffectual police? Check. Violence against women? Check. It's a landmark film for so many reasons.



There have been other adaptations over the years but I highly recommend this one! Sit back, relax, and enjoy an hour and a half of good filmmaking...

A to Z - The King's Speech

At first glance, The King's Speech might not look like my 'kind of film'. Having said that, I will give most genres a try at least once (within reason, I still loathe musicals) and the presence of Colin Firth, Helena Bonham-Carter, Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush swayed me into going to see this. Sufficeth to say, I absolutely loved it. It's the kind of heartwarming tale that you can't help but like, and that's in part due to the stellar performances by the extremely talented cast.



Colin "Mr Darcy" Firth plays George VI, or 'Bertie', the stammering Duke of York whose attempts at overcoming his problem just aren't working. Helena Bonham-Carter plays his wife, who went on to become the Queen Mother, who eventually enlists the help of Lionel Logue (Rush), an Australian chap whose methods have come highly recommended. His unorthodox approach breaks down the class boundary between him and Bertie, and you get a sense of a real camaraderie between the two. The entire film drives towards the big showdown, in which Bertie's final confrontation is essentially with himself as he faces giving his first wartime speech to the nation.



I had a lisp as a youngster, so I always find it easy to sympathise with characters who suffer from speech impediments (with the exception of Kripke in The Big Bang Theory - but I think he's supposed to be insufferable). But would I have sympathise with just anyone with a problem? I don't think so. Firth plays Bertie as being very human, subject to workplace anxieties and stress. Sure, not all of us have to deal with the problems associated with being a member of the Royal Family, but Bertie is in a position in which all the wealth and privilege in the world just won't help. In fact, I found I almost sympathised with him more for being a prince rather than having a speech impediment. We might look at the Royal Family and consider them everything from "idle scroungers" to whatever other epithet seems to be most offensive at the time, but imagine being born into an existence in which your life is not really your own, and you're not free to pursue the same dreams as everyone else. I'd hate it.



I've been a fan of Firth's since 1995, and that adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and I always enjoy watching Bonham-Carter. It's particularly nice to watch her in a non-Burton role, where she actually gets to act instead of stomping around with big hair, screeching and emoting all over the place, and her likeness to the Queen Mother is unnerving. But really, the real star of the film is Rush, whose homely chatter and refusal to be cowed by Bertie's status is possibly what gets through to Bertie in the first place. Logue doesn't treat Bertie like a prince, so Bertie doesn't have to feel the weight of responsibility within Logue's office. He can just be Bertie. I was pleased to see at the end of the film that even when he became King, he remained friends with Logue. Just like he stole Pirates of the Caribbean from under the nose of Johnny Depp, so Geoffrey Rush steals The King's Speech.



Sure, it doesn't have monsters or fairytale creatures, but The King's Speech is a lovely little film, telling the story of one man's desire to overcome a simple, and very human, problem. I'll leave you with a clip of that magnificent speech.

#FridayFlash - Ghost Town

Up until Google came along, Pocklebridge didn't appear on any maps. We took down the signs during the war to confuse the Germans and we never put them back up, so our station remained anonymous, tucked away on a side spur that trains rarely use. We don't have many amenities so road signs only appear within about a mile or so of the village green, when you're too close to turn back. The village hid from the world, and we were happy with that.



But even we couldn't hide from a satellite, and eventually, Pocklebridge appeared on maps. Sat navs could find it through its post codes. People still had no reason to come here, so for a time, it didn't really matter. We kept on with our little quiet ways, and everything seemed fine. But word of mouth is a powerful thing, and it spreads faster than most viruses. After all, how many places do you know of that don't just have a haunted house, they have a whole street of them?



It started off with Eiderdown Cottage, the first house on the left in Willow Street. Its elderly owner died, a lovely old thing named Edith Crabtree, and she left her tiny place to a niece from London. The niece arrived, and soon started complaining of noises in the night, strange lights at the windows, and all manner of disturbances. I can't say any of us were surprised. Then No.3 Willow Street was next, left empty by the death of its owner, gap-toothed old Freda Smacksmith, and again the house was inherited away to a cousin from Birmingham. More disturbances were reported, including ghostly whispering over the back fence at midday. No.12, all the way down at the end of the lane, right where the street turns into scrap ground, was next. So it went on for months - the old folk died, leaving their houses to long lost relatives, who soon complained that things were going bump in the night. Eleven months after Mrs Crabtree died in Eiderdown Cottage, every resident in Willow Street was talking about ghosts - even the hard-nosed physicist who scoffed that they even exist. He soon changed his mind, I can tell you.



Of course, the internet found out, as the infernal thing always does. People began to visit Pocklebridge to see the haunted houses, bringing cameras and picnics. Tourists would loiter in the gardens, listening to the whispered conversations over the fence. The family in no.6 discovered that their resident ghost liked to rearrange the linen cupboard according to threadcount and people started paying a fee to come and see it. We even had TV crews come in, letting their hysterical hosts loose in the houses with thermometers and infra red. The ghosts stopped being pests, and became more like pets, pottering about the house playing with the furniture. The families that moved in started to see just why you wouldn't want to leave Pocklebridge.



That's the thing, you see. People don't move to Pocklebridge, and they don't move out. No one ever leaves. And let me tell you, we've got twenty more houses in the area with ageing occupants. That's twenty more houses to be left in wills, and inherited by outsiders. Twenty more houses just waiting for newcomers. Twenty more houses with phantom footsteps, flickering lights and knocking in the walls.



This town...it's becoming like a ghost town.

A to Z - Jurassic Park

I was really tempted for J to put down Jumanji, but the more I thought about it, the more I just had to put down Jurassic Park. After all, who doesn't love dinosaurs? I've loved them since I was little, and went through the phase of wanting to be a palaeontologist. Now I'm going through a phase of wishing I'd done forensic anthropology but more on that another time.



I remember going to see Jurassic Park at the cinema, and I've since read the source novel by Michael Crichton, and I think it's one of those rare occasions (along with Fight Club , previously discussed) where the film is actually more successful at telling the story than the book. The basic plot is simple - rich guy John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has managed to clone dinosaurs from DNA found inside those mosquitoes preserved in amber, and wants to open a theme park to display them. In order to test everything before it opens, he invites along various people to give it a try, including Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his two grandchildren. Things go wrong, the dinosaurs get out, and with the group split up around the island, they have to get off before they become dinner.



Given I like Sam Neill AND Jeff Goldblum, it would be hard for me to dislike Jurassic Park. It's hard to believe it's twenty years old, but I think part of its success lies in the use of animatronics alongside CGI to render the dinosaurs. It's difficult for decent animatronics to age badly since they actually exist as part of the film's misè-en-scene, unlike CGI which can look like it was added at a later date by a toddler with access to Photoshop. Most people found the shot in which the jeeps see the herd of brachiosaurs for the first time to be the real Money Shot, but I always did like the first sight of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. They might have tiny baby arms but they still look cool.



I did, and still do, have problems with Jurassic Park. The size of a Triceratops is wrong, for one thing, along with the fact that a Velociraptor was only around a couple of feet tall, meaning the dinosaurs the film calls raptors are closer to the Deinonychus. Even as a youngster, I couldn't work out how they could possibly determine all of the types of DNA within the bodies of the mosquitoes in order to ensure they weren't creating a triceratops/T-rex hybrid, and I wasn't entirely sure that adding the DNA of an amphibian to the DNA of a reptile would make a lot of sense. Of course, the dinosaurs have been genetically bred to be female and they need the gender-switching DNA of a frog in order to be able to breed, but couldn't they have found a reptile that did that? Still, these are nitpicky details in what is otherwise an enjoyable adventure film if you switch your brain off.



I leave you with the scene in which Alan and the kids get a bit more up close and personal with the Gallimimus than they might like...

A to Z - It's A Wonderful Life

I think most people might have expected me to choose something like Inception or I, Robot for this letter, but I couldn't really not choose It's A Wonderful Life. It's a film that I actually hated for a long time, but after watching it again during my first film degree, I actually found a depth in it that I'd previously missed. It's also a film whose central tenet I utterly refute, and I ignore its sentimental ending in favour of sympathy for our hapless hero, George Bailey.



George (James Stewart) is one of cinema's Nice Guys. He grows up in Bedford Falls, a perfect little town that only seems to exist on celluloid, but he's a young man with an itch, a desire to explore, to see the world. Sadly, this particular itch is to go unscratched. While his brother gets to go to war, George stays behind to run the family business, the Building & Loan that helps the people of the town with their housing needs. He marries his high school sweetheart, a lovely lady named Mary (Donna Reed), and has four kids. But it's not enough. He feels hemmed in, and when his useless uncle puts his business in jeopardy, George snaps. He wishes he'd never been born.



Wishing in films is a risky business, and his guardian angel, an odd little man named Clarence (Henry Travers), pops up to show him what life would have been like if he hadn't been born. George gets that rare glimpse into the effect one person can have in a community, and it turns out that pretty little Bedford Falls would have become a seedy dump named Pottersville, rife with prostitution and poverty, without him. Without George, his brother would have died in a childhood accident, Mary becomes a spinster librarian (who inexplicably needs glasses in the alternate world - apparently his presence also cures her short sightedness), and the world is out of kilter. With this new appreciation for life, he gets to return to his normal existence, cheered by the spirit of charity, and full of love.



I know I probably shouldn't, but I do love the film. I think humans are obsessed with the idea of "What if?", and it's easy to idly wonder how different the timeline would be without us in it. I suppose the film also wants us to realise that it's the little things we do that matter, and any intercession on our behalf can have a ripple effect further down the line. In a way, I guess it's saying "Be a good person and do good things" since a ripple effect from positive actions is more likely to spread positivity (after all, look at the ripple effect caused by the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents) and I'm always fascinated by 'alternate universe' stories. The idea of guardian angels is even more fascinating, particularly when we assume they're always going to be these elegant beings, and Clarence turns out to be a socially awkward little man with a fondness for mulled wine.



But George still never gets to leave Bedford Falls. That's the crux of my problem with the film. Sure, he gets to realise just how important he is to the world which gives him a new appreciation for what he has as opposed to what he doesn't have (which ends up being a little egocentric for my liking, but never mind), but he still never gets to leave - the poor guy doesn't even get to have a holiday, unless that happens after the credits stop rolling. Just as Shark Tale did its damnedest to convince its viewers never to strive to rise about their station in life, so It's A Wonderful Life takes up the refrain of The Wizard of Oz - there's no place like home...



Anyway, I give you George, proving just why he's the guy to run the Building & Loan...