Christmas in L.A.

Christmas always comes early to Los Angeles. In fact, the slightly tacky decorations hit the lamp-posts even before Thanksgiving. But the really good thing about this time of year in this part of the world is the abundance of new movies being released. They proliferate both in the cinemas, in private screening rooms and in the ‘screeners’, the DVDs that the various studios send to members of the Academy hoping they will vote for them at Oscar time.

I’m lucky enough to be one of the 5,000 acting members so I try to see as many of the movies as possible. Happily this year there are some excellent ones and a few great performances. Angelina Jolie in Changeling, James Brolin in W. and Javier Bardem in Che. But the performance that blew me away is Sean Penn in Milk. As the eponymous hero, the actor lost what appears to be about 30 pounds and miraculously transformed himself into the controversial gay activist who was murdered in 1978. This performance is so perfect it should be a master-class in acting, and if he doesn’t win the Oscar I shall eat one of my many hats!

Do you know who Anastasia Hille, Karel Roden, Lukas Haas, James Le Gras, Melissa Sagemiller and Dede Pfeiffer are? Neither do I, but they are all above the titles of several premium HBO and cinema channel movies that these networks just aired on a winter Sunday afternoon. Boring movies? You bet — and so are the actors. Why can’t the networks air some movies starring giants like Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy or Katherine Hepburn? There are so many fabulous stars from past decades that people still love. And most films between 1935 and 1960 were extremely entertaining, much more so than the schlock that goes straight to video or is ‘made-for-TV filler’.