Popcorn Adventure Time Part II
PoAdTi Too! The Revenge! The Return! The Christmas Special!
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Written by Martin Cadwallader
Creative at VBAT
Popcorn Adventure Time! It’s an initiative to promote the awareness and appreciation of movies, animation and motion graphics.
In case you missed it, this is what happened in part 1.
Incidentally, the title WAS a mash-up of Popcorn Time — the free torrenting movie app — and Adventure Time — the animated series. But unfortunately, pop culture being what it is, both of these references which may have seemed edgy and current a year ago are now entirely forgotten and obsolete.
But we will press on undeterred under our brave flag, and the excuse it provides for gratuitous and shameless numbers of exclamation marks!
Christmas Special!
Yes, merry Christmas everybody! Continuing the theme of anachronistic obscurity we will be celebrating Christmas this fine, February afternoon with a field report from our Popcorn Adventure Time Christmas Edition.
I’m going to keep this brief because there is only one choice for our Christmas special and it’s not a big surprise. It’s, of course, A Wonderful Life.
The Film
What makes this the perfect and obvious Christmas movie? Is it the fact that it was a total flop in the cinema? Or perhaps the themes of suicide and financial ruin provide its timeless festive charm?
Apparently the 1946 film was such a flop that the copyright holders did not renew its protection and so in 1974 it fell into the public domain. From then on, it was pretty much aired every christmas, every year, on every channel until there was no one left in the civilised world who had not at least once shed a tear or two over George Bailey’s joyful and triumphant return from that bleak alternate universe where he didn’t exist and his wife got a job.
So, as an early example of a public domain success story, It’s a Wonderful Life is truly the Linux of the film world.
A couple of things I noticed this time round
But enough! We’re not film students are we? Where’s the booze man? It’s Christmas for Christ’s sake.
Mulled Wine
“…heavy on the cinnamon and light on the cloves” — Clarence the Angel
In the bar scene George orders a double bourbon and Clarence considers a flaming rum punch before finally arriving at mulled wine, heavy on the cinnamon and light on the cloves.
Now, I would have much preferred to make a flaming rum punch, it seems more exotic and nothing livens up an evening more that the potential of an office fire. Also, as a fan of plain old wine, the prospect of throwing in spices; serving at temperatures other than room; garnishing with fruit, is all a little upsetting. Furthermore the only times I’ve had mulled wine in recent memory it has been a sickly sweet affair created from a ready made sachet of nastiness. However rules are rules, and double bourbons are no fun at all, so with gritted teeth and a resentful glance towards Clarence, mulled wine it was.
Thankfully, the Guardian came to the rescue with its ‘How to make the perfect…’ series where they try out various methods and recipes, review the techniques and distil their findings into one meta-recipe.
Here’s the mulled wine one. Handy!
Spoiler alert: the key is to dissolve the sugar in a small amount of wine first so that you don’t need to boil all of it which would burn off the alcohol. Nobody wants that.
I basically followed that recipe but without the ginger wine as I couldn’t find it on sale in Amsterdam. I think this helped keep it simple and more drinkable anyway. The only other modifications were to increase the cinnamon and use fewer cloves as per Clarence’s recommendation of course!
The result was surprisingly acceptable and cooking it up had the added effect of making the office smell delicious.
Christmas Squirrel
Finally, I would like to share one particularly great moment in the film. George has just made clear to Uncle Billy that he’s ruined his life, (as explained in depth in this analysis by the Onion). Devastated by this realisation, Uncle Billy lays his head in his hands in despair. But just then — a miniature miracle in its own right — a Christmas squirrel appears, climbs up his arm and gives him a consolatory cuddle:
Who wouldn’t feel better after that?
Merry Christmas!
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Written by Martin Cadwallader
Creative at VBAT
