THOMAS KINKADE'S CHRISTMAS COTTAGE
Inspired by his mentor, a young artist paints a mural of his hometown.
Let's talk a little about Thomas Kinkade, shall we? You may know him as the self-professed "Painter Of Light", a devout Christian who valued family and faith above all other things, a kindly gentleman whose work captured a sense of hope and belonging, beloved by millions of people around the world. He was also a dedicated alcoholic, an alleged plagiarist with serious anger management issues, and a man unafraid to market himself and his work to the masses to line his pockets, perhaps even exploiting his own faith and Christian iconography in many of his paintings to broaden his audience, earning a reputation among his contemporaries as a hack and a sell-out.
You can't throw a scone in certain hoity-toity circles without hitting somebody with their pointy nose in the air who can't wait to deride Thomas Kinkade and his "overly sentimental" paintings, accusing the man of using underlings to finish some of his most famous works while he sat back and counted his money, mass-producing "official Thomas Kinkade" originals in an assembly line fashion to expand his family-friendly empire, or even the truly bizarre rumors that he would sometimes literally mark his territory like a dog, pissing on objects he claimed to own. Kinkade also drank himself to death in 2012, which is not a rumor, but a sad fact.
The man obviously had his demons, and I have nothing against him personally. To be honest, I actually like a lot of his work. It is overly sentimental and even occasionally rather simplistic, but some of his paintings do evoke a certain warmth within me which I can't deny, perhaps because I am also overly sentimental at times. I'm not going to judge the man for cashing in while the getting was good. He saw a market for his work, and he exploited it, so good for him. That's capitalism, baby. A lot of snobs will look down on somebody who does what Kinkade did, as if it makes them unworthy of respect because they found a way to earn a living doing what they love.
I've always felt the same way about Cassandra Peterson and her Elvira persona. She retained the rights to the character she created for Movie Macabre and marketed the absolute hell out of herself in the 1980's and 1990's, starring in advertisements for everything from beer to potato chips to Blockbuster Video, appearing at hundreds of pop culture conventions, co-writing, producing and starring in a cult movie, and basically making herself the ubiquitous "queen of Halloween". She's still all over the place, going strong at age 64 with her annual stage show at Knott's Scary Farm, not to mention her busy schedule of public appearances that takes her all over the world every year.
Cassandra Peterson is still very much in demand, and that's fantastic. She's not a sell-out; she's a shrewd businesswoman. She never would have guessed when Elvira's Movie Macabre began in 1981 that her "Goth Valley Girl" character would become a genuine pop culture icon, bringing her a level of fame and notoriety that she didn't dream possible. But none of this was just handed to her. She took the opportunity when it appeared and made an icon out of herself. She deserves admiration for this accomplishment, not derision.
What does this have to do with Thomas Kinkade? Very little, I suppose. I'm just a big Elvira fan. One thing I can say about Cassandra Peterson is that she doesn't take herself seriously, unafraid to poke a little fun at herself. I don't think I can say the same about Thomas Kinkade, considering the movie I watched today, a 2008 hagiography of Thomas Kinkade produced by Thomas Kinkade entitled Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage.
Here's the plot of Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage: in 1977, young Thomas Kinkade comes home from college for the holidays to spend a little time with his dear mother and brother at their beloved cottage in Placerville, California. Unfortunately for the Kinkade family, his mother's a little behind on the rent, or the property taxes, or the mortgage, and the bank is moving to foreclose on their cozy little home in a few weeks. Thomas takes a job painting a mural of the town for their upcoming Christmas gala to help out, inspiring the entire town with his magnificent art to come together and save the Kinkade family cottage, rekindling the Christmas spirit for all of the forlorn and disillusioned citizens of Placerville in the process.
Like I said, this movie is a little in love with Thomas Kinkade. It purports to be inspired by true events in the life of Thomas Kinkade, but I highly doubt things shook out this way in real life. It's a pretty standard story, all things considered, with Kinkade's work bringing out the best in the people of Placerville, a community still trying to shake off the ghosts of the recently ended war in Vietnam. Kinkade even manages to inspire his mentor, broken down by age and the death of his wife, to paint one last masterpiece that captures the true beauty of the world around them all.
I can't speak to the veracity of any of the events of this movie. I'm sure some of it's true, but a lot of it just feels like bullshit designed to make Thomas Kinkade look like a really awesome guy. Here's the funny thing, though: it's really good. Completely divorced from whatever tenuous connections the narrative may have to a real guy named Thomas Kinkade, Christmas Cottage is a very effective story of a community coming together to help one of their own, as well as a story of a young man at a crossroads in his life trying to figure out what kind of person he wants to become. The cast is what makes the movie, and oh boy, it's a damned fine cast.
We've got Jared Padalecki turning in solid work as Thomas Kinkade, Marcia Gay Harden's nuanced portrayal of his mother Maryanne, Richard Burgi burying the pain and regret of a wasted life underneath the mask of an easygoing, aging charmer as Thomas' alcoholic father Bill, Geoffrey Lewis as local bar owner Butch, struggling to find the meaning of existence as he mourns his soldier son's death, Chris Elliott playing the ambitious Ernie, an acerbic schemer with a sentimental streak trying to organize the perfect Christmas gala to put his hometown on the national stage, Richard Moll as Big Jim, an intense electrician who loves to terrorize his uptight neighbors as he engages in a Christmas decorations arms race, Kiersten Warren as aging beauty queen Tanya, desperately clinging to past glory in an effort to recapture her youth, and Peter O'Toole absolutely killing it as Kinkade's mentor Glen.
The cast carries this bog standard story across the finish line with relative ease, transforming a simple, perhaps even tired narrative into something memorable occasionally funny and even poignant. Even every third-tier supporting character is given their moment, that one line or action that immediately humanizes them, making the fictional world of Placerville feel lived-in and substantial.
The character of Tanya could have come across as a two-dimensional comic foil, a humorously pathetic has-been trying to weasel her way into the town's Christmas gala to steal a little of the spotlight for herself. But Kiersten Warren makes Tanya feel like a real person, somebody who had a small taste of fame and doesn't want to just fade away and let the world pass her by. And Geoffrey Lewis is heartbreaking as an old man who is still haunted by the combat death of his son eight years earlier, unable to see his own purpose in a world that took his only child from him in such a cruel manner. He's sleepwalking through his day-to-day life, finally realizing (with the help of Kinkade's mural) that he still matters, that there's still a place for him in this welcoming community, and his old wounds finally begin to heal.
And what can I say about Peter O'Toole? The character of Glen as presented on the page must have been a very simple one, retreading the tired trope of the reclusive old mentor inspired by his student to embrace life once again. And honestly, if any other actor had portrayed Glen, the role simply wouldn't have had any impact. Luckily, we don't have to imagine any other actor in the role, because Peter O'Toole is fantastic, being the consummate professional and refusing to phone in his performance, breathing a real and brilliant life into the character of Glen. Reading some of his character's dialogue out of context, one realizes just how rote most of the prose really is, but O'Toole's performance sells every single syllable, bringing a deep passion and longing to his role, single-handedly elevating this movie with his mere presence. Peter O'Toole was (and remains) a legend for a very clear reason, one that is made immediately clear with his first appearance onscreen in Christmas Cottage, demonstrating that the man never lost a step with age.
When Glen implores Thomas to "paint the light" in a climactic speech, any other actor would have oversold the melodrama in the dialogue, and as a result the entire message of the film would have been lost in a groan-worthy final grasp at sentimentality, directly connecting the story to Kinkade's "Painter Of Light" moniker, but O'Toole crushes the speech, as the kids would say, and even got me a little misty-eyed in the process. I believed the speech because of the man who brought it to life. That's a master at work, and Peter O'Toole was a master.
I won't speak to the accuracy (or lack thereof) of Christmas Cottage as a Thomas Kinkade biopic, but as a fictional narrative divorced from any real subject matter, it's a damned good one. Obviously with a cast like this, not to mention the top notch production values, this was not a Hallmark Channel original movie, but rather a limited theatrical release from 2008 that airs frequently on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel during this holiday season. I didn't know anything about this movie until after I watched it, thinking it was just one of the big-time Hallmark Hall Of Fame productions from back in the day until I saw the Lionsgate logo appear at the beginning of the movie, and no sign whatsoever of the Hallmark logo throughout the opening titles sequence. I guess that was my first clue.
But whatever. I watched it. I really liked it. That's all that matters.
VERDICT: PETER O'TOOLE
Let's talk a little about Thomas Kinkade, shall we? You may know him as the self-professed "Painter Of Light", a devout Christian who valued family and faith above all other things, a kindly gentleman whose work captured a sense of hope and belonging, beloved by millions of people around the world. He was also a dedicated alcoholic, an alleged plagiarist with serious anger management issues, and a man unafraid to market himself and his work to the masses to line his pockets, perhaps even exploiting his own faith and Christian iconography in many of his paintings to broaden his audience, earning a reputation among his contemporaries as a hack and a sell-out.
You can't throw a scone in certain hoity-toity circles without hitting somebody with their pointy nose in the air who can't wait to deride Thomas Kinkade and his "overly sentimental" paintings, accusing the man of using underlings to finish some of his most famous works while he sat back and counted his money, mass-producing "official Thomas Kinkade" originals in an assembly line fashion to expand his family-friendly empire, or even the truly bizarre rumors that he would sometimes literally mark his territory like a dog, pissing on objects he claimed to own. Kinkade also drank himself to death in 2012, which is not a rumor, but a sad fact.
The man obviously had his demons, and I have nothing against him personally. To be honest, I actually like a lot of his work. It is overly sentimental and even occasionally rather simplistic, but some of his paintings do evoke a certain warmth within me which I can't deny, perhaps because I am also overly sentimental at times. I'm not going to judge the man for cashing in while the getting was good. He saw a market for his work, and he exploited it, so good for him. That's capitalism, baby. A lot of snobs will look down on somebody who does what Kinkade did, as if it makes them unworthy of respect because they found a way to earn a living doing what they love.
I've always felt the same way about Cassandra Peterson and her Elvira persona. She retained the rights to the character she created for Movie Macabre and marketed the absolute hell out of herself in the 1980's and 1990's, starring in advertisements for everything from beer to potato chips to Blockbuster Video, appearing at hundreds of pop culture conventions, co-writing, producing and starring in a cult movie, and basically making herself the ubiquitous "queen of Halloween". She's still all over the place, going strong at age 64 with her annual stage show at Knott's Scary Farm, not to mention her busy schedule of public appearances that takes her all over the world every year.
Cassandra Peterson is still very much in demand, and that's fantastic. She's not a sell-out; she's a shrewd businesswoman. She never would have guessed when Elvira's Movie Macabre began in 1981 that her "Goth Valley Girl" character would become a genuine pop culture icon, bringing her a level of fame and notoriety that she didn't dream possible. But none of this was just handed to her. She took the opportunity when it appeared and made an icon out of herself. She deserves admiration for this accomplishment, not derision.
What does this have to do with Thomas Kinkade? Very little, I suppose. I'm just a big Elvira fan. One thing I can say about Cassandra Peterson is that she doesn't take herself seriously, unafraid to poke a little fun at herself. I don't think I can say the same about Thomas Kinkade, considering the movie I watched today, a 2008 hagiography of Thomas Kinkade produced by Thomas Kinkade entitled Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage.
Here's the plot of Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage: in 1977, young Thomas Kinkade comes home from college for the holidays to spend a little time with his dear mother and brother at their beloved cottage in Placerville, California. Unfortunately for the Kinkade family, his mother's a little behind on the rent, or the property taxes, or the mortgage, and the bank is moving to foreclose on their cozy little home in a few weeks. Thomas takes a job painting a mural of the town for their upcoming Christmas gala to help out, inspiring the entire town with his magnificent art to come together and save the Kinkade family cottage, rekindling the Christmas spirit for all of the forlorn and disillusioned citizens of Placerville in the process.
Like I said, this movie is a little in love with Thomas Kinkade. It purports to be inspired by true events in the life of Thomas Kinkade, but I highly doubt things shook out this way in real life. It's a pretty standard story, all things considered, with Kinkade's work bringing out the best in the people of Placerville, a community still trying to shake off the ghosts of the recently ended war in Vietnam. Kinkade even manages to inspire his mentor, broken down by age and the death of his wife, to paint one last masterpiece that captures the true beauty of the world around them all.
I can't speak to the veracity of any of the events of this movie. I'm sure some of it's true, but a lot of it just feels like bullshit designed to make Thomas Kinkade look like a really awesome guy. Here's the funny thing, though: it's really good. Completely divorced from whatever tenuous connections the narrative may have to a real guy named Thomas Kinkade, Christmas Cottage is a very effective story of a community coming together to help one of their own, as well as a story of a young man at a crossroads in his life trying to figure out what kind of person he wants to become. The cast is what makes the movie, and oh boy, it's a damned fine cast.
We've got Jared Padalecki turning in solid work as Thomas Kinkade, Marcia Gay Harden's nuanced portrayal of his mother Maryanne, Richard Burgi burying the pain and regret of a wasted life underneath the mask of an easygoing, aging charmer as Thomas' alcoholic father Bill, Geoffrey Lewis as local bar owner Butch, struggling to find the meaning of existence as he mourns his soldier son's death, Chris Elliott playing the ambitious Ernie, an acerbic schemer with a sentimental streak trying to organize the perfect Christmas gala to put his hometown on the national stage, Richard Moll as Big Jim, an intense electrician who loves to terrorize his uptight neighbors as he engages in a Christmas decorations arms race, Kiersten Warren as aging beauty queen Tanya, desperately clinging to past glory in an effort to recapture her youth, and Peter O'Toole absolutely killing it as Kinkade's mentor Glen.
The cast carries this bog standard story across the finish line with relative ease, transforming a simple, perhaps even tired narrative into something memorable occasionally funny and even poignant. Even every third-tier supporting character is given their moment, that one line or action that immediately humanizes them, making the fictional world of Placerville feel lived-in and substantial.
The character of Tanya could have come across as a two-dimensional comic foil, a humorously pathetic has-been trying to weasel her way into the town's Christmas gala to steal a little of the spotlight for herself. But Kiersten Warren makes Tanya feel like a real person, somebody who had a small taste of fame and doesn't want to just fade away and let the world pass her by. And Geoffrey Lewis is heartbreaking as an old man who is still haunted by the combat death of his son eight years earlier, unable to see his own purpose in a world that took his only child from him in such a cruel manner. He's sleepwalking through his day-to-day life, finally realizing (with the help of Kinkade's mural) that he still matters, that there's still a place for him in this welcoming community, and his old wounds finally begin to heal.
And what can I say about Peter O'Toole? The character of Glen as presented on the page must have been a very simple one, retreading the tired trope of the reclusive old mentor inspired by his student to embrace life once again. And honestly, if any other actor had portrayed Glen, the role simply wouldn't have had any impact. Luckily, we don't have to imagine any other actor in the role, because Peter O'Toole is fantastic, being the consummate professional and refusing to phone in his performance, breathing a real and brilliant life into the character of Glen. Reading some of his character's dialogue out of context, one realizes just how rote most of the prose really is, but O'Toole's performance sells every single syllable, bringing a deep passion and longing to his role, single-handedly elevating this movie with his mere presence. Peter O'Toole was (and remains) a legend for a very clear reason, one that is made immediately clear with his first appearance onscreen in Christmas Cottage, demonstrating that the man never lost a step with age.
When Glen implores Thomas to "paint the light" in a climactic speech, any other actor would have oversold the melodrama in the dialogue, and as a result the entire message of the film would have been lost in a groan-worthy final grasp at sentimentality, directly connecting the story to Kinkade's "Painter Of Light" moniker, but O'Toole crushes the speech, as the kids would say, and even got me a little misty-eyed in the process. I believed the speech because of the man who brought it to life. That's a master at work, and Peter O'Toole was a master.
I won't speak to the accuracy (or lack thereof) of Christmas Cottage as a Thomas Kinkade biopic, but as a fictional narrative divorced from any real subject matter, it's a damned good one. Obviously with a cast like this, not to mention the top notch production values, this was not a Hallmark Channel original movie, but rather a limited theatrical release from 2008 that airs frequently on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel during this holiday season. I didn't know anything about this movie until after I watched it, thinking it was just one of the big-time Hallmark Hall Of Fame productions from back in the day until I saw the Lionsgate logo appear at the beginning of the movie, and no sign whatsoever of the Hallmark logo throughout the opening titles sequence. I guess that was my first clue.
But whatever. I watched it. I really liked it. That's all that matters.
VERDICT: PETER O'TOOLE
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