In any case the argument that Kris is Santa is simple: the theme of the movie is clearly and simply that we must believe in things even when there’s no evidence to back them up. Consider:
If, as you assert, Kris isn’t Santa, then the movie is denying its own message.
Even more telling is this line:
Since Kris does get it for her – or, at least, leads them to the house and has visited it, in the terms of the movie, he’s really Santa Claus.
Insisting that he’s not Santa is like being Doris in the beginning of the film. Or worse, it’s being Sawyer (the one person who never accepts Kris is Santa). If you want to be Sawyer, that’s your decision, but since he’s shown to be a neurotic, vindictive, and small-minded little man – and pretty much the only villain of the movie – that’s clearly not what the movie is intending.
If you were right, then Sawyer would be the hero. He’s not, and thus you’re wrong.
And to add one more thing to RealityChuck’s excellent summary, I’ll just say that it’s perfectly possible to be an atheist, rationalist, and skeptic who doesn’t take anything on faith, and yet believe that the 1947 Miracle on 34th Street is a charming and delightful minor classic of cinema.
Yep-I got Knockturn Alley (which makes the Diagon all the more inexplicable–I kept thinking [when I thought of it at all] as some play on dragon or diamond). Knockturn is also a double pun–doesn’t it also mean something to do with seances or carnival “fun” houses?
The THOUGHT of Hagrid being anywhere close to anything to do with alchemy makes me shudder. Why give him the name of Rubeus?
Slytherin is a play on slithering snakes. No clue where she got Hufflepuff, though. It sounds more like that thing Ginny buys at her brother’s shop and names Arnold, rather than a distinguished house of the premier wizarding school…
The ride on the Hsaw Aknow (Wonka Wash) occurs right before they go into the TV room. The TV room is a clean room. The ride is used to ensure that whomever goes into the room is clean.
Almost everything in Wonka’s office is split in half lengthwise. When he gets angry at Grandpa Joe, he starts reading him the contract, “The undersigned waives all rights and privileges here in contained et cetera et cetra.” Looking closely, the contract is split in half length wise. The et cetera’s are just place holders for the missing half.
How heavily Star Wars was cribbed from The Wizard of Oz.
Eventually, I noticed that the “knock over the guards, take their uniforms, and march into the prison” gag was played almost identically… and then all of the other parallels became obvious. :smack:
Not something I realized but something I was told - in Young Frankenstein the reason a horse neighs everytime Frau Blucah’s name is said is because Blucah means “glue” in German.
How do you get down from an elephant?
You don’t, you get down from a duck.
For decades I thought it was very dry humor along the lines of “Don’t do something difficult, do something easy” – and they used a duck because it’s a funny word.
For 10 years I worked at a building where one of the other cars had the vanity plate XANITAX, and I always wondered if it referred to a tax accountant, or pharmaceutical sales, or what? When I finally got it, I felt particularly stupid because
For the longest time, I could not understand the lyrics to Givin’ the Dog a Bone, by AC/DC. Sounded mostly like a bunch of screaming and grunting. It wasn’t until one day when I read the lyrics that I saw it was about getting a blowjob from a girl.
I didn’t get that joke for an embarassingly long time. I just never made the connection as a kid. Fast-forward to high school - a group of us were goofing around, telling stupid jokes. Someone told that one, I looked down at my down vest, and it suddenly hit me. Ooooooooh, I get it! :smack:
On the Rush song “Spirit of Radio,” there is a couplet at the end, set apart from the rest of the song. I always knew these two lines were a take-off of “The Sound of Silence”* lines:
And the words of the prophet were written on the subway walls, and tenant halls/
whispered in the sound of silence" (a previous line had used the word “echoed”)
So I get partial credit for making that conenction. But the first 1,000 times or so I heard the Rush song I heard the lyrics as:
“For the words of the profits were written on the stadium wall, and concert hall/
And echoes with the sound of salesmen.”
It wasn’t until I heard a Rush tribute band sing the song live that I discovered the word was “studio”, not “stadium”. Which in the context of the song makes more sense.
And yes, I got that Rush changed “prophets” to “profits”.
*Also known as “Sounds of Silence” but I prefer the singular version and apparently either is correct.
I guess I was pretty young when Cheap Trick first came out with Surrender. I remember hearing the line “Just the other day I heard of a Soldier’s falling off…” and wondering what the Soldier fell off of.
Then recently I heard the song on Jack FM and “Of course, THAT’S what fell off!”
:smack:
Along a similar vein, in Man of La Mancha, Aldonza’s song (I was born in a ditch to a mother who left me there…) is basically the same tune as Don Quixote’s song (I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha…), but much more musically ornate. It’s a sort of musical commentary on the fact that Aldonza is living in the real world, with all of its detail, while Don Quixote is living in an overly-simplistic fantasy world.
I think you’re thinking of St. Therese of Lisieux.