ACT ONE, SCENE ONE. EXTERIOR: CHRISTMAS COTTAGE.
We open on a long shot of a "Christmas cottage", the garden blanketed in snow and lights on in all the windows. A curlicue of smoke is drifting from the chimneypot. The path has been freshly swept and a holly wreath is adorning the gatepost. And, erm, that's about it ...
Fade out. The end.
We have had the film of the book and the film of the fairground ride, and now (or at least this Yule) we shall be getting the film of the picture. Brushing aside the obvious narrative constraints, Lionsgate is ploughing ahead with an "adaptation" of The Christmas Cottage by Thomas Kinkade, a Christian painter who prides himself on being America's "most-collected living artist".
Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light ™ produces bucolic pastel pictures of woodland homes, small-town streets, whitewashed chapels and American flags. These paintings come adorned with titles such as Make-a-Wish Cottage, Serenity Cove, Hometown Pride and Wild Night in the Missouri State Insane Asylum (although I may have misread that last one). The Lionsgate production will reportedly document how Kinkade came to paint his Christmas Cottage, but that sounds almost as dull as watching it dry.
Surely they can come up with a better story than that.
Am I alone, for instance, in finding something decidedly creepy in these supposedly wholesome canvases? They are all a little too fetid, over-blushed and oppressive. They could be illustrations for a particularly graphic version of Hansel and Gretel (one of them is even called The Gingerbread Cottage). So I'd like to see The Christmas Cottage spun into a film about a starving artist who accepts a commission to paint an idyllic mock-Tudor cottage in the woods beyond town. The money is good, but there is one condition. The artist must paint from the drive and never, ever approach the cottage or step inside.
Finally, like Bluebeard's wife, the artist gives in to temptation (or maybe he just gets cold, what with all that snow). He pushes open the door and sees ... well, what exactly? Perhaps the jolly Waltons-esque dad has butchered the little 'uns and stuffed them full of sage. Maybe the idyllic cottage is a front for some brutal CIA holding facility (Camp Xmas Ray?). The possibilities are endless.
In fact, until Hollywood finally gets around to making a movie about those dogs who play cards, I reckon they could do a lot worse than Kinkade's Christmas Cottage. We have a season, a location, and an opening shot. From this point the story could go just about anywhere.
