“The Christmas movies are all gone,” I overheard one clerk at the video store say to another.

I figured I’d ask anyway. “Do you have ‘The Lion in Winter?’”

They did. I suppose they don’t consider it to be a Christmas movie; like my definition of ‘Blues,’ my definition of what constitutes a Yuletide film differs from everyone else’s. And yet ‘The Lion in Winter’ is one of the great Christmas films.

The movie centers on England’s King Henry II, and his efforts to establish the terms of his succession. A powerful man in life, he sought to control events after his death as well.

Described by Winston Churchill as “the very greatest King that England ever knew,” Henry II was a 12th Century dynamo who built the prototype of the modern state when he wasn’t warring, negotiating or marrying his way to ever-greater power. He consolidated his grip on England, then established dominion over much of France; as a feudal warlord in control of the richest French provinces, he was more powerful in that country than the reigning French sovereign.

His wife, Eleanor, from the French province of Aquitaine, was the annulled queen of Louis the VII of France. Eleven years older than Henry, tough, beautiful and brilliant, she still ranks as one of the most powerful women in history. Estranged from Henry later in their marriage, she plotted with his eldest son, Richard, to seize the throne. Henry threw her in jail and kept her there for sixteen years.

‘The Lion in Winter’ takes place on Christmas Eve, 1183. Henry has given Eleanor a reprieve from captivity, and brought her to the French fortress of Chenon, where he has also summoned Richard and his two other male heirs, Geoffrey and John. They are all joined by Philip II, who has recently inherited the French crown. Philip’s younger sister Alais is also present; she is betrothed to Richard, but Henry has grabbed her as his mistress. The aging patriarch wishes to establish some familial order and take a pre-emptive shot at establishing his legacy.

They are a dysfunctional family for the ages. The film, scripted by playwright James Goldman and released in 1968, is full of wit and invective. Indeed, if there’s a flaw it’s that near the end of the 160 minute flick the viewer is almost as worn out by all the verbal jousting as the characters themselves.

The film’s two stars, Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn, eat up the scenery with a couple of the most flamboyant performances in film. They are supported by, among others, future James Bond Timothy Dalton and a young, Welsh-accented Anthony Hopkins, who is especially good in his screen debut.

The movie was actually O’Toole’s project. He was, in the mid-Sixties, a newly-coronated superstar, his most notable appearance being the title role of David Lean’s 1963 epic ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ He knew playing Henry II would be a great vehicle, and knew equally that the role of Eleanor would be a plum part for any actress.

He snagged Hepburn for the female lead, and recruited Englishman Anthony Harvey to direct. The latter was a curious choice. Harvey had made only one film; an shortish art house piece called ‘The Dutchman.’ Most of Harvey’s experience in film was as an editor, cutting his teeth under the exacting standards of Stanley Kubrick in ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘Lolita.’

Perhaps O’Toole and Hepburn figured they were getting a pliant sophomore who would let them run the show. Or maybe O’Toole saw a young director whose taste for clever dialogue and some swagger in the acting was akin to his own.

Once in charge, though, Harvey added some key elements to the picture, the most striking of which is the beautiful yet primitive ambience he creates. Shot by Douglas Slocombe, it is a lovely looking film, but its visual flourishes do not smother an underlying austerity that pervades the work and counterbalances the raging performances.

Many of the film’s subjects have become the stuff of legend. In addition to Henry and Eleanor, their sons Richard (the Lionheart) and John (the nefarious villain of the Robin Hood tales) are among the most storied characters English history has ever produced.

But Harvey manages to place them all in the context, even at the mercy, of their time. ‘The Lion in Winter’ does not, like many historical films, leave you with the idea that the characters have running water, central heating and microwave ovens.

Filmed in various locations in France, Wales and Ireland, the interiors are cold and stark. Fireplaces blaze constantly, candles are always flickering. Dogs roam cluttered courtyards and stone corridors, nobles eat on benches, courtiers and soldiers sleep on straw.

One of the most arresting scenes takes place early in the film. There is a large bowl of water. A half-inch thick layer of ice has crusted over the surface. A hand plunges in, grabs the ice in one piece, and tosses it aside.

The hand is Henry’s. He has risen in the morning, and he proceeds to wash his face. The bowl is in his room; it’s his washbasin. He may be ‘the greatest power in a thousand years,’ but he wakes to a frigid house, washes in stale ice water, and breakfasts on dry porridge and bread.

Eight-hundred years on, the descendants of the lowest of his subjects enjoy a lifestyle he couldn’t have conceived of.

It’s a conclusion the film leaves you to draw yourself, but it’s a conclusion nonetheless. And one as hopeful as you’ll find in any Christmas movie.

I noted that former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen was in Toronto recently, a guest at the convention that saw the replacement of Jean Chretien by Paul Martin as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. The manner of Chretien’s leaving strikes me as similar to the way Owen was shoved out of office by the local Non Partisan Association (NPA).

Politicians like NDP leader Jack Layton and left-leaning commentators like Linda McQuaig and Moe Sihota have been lately waxing positive about Jean Chretien’s last year in office. Paul Martin, as Layton would have it, is muscling in to pull the Liberals to the right just as Chretien was on the cusp of introducing a slew of socially progressive policies. For Layton it's a nifty manouver; use the outgoing leader for your own political gain, even if he's not in your party.

A similar tack was taken by Vancouver’s new mayor, Larry Campbell, in the municipal election of a year ago. Philip Owen, long derided as an establishment square, was reborn in the eyes of the left as a latterly-enlightened social progressive, thrust out of his party by scheming backroomers and an ambitous former ally just as he was about to go forward with the safe injection site experiment.

The media bought the line and the wily Campbell was off and running. He tapped into a silent but significant view held by many in Vancouver; that Owen was a simple but decent guy; not perfect, but easy to relate to on some basic level.

Is Layton onto something as well? Will the many Canadian voters who had a gut-level affection for the gushing Canadian-ness of Chretien turn on Martin? Certainly not enough of them to elect Layton as Prime Minister, but maybe enough of them on the left flank of the Liberal constituency to give the NDP a more respectable number of seats in Ottawa.

Without the simple ‘Canada is best’ patriotism of Chretien, it is unlikely that Paul Martin would have had the leeway to do what he did in the Finance portfolio. Many of Martin’s initiatives, particularly the cutting of programs and transfer payments to balance the federal budget, would have been seen as the thin edge of some ideologically conservative wedge had Chretien, with his open wariness of the American right and his years in the Trudeau inner circle, not been running interference.

The fact that much of the Liberal party can’t grasp this is reminiscent of the way the local NPA couldn’t see the asset it had in ‘Philip the Dim.’ Indeed, Martin himself seems to be the only one who knows it. We saw hints of this at his coronation as Liberal leader over the weekend. His acknowledgement of Chretien’s support while he was finance minster, his invoking of his father’s social activism, and his alliance of convenience with Bono all may allow him to create just enough of a small ‘l’ liberal face to stave off an electoral threat from the left.

Whether we'll still see this side of him when he's forced to make a few hard decisions as Prime Minister is another matter. It may well be that he performs best when someone else is the frontman.

My favorite New Year’s Eve bash took place when I was 18 years old. My band staged a performance in my parents’ basement. Afterward, we were whisked away via white Oldsmobile to a party at the posh Buckingham home of my childhood friend Winston Seto.

What was special about our show that night was that we were performing as an alter-ego band. Usually we were Trajan, a bunch of Burnaby headbangers. On that evening, however, we were The Boring Holmgrens, a punk band lead by the mythical Exciter Boy.

The thing is, The Boring Holmgrens were better.

I thought of this recently as I pondered the fifth anniversary of the release (or perhaps I should say the re-release) of the one and only album by the rock band Huxley.

Like the Boring Homgrens, Huxley was an alter ego band. It was the brainchild of Rob ‘Mule’ Hughes. He wanted to create a concept band that would deliver its listeners back to the early 1980s, the Elizabethan age of heavy rock.

So off we went, recording the whole thing in my dad’s house on corner of Moscrop Street and Huxley Avenue. Most of the bed tracks were done in the summer, but the real work came in November. It rained like hell all month, my dad went to Hawaii, and Mule and I settled in for a month of adolescent regression that ranks, I confess, as one of the best times in my life.

For me, the Huxley sessions marked a return to music. I had actually stopped playing my guitar altogether for a number of years; it was a no-hope addiction. I suppose I was pre-emptively taking the advice that the Mule himself would dispense years later:

“Stop it. Put that down. Take a break, go to school, get a trade. Make yourself useful. There’s way too much music out there in the world already. While I respect your need to spread your ‘message,’ please keep it to yourself.”

It was actually not a bad period. What it lacked in rocking it made up for in everything else. But then, out of the blue, JR McClelland gave me a call and the whole thing got rolling again.

Actually, come to think of it, nothing got rolling. We jammed about once every six months. It was only when Rob, with the Mule-like sense of purpose that is one of his hallmarks, decided that the Huxley project should go ahead in earnest that things began to change. A new era dawned in my life.

At the time it seemed utterly positive. It was a great year. I was like the Roman Empire during the era of Trajan himself. Settling into a month of rock and roll and booze in the old man’s basement seemed to be a perfect way to cap it all off.

And five years later I still get people talking to me about the “Huxley album.” Indeed, aside from its bargain basement production, it’s quite listenable. Lots of good riffs, conceived spontaneously and without inhibition.

Huxley was a four piece: Wes Byrne on guitar and vocals; Willingdon Black on guitar and vocals; Aljoz on bass; and Hugh Robson on drums. What I remember most fondly was sitting there amidst the cords, mics and amps, laying down guitar or vocal tracks some blustery evening, then adjourning to quaff down pints of the ‘Famous Ales of England,’ not to mention the not-so-famous ales of half of the rest of Europe and a good portion of Canada. There were some various malts and brandies comsumed along the way too. Recently, while cleaning up my father’s house, my sister came upon a large stash of exotic empties, archeological proof that Huxley did indeed once exist.

While Huxley were a typical British hard rock band, The Boring Holmgrens were something else altogether. Their origins lay in the fertile imagination of my long time pal Victor Keong.

“My puppet crawls, mortally wounded, as I kick the shit out of it.”

That from a song called “City of Desecration.” There were other tunes as well, among them “Cum Machine,” “Blood in Bombay,” and “She’s from Mt. Gonnga:”

“Oh great Shiva lend me a hand,
‘Cause I’m starting a rock and roll band.”

Perhaps you had to be there, but the Holmgrens' stuff rocked pretty well, and worked for the same reason Huxley did. It was not serious. Once you are freed up from trying to be serious, you end up being more real. The trying and the posing are gone, and all that’s left is the doing. It’s a good way to generate ideas.

And the ideas can then be used elsewhere. I have recycled pretty much all of the old Boring Holmgrens riffs. They’ve made their way into the first and (if it ever gets released) second Stoke records. I’ve also recycled a few of the Huxley songs.

You use the goof band as the catalyst to come up with the ideas, then you use the ideas in the real band.

The thing is, what if people think the real band is also a goof band? It came to dawn on me that if you play in a band called ‘Stoke,’ who play songs about Penthouse Pets and whose drummer twirls drumsticks, you may end up back at square one.

Of course, many of the most popular bands in Vancouver are goof bands. It says something about the emasculated, insecure nature of this town that cloaking youself in ‘irony’ is the only way you can safely express yourself.

And indeed, who are the ‘serious’ musicians these days anyway? For a couple of years I’ve been reading about how this place is an hotbed of ‘Alt-Country.’

Hmmm. We’re about as far away as you can get, geographically and philosophically, from Tennessee, Kentucky or Texas, yet a twang-accented hillbilly from Kitsilano or Commercial Drive raises no eyebrows?

More irony, I suppose.