Home Alone 4

A few days ago they showed this movie on TV. Both Ana and me know the other three entries in the series, but neither of us knew about this one. So we decided to watch this one...

(Watch out for spoilers, but if you know any of the movies from the series, there won't be many)
This movie returns to the family from the first two movies. Or at least tries to. I'm not sure what they tried. We have Kevin, his parents, an older brother and sister, even Marv. But two more of Kevin's siblings are missing and Harry has gone too, supposedly he died. Kevin's age suggests that this is happenening between the first two entris in the series.

Plot: Kevin's parents separated some time after last Christmas and now Kevin's dad (Peter) lives with his new girlfriend Natalie (note: she is not the reason why they separated!). She is rich, successful, pretty and young. Before Christmas Peter asks his children if they would like to spend a few days with Natalie and him. After a fight with his brother, Kevin decides to go to them. There he meets a strick looking butler (who in the end in pure Home Alone tradition turns out to be a good person) and a kind maid. Natalie's house is a "smart house", where things are done simply by voice command. Natalie gives him a big room full of toys and its own spa (bathroom sounds too small).
Since Natalie has a busy social life she and Peter spend their evenings out and this give Marv and his girlfriend a perfect opportunity to check the house, because they will try to kidnap a prince that will come to visit Natalie for Christmas. Since they have one of those keys to use voice command and Kevin can't summon the butler, he starts suspecting the butler is their accomplice. To get rid of them Kevin "accidentally" floods the house, which gives Natalie a panic attack. Because the video footage was deleted, Kevin has no proof that there were any burglars and so no one believes him. He gets scolded a bit but Peter and Natalie thought this is because of the divorce.
Kevin, Peter and Natalie have fun together decorating the Christmas tree (which turns out ugly), but Natalie has her designers change the decorations (to some good looking ones). The next day Kevin, while chaising Marv and his girlfriend, ruins Natalie's party. After that Natalie tells Kevin to behave, because this is an important time for her. We see that she managed to frighten Kevin. The next day Marv strikes again. kevin finds out that the maid was actually helping them, as she is Marv's mother. Of course Kevin captures all three of them. In the process he persuades the butler t o quit his job. He also invites the prince adn his family over. And his parents decide to be together again. Since Natalie is left alone, she starts crying, at which Kevin laughs at her.

I think the movie creators were relying too much on the movie's name. The main kid in the other movies was way more witty, setting many more booby traps all around. This time Kevin was most of all mean, almost like Problem Child. He also looks uglier, resembling the kid from this other movie.
They were also overly mean to poor Natalie. Remember: she didn't steal Peter from his family, she didn't need him for his money or something material... She must've truly loved him. She accepted his children, gave Kevin a big room and presents. She was probably the only normal person in the whole movie and how do they treat her? In the end, when she's crying, they laugh at her.

I suggest avoiding this movie.

Lack of New Year related songs

So the Xmas and New Year holidays are behind us. As usual, there were a lot of Christmas songs and movies in the last month. It's easy to name just a few songs: Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, Last Christmas, Santa Claus is coming to town... But what struck me this time is that there are almost no songs related exclusively to New Year's eve/day. It is mentioned in some songs, but it rarely plays a major role.
Googling I found out that Auld Lang Syne is traditionally a song sung at New Year's. Then I remembered ABBA's Happy New Year. In Slovenia we also have a song by Alfi Nipič, Silvestrski poljub (New Year's Eve's kiss). I believe there are more hidden somewhere, probably in non-English languages and maybe in cultures, where they celebrate New Year's day and it's not so close to Christmas or some other big festivity.
That's because I think it's Christmas' "fault" New Year doesn't get more songs, as it steals the spotlight. Which made me think some more and I realized, that they are basically the same thing! Both are festivals of light. Christmas replaced the old pagan winter solstice celebration, where they celebrated the arrival of Son's child and the start of the days lengthening again. And for New Year's day we throw so many lights in the sky (fireworks), that it's like we're trying to shoot the night away. I also think that for symbolism's sake having the start of the year during winter is bad, it would be better either at he beginning or end. Sure, on the calendar winter has just started, but it was cold much earlier. What we had in the days of old was, in my opinion, better symbolism (Haloween and carnival dates for New Year's day).