Cheese or fondue for National Cheese Fondue Day (USA)

“Do you fancy a pizza? Come on, then! Come on, let's go! What the hell. We might as well go out in style. What's the point in worrying about it all?”

– Antonio Ricci

A father for OP's father's birthday.

 

A father, and proud teacher, raises his son alone. When the boy is an adult and a teacher himself, the elder's traditional concept of societal hierarchy affirms the balance between the generations.

“Mr. Cadell got a bad leg in the war for his courage. And you've got your sleeve in the celery, Mr. Phillip.”

– Mrs. Wilson

“The madwoman has received your grace.”

– Nannina

“Another day, another ball of fire rising in the summer sky. The city is quiet now, but it will soon be pounding with activity. This time yesterday, Jean Dexter was just another pretty girl, but now she's the marmalade on 10,000 pieces of toast.”

– narrator

“Roy, this is the land of milk and honey for the health racket. Every woman in California thinks she's either too fat or too thin or too something.”

– 'Doc' Banton

“I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.”

– Waldo Lydecker

A Christmas tree for National Christmas Tree Day (USA)

 

In August 1942, a Mexican-American man with a broken finger was found semiconscious near Sleepy Lagoon, Ca.. By association, a group of young Latinos was put on trial. This spark, mere months after Roosevelt sent thousands of Japanese Americans to concentration camps and fuelled by Cold War paranoia, eventually set off the Zoot Suit Riots.

 

Zoot Suiters or Pachucos and other “outsiders” like African, Italian and Filipino Americans, were viciously attacked by Anglo-American #sailors. Those suits, all that fabric, this colourful extravagance, they cried out, were hampering the war effort.

“Inflammable desires dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited that night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence.”

– The Dreamer

The Dreamer, Anger, dreams of a similar violent attack. The sadism is harrowing, filmed with such exquisite eye that it's impossible to look away. Blood finds its way out, pulsating and spurting. Ambiguous glances. A hand, no finger. A young man awakes, is born. The dreamer is still asleep.

Someone is given something special for Giving Tuesday (USA)

 

Just before leaving home for a business trip, a father asks his three daughters what he can bring them as a return gift. The eldest two ask for silly, extravagant things. A monkey! A parrot! The youngest simply wishes the most beautiful flower which the father finds in an enchanted garden, guarded by a terrible beast. And will pay for with his life unless he gives his youngest away to the beast, to die in his place.

– Can such miracles really happen? – You and I are living proof.

#Cocteau and Clément's La Belle et la Bête is of course based on Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy-tale, which on its turn was based on the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche.

“Any resemblance between HELLZAPOPPIN’ and a motion picture is purely coincidental”

– tagline