In the video above, featured modestly on the Christmas Cottage Web site, Kinkade promises an autobiographical family classic featuring Peter O'Toole, Marcia Gay Harden and Jared Paladecki, and which holds its own against It's a Wonderful Life. Bold claims all, especially considering Cottage went straight to DVD. Still, considering the explicit directions excerpted here, what could possibly go wrong? Apart from the Kubrick references, that is:

3) Create classic compositions. [...] Utilize traditional eye levels for setting the shot — that is, no high vantage points, off-kilter vantage points, or "worms eye view" vantage points. Generally focus on a standing adults viewpoint of the scene at hand.

4) Awareness of edges. Create an overall sense of soft edges, strive for a Barry Lyndon look. Star filters used sparingly, but an overall "gauzy" look preferable to hard edge realism. [...]

6) Hidden details whenever possible, References to my children (from youngest to oldest as follows): Evie, Winsor, Chandler and Merritt. References to my anniversary date, the number 52, the number 82, and the number 5282 (for fun, notice how many times this appears in my major published works). Hidden N's throughout — preferably thirty N's, commemorating one N for each year since the events happened.

16) Most important concept of all — THE CONCEPT OF LOVE. Perhaps we could make large posters that simply say "Love this movie" and post them about.

Yes, lets! Just above the pull quote from cinematography great Ellen Kuras, who tells VF that Kincade's definition of "cozy" imagery sounds like "a prescription for a bad ’60s porn movie." But that hardly seems fair — even '60s porn screened in movie theaters before disappearing forever into video oblivion.

• Article NameThomas Kincade's 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck [VF]

Realizing that the millions of purchasers of the shopping-mall-quality artwork of Thomas "The Painter of Light" Kinkade who spend their weekend nights avoiding the multiplex in favor of staying home to stare contentedly at the quaint tableaux upon which they've just spent hundred of dollars represent an untapped market for their cinematic product, the visionary executives of Lionsgate have announced that they're adapting Kinkade's "The Christmas Cottage" painting into a feature to be released around the holidays, according to Variety.

While the project will reportedly be "partly biographical," Lionsgate expects that audience testing will result in the boring details of the painter's life being expunged from the film, with a final cut consisting of nothing more than a single, 90-minute-long shot of the snow-blanketed abode slightly enhanced by subtle CGI highlighting (no two showings will be exactly the same!), which will allow theatergoers to imagine their own satisfying, idealistic Christmas tale unfolding within the cottage's cozy confines. Should this bold experiment into nontraditional source material pay off as handsomely as expected, the studio plans to quickly adapt the work of other massively popular and accesible artists, starting with a big-screen treatment of Bob Ross' Happy Little Tree, Fluffy Little Cloud, which could hit theaters as early as March of 2008.

[Image: KinkadeCentral.com]

• Lionsgate latches to Kinkade [Variety]