Mainlining Christmas

A movie set (at least mostly) at Christmas, focused on a car crash, told multiple times from multiple perspectives. If you feel like you’ve heard this one before, you’re not alone . Il Capital Umano, however, is a very different animal. It’s about class struggles, love and the lack of it, and attitudes around the value of human life. I mostly dug it through the first sections; Erin liked it a bit less. It’s a combination mystery and social commentary, so don’t keep reading if you don’t want to learn what happens. It starts out in the aftermath of a fancy holiday party. The caterers are working late into the night to clean up. The camera follows one particular gentleman; we learn that he’s cynical, tired and happy to clock out as soon as he can. He mounts a bike and heads home through the dark, snowy countryside. He is struck by a car on a back road. At this point the movie jumps back six months and introduces our first viewpoint character: Dino. Dino is bringing his dau

I haven't seen enough recent animated programming from Marvel to know whether or not this 73 minute special is in continuity with Avengers Assembled and the like, but I have seen enough to know I don't care. The last generation of Marvel cartoons - Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Spectacular Spider-man, and the short-lived Wolverine and the X-Men - was fantastic, but it all got cancelled when Disney took over. While Mickey has been a great overlord for Marvel's comics, movies, and live-action productions, their animated series have been far less impressive. This bizarre holiday special does not reverse that trend. To be fair, it has an intriguing premise - Santa Claus, re-imagined as a half-elf/half-ice giant who delivers gifts to all the nine realms, is being hunted by Loki, who's trying to steal his powers. In the right hands, this could have been a fun, zany adventure. But these are not the right hands. It's pretty clear the people making this wante

Today, I'm looking at a pair of bargain light-up miniature buildings I found in drug stores last year. The larger is actually lights up AND plays music, while the smaller, cheaper one just lights up. Let's start with the large, red thing labeled "Holiday Town." This was a fairly good looking piece (the snow, characters, building, and assorted decorations were all fused together), though it was quite a bit more pricey than the other. If memory serves, I found this at a Bartel, where it had at one point been $20. I'm sure I paid no more than $5 (probably less). Also, if memory serves, this had a fairly interesting light/music set-up. Note how everything in the last paragraph is written in the past tense. Every year, I buy crap like this and tell myself I'll take it right home, unbox it, and get my pictures. And every year I wind up shoving it into a box. Hell, I'm not 100% sure I picked this up last February and not the year before. Did I mention

After much whining, I had an American Girl doll as a kid. I did not have Samantha. I had Kirsten, because yes, I read a lot of Little House on the Prairie , and my second choice would have been Molly, because I thought Samantha looked stuck-up. I believe young me’s choice is somewhat justified by this stultifying mess of a “film.” Apparently, long after my Kirsten had started collecting dust on my childhood bedroom bookshelves, the company decided to introduce companion dolls for some of their classic dolls, and what better way to sell new toys than with a made-for-TV movie? The best thing I can say about this is that some of the costuming and sets are decent. Not really Samantha’s, though; those dresses look silly on an actual girl. On to the story. Samantha is an orphan who lives with her rich grandmother in upstate New York in 1904. She’s feuding with the boy next door and eagerly awaiting the return of her rich uncle who dotes on her when a family joins the next-door hou

What the hell is wrong with America? Annually, we watch movies like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story  again and again, as if our sheer, culturally mandated refusal to admit they're crap will somehow elevate them to the status of genuine classic. Meanwhile, England's been cranking out genuine holiday brilliance at a breakneck pace, and no one here notices. Arthur Christmas , Get Santa , and The Snowman are almost entirely unknown in the US, and they're all incredible. Add Danny Boyle's 2004 surrealist comedy, Millions, to that list - this thing is amazing. The movie's main character is an eight-year-old who's just lost his mother. His name is Damian, and he's obsessed with Catholic saints. Also, he sees them. Arguably, he merely hallucinates meeting and interacting with them, but I'm not buying that. They seem to have knowledge he lacks, and they're capable of affecting the world in at least minor ways. He's

So. Everything is awful. President Elect Meisterburger has pledged to orchestrate a complete and total shutdown of elves entering the country, and the Winter Warlock is heading up his transition team. Once again, Kris Kringle is public enemy number one. This is as dark as it gets. As cold and bleak and empty. This is the point in the special some kid's supposed to shed a tear and say Christmas is going to be cancelled. But that's backwards. Christmas isn't supposed to be bright and sunny - it never was. Christmas thrives in this shit. It was born here, in the darkest season, when it seems like the light's gone for good. For millennia, humans have celebrated in order to spite the darkness. We've come together to drive the cold winter away or, barring that, to get drunk on eggnog and exchange sweaters. And nothing's going to change that. If President Meisterburger starts a war that leaves the planet a radioactive wasteland, we'll crawl out of our sewer

Once again, our tolerance for what constitutes a "Christmas movie" has been put to the test. This time, it's for entirely different reasons. Strictly speaking, The Good Son should  meet our litmus test, as it seems to take place entirely around the holidays. However, that's really a technicality, as the producers don't seem to have realized that Christmas should be going on. See, there's a line early in the movie establishing that the events unfold over "winter break." I'm assuming this was done to explain why no one needs to go to school. Unless there's another "winter break" I'm unfamiliar with, that means this should be set at Christmas. But at no point is the holiday referenced, nor are there any decorations or lights shown. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the winter break line was either an error or an artifact of an earlier draft, and that for all intents and purposes the movie was set over some myster