Mainlining Christmas

While Santa Claws wasn't intended to be confused with the 1996 horror movie with the same name, it was almost certainly intended to be confused with the direct-to-DVD Santa Paws movies . This was produced by "The Asylum," the low-budget production company that produces cheap knock-offs of big-budget pictures and pushes them onto the market early and often. They're also responsible for the Sharknado franchise (which gets name-checked in Santa Claws). This is a difficult movie to approach. While it was one of the most boring, pointless productions we've ever had the misfortune of sitting through, it did include a sequence where someone had to shove an EpiPen into Santa's chest to save him from a peanut allergy. While this scene wasn't good, it was certainly a unique moment in Christmas entertainment. It wasn't entirely alone - the movie offered a couple more shots or jokes that implied a subversive streak in the producers. But saying these were few

I got a full-time job as an editor this year, which means that I often want to listen to music without words. This has lead me to many soundtracks and atmospheric albums, and eventually to rediscovering Solitudes. Solitudes are a lengthy series of albums that mostly combine new-age-ish instrumentals with recordings of wildlife and natural soundscapes. The series was created by Canadian Dan Gibson, who created new techniques and equipment to improve wildlife sound recording. I had a compilation in the 90s (Favorite Selections), but I’d forgotten all about it until recently. I think they make great background music for office work, particularly if, like me, you’d rather be out in the woods than in a cubicle. And there are Christmas albums! Here are three you can easily access on Amazon (or YouTube. Seriously, there are a ton of quality long instrumental tracks on YouTube). Christmas Wonder (1996 CD) Overall this is my favorite of these three. The songs often evoke a melancho

Ah, the magic of Cyber Monday. I've been wanting to get my hands on one of these for a year now, but the $20 price tag was more than I wanted to pay for something I knew almost nothing about. But then Cyber Monday rolled around, and ThinkGeek marked it down to $5, with free shipping to boot. That price point was more palatable, so I placed an order and waited for it to arrive. And now that it's here, I'm really, really happy I didn't pay $20 for it. That feeling is the true magic of Cyber Monday. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The concept behind this is pretty fun: it's a building-block wreath intended to be used with other building blocks (i.e.: LEGO's). You can snap the wreath together, make LEGO decorations, and create your own masterpiece. I really had no idea what to expect from this in terms of size or complexity. The box measures about six inches squared, but the wreath comes disassembled. Once it's complete, it has a diameter of abo

For those of you trying to place this, it's the mid-budget, raunchy, R-rated Christmas comedy you skipped last year. Most years offer at least one such movie, and they have a tendency to blend together. This stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie as Ethan, Isaac, and Chris, three friends who have been spending Christmas Eve together for years, ever since Ethan's parents were killed right before the holidays. Now that they're older, Isaac and Chris feel like they've gotten too old for the traditional pub crawl. Before the movie opens, they've already made it clear that this is going to be the last year, though the other two doubt Ethan, who's accomplished very little in his life, is comfortable with this. To the movie's credit, Ethan is a little more complex than that. While he's not entirely prepared to move on with his life, he's not oblivious to where the others are coming from. Besides, they've got problems of their o

A Big Sky Christmas William W. Johnstone* and J.A. Johnstone, 2013 (Note: Many of the Christmas books I am reading this year have one notable thing in common -- they were all cheap or free on Kindle some time in the last few years. No other qualifications.) *As I discovered at the end of the book, this was one of many books written from notes/unfinished manuscripts by another after this author’s death. Premise: Famous frontiersman Jamie McCallister hadn’t intended to get involved, but someone had to get the pilgrims to Montana by Christmas. I told Erin I read a Western. I said it was boring. He said, “Yup, then it’s a Western.” This book wasn’t terribly written, I guess, but I found it quite dull. All the characters are either good or evil. All the evil characters end up dead, mostly after surprisingly short, not-very-tense action scenes. All the obvious plot hooks are followed up with almost no surprises. It must be odd, to write a Western today. If someone’s just writi

The Holiday tells the heart-wrenching story of unrequited love, specifically that between the producers of this movie and the film, Love Actually . You see, the people who made The Holiday watched Love Actually, loving its success from afar for three long years. But The Holiday's producers were American, largely based in California, a world apart from the English production they so desired. The Holiday is an allegory for this passionate love, told with two crossing stories centered on women who trade homes - one in Los Angeles and the other in the English countryside. "Why only two?" you might ask. After all, Love Actually juggled nine tales of romance. Presumably the people behind The Holiday partially understood their limitations and decided to aim for something more manageable. Unfortunately, two-ninths still proved an overly-ambitious goal. The worst sections of Love Actually still manage to deliver escapist romance that's orders of magnitude better than wha

I'm counting this as a Christmas movie, even though it means watering down the litmus test we've used in the past . The lead-up to Christmas itself only requires a third of the movie's 90 minute run-time, while New Years Eve falls at the halfway mark. Still, Christmas decorations are present until the end, so I'm giving it a pass. I should probably mention I've only seen the first Jaws and this one. In theory, that should mean I'm missing two movies from the story, but Wikipedia assures me the third installment was excised from continuity. The Revenge opens with a holiday celebration in Amity, where the original was set. At some point, Martin Brody, the protagonist of the original Jaws movie, died of a heart attack (i.e.: wasn't interested in making another of these damn movies). His wife and older son, Ellen and Michael, take over as the leads, while his younger son, Sean, is killed off in the first few minutes. There are two culprits resonsible: th