Mainlining Christmas

Okay, we already watched the Christmas episode in season three . Here's the rest of them.   A Girl and Her Cat (1996) First we have to backtrack to episodes in seasons one and two. In this episode Salem throws a hissy fit (pun intended), stays out to make the family worried, and ends up catnapped by a little boy who wants a pet. There's a painfully obnoxious montage in this one as well, as Sabrina and her aunts (Hilda and Zelda) search for Salem. The highlights are references to Salem's backstory (he was originally human, but turned into a cat for trying to take over the world), and a scene where Sabrina steals Salem back by dressing as Santa and teleporting into the kid's closet, knowing no one will believe him. Also, Coolio has a cameo as a poster brought briefly to life. Oh, if you've never seen this show, you might not know that Salem is played at times by a truly ugly puppet cat and at times by a real cat. It's very strange. Sabrina Claus (1997)

Forbidden Fruit (Corinna Chapman Mysteries, Book 5) Kerry Greenwood, 2009 Premise: It's Christmas with the staff of Heavenly Pleasures and the inhabitants of Insula. Time for heat waves, bands of roving hippies, and a family with a lost daughter and a very dark secret… ( Previously reviewed: Book One ) I’ve read all of this series. Yes, I only reviewed the first one until now, (although ironically, the first one was probably the weakest) but I had to come back to blog for Christmas! It's funny, but for all the different media we've consumed for the mainlining Christmas project, this year might be the first time we’ve done anything conspicuously set in the southern hemisphere. Australia is hot at Christmastime, and yet the holiday comes on all the same, with all the crowds and obnoxious music and such. Corinna’s commentary on the holiday season is especially fun. The two plots Corrina and her friends are investigating this time around are not as high stakes as s

This DVD compilation includes Christmas or winter themed episodes from across the dozen or so incarnations of Scooby Doo over the years. Unfortunately, the majority are less Christmas than winter, and we already reviewed one episode, A Scooby-Doo Christmas , a few years ago. We're going to review the other two Christmas centered episodes, Haunted Holidays and The Nutcracker Scoob, on their own. That leaves ten of dubious holiday connection. We almost didn't write these up at all, but a few included some holiday allusions or references, plus the snowy visuals were certainly evocative of Christmas. Ultimately, we decided to cover them together, along with some discussion of how each ties to the holidays, if at all. First, though, let's talk about this "13 Spooky Tales" line. They released several of these DVD sets with different themes about the same time, each collecting ostensibly similar episodes throughout the years. In this case, even the math to get to 1

I've seen Children of Men twice now, and I'm still not sure whether or not it qualifies as a Christmas movie. It's essentially a post-apocalyptic version of the nativity, complete with numerous references, some in world, but there's none of the usual connections - no decorations, no mention of the holiday, nothing. Still, there's more than enough thematic resonance to tie it back (plus it shows on several lists of Christmas movies). Oh, and it was also released on Christmas in the US, not that that means anything. Children of Men is often considered one of the best science fiction movies of the past decade. It was nominated for several awards, and it's currently at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's not hard to see why: the movie was brilliantly shot and edited, and it's quite engrossing. It's just... it's also kind of boring and pretentious. And the premise doesn't make a damn bit of sense. I'm not talking about the "no humans have been

Nothing says Christmas like violence and bleak depression. This was a fantastic movie. Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) are professional hitmen. After a job, they’re sent to the Belgium city of Bruges to lay low and await instructions at Christmastime. Ken enjoys the city, the younger Ray chafes at being in the middle of nowhere. But something deeper is eating at Ray, and… You know what? We usually do a bit of a synopsis in our reviews here, but I really enjoyed watching this twisty plot unfold, so I’m not going to give too many more specifics. One of the final twists, I saw coming (and Erin didn’t! Call the papers, that might be a first), but watching it was still incredibly compelling. Suffice to say that this movie contains quiet, atmospheric scenes, emotional breakdowns, public brawling, graphic violence and lots of historic buildings. The cast does a fantastic job portraying the complexities of the characters. The subtlety of the performances was just lovely

This movie can best be described as a pretentious art film trying to masquerade as a cult hit. The vast majority is in black and white and attempts to duplicate science fiction films from the 50's and 60's. They actually did this pretty well, setting aside the copious cursing. Oh, and the marching band with vaginas for heads. Sorry. Probably should have put a *spoiler* warning before that. At any rate, most of the visuals were in line with old movies. Based on still images, you could even be convinced you were getting ready to watch something campy or at least interesting. Instead, imagine a dimly-lit empty corridor made to look like a 60's SF set. Now imagine someone walking down it slowly while looking downcast. That's about two-thirds of the movie. God! I'm sorry. Again, I forgot that *spoiler* warning. There's very little narrative glue holding this together, and it's a bit of a stretch calling the malformed story line a plot at all. With tha

I’ve been trying to think how to describe this show to someone who’s never seen it. I suppose it’s a sketch comedy, in that each episode consists of a series of short skits, each generally with a punch-line or six. But it’s closer to a hybrid with a sitcom than any other sketch comedy I know of. There are consistent characters, plots carry from one bit to the next, and there’s even sometimes a hint of pathos, or at least you can become sympathetic towards the characters. The characters in question are the men of Possum Lodge, both the name for the building and the club. It’s also a show-within-a-show, in that the characters are mostly aware they are being filmed, for the “show” they produce locally, the segments (many repeated in each show) are named on screen, and they directly address the camera. The repetitive structure is also reminiscent of many children's shows. The repeated skits are things like a guess-the-word game, or ‘Handyman’s Corner’, wherein Red builds something

This was one of those times Lindsay and I spent the first half of an episode trying to figure out what the hell was going on, because it's mid-series and not particularly interested in recapping. Afterward, I skimmed part of the Wikipedia page and learned that several of the main characters were alien/human hybrids who were cloned from a royal family of extraterrestrials which... to be honest, I stopped skimming around that point. It's not that I don't like this kind of stuff - I'm a lifelong geek. But, frankly, the episode we saw didn't leave me enthusiastic about the series. It's not that it was awful: it wasn't. It was, however, dull and rather tedious. It felt like an "intro to genre" series: something that might have appealed to high schoolers who had never gotten hooked on X-Files, Star Trek, Babylon 5 , or Buffy , but who might have some interest in science fiction, provided it spent most of its time exploring teenage life and relation

I’ve seen a few minutes of The Catherine Tate Show . It’s a sketch comedy show. I was not prepared for this. Some explanation that I wish I’d had going into this: This special is one long story based on one of the recurring characters that Catherine Tate plays. This character is an abrasive, obnoxious grandmother. I suppose it’s funny to some people? It’s really not my style of humor. Because it’s A Christmas Carol, we have to set up that Nan is a horrible person by having her be rude to carolers, steal from her neighbors, and toss relations come to stay with her out on the street. This takes entirely too long and is dull as dishwater. FINALLY, we get to the ghosts. At this point the pace and the humor finally start to pick up. Marley’s place is taken by her late husband, and that scene made us both sit up and pay more attention. Then the Ghost of Christmas Past has a bit of trouble impressing Nan, and we started to laugh. Past brings Nan to her childhood and also shows her oth

I'm going with the original Finnish name,  Joulutarina , over the title for the US release, Christmas Story , because there are already too many damn movies with that name. Unfortunately, it'd be more accurate to say I watched Christmas Story : the official DVD doesn't have a goddamned subtitled version, forcing us to watch it dubbed in English. Fortunately, this movie is more visual than anything else, minimizing the damage done. Still, it was extremely obnoxious, and I feel like I missed a large portion of the performances. This thing is intended as an origin story for the Santa myth. Of course, like most Santa origins, it's not remotely based in any of the legend's diverse historical roots. It is, however, quite reminiscent of the Rankin/Bass specials, which is better more than I can say for some interpretations . This Nikolas is an orphaned boy in Lapland. The exact time is intentionally left ambiguous, but the clothing and elements of technology were rel

This was an enjoyable, though not amazing, entry into the genre of ‘Christmas war movie’. Joyeux Noël is a French movie based loosely on the Christmas Truce of 1914. if you were asleep in history class and a dozen other pop-culture references, the Christmas Truce refers to a series of informal cease-fires along the front lines of World War I. We think this movie did a really good job of conveying aspects of that event, mostly around the way it probably felt. The surreality of the situation was compelling, and the tension was well done around what a person is told to feel toward people of another country, versus how they react when face-to-face. Also I liked the fact that different minor characters reacted completely differently. The movie followed a half-dozen or so characters from three units. I did really like how multilingual the movie was. No characters speak an unnatural language for the courtesy of the audience. So we have two brothers and a preacher from Scotland, a lie

At 5% Fresh, Rotten Tomatoes underrates this movie. Based on similar films, I'd have expected 7% - perhaps even 8% - positive; not 5%. Critics seem to have punished this movie more harshly than it deserves on account of its horribly disgusting message, along with the fact that it does, in fact, suck. But these things all come down to magnitude. Christmas with the Kranks sucks less, not more, than Surviving Christmas , which is far overrated at 7% fresh. If I were the Kranks' two-bit hack of a director, Joe Roth, I'd be angry at this injustice. Let's back up a bit. The movie stars Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple who decide to skip Christmas. It's based on a book called, "Skipping Christmas." Why the title change? Because it was released the same year as Surviving Christmas , and the names were too similar. Once again, the Universe is a cold and unfair place for Joe Roth. Of course, "Skipping Christmas" is a shitty title,

Try and stay with me for a minute: this one gets a little confusing. Technically, we watched the 2002 direct-to-DVD movie, A Very Merry Pooh Year . However, after a brief introduction, the first half of that movie is a slightly edited version of the 1991 special, "Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too," which is the finale of the series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh . If it weren't for the intro, these would just be two desperate specials featuring the same characters, but - for some reason - they must have thought it would work better as an integrated feature. For the most part, they were hilariously wrong. More on that in a moment. First, let's back up and say a few words about The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh . The series ran from 1988 to 1991; I was born in 1979, so I was certainly watching Saturday morning cartoons when it was around. When I wasn't able to find something more violent on TV, I'd occasionally turn it on. I remember liking it

Ugh. I feel for the folks who made this, and the folks who love this character, but I cannot recommend you watch this. It’s incredibly dull. The episode opens with Static bemoaning the busy life of a superhero when he has holiday festivities to attend. Of course, no sooner does he get there, but the power goes out, and he’s off to melt the mysterious ice engulfing the substation. He conveniently ignores the girl on the scene, and then rinse, repeat. Whining, Mysterious Ice, and then he finally figures out it’s the girl. We are treated to some tedious backstory about Permafrost. She lost her mom at a young age and is living on the street. Sad story, right? Not the way it’s animated here. Instead, it’s boring. Static finally goes looking for some information about her and learns her sad story. When she shows up again, he reaches out in compassion, and she agrees to accept help. That should be a good story, but the writing is so pedantic that any emotional impact is muted. It so

To even begin to entertain a serious discussion about the movie Santa Buddies , we must first explore the greater cinematic universe it inhabits, as well as the origins of that universe. And for that, we need to talk about Full House . Or more specifically, the star   of Full House , a golden retriever named Buddy. Buddy was a stray who was adopted and taught sports by his owner. He was so famous, he appeared on two shows starring Bob Saget, Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos . He even starred in a film adaptation of his life called  Air Bud . He died a few weeks after Air Bud 's sequel, but his legacy has endured. In total, there were two theatrical Air Bud movies, along with three direct-to-video sequels. Like most people, I haven't seen any of these movies, nor do I intend to. Rather than putting the franchise to sleep, Disney shifted the focus to the next generation. While I suspect the real Buddy was neutered, the theatrical version was more prol

I'd like to begin with a thought experiment for those of you who haven't seen Home Alone 4 . I'm assuming that includes you, since - as far as I can tell - no one alive has actually seen this movie and only a handful have even heard of it. So then, imagine that, after the disappointing third installment  (which, to be fair, isn't really much worse than the first two), the Home Alone franchise didn't disappear entirely. Imagine instead that the IP transitioned to a made-for-TV movie aired on ABC. Now imagine that the character of Kevin McCallister, the protagonist from the original two, returned, albeit recast, along with every other character. Now ask yourself, how bad would you expect this to be? How abysmally awful, how utterly vapid, how monumentally stupid do you think a movie like that would be? What you're picturing right now is what we'll call, "The Expectation." Before we go on, you'll have to lower that expectation. Before we g

I should start by saying that I like this show, although I like it more in a ‘turn on while I clean or knit or otherwise multitask’ sort of way, rather than a ‘sit down and pay close attention’ sort of way. I first ran across this Christmas-ish episode earlier this year when I was doing just that. I say Christmas-ish because while there are several references to the upcoming holidays and the episode originally aired in December, that’s all there is, and the setting and main plot have nothing to do with the subject of this blog. It’s a standard episode of this show, which means the plot follows gardeners Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme while they attempt to solve a plant problem for a client and solve a mysterious death at the same time. In this case, the deceased is a critic visiting a struggling hotel, and the protagonists are there to help the adjacent struggling winery. The hotel and the winery are run by estranged brothers, one of whom of course turns out to be the killer, whi

1988 2005 We recently watched two versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . I know, I know, gluttons for punishment. One was the movie from 2005, one was a BBC version from 1988. I freely admit that I am partial to the BBC version as it is the one that I grew up with and the music just makes me happy. The BBC version is also slightly longer and uses its extra time for character and world development and not just for people throwing things at each other. The main problem with adopting The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is that you are bound by the source material. Things that kinda work in the book if you don't think too hard about them are brought into stark relief on film. Things like that the kids spend all of 48 hours there before the climactic battle. Logic flaws and poetic license are less forgivable once you make a half hearted attempt to make the story feel realistic. This source material does however include some Christmas which is why we're here