Mainlining Christmas

For a sub-genre that's not widely discussed, there is a hell of a lot of Christmas noir out there. The Ice Harvest is a long way from the best of the bunch, but it's an interesting flick. The movie stars John Cusack as a lawyer who makes lawyers look good. I haven't seen a lot of movies which make Cusack seem unlikable, but this manages. Fortunately, the movie doesn't hinge on his likability: he's a desperate and pitiful man in a desperate and pitiful world. The whole thing is set on Christmas Eve, right after Cusack's character (along with his partner, played by Billy Bob Thornton) steals two million dollars from his boss, a mobster who owns several strip clubs. He's played by Randy Quaid, who - along with Thornton - are fairly iconic Christmas movie actors at this point. The movie does several things right and a few wrong. I liked the visuals - the world depicted here is a pale blue; you almost get cold just watching the movie. The actors do a dece

For the record, we didn't go out of our way to watch this because of the Affleck connection: this has been sitting in our NetFlix queue for months, slowly climbing its way to the top. And now that it's there, we finally got to watch the damn thing. It. Is. Bad. It's almost impressively bad. With the right crowd - and the right drinks - this thing could easily cross the fabled line into "so bad it's good." But it doesn't earn that honor, not on its own merits; it would take a huge amount of work from the audience to meet it halfway. And, frankly, we just didn't have the energy. The plot is borderline comical. For a solid twenty minutes, I almost gave this the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was intended as a comedy, albeit one lacking in humor. But, as the movie dragged on, it became crystal clear I was being far too kind: this was supposed to be suspenseful. We were supposed to care about the characters. Let me see if I can summarize the

I saw this on a weekly list of short films at  Ain't it Cool News . I clicked on it because it was about superheroes, but - lo and behold - it turned out it was set at Christmas. It's not what I expected from the premise and title. What it is, beside sweet and well made, is better experienced than explained. So, assuming you've got ten minutes, check it out: "Secret Identity" (2011) from Tyler MacIntyre on Vimeo .

I actually considered skipping the write-up for this two-parter or combining it with the following year's Christmas episode, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas , but decided it really needed to be considered in its own right. The first half focuses entirely on Scully, who's gone home to spend Christmas with the members of her family who weren't killed in earlier episodes. Scully is shocked to receive a phone call from her dead sister, who simply says that someone needs her help. Apparently calling rates from the great beyond are low enough to allow ghosts to place calls but just a little too high for them to have time to offer any useful details. Scully immediately has the call traced and finds it was placed from a house where a woman has just apparently killed herself and not been murdered at all. Later investigation will reveal - I hope you're sitting down for this - that she actually was murdered, and that the murder was made to look like a suicide. As I recall, th

Oh man, I like this show. I haven’t actually seen too many of these original black-and-white episodes, but I really enjoyed these. I like the writing, the little flashes of wit, and the straightforward style with a minimum of fuss or drama. Once you are used to the deadpan style, I think it makes the subtle moments of action or drama really resonate. Dragnet’s not to everyone’s taste, but they’re solid, well-produced, cleverly scripted stories. Dragnet: The Big Little Jesus (1953) The first one we watched was also the most religious. And yet, except for maybe a split second here or there, it didn’t bother me. Sergeant Friday and his partner Smith investigate the theft of a Baby Jesus statue from a church. This is a sweet episode, clearly playing on the holiday themes. Everything turns out fine in the end, while it has enough of Friday’s dry-as-can-be wit to keep me interested and amused. Dragnet: The Big .22 Rifle for Christmas (1952) This is a well known episode, because they

Let's get one thing straight from the start. The Small One is an animated piece directed by Don Bluth (and very much in his style) when he worked for Disney. Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey is a stop-motion special by Rankin-Bass.  Both of these pieces are about the origins of the donkey who carries Mary to Bethlehem. Both of these pieces are not very good.  However, The Small One is only mediocre, so compared to the steaming pile of excrement that was Nestor, Small One comes out pretty far ahead in the donkey-story quality scale. There are aspects of this special that aren't terrible, even. The story follows a young boy forced to sell his beloved but undersized donkey, who just wants to find his friend a new home. The animation is quite well done, both the boy and the donkey are cute, and there are some sweet interactions between them. The story ends with the purchase of the donkey by Joseph. We don't follow them to Bethlehem, we never actually see Mary. Th

This thing was hilarious. The special starts with Lassie, Timmy, and the parents in town for some Christmas shopping. Across the street, a young girl rolls a toy ball into the road in an apparent attempt to lure Lassie into the path of an oncoming truck. When she realizes that he's not that dumb, she tries larger bait, running out after it herself. Lassie leaps into action, knocking the petulant child out of the way and taking a potentially lethal blow to the head in the process. The heroic dog is then whisked away to the doctor's office, where a waiting newsman pounces on the story. But... will Lassie die? Cue the solemn Christmas music. How about dramatic close-ups of Timmy praying for her recovery, a parade of supporting cast members and their pets visiting, and as much dramatic tension as the producers could wring out of this half-hour melodramatic episode. Lindsay and I laughed out loud. The best part, in my humble opinion, was when Timmy prayed to God, asking

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to coherently describe what happened in the special, but I know I can explain how it came to be. There was a meeting, quite possibly in a studio boardroom, where someone said, "Hey. You know what we need? Another Rudolph." To which someone else added, "And we need something that's religious, really puts the Christ in Christmas." And fifteen minutes later the storyboard for Nestor: the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey was born. I don't think I've ever seen this before, probably because it doesn't have the same exposure most of the other specials have. This is kind of a shame, because it's just about the most screwed-up thing I've ever seen, and I feel like more people should be familiar with it. This is narrated by Nestor's descendant, whose name escapes me and I don't care enough to look up. I should probably add that Nestor's descendant works for Santa Claus at the North Pole. This i

This is a bizarre little animated special on a collection I found cheap on Amazon. This was the first special on the first disc, so here we are. The special opens with caroling children singing, then immediately transitions to tanks firing, followed by a description of the Middle East now, then finally settling on the Ancient Roman Empire. The next five or ten minutes introduce a flurry of characters and locations. From a narrative point of view, this offers very little in the form of a coherent story, but then again, neither did the New Testament. What this does surprising well is depict a complex social and political landscape, complete with intrigue and danger. When we follow a couple Roman soldiers through the streets of Bethlehem, it's genuinely fascinating, and the special's depiction of Herod - while certainly not even-handed - makes for an interesting foil. Things start to drag when the story shifts to Mary and Joseph, who are obnoxiously two-dimensional (as usual

This was an interesting artifact to track down. Apparently, it was aired live in 1951, and then performed again in subsequent years to decent success, making it one of the first, if not the first, actual television Christmas specials to become a yearly tradition. This is the recording of the 1955 performance. Watching it now is... odd. Erin flatly hated it, while I found it amusing. Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera about the Three Kings stopping to rest with a poor family on their way to find Jesus. Except that it's a light opera, so much of the kings' behavior is played for laughs. Amahl and his mother are destitute, but somehow have this building big enough to have a dance in, that has no furniture. I guess what I'm trying to convey is that any logic in the situation is somewhat lacking. It's sort of slow and boring, although as I said, the humor was okay. I mean, Amahl goes at one point between his mother and the door, telling her a king is there, she

I think it's important to note that movies based on short children's books can work. Look no further than " Where the Wild Things Are " for a primer in how its done. If something isn't long enough to adapt into a movie, DON'T ADAPT IT: use it as inspiration, and build a new story and world. Whatever you do, don't stick with a plot that requires five minutes to function and try to pad it out into an hour and a half epic. If you do, you could conceivably wind up with something nearly as bad as Polar Express, a film so awful it more or less got its source - a beautiful, subtle picture book - removed from most peoples' lists of classics. It's common for us nerds to accuse a movie of ruining a book, but in this case, it's kind of true. The Polar Express isn't the worst holiday movie we've seen, not by a long shot. But I'm having a very hard time thinking of another that's this bad made at this budget. As such, we're goi

This might change after I see this a few more times, but for the time being I consider Arthur up there with the best Christmas movies ever made. The top three - Nightmare Before Christmas, Elf, and Miracle on 34th Street - are now the top four. At its core, Arthur Christmas is a brilliant little picture about a dysfunctional family at Christmas time. The reason we should care is that this family is heir to the Santa dynasty, a lineage of Father Christmases going to back to St. Nicholas. There's a lot to like in this one. Right off the back, the portrayal of the operation is ingenious and original. Comparisons to the Star Trek Enterprise are obvious - I'd argue that there are at least as many parallels with Battlestar Galactica. This Santa's using technology a few hundred years ahead of the rest of the world. Intriguingly, they've also got some more traditional magic in reserve, though that's generally become obsolete. The elves appear quickly and instantly s

Just about everyone my age has some memory of watching this when they were young, although most of us can't seem to remember the details all that well.  Lindsay and I came across this in a drug store about a year ago and snatched it up. This viewing actually helped me put this in perspective.  By the time we got around to it, we'd already seen around seventy or eighty Christmas specials.  You'd think the burnout would work against this one, but, if anything, the contrast underlined just how good this special is. Before I get involved with that, let me take a moment to explain why such context might be needed.  The thing about Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (and, just to be clear, it is a THING, not an ISSUE), is that it's slow.  Last year, when I saw this for the first time in two decades, I found it a little too slow for my tastes.  If it makes sense, I wouldn't call the special "boring," but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bored. T

At one point during this Lifetime Original made-for-TV movie, Lindsay pulled my hand away from my head to keep me from literally pulling my hair out of my head.  I tried to explain that I knew what I was doing, that it was distracting me from the pain.  She stopped me anyway.  I think, in time, I'll come to forgive her. This one was hard for me.  It's not that I'm a guy: I can take dramas, chick flicks, what have you.  But the thing is, I'm also a writer.  And, as such, there's a level of bad dialogue that will hurt me.  In high enough doses, it might even kill me. Like most Christmas dramas, this was actually a science fiction film, though it buried that fact beneath five metric tons of melodramatic nonsense.  Even so, the plot was a pretty straightforward time jump: the main character, a self-obsessed career woman, jumps forward ten years in her life to find herself a wife and mother, dutifully living out her husband's philanthropic dreams.