Mainlining Christmas

This review is yet another in our long and prestigious series on crap we found clearanced for damn near nothing - this display piece was left lingering in the clearance aisle of K-Mart into January. While there may not have been room in the inn for this decoration, there was space in our closet. Lemax does a lot of miniature pieces, some of which make decent stand-ins for table-top gaming and toy displays. I considered this a pretty nice find: these usually sell pretty well, in my experience. If I'm remembering right, this one was going for 75% off, which felt like a deal, even with one of the lambs broken off ( Little lamb, who broke thee? / Dost thou know who broke thee? ). Here's the piece out of its packaging with the broken lamb put back together again. We'll pretend I glued it down instead of just balancing it on its broken feet. First reactions: this isn't a bad piece overall. The grassy display and manger look good, as does the fence. The back of the

While keeping Christmas in our hearts all year round may be too ambitious a goal for even us, we find that doing the bulk of our holiday shopping in the weeks after Christmas can extend that yuletide feeling well into January. Also, it saves us a ton of cash, largely thanks to the fact that stores unload any remaining junk at steep discounts once the 25th has come and gone. The decorative piece I'm looking at today is no exception. This was originally priced at $69.99, though I'm not sure I ever saw it selling for less than half that. As soon as last year's seasonal merchandise was on the shelves, it was joined by a 50% sign that never seemed to disappear. For all intents and purposes, retail on this thing was thirty-five bucks, which is probably good, because there's no way in noel this is worth seventy. Personally, I wasn't about to pay thirty-five, either: I held out until early January, when it got marked down to 75% off, which means I paid about $17

I wanted to hate this. I'm getting that out of the way first, so you have some idea of where I'm coming from. On principle, I dislike this series, not so much for its content but for what it represents. I liked the original Teen Titans, as well as Young Justice - the last thing I wanted was a hokey show that reduced the characters and premise to cheap jokes. So I set out to hate this. But then... then something went wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. This episode elbowed me in the gut, kicked me in the shin, then reached in through my cold chest and violently wrenched my heart away from me. It made me love it, whether I wanted to or not. That's also a fairly good synopsis of the premise. As the title suggests, this episode focuses on Black Friday, presented here as the cultural juggernaut it truly is. The Titans are preparing to shop by gorging on turkey. With one exception, they're eagerly awaiting their favorite day of the year, when they'll charge into st

Over the years, I've found the large drug store chains to be abundant sources of bizarre holiday decor, none more so than Rite Aid. Their seasonal section seems to be full of a wide array of Christmas oddities that linger well into January, when everything becomes more affordable. That's the story behind this, of course. I grabbed it last year when it hit 70% or 75% off. As you can probably tell from the image, these are low-end animatronic birds fixed to a stand decorated with fake tree pieces. When activated, they erupt in a chirping version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" at deafening volumes while LED's  light up behind them. This is the part of the review I typically go into a rant about the crappy quality, or stupid concept. But there's a problem... I kind of love this thing. I mean, sure, it's too loud and I could do without the glitter coating the base (I hate glitter). And, yeah, the plastic pine pieces aren't doing it an

When this movie came out, I asked the first person I knew who watched it one question. I didn't care if it was good or bad, intelligent or idiotic, whether it tied to Prometheus or to the original movies... I just wanted to know if it was set at Christmas. The person I asked assured me it wasn't. Turns out, he was wrong. To be fair, you really  needed to be paying attention to catch it. The first shot after the intro provides the movie's only date: December 5, 2104. The ship is almost immediately damaged, requiring repairs before they can continue on their journey. Helpfully, the movie tells us it will take about 48 hours to make those repairs. That takes us to December 7. At this point, they decipher a message and change their destination to a planet "a few weeks" away. Assuming "a few weeks" translates to fourteen days, they arrive at the film's alien-infested world on December 21. Where do I remember that date from? Yup - it

Shockingly, this stop-motion Rankin-Bass special is not the same as the 1971  Here Comes Peter Cottontail . However, it is essentially identical to the 1970 special,  Santa Claus is Coming to Town . The plots and setups are basically the same - they've just changed the character names and lowered the quality to make them distinct. In this version of the Easter Bunny's origin, he's a baby rabbit located and adopted by a town of orphaned kids called "Kidville," because contrary to what the special's narrator would have us believe, there is clearly no God. He's discovered in the woods on Easter, so the kids call him, "Sunny," after the Easter Sun, which is not a thing. I'm pretty sure they're thinking of the Winter Solstice, which is (for all intents and purposes) Christmas. Within a year, the bunny has enslaved the children of Kidville (at least that was my reading). For some reason, he convinces them they need to introduce capita

The second most surprising thing about Michael Bolton's Big, Sexy Valentine's Day Special is that's it's got a surprising amount of Christmas in it (the most surprising, obviously, is that it's actually worth watching, but I'll get to that in a moment). This is a holiday special produced as a collaboration between Comedy Bang! Bang! and The Lonely Island. Blending together elements of old-fashioned Christmas specials, musical parodies, telethons, sketch comedy specials, and some 90's nostalgia, it sort of feels like a series of SNL music videos expanded into a short movie with a frame story. The plot is pretty thin, but Santa Claus plays a crucial rule (hence this write-up). The elves made too many toys, so Saint Nick enlists Bolton's help, hoping that a Bolton Valentine's Day special will result in 75,000 more pregnancies and by extension 75,000 new babies born before Christmas. The special's opening number, "Ten Months 'Til Chris

Despite going on for four abysmal seasons and spawning numerous spin-offs, the Bradys only seemed to produce two holiday-themed installments: this and the 1988 made-for-TV movie, A Very Brady Christmas , which we sat through two years ago. That means as soon as this article is over, we'll be free of the Bradys forever. What I'm saying is Christmas miracles do exist. Which is actually the thesis of this crappy episode. The premise centers around Carol Brady getting laryngitis right before the holidays. This is devastating to her, because she's supposed to sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" at church on Christmas. Just so we're clear, there's no, "because if she doesn't an orphanage will close" coming. The sum total of the stakes at play are that she won't get to sing like she wants to if she doesn't get better. That's it. Naturally, everyone freaks out. The maid makes a family recipe that's supposed to cure laryngitis but ma

Three years ago, I put together a list of the all-time best Christmas movies : five films meant to represent the absolute best of their respective genres. I stand by the concept and remain proud of what's on there. But. I've seen a lot more movies in the past three years, and I wanted to revisit and update it where appropriate. Luckily the format I used lends itself nicely to this. Last time, I presented my picks for the two best installments in each genre and let them fight it out until a winner emerged and claimed the prize. Well... here comes a new challenger. At the end of this, we're going to be left with two lists: a revised top five and an expanded top 15. Best Animated Christmas Movies Previous Winner: Nightmare Before Christmas Previous Runner-Up: Arthur Christmas New Challenger: 101 Dalmatians You'll see a few movies showcased on this update that were overlooked the first time due to their holiday credentials being subtle. 101 Dalmatians isn&#

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is essentially a parody of every other cop show on TV. In that sense, it's sort of an update of Police Squad. Based on the holiday episodes I just saw, that comparison might actually be fair - this was surprisingly good. "Christmas"  (2013) The episode's A-plot concerns death threats made towards Captain Holt. His boss commands him to accept a protection detail, so he assigns Detective Jake Peralta (the series' lead, played by Adam Samberg) the job, assuming he'll blow off protocol as usual. However, the assignment gives Peralta total control over the movements and activities of his Captain, so he instead abuses the situation. There are some hi-jinks involving a safe house, where Peralta handcuffs himself to the captain and tosses the key down a grate; the sort of stuff that would normally be tiresome and dull. But the cast pulls it off, selling the slapstick through their bizarre characters. The same commitment and skill allow the B

There's an article up on comingsoon.net offering a brief look at a handful of Christmas horror movies. It's a good read with some interesting insights into the sub-genre, but it doesn't really delve into the origins. Instead, it points out the more horrific aspects of modern Christmas, which are of course worth exploring. But it got me thinking about the depth of horror as it relates to Christmas, and I wanted to dig in a little deeper. Over the last century or so, pop-culture and entertainment has mainly embraced the funny and whimsical aspects of Christmas, leaving things like horror seeming subversive. It hasn't helped matters that the vast majority of Christmas horror has been extremely campy, giving the genre the sense it's trying to mock or parody the season from the outside. All but one of the movies the article I linked to above fits that mold (the exception being Black Christmas). But this is all pretty new. Pull off a layer or two of cheer, and you fi

Sheriff Wanted By: Erin L. Snyder A light dusting of snow lay scattered across the street. Rare for December, but not unheard of. The bitter cold, though, that was something else. In all his years in Silver Falls, Clemont had never known a Christmas Eve like this. No. That wasn’t quite true. He’d known one. He shook off the thought and stepped towards the building. Between the wind and drinking and just the overall strangeness of it all, Clemont wasn’t seeing clearly. His eyes ached, and he strained to try and see the sign clearly. It slowly came into focus: “Sheriff Wanted,” it said. But he already knew that - he’d been the one to paint those letters on, one by one. And he’d been the one to lean it against the office. Someone else had boarded up the windows and door. But that’s not the part that Clemont Holcomb had left the warm tavern and walked a quarter mile through the cold to see. He hadn’t believed it when Harrison had come in mumbling, but here it was in front of him.

Apparently, Mon oncle Antoine is considered one of the best Canadian films ever produced. Honestly, I lack anywhere near enough cultural background to offer an informed opinion on that claim. For what it's worth, I found the movie interesting enough, despite an intentionally slow pace and meandering point-of-view. For all intents and purposes, the plot doesn't even kick in until about halfway through. Prior to that, it feels like you're watching a series of vignettes about a few different groups of people living in rural Quebec in the 1940's. An asbestos mining operation serves as the backdrop and is pretty clearly significant to the movie's point, but you really need some knowledge of Canadian history to understand the connection. I skimmed a few Wikipedia articles after watching the movie, but I suspect the film would have had more impact if I had a more personal connection. The short explanation is that there was a major asbestos strike in 1949 that effecti