Mainlining Christmas

I am not a fan of Grumpy Cat. I know that the cat is fine, healthy, and as happy as you can consider a cat to be, but I find the actual cat off-putting because of the same physical differences that have made her an internet star. I am a fan of the smart people who are making lots of money off their mutant cat. You do you, and put your kids through school. Congrats. I’m proud of my maturity that I can say that, even after watching this…. thing. Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever is “of the moment” in the worst possible way. The filmmakers plainly knew that not a single person would care about this movie in six months, and so they stuffed it full of in-jokes and winking, nodding references to the meme, internet culture, and the movie’s own stupidity. I’m not talking subtle, here; I’m talking the cat asking the camera “Why are you still watching?” The problem is that constantly calling out the fact that the movie is stupid doesn’t actually A) make it somehow not stupid or B) absolv

Yup, this might be another year for versions of the Nutcracker. This one is now our favorite. If you’re going to watch a film of a ballet, skip this boring one , and this better, but still dull one and probably even this one in favor of The Hard Nut. This production does suffer from the same problem that plagues almost all attempts to film a live performance: the person choosing the shot sometimes chooses the most boring part of the stage, or hides a transition that would actually be interesting to watch, or focuses on one character when something interesting is happening across the stage as a whole. This film version was produced for PBS in 1991, and the intro pieces with choreographer Mark Morris are clearly a bit dated. That said, the design, story and energy of this version lifts it well above others we’ve seen. The first act, especially, is glorious, in no small part due to the marvelous design. The style is based on the cartoonist Charles Burns; it uses strong black and

That, that was a thing that we sat through. Erin swears that he doesn’t remember why it was on our Netflix DVD queue. After watching it, we agreed that evidence suggests it was on some ‘worst holiday movies’ list. I thought it wasn’t going to be much from the opening credits, frankly, but the acting in this movie ended up being truly remarkable. The acting, the writing, the special effects and the production values: all of these were at a level that is hard to describe. I’ll try, though. Picture a bunch of fifth graders who have been brought up in a room with no contact with the outside world. They only learned about how people behave from two sources: only the most cliche and flat television from the 40’s and 50’s, and from one adult who has kind of a sadistic vibe. These kids write, direct, design and act in a holiday play. This is that play. The acting isn’t just wooden, it takes wooden to a whole new level of flat and unbelievable. It’s actually almost enough to believe it’

In 1985, I was six years old, Family Ties was my favorite show on television, mostly because of Michael J. Fox's Alex Keaton. Re-watching a few episodes three decades later, I can't really tell why I liked the show all that much, though Fox's deliveries seem to be the highlight. The show's premise revolved around a couple of liberal ex-hippies raising kids who were more in tune with 80's materialism and conservative politics. As a meditation on the power of the instinct to rebel, even when that means rebelling against the very concept of rebellion, I'd expect them to have enough material to fill two or three hours. The fact this show lasted seven seasons (including the three holiday episodes below) plus a made-for-TV movie doesn't bode well for its watchability. A Christmas Story (1982) : This episode starts on Christmas Eve while the Keatons are getting ready to drive to a ski lodge for the holiday. A blizzard forces them to change those plans, and

It's a competitive race, but "Last Christmas" has at least got to be in the running as the least rational, most bizarre episode of Doctor Who produced since the show was restarted in 2005. It's essentially a mashup of Aliens, Inception, and The Thing. With Santa Claus. The Jolly Old Elf is played by Nick Frost, who might be the single best named actor to ever take on the role. He does a fantastic job with it, too, embracing the absurdity of a fantasy character showing up on a science fiction show. The opening focuses on Clara, still grieving, rushing to her roof to investigate a loud crash. She discovers Santa Claus and two elves trying to corral their flying reindeer. The TARDIS shows up in the middle of this, and The Doctor appears to trade barbs with Santa before taking Clara away. They soon arrive at the North Pole, where they discover a group of scientists dealing with an alien outbreak. The aliens, called Dream Crabs, are drawn to people who are thinking

Aww, Sofia. I wanted you to be fun. I wanted you to be clever. I like the idea of a Ur-princess narrative. But you were only sticky-sweet and not-too-terrible. Sofia the First is an animated series from Disney Junior, about a girl whose mother marries into the royal family of a fairy-tale kingdom. According to Wikipedia, she is the bearer of a mystic amulet that connects her to advice from other Disney princesses. In this episode, we're introduced to their traditional winter-gift-giving holiday: Wassailia! It's a fairly simple fantasy Christmas. There are presents, decorated evergreen trees, and traditional foods. The most prominent point unique to Wassailia is the lighting of a special candle in honor of the season that...it's not quite clear, but it seems to bring blessings on the family. The kids (Sofia and her step-siblings James and Amber) sing about how they celebrate the holiday to open the episode. Sofia is excited for her first Wassailia in the castle, but

South Park has always been hit or miss for me, though I've never been sure whether it's the show's quality that's uneven or my tolerance for its twisted subject matter. At any rate, they've produced episodes that rank among the funniest works of animation I've ever seen and others that I would rather have a dentist appointment than re-watch. This three parter from 2013, fortunately, falls closer to the former. It's a mash-up of Black Friday, Game of Thrones, and the console wars that fits together seamlessly into a hilarious - albeit warped - holiday tale. In addition, its focus on Black Friday is a welcome deviation from the norm: I find it odd more shows haven't played with the day. The premise is a bit convoluted, but the three episodes give them time to develop it. In order to maximize interest in Black Friday, the mall is planning to offer a massive discount to only the first thirty customers. This discount can be applied to anything in th

A Christmas Horror Story 's title might undersell the content: this is at least four distinct stories, not one, each with a different tone. The stories are told in tandem, cutting back and forth over the film's hour and forty minute run time. All occur simultaneously on Christmas Eve. They're technically connected, but not significantly. Some of the characters know each other or have some background tying them to another story, but none of what happens to them in their own tales is impacted by what's going on elsewhere. Despite being distributed direct to video on demand, this anthology was impressively well shot, written, directed, and acted. It balances the horror and comedy well, juggling between a genuinely unsettling horror/fantasy, a creature feature, a ghost story, and a campy horror tale. None of these - not even the camp - fall into the pitfalls that usually trip up this genre. The movie never forgets it's horror first, and it has no interest in settlin

Absolutely charming. Father Christmas is an animated special based on two more of Raymond Briggs’ children’s books. It features a very stereotypical-looking Santa Claus who acts very un-stereotypically. Father Christmas is exhausted, and decides to take a holiday in the off-season. He first tries France, only to be put off by the food (the resulting bathroom humor, while extremely tame by today’s standards, is not for everyone. Then goes to Scotland, only to be put off by the weather. He finally stays in Vegas for most of the summer months. This is a very grounded Father Christmas. He’s old and crotchety, and prone to using ‘blooming’ as an all purpose word in every sentence. He loves Vegas because he can swim and tan, gamble, drink and watch the showgirls. But eventually he has to fly his homemade camper (pulled by reindeer, naturally) home, retrieve his pets from boarding, and prepare for Christmas. The special follows him all the way through Christmas deliveries, with a sid

I found Beyond Tomorrow listed on a list of theatrically released Christmas movies I found on Wikipedia that we're using as a checklist. I didn't remember ever hearing about it, so I added it to my Netflix queue. But before it came up, I found a copy in one of our bins of unwatched Christmas DVD's. Actually, I found two copies; one in a compilation, and another remastered version. I'm starting to think we should invest the time to re-organize our collection. I should probably mention that the remastered version was also re-branded as "Beyond Christmas." That was released in 2004 and included a color version along with the original. I'm not sure if their were legal reasons for the title change or if they just thought it would sell better with the word "Christmas" stamped across the top. The movie has a lot in common with Bell, Book and Candle  and The Bishop's Wife , though it seems to be even less well known. It's a shame, becau

Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol 's claim to fame is that it was the first animated Christmas special created for television. Its success paved the way for Rudolph, Frosty, the Peanuts' special, and all the rest. From a historical perspective, this is extremely important. But from a practical standpoint, it's pretty dull. This thing starts with a brief frame story, which serves no purpose other than establishing why Mr. Magoo is Scrooge. It's a fairly simple set-up revolving around a Broadway production of "A Christmas Carol" starring Mr. Magoo. Why is Mr. Magoo starring in a play? No clue. But there are a few quick gags involving his sight. He crashes his car, goes into the wrong building, goes into a woman's dressing room instead of his own, then causes the play's director to be horribly injured just as the play starts. All of this takes about three and a half minutes. The next forty-seven minutes are just "A Christmas Carol." Ostensibly

If you’ve hung out here with us for any appreciable time, you have probably noticed that while we are open to anything with a Christmas flavor, we each have our specialties. Partially because of what we have history and context for, partially just our individual taste. Erin tends to handle the true Christmas classics and the modern mainstream comedies. I take lesser-known classics, the BBC and movie musicals. We occasionally flip for the truly terrible stuff. Erin deals with most horror. I take children’s media, particularly when it involves Henson. Bear in the Big Blue House is a Henson Company production that aired on the Disney channel from 1997-2006. I may have seen some episodes in 1997 and 98. Yes, I was a teenager, what of it? It focuses on the titular Bear and his varied friends: a tiny mouse named Tutter, a baby bear, Ojo, two otters, Pip and Pop, and a lemur with a speech impediment who goes by Treelo. They all live together in a, yes, big blue house. The episodes tend

Lindsay and I reached dramatically different conclusions on this; probably as extreme as anything we've ever seen for this blog. That said, we can't actually point to many details we're in complete disagreement on: we simply weighed the positive and negative aspects of the special differently. Extremely differently. This is a sequel to The Snowman , a British Christmas special that's been around for three decades. The original is hands-down the best animated holiday special that I've ever seen, and I've seen damn near all of them. If you haven't seen The Snowman , just... no. Stop reading this, track it down, and watch it. I don't care if it's late, if you're tired, if you came across this write-up in the middle of April, or any other excuses. It is required viewing. It's also something that, by all rights, should never be touched again. Before we put this on, the very notion of a sequel didn't just feel unnecessary: it was blasp

So once upon a time there was a gorgeous piece of art, The Snowman . And some people saw T he Snowman , and thought, hey, we should do a sequel! We’ll get the creator on board, it’ll be great. Two years later, The Snowman and the Snowdog was born. And.. it’s not terrible. GOD F*CKING D*MN IT. Because if it were terrible, I could just tell you it was terrible and we could all move on. But no. I enjoyed it. However, as I told Erin after the movie: “I liked it the way I feel emotional at Pixar movies even if the scene isn’t actually any good.” The writers did an excellent job checking off all the boxes and twisting the emotional beats to create a perfect facsimile of The Snowman . It’s like the uncanny valley. It’s almost perfect, but there’s something unsettling. Something wrong. This version stars a new little boy, which I liked. And I liked a lot about the animation. The building of the snowman especially was very well done. This was clearly carefully created. I was

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

The strange lighting, coupled with the almost alien music and meandering story line of Eyes Wide Shut , created a dreamlike effect. And by "dreamlike effect," I literally mean the movie almost put me to sleep, because it was astonishingly, bafflingly, almost unbelievably boring. This was one of the most boring movies I've seen since... well... actually, it hasn't been that  long since I've seen something this boring, but keep in mind I watch a hell of a lot of bad Christmas flicks. But the competition generally goes more than ten minutes without showing naked people: Eyes Wide Shut has no excuse for failing to hold anyone's attention. I heard a while ago that this was a Christmas movie, which I wasn't aware of. Turns out, the movie is Christmas through and through. Christmas lights, in particular, are in damn near every scene that doesn't contain weird sex cults. Half of the film's lighting seems to come from multicolored bulbs. The other half

Background information on this special is sparse. It's an animated half-hour story providing a fictitious origin for the song of the same name. It features Phil Hartman, though he's warping his voice to a degree I couldn't even tell which character he was playing (not surprisingly, it's the lead). This is narrated by a partridge and concerns four named characters: King and Princess Silverbell, Sir Carolboomer, and his squire, Hollyberry. If you read those names and thought to yourself they were hilarious, I've got some good news for you: there's a special floating around Youtube you're going to love. Unfortunately, I've got some bad news for you, too: there's almost certainly a two-foot spike sticking out of your forehead that's impairing normal cognitive function. Seek immediate medical help (after watching the special, of course). The plot is thin to a degree that the very term "plot" is a generous overstatement. The special sta

There are the Christmas episodes you seek out, then there are the ones you trip over. I've been slowly making my way through the series, Wilfred , and I stumbled across a holiday episode in season 3. First a few words about the series. More specifically, this is the American remake of an Australian show with the same name. It follows Ryan, played by Elijah Wood, a disturbed former lawyer who perceives his neighbor's dog as a grown man in a dog suit. Just describing the bizarre premise doesn't do the series justice. This is far stranger and darker than it sounds. It regularly delves into existential questions, as Ryan attempts to determine whether his experiences are mystical in nature or if he's simply losing his mind. The series's tone oscillates between dark comedy and psychological horror. This episode is surprisingly restrained, though it ventures into some dark territory. It's Christmas, and Ryan's family is reuniting for the first time in years

Okay, I had no memory of ever having seen this, but it was very familiar by the end, which makes me think I must have seen it at some point. In the annals of Christmas TV Specials, there’s a reason this one doesn’t make the list of classics. However, there are bits that are clever, and it’s nice and short. The special opens by introducing us to our villain, Alexander Graham Wolf, aka Big Bad. He’s got some sort of weird plan involving the North Pole and Santa, and it’s all very unclear. It’s clear enough, though, to reindeer Comet, who zips off for reinforcements to save Christmas. Since she can’t carry anything too heavy, Comet chooses two rag dolls and a rag doll dog for her helpers. Not the smartest member of the team, our Comet. They get back to the North Pole to investigate. Santa and company have all gone to bed (at like six hours to Christmas! This was the most unbelievable part of this for me), so Wolfy has free run of the workshop. He sets up a giant expanding machine-

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