Mainlining Christmas

I remembering watching this show back when it started. I saw the first season, but gave up after a few episodes in the second, so I never got to this one. Before I go on, I'd like to point out that seeing Joseph Gordon-Levitt when he was that young is really messing with me. To think that kid grew up to become Cobra Commander. The episode is entertaining enough, and thanks to the series' concept, is actually about Christmas, not just set during the holidays. Like pretty much every single episode of the series, this was a comedy of errors about the disguised aliens trying and ultimately failing to understand our strange world. Ahem. That's why I got tired after a season back in the 90's. Fortunately, having not seen an episode since then, I was ready to jump back in. You get subplots for each of the main characters, though Dick clearly had the most screen time. He was cast as the episode's Scrooge, though he was always kind of Scrooge, so that's not a

I was taking a walk up Sixth Avenue for a change, and realized that there is quite an amusing string of holiday displays along this route. I love these giant Christmas lights: If it's unclear, each bulb is more than three feet long.  Another block down you get these giant ornaments: Across the street from some of this is the brightly shining front of Radio City Music Hall: Over in front of Radio City, I was highly amused by this special holiday bus-will-not-stop sign: The last giant prop that I saw was this big toy train, also filling a fountain. It's very large, not as large as a real train, but probably as tall as me.

Bah, Humduck attempts to invoke the joy of classic Looney Tunes cartoons in telling a quirky version of A Christmas Carol, and it fails miserably on both counts. There's absolutely no charm, no fun, and no humor in watching this special drag out. There's a sense that this was made to mimic better movies. The backgrounds are filled with a constant barrage of old characters from Warner's past, but the references are hollow, adding up to nothing. It's as though the producers are trying to convince the audience they love these characters, too, despite clearly not understanding what makes the classics entertaining. The writing is dull and uninspired, driven by a need for instant recompense for any misdeed or heartless comment. The role of Scrooge is played, as the title suggests, by Daffy, who is impossibly rich for no discernible reason. If he threatens a child collecting for the poor, a door closes on him. If he dismisses Christmas, he falls down the stairs. Karmic p

Okay, so apparently at some point Harry Connick Jr was delusional or high enough to think producing an animated special based loosely on a stupid song he wrote was a good idea. And then somehow NO ONE involved thought: wait, this is a TERRIBLE idea! Thus was born the steaming pile known as The Happy Elf. Ugh, even the name is boring. The plot is idiotic, every single character is annoying. The only thing this has going for it is that it isn't very long. Rob Paulsen plays the lead, and if anyone could have pulled it out of the dive and made the twitchy hyper obnoxiously Pollyanna elf charming, it probably would have been Rob Paulsen. But it was not to be. The dialogue is so terrible, and the performances are all painfully overwrought. The animation... on a purely technical level, it might not be quite as bad as some of the CG we saw last year. It's bad, but the humans are maybe 5% less creepily mask-like. However, 99% of the designs and movements were poorly chosen,

Well, this is depressing. First the good news: this wasn't awful. In fact, taken on its own merits, it was even good. It was funny, cute, and kind of fun. But that's just not good enough this time. This isn't a new special existing in a vacuum: it's the sequel to the single best Christmas special made in more than a decade. And this one doesn't measure up. The original, while not being too dark for kids, was exciting. Yeah, half was devoted to heart, but when things turned, there was a real sense of danger. That was completely missing this time around: I never felt like the elves could actually die. There were still some cool scenes, particularly the opening, which expanded the series's mythology by showing the other half of the operation: the elves there to punish the bad kids. For a minute, there was a darkness to the tone, but they just couldn't hold it. Almost immediately, we shifted to the comic relief. And guess who played that role. If you

Lindsay bought this for me last Christmas, and - having taken a year to recover from the holidays - I recently cracked it open for a read. Like most books about the holidays, this was marketed as a Christmas present. The writer, John Grossman, is apparently a collector specializing in printed cards, promotional publications, and the like. Here, he's brought together some fascinating images demonstrating a darker side to the season. As a collection of images, the book is awesome. As a look at history, it's less impressive. In the chapter introductions and image blurbs, Grossman makes some grand claims about how Christmas used to be, but he offers little context to back this up. The images certainly display some fascinating depictions of the holidays from the past, but he avoids addressing whether these represented the normal iconography of their respective eras or if they were outliers. None of this impacts the book's value as something to flip through, of course. Imag

Okay, this was kind of awesome. Well, it was weird and bemusing, cheesy and very surreal, but that can be a kind of awesome, right? I had never seen a full episode of this series, but I think I'm going to have to watch more after seeing this one. The cheese factor is right on the level that I really enjoy: the occasional wink and nudge in good fun, charming, affable characters, somewhat silly fight sequences and dated but well-meaning special effects. This episode isn't that impressive itself, though. Diana (in her civilian life as agent Diana Prince) is assigned to protect a trio of scientists. They each have knowledge of a piece of some doomsday weapon, and one of them has been kidnapped and... replaced with a lifelike android. If someone were to get all three scientists, then clearly, disaster! So Diana investigates, both in and out of costume, and eventually figures out the plot and rescues the scientists. No surprise there. In the process there are more androids (w