Mainlining Christmas

As White Christmas opens, the film proudly announces that it was produced in VistaVision, which research tells me means that it was filmed in a special widescreen process that gave exceptionally high resolution for its time. While the Netflix version that we watched occasionally lost some of that gorgeous resolution, the care and artistry that went into this picture was still very apparent. The plot is simple on the surface: Burl Ives and Danny Kaye play a pair of friends and showbiz business partners who fall for a pair of sisters who are a singing duo. On that level, it seems similar to Holiday Inn, the classic holiday musical which White Christmas (the song) originated in. But the experience here is miles above the earlier film. For starters, all the characters are actually characters. The pair of guys are army buddies as well as business partners and that affects the plot throughout. The secondary romantic pair make it their business to get the primary pair together, and it

I stumbled across this the other day, and it’s AMAZING. http://jack_benny.podomatic.com/entry/2012-11-17T18_11_43-08_00 It’s a compilation, in podcast form, of a bunch of classic radio recordings of Christmas songs which originally aired between 1944 and 1952. They aren’t all winners, but they’re really interesting recordings. At least listen and marvel at the very beginning: Bing Crosby reciting the “GI Night Before Christmas.” Talk about your gallows humor... The “Jingle Jive” is a great version of Jingle Bells. Whenever the Sportsmen quartet comes on, you know they’re going to shill Lucky Strikes cigarettes. You get a bit of Bing Crosby and Jimmy Stewart singing Baby, It’s Cold Outside together. The “Rudolph Jive” is amazing. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would have just become popular in 1950, and Bing Crosby and Judy Garland see nothing odd about making adult jokes and adding a totally great ending to the song. These are all live radio recordings, I think, so sometimes

Olive, the Other Reindeer is an animated special produced by Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, and features Drew Barrymore in the lead role. With that kind of muscle behind it, you'd expect Olive to be pretty good. And you'd be completely and totally wrong. The design and animation tops the long list of problems plaguing this thing. The majority of the special is done using 2-D animation on 3-D environments. The backgrounds are fine, if underwhelming (think video games from a decade ago). The characters, on the other hand, are astonishingly and unbelievably awful. The special is based on a picture book, which uses highly stylized two-dimensional images that resemble (intentionally) something a kid might draw. The special attempts to recreate this effect and winds up with something resembling what a first-year college student might animate. It's painful to look at. A few years later, this would probably have been done in Flash, and the results would ha

We're almost done. This is day 23 of "25 Christmas Eves," my series of genre fiction about Christmas Eve. This one's called "Scrap." It's a short piece of SF. I think it qualifies as cyber-punk, in fact. Enjoy. By: Erin L. Snyder The box was four inches across, and the wires sticking out of the bottom were frayed. Its battery was long gone, so Ail pulled the cord connected to her hip pack. She sighed - if she connected it directly, it might short and fry the board. She could always hold off until she came across a breaker. She flipped the device over in her hands and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. If the damn thing fried, it fried. What would she be out? A forty-dollar piece of junk she’d just picked up. What’s forty dollars buy you, anyway: burger and a Coke? “Mother. I located several phones.” The voice came from beneath a pile of rusting electrical equipment. “Fine. Pull them into the clearing. And I’m not your mother,” Ail said. “That ma

30 Rock: Ludachristmas (2007) The first Christmas episode is in Season Two. The main plot, following Jack’s trouble with his elderly mother and Liz’s annoyingly perky family, was darn fun. There’s great family dynamics, and the resolution is nicely cynical. The B-plot about Tracy’s alcohol monitoring and the office Christmas party was also pretty funny. 30 Rock: Christmas Special (2008) Season three brings us this episode, with promising plot hooks and decent execution. Elaine Stritch is fabulous again as Jack’s mother, whom he has (accidentally?) hit with his car. Liz’s plot, however, is about her desire to donate toys to some needy kids, and while the takeaway is kinda funny, it’s awkward and painful to watch. 30 Rock: Secret Santa (2009) This one I had seen before, and it’s rather weak. The gags fall flatter and the tropes are tired. Blah.The joke about Jenna’s insecurity about her singing made me sort of angry. I know the character is shallow and crazy, but I just didn’

Man, I forgot how freaking weird this show is! It’s really, really weird. Watching this episode, about how one kid’s attempt to keep Christmas around a bit longer spirals into a battle for the ages between the Christmas Spirit and an evil Garbage Man with his own theme song is... well, there’s nothing else quite like it. Overall I’m glad we saw this. It certainly wasn’t boring. It was an exceptionally surreal experience and it suffered from the abuse of sound effects, but at least it wasn’t boring. If you’re looking to relive what you liked about Pete & Pete, you might want to start elsewhere. But if you want a very unique tale of holiday cheer, give this a shot. I found it on YouTube.

Ah, VeggieTales. At last we meet face to face. VeggieTales is about a bunch of anthropomorphic vegetables who praise Jesus and tell really, really awful jokes. The vegetables don't have hands, but still manage to lift small objects in front of them, as if they did. I can only assume this is done with a limited form of telekinesis. As premises go, I think I'd rank this dead last out of absolutely everything humanity has ever invented. And yet... somehow... this was so bad it failed to live up to its potential. I'm going to gloss over the frame story about a broken truck and jump right into the real meat of this thing, which concerns the "real" Santa Claus. Of course, they're referring to Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra. Ultimately, I'd describe the final result as being less historically accurate than Santa Claus is Coming to Town . Sure, they turned Nicholas into a pepper, but that was far from the only alteration. The story started out acceptably