Posts

Supernatural: A Very Supernatural Christmas (2007)

Image
It's always awkward to jump into the middle of a plot-heavy series for a holiday installment. Supernatural is a long-running genre show with a pretty passionate fan base. This is the first time we've seen an episode. This one's from the third season, and it's packaged as a full special, despite really only being an episode. The producers arranged to start with the old CBS "A Special Presentation" title card as an homage to holiday fare from the 80's. And, naturally, they end with snow falling. There are a few story lines playing out simultaneously. A monster-of-the-week mystery forms the backbone, while a series of flashbacks to a Christmas Eve when Sam learned the truth about their family's legacy provides some heart. The episode opens with another flashback, this one just a year prior, showing a man being pulled up the chimney on Christmas Eve while his son watched. A year later, and the situation is repeated in another state, but this time m

Krampus Custom Action Figure

Image
If you're reading Mainlining Christmas, you likely knew who Krampus was even before he played a major role in a pair of surprisingly great horror movies last year. I'd love to see decent collectibles from one or both of those movies, but no one's stepped up to produce action figures to date. So I decided to try making my own. This is a Funko Magic: The Gathering Ajani Goldmane action figure. I picked this up about a year ago when it was on clearance (I want to say I spent six or seven bucks on him, but I really don't remember). I loved the sculpt on the body, but I thought the head was awful. Still, I bought him on a whim, in the off chance I'd think of something to do with him. I'm glad I did - there aren't a lot of action figures out there with triple-jointed legs. And this head belongs to a build-a-figure Absorbing Man from Hasbro's Marvel Legends line. It's actually one of two heads I have for this character - the other

The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About Christmas! (2012)

Image
This is a special, double-length episode of a show I knew existed (as I often have a vague sense of programming affiliated with PBS) but had never seen. I had the impression it was educational. I’m not sure about that, but it is boring. It starts off relatively inoffensive, if bland. Nick and Sally are two kids who are friends with the Cat in the Hat, and they arrive at his Christmas party and are promptly put to work as waiters while he sings about how awesome his party is. They think this is awesome. Kids at home: when doing favors for your “friend” is the super-fun part of your relationship, maybe rethink the friendship. Anyway, all the guests are animals, and a bunch of them are introduced during the song and subsequent party games. These include an annoying young caribou/reindeer, a mouse, a crab, and a bunch of other animals in passing (I wasn’t paying close attention, it didn’t seem important). The guests leave, and the kids offer to help clean up, but the Cat sends them h

Ronin (1998)

Image
The number of action movies set at Christmas is staggering. You can add Ronin to the list, though this one is really only a technicality - the holiday elements are faint to the point of being nearly nonexistent. But, for whatever reason, it's established that it's set during Christmas, so we're reviewing it in the interest of being complete. Ronin might be one of the 90's better action flicks, though that's really not saying much. It's a tense, realistic spy thriller that masquerades as a heist movie. We never get more than a first name for most of the movie's characters, nor do we really get a good sense of their motivations. It's a movie about secrets, so don't expect a great deal of emotional depth. Set in France, it follows its lead, Sam, played by Robert De Niro. He's a former CIA agent hired by Irish terrorists to work with a group of mercenaries in order to steal a briefcase before it's sold on the black market to the Russian maf

Comic Review: NorthStars Volume 1: Welcome to Snowville

Image
NorthStars Volume 1: Welcome to Snowville Jim Shelley, Haigen Shelley, Anna Liisa Jones, 2016 Premise: Santa’s daughter and the princess of the yetis go on an afternoon adventure to save Christmas. This sweet comic book from Action Lab Comics is a digital-first release this year, planned to be a gift-ready hardcover next year. The story isn’t anything more than it appears to be, but it’s a cute, well-done tale. The art is clean and bright and the writing is clever. Some of the little details and tweaks on holiday lore were things I’d never seen before and quite liked. Holly Claus meets Frostina under parental pressure, but they hit it off immediately. During a quick tour of Santa’s workshop, they run into a goblin who reports (in crayon-drawing speech bubbles representing a language barrier) that Krampus is interfering with the goblins who prepare the Christmas coal. The girls travel under Snowville to investigate, facing harvest-themed straw men and a snow dragon on the way

Forever Fun: Misfit Christmas and Santa's Christmas Figurine Playsets

Image
One of Christmas's most hallowed traditions is the post-holiday culling of the clearance aisle, when countless toys' and decorations' prices are slashed to absurdly low levels, and bottom-feeders like us swoop in to gather samples of the year's yuletide nature. This is certainly not the first time Rudolph figures from Forever Fun have wound up on our list. Way back in 2011, I reviewed their massive display, Santa's Musical Sleigh . And, prior to the creation of Mainlining Christmas, I picked up and reviewed Reindeer Games Rudolph (which is probably the best Rudolph action figure I've come across) at The Clearance Bin. I'm still a little unclear what "Forever Fun" is. They have very little online presence - it looks like they're a subsidiary of something called "Round 2 LLC," but I'm not seeing a lot of info about them, either. I guess they're a model kit company in Indiana which tosses out Christmas toys every December

Meet John Doe (1941)

Image
Even going by our standards, Meet John Doe qualifies as a Christmas movie on something of a technicality. Only the last few minutes actually occur around the holidays, and even then they're almost incidental. However, the movie goes out of its way to tie the season into its premise in order to build something of a heavy-handed metaphor. I'll cut to the chase: Meet John Doe is a Christmas movie because "John Doe" is Jesus. Well, sort of. It's slightly more complicated than that, but not as much as I'd have liked. The movie has a relatively strong opening, centering on Barbara Stanwyck's character, Ann. She plays a newspaper columnist who's just been laid off. As her final act, she writes a fake editorial letter written by an average Joe, who's fed up with the way "the little guy" is treated in society. The letter concludes with "Joe" vowing to jump off of City Hall on Christmas Eve. The letter gets a huge amount of public