Mainlining Christmas

Okay. First the simple. At time of writing, I've seen two episodes of the Fraggle Rock reboot including this holiday special, and they are really quite good. It's a lot like the original, just gently made more modern feeling. However, this special episode is dancing in the shadow of one of the all-time great holiday episodes, and that means there's a lot to live up to. I think the fairest thing is to talk about it on its own first, and then address the larger context. (I'll mark the sections ahead.) If somehow you are ignorant of Fraggle Rock's premise, here's the quick pitch: A race of cheerful creatures (Fraggles) live in a system of underground caves, in a sort of symbiosis with a race of tiny hardworking creatures (Doozers) and in fear of a family of giant pompous fools (Gorgs). The tunnels also open into a workshop owned by a human who is unaware of the Fraggles and often has a parallel plot line going on. The episodes are usually comic adventures that touc

This is one of those things that both is and is not an adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Specifically, it falls within the sub-sub-sub-genre where the idea is used to establish a frame story justifying the use of loosely connected clips to repackage old material as a new special. Only this time it's Sesame Street doing it, so it's kind of good. I assume it goes without saying that the Scrooge analog here is Oscar the Grouch. There's a bit of narration courtesy of Tim Curry (who voiced Scrooge himself in a 1997 animated movie) establishing the setting, though Curry immediately bows out until the very end. We don't get much setup at all: there's no Cratchit, Tiny Tim, or Fred analogs, nor does Oscar actually do anything more aggressive than hanging a sign on his can demanding not to be bothered until after the holidays. But Joe Marley, who works for a ghost-related delivery service, shows up to deliver the first of three ghost-o-grams (an antique can of beans) along wi

Just so there's no confusion, this isn't a movie: it's a 25-minute version of A Christmas Carol made for television. Actually, Wikipedia claims it's the first TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol - I have no idea if that's actually true, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. If you're wondering how they're able to condense the entirety of A Christmas Carol into 25 minutes, rest assured the answer is "poorly." Very poorly, in fact, and it doesn't help that a significant portion of that runtime goes to overlong opening credits where Scrooge's first name is misspelled (seriously) and an intro from narrator Vincent Price. Don't get too excited: he's warm and friendly here - picture the Platonic ideal of "Christmas special host," and you should have a good idea of what he's wearing, how he's dressed, and what the set looks like. Also, try to act surprised when I tell you he reads the story from a book. Still, Pr

I want to state up front I'm extremely torn on this movie, and I don't even want to touch on why until I've hopefully scared off a few people who should see this unspoiled. One of my goals in writing reviews is to avoid spoiling worthwhile experiences. On this site, that's usually easy, because a lot of what I'm looking at is pretty old, and quite a bit... well... just isn't good enough to worry about. The Lodge, however, is extraordinarily well made, extremely well acted, and effective at what it's trying to do. It's really just a question of whether "what it's trying to do" is going to impress you or leave you feeling like you wasted two hours of your life. And I really can't offer a single detail as to why  without rendering the point moot by spoiling literally every significant twist and turn this takes. So... I guess it's time for as oblique a spoiler warning as I can offer. If you like horror - particularly atmospheric horror

Star in the Night is a 25-minute film that won an Academy Award for Short Subject. It's not hard to see why - despite a simple premise, it's sweet, clever, and surprisingly touching, even 75 years later. That's not to say it doesn't contain a few aspects that aged poorly - they cast a white actor as a Mexican character, and an Italian character's accent is comically bad - but if you can overlook these issues, it's remarkably progressive in several respects. The story is a modern (well, modern for 1945) retelling of the nativity in a motel in the middle of a desert in America on Christmas Eve.  It starts with three cowboys riding across the desert at night. They're carrying a bunch of toys they just bought on a whim. Then, in the distance, they see a star. Not a literal star, mind you: a gaudy, light-up display advertising a model. The main character is the owner, who's having trouble getting the star to work. He meets a hitchhiker, and the two argue abou

As you can see above, this has had a couple different titles, depending on the country. The original US release was "Christmas Eve," while it was released in Britain under the less generic, "Sinner's Holiday." The British version sets a more accurate expectation for what you're getting. I'm not sure if the US version went with "Christmas Eve" to avoid confusion with a movie from 1930 called "Sinners' Holiday" or to appear more upbeat and festive in the hopes of attracting holiday audiences. If it was the latter, it didn't seem to work: the movie wasn't all that successful and didn't leave much of a cultural footprint, which is a little unfortunate. I had a lot of fun with this one. There's part of me that wants to tell you to just stop reading and watch this movie. It's not so much that this is good - aspects are great, while others are lacking - as it is... well... bonkers. This movie is bonkers. And more than

Love, Death & Robots is an animated science-fiction anthology series on Netflix that leans towards R-rated fare. Like most anthologies, the quality and style vary from short to short. Some of these are absolutely fantastic, while others are fairly mediocre. None are what I'd call awful - even the worst feature jaw-dropping visuals, almost always of the computer-generated variety. My largest criticism of the series is it's prone to excess: the first volume, in particular, contains so much unnecessary nudity and sexual content I found myself wondering if there was a mandate only lifted for a couple shorts. This short doesn't have that issue. In fact, I'd describe it as impressively restrained and tonally balanced, particularly given the premise. It's also the first of only two stop-motion installments to the series, as is appropriate for the holiday theme. Let's get to the story, though at only five minutes, "scene" might be a better descriptor. The