A Statement About the Best Christmas Movies (a much happier post)

'Tis the season for watching all of the movies that your mother banned for the past year, because watching Christmas movies all year round is the number one way to make them 'less special.' Since coming back from galavanting, I have been on a movie mission, not just watching Christmas films, but film series and oft-neglected films in my collection. Some of them are distinctly un-Christmas-like (Star Wars, anyone?) but some create nice background while doing things like working or baking. The moral of the story is that Christmas is a really good time for catching up on your film-watching: the kids are on vacation, finals are over, and there is only so much conversation one can have with visiting family before going completely insane.

'So,' you ask, 'What are the best films to watch at Christmastime?' Well, that is a very different question from 'What are the best Christmas films?' Obviously there are the classics, It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas etc. But I submit that there are some less obvious ones that rarely get their due consideration-- Meet Me in St. Louis and The Muppet Family Christmas (not to mention A Muppet Christmas Carol) to name a few. Also, a good Christmas movie does not really need to carry strong Christmas themes; my feeling is that anything epic and fun and magical works very well. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, even Star Wars... in otherwords, anything that is universally loved that can be watched while the family is recovering from massive amounts of food and gift overload.

So happy watching, Happy Christmas, and all that jazz. I promise to come back happier in the New Year if you promise to write to the AMTP and tell them they are morons.

A Statement About the Golden Globe Nominations

Wow. I don't want to talk about it.

A Statement About Why It's Been A While (Again...)

OK, so here's the thing: There is nothing going on. And the little that is going on is depressing and terrible and means that Televisionland is heading toward some kind of irreconcilable shift. Let's recap: The producers say the writers are being hyper-demanding babies, and the writers are saying the producers are being cheap bastards. Fair enough on both counts. The fact that neither side is willing to give in enough to attempt to fix what will now be not one, but two disrupted seasons of television (at least), and save an industry that is already having serious problems, is mind blowing in it's sheer selfish stubborn-ness.

Also, there is a speculation that ths Oscars are going to be cancelled (theoretically they can go on, but I assume Jon Stewart is a member of the WGA, which means he probably can't even take on the monumental job of writing the show by himself... he'd might be all right if he jumped on stage and ad-libbed the whole thing...) ANYWAY, saying the Oscars will be cancelled is like telling me Christmas is cancelled and I can't have a birthday for 10 years. I'm not pleased.

To stave of depression, everyone is hereby ordered to go see Juno, because as soon as she is allowed to write again, Diablo Cody is going to be the Next Big Thing. That is, if they ever put the thing in wide release. Whatever.



(Sorry, I hope to come back and talk about the best Christmas films in a much more cheerful manner sometime in the very near future).