As cultural shadows go, they don’t come much bigger than that cast by Charles Dickens and his classic festive novel A Christmas Carol, which has been interpreted, in one form or another, by just about TV show and movie that has existed. And why not? The themes of loss, selfishness, Continue Reading
On 12th day of Christmas … I watched “The Hard Luck Kid I” (That Girl) and “The Hard Luck Kid II” (The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
We are by nature a communal nature a communal species and never more so than at Christmas when the idea of being alone is anathema and we (for the most part anyway) seek out friends and family for some festive communal togetherness. That’s not always the case with some people, Continue Reading
I’m dreaming of a romantically cookie cutter festive season: James Franco hilarious parodies every Hallmark Christmas movie
SNAPSHOTEvery Christmas season, we can be sure that Hallmark Channel will have more than enough heartwarming holiday films to keep us entertained all month … And yes, these Hallmark holiday movies are super fun to watch, but we can’t help but notice they all seem a little similar. SNL hilariously Continue Reading
Santa’s in trouble? He needs some of Russell’s Christmas Magic by Rob Scotton
You’d think, given the miles he has clocked up over the many centuries that Santa has been delivering presents all around the world that he’d have the whole sleigh maintenance thing down pat. And yet, time after narratively convenient time, the big red guy’s sleigh inevitably comes a cropper, dragging Continue Reading
On 11th day of Christmas … I read An Island Christmas by Jenny Colgan #BookReview
Christmas is a pretty powerful time of the year. Or, at least, that’s the way it often seems with popular culture and some sort of giddy group consensus joining together to ordain it as the time of the year, the most wonderful time of the year in fact, when just Continue Reading
Movie review: Star Wars – The Rise of Skywalker
You might find it hard to believe but there are downsides to being the steward of one of the most successful cinema franchises of all time. Star Wars, which took the world by storm in 1977 when George Lucas released his charmingly low budget swashbuckling sci-fi epic, A New Hope Continue Reading
On 10th day of Christmas … I watched the movie Noelle
Unless you are someone staging a nativity play, in which case strict depiction of sacred religious truths is a virtue, there is a temptation whenever you tell a story about any aspect of Christmas’s many well-worn tropes and cliches to place your own merry, eggnog-addled spin on it. In fact, Continue Reading
Book review: The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith
History is all too often the art of looking back at facts and not personalities. When we examine the big epoch-defining events of our time and those that preceded it, we are often apt to look at what took place rather than who made it take place. That is largely Continue Reading
Christmas Comes to Moominvalley (adapted from the Tove Jansson classic) by Alex Haridi & Cecilia Davidsson / illustrated by Filippa Widlund
The chances are that if you haven’t heard of Christmas, then you have been living under the proverbial rock, without deliveries of junk mail or without access to a streaming platform or no nearby mall or singing angels in the sky announcing the saviour’s birth (you know, it happens ALL Continue Reading
Ho! Ho! What ho! My 2 fave British sitcom Christmas episodes – Miranda and the Vicar of Dibley
“Hi, my name is Andrew and I am a Christmas tragic.” I utter these words not out of any kind of sense of shame because, well, CHRISTMAS, but because it’s best we get it out and into the open. (Although if you’ve been paying any attention to the blog at Continue Reading