December 9, 2025 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy First Showing) Christmas is a LOT. Even if you love the season, and this reviewer loves like an elf excitedly stocking Santa’s sleigh before downing a vat of eggnog and decorating every tree in the garden, all of us reach a point, even for a second where it all Continue Reading

On 2nd day of Christmas, I watched … Oh. What. Fun.

Burning gingerbread men and festive snow funnies – Thoughts on Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol

(courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTThe Emmy-winning franchise returns after more than a decade, following Christmas elves Lanny and Wayne as their holiday mission unfolds with many merry mishaps. The fourth installment [sic] continues the holiday adventures of an elite team that prepares homes worldwide for Santa’s arrival. (courtesy Disney+ media) After a Continue Reading

Festive book review: Keeping a Christmas Promise by Jo Thomas

(courtesy Penguin Books) When you love dearly dies, suddenly everything about them becomes vitally and inviolably important. That hit home very hard to me in the wake of the passing of my dad (2016) and then my mum (2019); suddenly I need to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation every year, Continue Reading

On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 10 new pop culture ornaments incl. Elio, Up, The Muppet Christmas Carol … and more!

(via Shutterstock) When I bought my first Christmas tree as an adult way back in 1992, I bought some pop culture ornaments but I mostly stuck to the sorts of ornaments and baubles I remembered from childhood. But as time went on, I increasingly bought more and more pop culture Continue Reading

More than a single snowflake … Thoughts on The First Snow of Fraggle Rock

(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTThe Fraggles eagerly await the first snow of the season and all the traditions it brings, but when only a single snowflake arrives and Gobo can’t write the yearly holiday song everyone is expecting, the season is thrown off course. For the first time ever, Gobo journeys Continue Reading

The festive short and the short of it: You’ve got a friend in the A Disney Holiday Short: Best Christmas Ever

(courtesy Disney+) SNAPSHOTWhen Santa mistakes the doodle on a girl’s list for a holiday wish, she wakes up on Christmas morning to find an unusual new friend under the tree. Directed by Taika Waititi and featuring the voice of John Goodman, the short follows the heartwarming story of the friendship Continue Reading

Festive book review: Good Spirits (Ghosted, 1) by B.K. Borison

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Ever since Charles Dickens published his novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas aka A Christmas Carol in 1843, it has been adapted repeatedly (almost immediately as a play in 1844), its universally relevant truth of finding redemption in the Continue Reading

Festive movie review: Champagne Problems

(courtesy IMP Awards) In a world where hype and PR all too often turn out to have more substance than the thing they’re promoting, it’s always a pleasant, if low-key, delight when something turns out to be better than the vehicle used to promote it. Champagne Problems is one such Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs Christmas songs #1: Sara Evans, Anaïs Reno, Lady A, Thelma & James, Mia McIntosh, Ingrid Michaelson + more … also Christmas releases by Eurovision artists!

(via Shutterstock) While Christmas albums from a wide variety of artists are hardly out of style, what is most remarkable in this year of our festive lord 2025 is how many Christmas singles have made their way out into an tinsel-draped, eggnog-addled world. Maybe there were always a lot of Continue Reading

Animated movie review: In Your Dreams

(courtesy IMP Awards) As a lifelong fan of animation, one of the things that I love about the artform, and which still holds true even in the face of ever more sophisticated CGI, is how much it emboldens and empowers the imagination. If you dream it, and good lord there Continue Reading