In a world of dazzling CGI special effects and ever more postmodern, cleverly-interwoven stories, the beautiful simplicity of 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas is striking. Holding close to the look and spirit of Charlie Schulz’s immortally-brilliant comic strip Peanuts, the animated Christmas special features, as you might expect given the Continue Reading
Movies
It’s BAAAA’D! Shaun the Sheep has to deal with Farmageddon
SNAPSHOTWhen an impish and adorable alien with amazing powers crash-lands near Mossy Bottom Farm, Shaun soon sees an opportunity for alien-powered fun and adventure, setting off on a mission to shepherd the intergalactic visitor home before a sinister organization can capture her…can Shaun and the flock avert Farmageddon on Mossy Continue Reading
On 7th day of Christmas … I watched Christmas in Connecticut #retroreview
If you think that creative fabrication is purely a product of our digital Fake News what-you-see-isn’t-necessarily-what-you’re-getting age, then 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut is proof that humanity has long had a talent for pulling the wool over others’ eyes, especially if it aids in building and sustaining a career. You could Continue Reading
On 6th day Christmas … I watched The Grinch
For a film that’s ostensibly about a person who hates Christmas with such a ferociously ill-tempered passion that he steals it away from everyone else, The Grinch wears its Christmas-loving heart very much on its tinseled sleeve. Which really makes perfect sense since at heart The Grinch, like Charles Dickens’ Continue Reading
A Christmas tree you can see from space: Come join the apocalyptically-festive LEGO party!
It’s fair to say that celebrating Christmas is not exactly high on the list of priorities in your average garden variety apocalyptic wasteland? After all, resources are slim to none, it’s really dusty and bleak, and there’s all that time that must be devoted to brooding sessions. There surely isn’t Continue Reading
Movie review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?
One of the great pleasures of postmodern storytelling is its willingness to go beneath and beyond the obvious and explore what lies beneath the easy-to-access tropes and cliches. This means that in a film like Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the “villain” is rendered not as some ne’er do Continue Reading
The short and the short of it: The intriguing stopmotion beauty of Fabricated
SNAPSHOT A stop-motion film ten years in the making, ‘Fabricated’ is a journey through an alien world which was once our own. (synopsis via Vimeo) There is not a lot of correlation, in general, between the natural and mechanical worlds, the two quite inimical to each other in a Continue Reading
On 3rd day of Christmas … I watched Anna and the Apocalypse
If you’re a Christmasaholic, you may well wonder what zombies are doing shambling their way through your favourite holiday. After all, isn’t the song-evoked “most wonderful time of the year” a joyous time of peace and goodwill to all, chestnuts roasting over open fires and sleigh rides through the Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 11 new pop culture ornaments
I am not a Christmas traditionalist. Well, I am and I am not, said as I pivot, rather precariously on the fence of what sounds dangerously like festive decorating ambivalence. What I mean is that while I love all the warm-and-fuzzy, bright-and-shiny trappings of the season so much so that Continue Reading
Christmas movie review: The Holiday Calendar
If you are to believe Hallmark, and frankly who are we to disagree, Christmas is the ideal time to fall in love. Movie after movie – 33 this year in total, up from last year’s Grinch-ly paltry 28 – extols the wonder and magic of a time of year Continue Reading