It is possible for a Christmas album to actually feel like the season after which it is named? Almost as if Christmas has taken on some sort of gloriously heartwarming, reassuring form and come to us complete with all the love, happiness and hope of the season decanted into a Continue Reading
Christmas 2021
On 3rd day of Christmas … I watched Single All the Way (movie review)
It is never easy to remake any movie genre in your own creative image. Stray too far from the formula that audiences know and love and you risk killing the goose that laid the golden box office egg; cleave too closely to it however, and you lose any spark of Continue Reading
On 2nd day of Christmas … I listened to When Christmas Comes Around … by Kelly Clarkson
Coming back around for a second go at creating a warm-and-huggable Christmas vibe – her first festive record Wrapped in Red (2013) made quite the seasonal impression when it landed, anchored by that powerfully emotive voice and a gift for somehow sounding traditional and original all at once – powerhouse Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I put 15 pop culture ornaments on my tree incl. The Rescuers, UP, Toy Story, Ahsoka Tano, Peanuts, Dr Seuss + Scooby-Doo
We all know history repeats itself thanks to the ongoing presence of human being in the process who alas have shown a freakish propensity for making the same mistakes over and over and over again, but did 2021 really have to ape 2020 so completely and absolutely? I think we Continue Reading
Christmas classic review: Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol
There is no doubting the universal appeal of Charles Dickens’ 1843 A Christmas Carol. Interpreted by just about franchise going, including the Muppets, and even run in reverse by the likes of Blackadder and Scrooged, A Christmas Carol appeals because it maintains with exuberant moral certainty that the hopes and Continue Reading
Book review: The Girl Who Saved Christmas by Matt Haig
Christmas is as wondrous and magical as life gets. A giant, and often much-welcome step away from the same-old banality of the everyday, which is often not awful, just not that great, Christmas promises that everything, at least for a while, will be sparkly bright, awash in contentment, love, and Continue Reading
Movie review: 8-Bit Christmas
Ah, the hazy, crazy days of youth! Specifically the late 1980s when kids definitely wore bike helmets – shhhhh, no, they didn’t but don’t tell today’s kids that – and the biggest, baddest Christmas present goals out there were, beside getting a freckled Cabbage Patch Kid, was securing your very Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more Christmas songs: ABBA, Michael Bublé, Meghan Trainor, Gary Barlow Manchester Orchestra+ The Muppets get Animal-istically festive
Christmas music is wonderful. Granted it may wear thin when you’re in retail and listening to the same tracks day after tinsel-saturated day, but for a great many of us, music adds some extra whimsically charming, emotionally uplifting specialness to a season already brimming with a magical sense of hope Continue Reading
Sneaking into #Christmas with Robin Robin: All warm mousey feelings, family and magic shiny wishing stars(review)
It honestly seems like Aardman Animation can do no wrong. Whether it’s the cheese-saturated domestic adventures of Wallace and Gromit or the hilarious mischievous of Shaun the Sheep, Aardman, known chiefly for their inspired stop-motion animation storytelling, have a gift, like Pixar, their spiritual narrative-shapers across the Atlantic, have a Continue Reading
It’s beginning to look like a kids’ books Christmas: Jingle Bells, What Does Santa Do When It’s Not Christmas? + more
I love Christmas and in many ways, I am still a kid at heart (more looking at life with excitable eyes way, not so much the tantrums). So, it makes sense that among all the other things I love about the festive season that I really enjoy reading kids’ books Continue Reading