7th's Top 100 Christmas Diversions Part 2 (75-51)
Posted by 7th on December 07, 2005

So I turned 31 yesterday (I accept Wal-mart gift cards in lieu of presents, folks!) People told me it would really kick me in the ass to turn 30, but it didn't. This birthday didn't either, though I have been feeling a bit long in the tooth lately.

Of all the "Pop" writers out on the 'Net, I'd say I'm probably one of the oldest (I think Maddox has me beat, Seanbaby too I think. Stile might as well, though I wouldn't call him a pop writer as much as a porn distributor.) I know I'm becoming "the old timer" because I surf through the various e/n sites, and read the articles these guys are writing about old 80's TV shows, and I often catch myself thinking "yeah, but I'm actually old enough to remember SEEING it," as if that was some kind of badge of significance. Holy shit, I remember sitting in my bedroom with a white kid named Michael Jackson one saturday morning and seeing the premiere episode of the Mighty Orbots! Bow Down Before Me, E/N Peons!

This is the kind of behavior I used to mock my dad over, the kind of stories that always started with "In MY day..." I can remember when comic books were still 60 cents. I can remember when action figures were less than 3 bucks. I remember when you could buy a gallon of gas for .75 cents. I can remember when Megatron wasn't a battle tank. That's the way it was, and we liked it, dammit!

I don't know. Maybe I'm outliving my usefulness to the web world. Maybe I was never useful to begin with. Maybe I should shut the hell up now and talk about Christmas shows. Ho-ho-ho.

75) Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas

I watched this show a lot when I was a kid. And yeah, I hated the Disney movies (though the original was marginally less annoying than the DTV sequel... French Stewart did SOUND more like Inspector Gadget than Broderick, if that counts for anything.) This DTV movie was released several years after the show went off the air (December of 1992, in fact), but I had a fun time with it regardless.

Don Adams returned for another adventure as the Maxwell Smart/Inspector Clouseau-inspired Gadget. This time, he's off to the North Pole to stop the evil Dr. Claw from ruining Christmas. Old Sharp Nails has thrown Santa down a manhole and turned the Christmas elves into toy-smashing zombies.

It includes the usual Gadget fuck-ups, including the Inspector accidentally arresting the real Santa for "Impersonating a Santa Claus," but as usual, Penny and Brain are there to bail his worthless ass out.

It's less than a half hour long, but if you enjoyed the show, you'll like this.

74) The Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special

Not much to say about this one. If you were and are a big fan of this show, then this will fit nicely into your Christmas show watching routine. Otherwise, it's just a Christmas-themed episode of the defunct Saturday morning show and nothing to write home about.

I can sense some of you tensing up in your computer chair, ready to remove the site from your favorite list. Well I don't care. I know full well that a lot of the e/n crowd out there maintains a constant erection for all things Pee Wee/Paul Reubens, but I'm not one of them, and I'll tell you why: because Pee Wee is the only success Reubens has had (if you don't count his stellar cameo in Batman Returns) and the character wasn't even his unique creation.

That's right, I said it. The character of Pee Wee Herman may have been brought to life by Paul Reubens, but much of the character's heart came from the mind of the late Phil Hartman, whom Reubens approached for help developing a "Child Trapped In A Man's Body" character for his eventual HBO special. This is why Hartman also co-starred in that special, and had a recurring role on the TV show. And it's also why I get pissed when people refer to Reubens as a genius, when Pee Wee was mostly Hartman's creation and he never gets the credit for it AND he had enough class when he was alive to downplay the fact that Reubens never acknowledged the fact that he owed his entire career to the man.

Reubens was good at pretending to be a 30 year old toddler who yelled alot and talked to his furniture. He also had a lot of hand/wrist/exposing himself in a porn theater dexterity and was found to have one of the largest collections of child porn/underaged male erotica in the history of the FBI. That's about it.

73) The Star Wars Holiday Special

George Lucas has gone on record stating that he will never allow this tripe to be released on the home video market, and I can't blame him. No, I have not seen the endless supply of online bootlegs for it out there. But I don't need to. As mentioned above, I'm old enough to remember actually seeing it on TV the night it was broadcast. Even at that age, I noticed how crappy the effects were compared to the movie. I recall seeing one scene when Chewbacca makes it back to his home planet, and there's a sort of video screen phone thingy that I assume was meant to be a device similar to the hologram systems seen in use by Vader in Empire Strikes Back, but I remember thinking the effect looked more like the "video" web-shooting effect from the Spider-Man guest appearances on the Electric Company. I noticed how the sets and matte shots looked more like Sesame Street quality than what was seen in the film. And of course, I loved the Boba Fett cartoon.

Everything else was crap, particularly Carrie Fischer singing a "Life Day" song to the tune of the Star Wars anthem while leaning against Chewbacca to hold herself up because she was fighting off a pending drug/alcohol stupor.

The plot's been covered by everyone from Matt to Mike Fireball, so I'm not going to bother, other than to state that this special does have one piece of historical significance that seems to get overlooked. This was one of the first "politically correct" specials to come out, in that it had nothing to do with Christmas, Santa, Jesus, or anything else of a Judeo/Christian origin. It just had to do with Life Day (which bears a striking resemblance to Earth Day in my book) and the worst looking Wookies I've ever seen. They looked like Wookies wearing Jim Carrey Grinch make-up.

72) Child's Play

Even though it was clearly the most financially successful Christmas horror film of all time, it's also the most easily forgotten. No one seems to remember old Chucky, the serial-killer possessed My Buddy doll and his knife-wielding murderous rampage. Sure, the sequels were all shit (though I hear Seed of Chucky is rather intentionally hilarious) but this film at least tried to not be too tongue-in-cheek, and somewhat convincingly portrayed a demonic evil doll creature with traditional mechanical effects (which was all they had back then.)

Clearly, the most iconic scene here was Chucky's birth, where our favorite mentat Piter De Vries performs an evil spell in a toy store to transport his soul into a little plastic Danny Bonaduce. He grabs the doll by the chest, utters some voodoo heebie jeebies nonsense Pentecostal one-liners nonsense, then screams "GIVE ME THE POWER, I BEG OF YOUUUUUUUUU!"

You just have to laugh, really. Brad Douriff deserved (and still deserves) better.

71) A Smokey Mountain Christmas

Here we have an ABC TV movie that I've only seen once in my entire life (in the winter of 1986), but was so downright weird that I have remembered it all these years. How could I not? It stars Dolly Parton and Lee "Steve Austin" Majors (and no, youngsters, that's not a wrestling joke) as two love birds who live deep in The Tennesee Smokies and must fight an evil WITCH OF THE WOODS to save Christmas for all the little humpkins and bumpkins, particularly seven orphans. So you have a beautiful outsider who goes to live in a cabin in the woods with seven little people and falls for a woodsman who saves her from an evil Witch. Nope, doesn't ring any bells at all.

I swear, that really is the plot.

My wife loves this movie, but it's not out on DVD except in overpriced bootleg form on Ebay and I haven't been able to find it being broadcast this year (the Hallmark Channel showed it last December but we missed it.) If any of you happen across a listing for it, please post the date, channel, and time on the forum for me.

P.S. It was directed by then newbie director Henry Winkler, who lost every ounce of cool Fonzie ever earned him when he cowered in fear before the Snowman took his team Eastbound and Down on the football field.

70) Mickey's Magical Christmas - Snowed In At The House Of Mouse

Disney advertised this film upon its release as "an all-new Holiday Feature!" But for the most part, that's crap. It's based on Disney's daytime TV show Mickey's House of Mouse, a sort of Disney take on the Muppet Show format. Mickey and the gang run a nightclub/theater, and shenanigans ensue.

So, a whole shitload of Disney characters get snowed in at Toontown and make it to the House of Mouse for shelter. Mickey keeps everyone cheery by showing several Holiday shorts. With the exception of one, all of the major shorts shown here are also included in the Disney Cartoon Classics Volume 9 DVD, namely "Pluto's Christmas Tree" and "Mickey's Christmas Carol," which we'll get to in a little while. So if you already have that DVD, this one's kind of a waste.

The reason I include it here is the third short, a Disney take on the Nutcracker starring Donald Duck as the Mouse King (complete with taped on Mickey ears.) The short is narrated by John Cleese in an admittedly hilarious performance, as he gets ever angrier at the characters for screwing up their performances. I can't justify the 20.00 price for what's essentially a ten minute short, but it is pretty damned funny. Of course, Donald is almost always a comedy hit, as we all know that speech impediments=hilarity.

69) Jesus Of Nazareth

This six hour miniseries can be rather exhausting to sit through, and really ought to be shown during the Easter holidays rather than Christmas as it's more of a resurrection movie than a vigrin birth movie, but when I was a kid, it was the best "life of Jesus" movie out there (Mel Gibson was still barreling across the Australian highways killing mowhawked bikers when this came out) so we'll work with what we have.

As I mentioned in my review of The Passion, I've never liked the "emaciated ghostly guru" image that so many Jesus movies have shown. Before The Passion ( and possibly King of Kings in the 60's) Christ was always shown as a thin, frail, almost Ethiopian looking waif of a human with huge ghostly eyes who spoke mostly in a whisper and tended to stare off into space a lot. In other words, he resembled your typical methhead. I've never agreed with that interpretation, for two reasons.

One, tradition paints Christ as a carpenter by trade, and that kind of work did not breed skinny, scrawny men. Carpentry builds muscle, people. Second, it would take a well-fed, well-bred, and healthy "in tip-top shape" man to live through the amount of torture Christ went through. Were he one of these anorexic looking bean pole Christs we've been shown in movies past, he wouldn't have made it through the scourging, much less the crucifixion.

At any rate, this movie really took that image to the extreme. Robert Powell, the actor portraying Jesus in this film, appears as though a mild April breeze could just pick him up and carry him away (which is how the story of Jesus ends in the Bible, so perhaps that's somewhat fitting.) However, it's just too much too far here. For crying out loud, shave his bead and slap him in a black latex jumpsuit and you'd have Ursa The Kryptonian.

67) Trading Places

Again, here's a movie most people don't think of during Christmas, despite it taking place during the holidays and one of its best scenes involving Dan Ackroyd dressing up in a Santa suit, getting piss drunk, and crashing the corporate Christmas party at his former employer.

This is just one of those comedies that I can watch over and over again without getting bored with it. It's also one of those movies that everyone has seen, so I don't really see the point in recapping the plot. But here are soe of my favorite bits:

The Jim Belushi cameo. He's really just playing Jim Belushi here, but so what? It's still funny.

The scene on the train with Jamie Lee Curtis in liederhosen and Ackroyd in blackface. "Hai Am Inga From Sveden!"

"Is there a problem, officers?"

When Murphy confronts the drunk Ackroyd, still in his santa suit, and call he can say in reply is "Errrrrrghhhh!" I also enjoy the bit where he stuffs and entire baked salmon into his suit.

66) Better Off Dead

Once again, this is a movie that few people think of when thinking of Christmas films, and again, is a movie that it seems everyone has seen once or twice. But this time, my unabashed love of this movie is forcing me to recap the plot, so just sit through it and enjoy.

Lane Myer has been dumped by his girlfriend for the captain of the ski team. He quickly embarks on a mission to kill himself through various failed schemes (hence the title) only to find himself, and real love, in the process.

I know it sounds like a hokey teen flick from that description, but believe me, it's nothing of the sort. This is one of the most fucked up movies you're likely to ever see. For example:

One of Lane's biggest adversaries are two Chinese brothers. One doesn't speak English at all, and the other learned English from watching ABC's Wild World of Sports, and thus sounds exactly like Howard Cosell. They drive what appears to be a retooled old taxi cab that has a loudspeaker on the roof. Their mission is to humiliate Lane in a street race, and often win, thanks to the general lameness of Lane's car, his father's station wagon.

On Christmas day, Lane is shown in the living room (complete with the virtual fireplace video playing on the tv) opening his Christmas presents (notice his brother is playing with one of the motorcycle toy sets from the old 80's cartoon show M.A.S.K.) All of Lane's presents are wrapped TV dinners.

Lane's best friend is Charles De Mer, played by Curtis "Booger" Armstrong as the resident school dopehead... except for the fact that their town is so clean that no one has any drugs, so Charles spends his days trying to get high by snorting over the counter products like nasal spray, whipped creme, and Jell-O. At one point, he's shown snorting snow off his top hat while waiting for Lane to attempt a rather harrowing ski track. "Oh my God! This is PURE SNOW! Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is?! I think I've frozen the left side of brain! Look, I can't move my right arm!"

An ongoing subplot of the film (and possibly what the movie is most famous for) concerns the evil paper boy, a ten year old hoodlum dressed all in black, complete with a black toboggan, black gloves, and a black BMX bike, who comes to Lane's house asking about his 2.00 delivery fee. Lane fears this boy, though we're never really told why. He constantly shrugs him off, but the evil little imp seems to magically appear out of nowhere on and off during the movie, always repeating the same line: "I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!" At one point, he gathers several of his fellow paper boys together and chases Lane through the park (complete with spot lights in the far distance illuminating the sillouettes of numerous demonic paper boys) in a send up of Night of the Living Dead style horror films. But his quest reaches its ultimate point when he mounts skis on his bike wheels and chases Lane down the side of K-12.

Another ongoing plot concerns Lane's little brother, who's obsessed with ordering prizes advertised on cereal boxes. This culminates in Lane noticing a package in the mail that states "Build your own space shuttle from household parts." By the end of this strange little movie, we're not at all surprised when, as the credits roll, a huge space vehicle bursts through the roof of Lane's house and blasts off into the night sky.

In one scene Lane is contemplating jumping off an overpass. Charles rides by on a bike and tries to console him, then pats him happily on the back and sends him careening over the side. He luckily lands in the back of a garbage truck, and is still lying in the trash, utterly defeated, when the truck passes under two black electricians cutting down tree branches. As he passes by and waves hello, one turns to the other and says "Now that's just a damn shame, throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that."

Long story short, a lot of my sense of humor comes from endless repeated viewings of this film, so perhaps that makes some sense to those of you who've been reading my stuff for a while. It's one of the most loved films of my teenage years, and I try to watch it every Christmas. Also, I had a bit of a teenage crush on the French exchange student character Lane eventually falls for (Monique was played by actress Diane Franklin, who has a bit of a cult following on the net, particularly for a brother/sister sex scene in the film Amityville 2: The Possession, wherein most of Diane's goodies can be plainly seen. Not that I'd know. I haven't seen that film since I was ten years old, and back then my Pentecostal Warrior mother would make me fast forward or cover my eyes through any nude scenes.)

(Pop Culturey Super Duper Note:The director's credit is listed as "Savage Steve Holland." He's also known as the creator of Eek! The Cat, but this film is what he's most fondly remembered for.)

65) The Berenstain Bears Christmas Tree

I can't say why, but when I was a kid, I just loved the Berenstain Bears. Nowadays, they aren't mentioned too much (they had a saturday morning show for a while on CBS too, as I recall) but for the most part, they're not as big as they used to be (their creator recently passed away too.)

My favorite of the Berenstain specials was the one about a Bigfoot type creature who ends up becoming their friend ( I think his name was Big Paw or something like that) but this one ranked up there too, back in a time when Raggedy Ann and Andy specials were as much of a Christmas and Halloween staple as Charlie Brown was.)

Papa bear is determined to find the ultimate Christmas tree, and takes the kids up the side of the mountain to find one. Unfortunately, every tree they find turns out to be the home of one of their numerous forest friends, so being the good "people" they are, the Bears leave them be. Eventually, they're forced to return home treeless by a vicious snow storm, only to find that the animals whose homes they spared have come down the mountain and decorated their home, essentially turning their entire house into a huge Christmas tree.

I know it makes me a bit of a dork, but I still like this one.

64) Hook

Yeah, I know, this isn't really considered a Christmas movie either 9though it does take place during the Christmas holidays) but I still relate it to good Christmas memories.

You all know what the movie's about. "What if Peter Pan grew up?" That's not what I'm going to write about here. The movie came out in holiday season of 1991. At that time, I was seventeen years old, a junior in high school. That year, my family and my uncle's family all decided that, instead of getting each other presents, we'd all go to Disney World for Christmas. So with bags packed and warm clothes donned, we headed down to sunny florida. While there, I ventured into the Downtown Disney West side area for the first time in my life, and watched Hook in the first deluxe-style theater I'd ever been in. I loved it so much that, later that week, I convinced my parents to go see it with me. My mom seemed to really enjoy it, but my Dad fell asleep. This was the first time this had ever happened before, and short of seeing Lethal Weapon 3 that following summer, it marked the end of my movie going days with my Dad.

But I still love it, bad child actors and all.

63) The Christmas Star

This is yet another guilty pleasure of mine. Originally released as one of ABC's Disney Sunday Movies (including cheesy introduction by Michael Eisner), the movie stars Ed Asner as Horace McNickle, a known felon doing time in the big house for conterfeiting. The week before Christmas, Horace uses his beer belly and long white beard to his advantage and escapes dressed as the visiting prison Santa. he flees the ploice and hides out in a non-descript suburban neighborhood and happens across two kids who mistaken him for the real St. Nick.

Horace uses the kids to help him find his fake cash (ie his "Christmas" money which was stolen and hidden from him by his partner, who avoided arrest) and eventually finds himself onboard a train, where a Christmas miracle changes his life forever.

(Super-amzing Hyper-realistic Pop Culturey Note: Asner played the REAl Santa Claus in last year's Elf. He didn't look any different.)

62) The Amazing Stories Christmas Episode

Sadly, I couldn't find any pics from this, but I remember it fondly.

Amazing Stories, for those of you not old enough to remember it, was a show on NBC during the 80's that was produced by Stephen Spielberg. It was a sort of Spielbergian take on a Twilight Zone style show, each episode telling a different story. There were often big name directors at the helm, and numerous big name stars like Kevin Costner, Danny DeVito, and others took part. It was, for its time, one of tbe best TV shows ever produced. It was also incredibly expensive, and only lasted two seasons or so.

One episode in particular made fun of our modern paranoid society, and posed an interesting question. What would happen if, on a dark, cold Christmas Eve, Santa slipped down the chimney of a house that had a modern electronic burglar alarm?

You guessed it. Santa gets arrested, and in true Spielberg style, it's up to a couple of "in the know" kids to get him out and back in his sleigh before Christmas is ruined.

I loved this episode, and had it on video for many years. I'm patiently awaiting the day when I can have them all on DVD.

61) Santa And The Three Bears

This was one of my favorite Christmas specials as a young boy. Sadly, it's not as well known as the Rankin/Bass specials, and is rarely aired anymore. It concerns two small Yellow Stone Park bears who don't want to go into hibernation with their mama. they want to meet Santa Claus! This worries the mama bear, as in the freezing cold, her little cubs could freeze if they don't go down for the winter. Eventually, a Park Ranger happens by who helps the two cubs have a better understanding of the meaning of Christmas, and that there's more to it than Santa and his magic ride. By the end, a secret is revealed about this park ranger that still makes me smile, some 27 years after I first saw it.

Copies of it are available via DVD, but I hear the quality is rather poor. Still, I think back on it with fond nostalgia, and those of you looking for good Christmas shows for your kids without putting them the more modern (ie shitty) politically correct garbage like 2002's made-for-TV Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (which included Whoopi Goldberg as God for Christ's sake) you could find a lot worse than this little film.

60) The Little Christmas Burro

This is yet another "Christmas donkey" special. I swear, I'm not sure why so many animation houses focused on Mary's donkey. There are two more films like this one higher up on my list. Why? Because the animation in this one is rather subpar.

But the heart of the story is still sweet, telling the tale of a little misfit burro who eventually finds his place in life by giving of himself so a savior could be born.

Be warned: there's a combo pack of this and Santa And The Three Bears floating around out there that seems like a great deal, but it isn't. It's an import from Greece, and the audio quality is really shitty. It sounds like an old scratched up record.

(Pop-Culture Super Sayan Note: It's given extra special 70's nostalgia glee by the fact that it's narrated by Lorne Green. This makes me smile, as when I was a kid I used to wake up very early on saturday mornings to watch cartoons. Often times, I woke up too early, and was forced to sit through one of those "true life" wildlife shows, also narrated by Lorne Green, until old Transformers re-runs came on. God, did I hate Lorne Green, along with those damn dog food commercials he narrated. Fuckin' Lorne.)

59) The Fat Albert Christmas Special

I was going to do a write up on the B.C. Christmas Special from the early 80's here, but then thought against it. B.C. sucks. Christian cavemen? Talk about an Intelligent Design Revisionist.

This special is not as well-loved as the Fat Albert Halloween Special (though it's leaps and bounds above the awful Easter show) but is still a childhood favorite of mine.

The gang are practicing in their junkyard clubhouse for a Christmas play they plan on putting on, whilst trying to prevent the cranky old junkyard owner from tearing their clubhouse down. Meanwhile, Marshall's mom is about to have a baby, and Marshall's dad is out of a job. They get evicted, and their car breaks down. Albert and the gang invites them to stay in their clubhouse until things work themselves out. The junkyard owner grumpily agrees to let them stay till the baby is born (no hospital for them, as they have no insurance either) but on one condition: Albert has to work for him as a Sidewalk Santa. And if you guessed that he changed his Hey Hey Hey to a Ho Ho Ho, you'd be right.

Typical Fatty shenanigans ensue, with the junkyard owner getting crankier and meaner all the while, until Mudfoot the Hobo With A Heart Of Gold (tm) tells him off, explaining that he's been a cranky old Scrooge ever since his wife died. The junkyard owner has a change of heart in the usual Christmassy way, and all's well that ends well. Well Hey. And Hey, Hey, even.

58) Tokyo Godfathers

This is quite possibly my favorite anime of all time. This sometimes gets laughs from hardcore anime fans (especially those who worship at the feet of Miyazaki, which is not at all unwarranted) but I don't care. This movie has heart that transcends cultural boundaries like few other animes do, and deserves as much praise as I can possibly give it.

it tells the story of three homeless people in Tokyo: a young woman, a cross-dressing flaming homosexual, and a gristled, middle-aged man, who find a an abandoned baby hidden in the trash. They decide to try and track the mother of the child down, and in doing so find out a lot about each other along the way.

I will warn you. This film (for an animated feature) is very realistic in its portrayal of homeless life. And it's not your typical family friendly feature. There is a lot of profanity and homosexual slurs in this film, especially between the two homeless men ("You goddamned faggot!" and so on.) Here, see for yourself:

This was the tamest screen capture I could make.

But the story is so heartwarming (along with a little business about a certain ticket that I won't reveal too much about here) that you can't help but love it by the time the credits role. It's possibly one of my all time favorite films.

57) Planes, Trains, And Automobiles

Once more, I know this is really a Thanksgiving movie, but I tend to only catch it on TV during Christmas time, so it's always been a Christmas movie for me.

Steve Martin plays Neil Page, a business man trying to get home to Chicago from New York to be with his family for Christmas. Due some problems at the airport (along with an unusual blathering of f-bombs from Steve Martin at the car rental desk) Neil runs into Del Griffith (John Candy( the most successful shower curtain ring salesman in the upper mid-west, who is also on his way to Chicago. As a result, the two strangers end up traveling together, and it becomes the sort of "road trip gone horribly wrong" film that Vacation made famous and that Tommy Boy so adequately imitated.

the film is most famous for its "THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS!" scene that was so heavily advertised when the movie came out, but I think my favorite scene takes place when Del is driving. He gets his overcoat stuck in the framework behind the driver's seat and loses control of the car, sending it into donuts on the free way that not only ends with them going in the wrong direction, but stuck between two eighteen wheelers. Neil turns and looks at his new least favorite person, and envisions Candy as the devil himself, red horns and all!

The humor is often off color, but it has the typical John Hughes warm and fuzzy happy ending that never fails to make one a bit misty-eyed. I really like this flick, and if you've never seen it, I think you will too.

56) A Christmas Carol (1999)

You're going to find numerous instances of the Charles Dickens classic in my list, so you best get used to it now. This one stars Patrick "Make It Humbug, Number One!" Stewart as the penultimate Scrooge. He plays the part with real panache, chewing the scenery like he hasn't had a good meal since Star Trek: Nemesis bombed.

Whereas other screen versions of Scrooge can sometimes come across as overacted or cartoony, Stewart gives this Scrooge a real heart, albeit one that's cold and twisted. You really do come to despise him before his eventual turn from the dark side. Stewart lends him a real humanity here, a sense of believability that probably no other version of Scrooge has ever had, which is even more impressive when you consider the fact that this was originally a TNT Original Movie. The special effects are also quite well done for a TV movie and almost haunting in some scenes. Very well done, Cratchet!

55) Groundhog Day

This is probably my favorite Bill Murray movie of all time. I know it's also on a lot of other people's lists, but for me, it's just about one of my favorite comedy films, and a must watch every Christmas season.

There's no getting around it. This movie, when you sit down and think about it, is more or less another sort of retooled version of "It's a Wonderful Life," only in this film, instead of an angel showing the hero the error of his ways and a world without him in it, Murray's character is left to relive the same day over and over again until he finally gets it all right.

In that sense, it plays out like an episode of Amazing Stories. Murray lives the same morning so many times, that he eventually has every event of the day memorized, and finds numerous ways to make the day go better, until by the end of the day, he's the most beloved man in town, and has semmingly learned to play the piano like a genius in one, simple lesson.

Some of the funniest scenes come from his various attempts to commit suicide, only to wake up each morning to that same Sonny and Cher song on the radio (by the end of the film, you'll be sick of that track too.)

All and all, I really love this movie, every part of it. It really shows off Murray for the subtle comic genius that he is, far more than that boring, pretentious, on the borderline of being unwatchable Lost In Translation film that emo web geeks like to praise to the rafters ad nauseum. If you wanna watch 90 minutes of two people talking over coffee, that's your bag. I'd rather see a film with an actual plot, thanks so fucking much.

54) Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone

Once again, this is a movie that I watch every Christmas season due to memories attached to it, and an overall feel. I went to see the first Harry Potter film with my wife in Atlanta, during a very cold winter night. I remember every bit of that night, from the cheesy Batmanish Scooby-Doo teaser, to the weight of my wife's head on my shoulder.

Besides the winter scenes, with Hagrid dragging gigantic trees into the dining hall and what not, there's an overall holiday vibe going on here. In many ways, Hogwarts comes across in this movie almost like Santa's workshop, with Dumbledore as the jolly old elf. it just has that magic to it (of course, we wouldn't see elves until part two.)

This is partly explained by the movie's director, Chris Columbus. As you'll recall, he also directed both Home Alone movies, which take place during the Christmas holidays. The musical score of those films, coincidentally, were also done by the man behind the Potter score, John Williams. You can hear several similar themes in the score of the original Potter adventure and the original Home Alone: the use of bells, for instance. This lends the movie a Christmas feel and sense of wonder it might not have had otherwise.

This is why it especially galls me when these religious extremists paint the Potter films as a gateway to witchcraft. Yeah, and the Superman films are a gateway to jumping off buildings. Say, how many kids became satanists because they wanted to become Ghostbusters? Didn't see you guys out protesting that movie. Oh, it says witchcraft is bad in the Bible? Well how about that old ABC cartoon movie from when I was a kid that had a school teacher who was secretly a witch, eh? How come none of you protested that? Or better yet, how about all those old Bewitched re-runs you all laughed at as kids. Are any of you secretly sacrificing bullfrogs to Belial in your basements these days because Samantha thought it was a good idea? Don't talk to me about violence and mention of witchcraft corrupting the youth of America. I'm a Christian, but let me clue you in on something. The Bible is full of murder, idolatry, bigamy, adultery, and even a scene where a group of kids make fun of a prophet's baldness, so he calls on the Lord and God sends a bear out of the woods who EATS THE CHILDREN.

This book is the foundation of my faith, yes. But it's also the same book your kids read in Sunday School every weekend, and has per capita more acts of violence and sex than most of the books you like to ban from schools, so try and be a little more understanding before you start running your holier-than-thou fucking mouths about violence in media corrupting the youth of America.

Anyway, Sorceror's Stone is a great movie.

53) A Family Circus Christmas

Typically, I hate Family Circus with a passion. It's the most simplistic, unfunny, stupid comic strip in papers today, always has been. but this special hits a nerve with me. it has to do with jeffy seeing the ghost of his grandpa during the holidays. This is a common theme in the comic, where ghosts of dead relatives are often shown watching over the kids.

I never got to meet either of my grandfathers. One wanted nothing to do with my dad (though when he finally died, my dad found a picture of me at the old man's bedside. Apparently, he was proud of being a grandpa, but too proud to let Dad know it.) My other grandfather died of leukemia five years before I was born.

My mother and grandmother told me many stories about him so that I'd have a sense of the kind of man he was. For instance, he was not a heavy drinker, but every now and then he came home drunk. My grandmother decided to teach him a lesson about the evils of booze, so one night when he came home drunk and passed out in the bed, she spent all night sewing his clothes to the mattress, then started screaming "FIRE! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!"

I loved my Grandmother.

52) It's A Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special

I was always more of an Animaniacs fan than a Tiny Toons fan (who wasn't?) but I liked this special, all the same. Once more, it's essentially a parody of It's A Wonderful Life with Buster Bunny filling Jimmy Stewart's humungous shoes. All the other key Tiny Toons players make appearances, and the plot quickly sinks into a cragmire of the usual madcap Tiny Toon tomfoolery.

Buster's Christmas pageant is going down the tubes, and he feels understandably down in the dumps over it all. So bunny angel in training Harvey (who looks, talks and acts like Jimmy Stewart) shows Buster what life at Acme University would be like without him. There's an icecapades show that involves Cher, Monty ends up in a wheel chair, it's all the usual big mess, and at 22 minutes, doesn't take up too much of your time.

I haven't seen this one is many years, and as far as I know, it was never released on DVD (there was a VHS release in 1997 that's still available on Amazon.) I wouldn't pass up an Animaniacs DVD box set to have this, but I'd certainly buy it for a decent price. I've heard that Cartoon Network played this one last Christmas. Perhaps they'll do so again this year.

51) I Want A Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown

This is the least known of the three (yes, three) Charlie Brown Christmas Specials. It was made much later than the original, and the cultural chances it exhibits shows it.

This little film revolves around Linus's little brother Rerun ( a fitting name, since he looks just like a smaller Linus.) Rerun doesn't have many friends (just like me as a kid) and so he becomes attached to a dog as his best friend (hey, also just like me as a kid.) Unfortunately for one Charles Brown, that dog is his beagle Snoopy. Rerun decides he wants Snoopy for Christmas.

Charlie is in a pickle. He can't very well give Rerun his dog. But he also can't live with the thought of breaking the little kid's heart.

Finally, a solution presents itself, when Snoopy's little seen but infinitely cool brother Spike comes to visit from his desert home, and bonds with Rerun almost immediately.

Rerun was a charcter that was shown off a lot in the weekly saturday morning Charlie Brown show on CBS back in the mid 80's. He was usually shown riding in the child seat on the back of his mother's bike and making various comments on the intricacies of childhood life. In other words, he always, and I mean alays, came across as Linus v2.0, ie, a disposable character. And so a cartoon that revolves around a disposable character becomes equally disposable, though it does have a happy ending and a good Christmas feel to it (it does have a bit of a sad vibe in some scenes though.) but don't make the mistake of thinking it's even in the same league as its droopy-tree predecessor.

And that about does it for this week. Next week, I'll share 25 more in my list. Until then, keep your chin up. you've got just 18 more days to behave yourself before Santa gets here.

-=7th=-