Pop Culture - All I Want For Christmas...

Spoilers exist; maybe not so much here, but they do exist and they will get you...

Definitely NOT The Waltons

Christmas films, eh? So many of them get churned out now that it's an industry unto itself. Even Netflix has got in on the Hallmark act; as November becomes December you just get so much festive shit some of it's bound to stick to something other than the dog blanket. So when I saw a recommendation for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, I was immediately unimpressed and scrolled on... Except, it had a remarkably high IMDB rating - 7.1 (at time of watching) as opposed to most Christmas films being between 4.8 and 6 - and the two positive reviews I read were by people who claim to be Christmas cynics. Was it worth giving it a go?

Well, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is one of the best [new] Christmas films I have seen in well over 30 years. The thing about it though is it's really all about Christians, about the meaning of Christmas and how so many Christians are such utter selfish pricks and arseholes they don't deserve a joyous festival such as Yule. Christians have a massive propensity to be utter cunts; a most pious religion, with blinkered wankers coming out of every vestibule and pulpit. One of the reasons I dislike Christmas so much (and think it should be held every four years, like the Olympics, in a different country) is the way Christians have subverted it and all the other basic tenets of religion. Christians are fucking horrible, by and large, and this film goes a long way to proving this theory of mine by portraying many of the Christians in it as fucking arseholes...

The Herdman kids are the worst family ever. No one has ever seen their parents; they live in the shittiest part of town and the six of them are essentially feral. Beatrice Schneider (who was utterly fantastic and reminded me of a young Emma Kenney from Shameless US) is the oldest Herdman, Imogene - the leader of the rag tag band of trouble - and she decides that she and her siblings should be in the town's 75th Christmas Pageant - a 'living' nativity scene, with the kids playing different parts. Except this year, six of the parts will be taken up by Herdmans - Imogene as Mary, Ralph as Joseph, three other brothers as the Three Wise Men and the youngest Gladys as the Angel. Everybody, including the emergency director of the pageant thinks it's going to be a disaster, especially as the Herdmans only seem to be doing it for free food. The entire movie is narrated by Molly Bell Wright, who plays Beth, the daughter of the slightly ineffectual Grace - her mother who takes on the job of director when the regular woman breaks both of her legs in a freak accident.

This is a feelgood film. Packed to the rafters with hometown, homespun yuletide overload - this is suburban USA in the early 1970s. You sometimes get the feeling that god plays far too much a prominent role in this movie, but I think that's deliberate, because as the feature progresses you see fewer moments of genuine Christian values and a greater number of bigots and people who look down their noses at those worse off. It's packed full of messages, but it's also funny and a bit schmaltzy, but also weird and the Herdmans all ask questions that most people would take for granted. In fact, some of the questions they ask would have them labelled as communists, probably. It's never going to be the best Christmas film you will ever watch, but I'll bet you an eggnog and a full on mistletoe kiss with tongues that you enjoy it considerably more than you think you will. 

Serial Boring

The fifth James May and the Dull Men was surprisingly more entertaining than the previous three. It wasn't a patch on episode one, but the three subsequent ones got quite tedious. This, to be fair, is also quite tedious, but it's amusing, which is more than you can say for the bulk of this series. This week's challenges were: to make a work desk that forces you to exercise (pictured), which might just have some real world practical uses; how to make pasta from pasta and how much ink - in kilometres - is there in your average Bic pen? I still think Seb Tiley - James's odd mate - is as creepy as any villain in a modern horror film, but this week he managed to get one of the production team girls help him out with his Bic challenge and if I was an attractive young lady wearing skimpy summer clothes, I would not be within jizz-lobbing distance of this man; so perhaps he is benign.

The sixth part, had something really useful in it. But first we had to suffer James learning to cut hair in three hours; they made a stupid Sunbrella, bringing the summer under the canopy and making a bowl out of broken bits of old bowls using epoxy resin - which was interesting. Then out of the blue a seventh episode arrived and that was equally as pointless as the previous one... I would be surprised if this show got renewed for a second season.

Comme ci Comme ça

So... Secret Level, the new cgi animated Tim Miller series (the guy who brought us Love, Death & Robots) arrived and we watched the opening four episodes on Sunday night. Two were okay and we gave up on the other two. 50-50 isn't bad, but we're not gamers so what we did watch and became invested in was needed to be good almost from the outset. The best of the opening half of episodes was The Once and Future King about an arsehole Viking-like barbarian - voiced by Arnold Schwarzenegger - it was just a shame that we didn't have subtitles for all the non-English bits. However, after a couple more episodes we decided not to bother with it. The series was only really there as episodic space fillers - something quick to watch when we had less than half an hour to waste - that not to say that the animation hasn't been excellent, it's just been our lack of knowledge of the source material that has been problematic and there's other things out there we need to watch. 

Old Dogs and Wild Cats

Earth Abides reached the halfway point and while the first part covered a year, the second part two years, by the time this one ends - on an actual cliffhanger - 14 years have passed, umpteen children and more survivors - all with stories we never really delve into - now all live in this quiet suburb of San Francisco. The fact that 14 years have whizzed by and very little of note has happened - whatever dramas there have been are all understated and slightly devoid of drama and at times it simply feels like a bunch of off-gridders living in a commune and having little to do with anyone else. The climatic ending of the second part is explained away inside 30 seconds of the third episode and actually little happened between Ish's encounter with a mountain lion at the start of the episode and his next encounter with one at the end. The true thing about this is if 99.9% of people were killed off, there might still be as many as 10 million people left alive; but Earth is a big place and if survivors were evenly spaced there would be an element of luck involved to ever find anyone else.

Wayward Son

[Subtle Kansas reference there...] We haven't really seen Taron Egerton in a bad film, that was until now, because while Carry-On isn't really bad, it is about as far removed from good as you can get in the making of a Die Hard styled movie for Christmas. This was implausible from the word go and while some of the set ups in this might possibly be workable, given the state of US flights since 9/11 and the fact getting on a plane with something dodgy is about as likely as winning two lotteries, one after another. This is your typical going-nowhere average Joe who works at airline security but doesn't really enjoy the job, but is there for his girlfriend, who would rather he became a police officer. From the point where unreliable and uncommitted Egerton decides he wants to be promoted this movie veered into Contrived Land. Jason Bateman is his usual excellent self as the baddy, who always seems one step ahead of everyone else, until something happens that changes it. To say any more would give it away and the last thing you'd want me to do is tell you how they all die horribly at end - the hero, the villain and all the people in the airport - it's Christmas Carnage and, of course, none of that happens. It's on Netflix...

Minnesota Madness Part 3

And so to season three of Fargo... This one has some more A listers and classy actors involved - the fact that Noah Hawley has made something that has top celebs queuing up to be in is testament to a quality product and oddly enough, for a while, we started to wonder how season three could possibly stretch itself out to be 10 episodes, when the two police officers had pretty much worked out the nuts and bolts of the plot by the end of episode four. Anyhow, this time around it's Ewan McGregor - in two roles - Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Stuhlbarg, Carrie Coon, David Thewlis, Mary McDonnell, Hamish Linklater, Shea Wigham, Scoot McNary and Ray Wise, all involved in something decidedly dodgy in 2010. It's about two brothers - one a successful real estate man and the other a failed probation officer - and an argument over a rare stamp that escalates into something you wouldn't imagine happening. There's also the subplot - or is it the real plot - involving an extremely dangerous group of people infiltrating the rich brother's life and business with devastating effects...

Here's the thing; Fargo is more than just the Cohen Brothers film. Noah Hawley has created an entire Fargo universe of stories and links to the past, present and future, all taking place in the winter and all taking place in that strange triangle between Minnesota, North Dakota and, at times South Dakota. We're late to this parade, but I suspect we're not the only ones. Fargo has an 8.9 rating on IMDB - let that sink in... there's little else that is rated higher; so if you've never been tempted - be tempted.   

QI XM

The annual QI Christmas Special dropped a week before the big day and while QI is a bit hit or miss nowadays, this was an entertaining and obviously quite Christmassy attempt at elevating festive information into the realms of silly and absurd. As usual with QI now, there is an element of tenuous and titles of programmes tend to be advisory rather than specific. Sandi Toksvig hosts as usual and is joined by Gyles Brandreth, Lulu, (the very funny) Emmanuel Sonubi and, of course, Alan Davies, who still manages to look and sound amazed when he scores so little. Brandreth was a little more restrained than he usually is, although if you didn't know him you'd seriously wonder about the voracity of my previous statement. Lulu might as well not have bothered turning up; they could have just had a recording of her laugh and played it ear-bleedingly loud. Sonubi has been on the show before and is a genuinely funny man, while Alan Davies sometimes looks as though he can't wait for Z to arrive (although what he'd do after QI is a question worth pondering).

Festive Property Porn

You can tell there's fuck all on TV at the moment if I'm reviewing Scotland's Christmas Home of the Year 2024. Actually, at one point about 15 minutes into this, I was on my phone texting my brother, when the wife said, "Are you watching this?" To which I replied, "Not really. If I was watching it I would be moaning about it and you'd be asking me why I'm watching it." ... Anyhow, the best house won the prize, although the third and fourth houses were also worthy of winning. The second house, which I wasn't keen on, came second and the first house that was all a bit sterile was voted the least best. I miss Michael Angus and Kate Spiers who used to present this with Anna Campbell-Jones, who seems to be letting her naturally curly hair grow out. Banjo Beale is quite a character even if he is Australian and the new guy, a young architect who I can't be bothered to check his name, is just a massive twat with big feet and unbelievably boring. The last two sentences are why I don't tend to watch any more because the wife gets fed up with me being fed up with the dull and boring presenters. The thing is, Campbell-Jones is English (but lives and works in Edinburgh), Beale is an Aussie (who lives on Mull) and [checks internet] Danny Campbell might be Caledonian but zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. At least Angus and Spiers were both Scottish and excellent foils for each other - one being an architect (about my age) and the other an interior designer and [ahem] social media influencer. The new guys just aren't worth listening to; if you don't care what they're saying then there's no point in them being there.

Dune But Not Forgotten

So we've arrived at the penultimate part of the (presumably) first season of Dune Prophecy. I didn't fall asleep during it and some stuff happened. Traitors were exposed; people were put into places where they can fail and I think I started to get a slight grip on the story, which I'll admit might have been quite intriguing if it hadn't been so fucking dull. Fantastic sets, great special effects, some good actors and a story that, like other Dune things, is just too up its own arse to be something to actually care about. Mark Strong's Emperor and his pet Travis Fimmell make their moves and try to flush out any traitors and Sisterhood spies; allegiances are formed and ghosts come back to inhabit the living to give this mystic science vibe. I have to admit I've spent almost a third of this asleep, I'll be glad to see the back of it; I'm sure it's been good, but those bits must have happened while I was sleeping... 

Trailer Trash?

Is it James Gunn? Does he have a superpower? I don't necessarily believe that because I have never been a huge fan of the first two Guardians of the Galaxy pictures. I actually really understood Gunn with Suicide Squad and then with the final Guardians film, which I think was down to familiarity rather than it being a imaginative bit of story telling, which we all ignored because it was so enjoyable - in a kind of nasty way. So, while I've been badgering away at the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the last year or so, Gunn has been rebuilding the DC Universe in his own image. The fruits of his labours will be unleashed on the cinematic public in the summer when Superman arrives (apparently a week before Marvel's The Fantastic Four reboot). Originally it was going to be called Superman Legacy, it appears that Warners are going for broke with the basics. 

There's Krypto the Super Dog and lots of Clark and his alter-ego, Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult (blimey, he's come a long way since Skins) as Lex Luthor. There are also other super beings, some recognisable, some new (to me) and one that looks suspiciously like Guy Gardner (unless you know, it's a long and mostly laborious story about a wanker who becomes a Green Lantern). I have to be honest, it stirred something in me that I haven't had for quite a while, but I am a Man of Steel fan and have been since the 1990s. That has waned since I've got old and cynical of superhero stuff. I've never watched the Lois and Superman series (and now I know Elizabeth Tullie from Grimm...). Yet, this seemed to twang a note in me. The thing is, I don't want to get my hopes up, because the disappointment will be too much.

Duller and Dull

So we finally settled down to watch a highly rated movie which we had never seen - Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, a film I now can kind of understand why we never got around to watching it. Yes, it's a great image of the horrors of modern desert warfare and how it affects the people involved, but it was just a testosterone-fuelled two hours of snapshots from just over a month in Iraq in 2004 of a team of bomb disposal men; or to be more precise a bomb disposal man and his two oppos with guns and licence to shoot anyone who looks a threat. Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie - aka Hawkeye and Captain America before they were famous - were the two main actors and it was angsty and earnest and just a little too... meh. I'm sure it's supposed to be so much more than that, but I found myself checking my phone a lot.

You Won't Care

You see this 'humorous' meme, to the left? They have literally made an entire Christmas feature film about this with Jack Black as Satan. It's called Dear Santa and it's a Bobby Farrelly movie about a young dyslexic child who sends Satan a letter rather than Santa. It has a 5.3 rating on IMDB and has some truly appalling reviews, so I wonder if people in the production team got friends to leave positive reviews about it...

I made the picture as small as I could, but I still couldn't write enough words to fill the appropriate space. Perhaps this proliferation of shite Christmas films is to cover up some abnormality or deficiency in the producers of such vomit. I saw a clip of the above film a few weeks ago and knew instantly that it was going to be a large heap of steaming cow shit. Why can't Hollywood give me a lot of money and I'll given them FIVE ideas of how to make better, more commercially successful movies... 

The End...

You know when you've invested time and effort into something and you quickly realise that you're not going to get the pay off you anticipate? Well, the finale of Before was exactly like that. For nine weeks, we navigated our way through the four hours of bollocks hoping that there would be a denouement that was fitting of the strange and ghostly set up. Sadly, we got to the end and I wasn't really sure what I'd witnessed. Was it about inner redemption? Maybe about ghosts that needed to be rid of? In the end it did seem to be all about Eli (Billy Crystal) and Noah seemed to be a conduit. Why the boy was there and what good using him proved to be was somewhat lost and what started as a creepy feeling psychological thriller descended into a what felt like a lot of New Age mumbo-jumbo. Was there a ghost moving the pieces and ultimately what pieces were being moved. Crystal was excellent, but it felt like a wasted opportunity in the end...

Christmas Film

There have been some excellent Christmas films, we all have our favourites. As I started editing this week's blog The Bishop's Wife had just started on BBC2. It's a truly wonderful film and like many other classics of its ilk you don't really know it's a Christmas movie, despite it playing out behind David Niven, Loretta Young and Cary Grant. Marvellous! 

Next Time...

... you read this column Christmas will be all over apart from that period between Boxing Day and New Year when you don't know if you've had a shit that day, whether or not you have visitors coming round and if your liver can take any more booze that you avoid drinking 363 days a year.

I hope you all have a festive and fun Yule and if you're expecting a list of favourite films and TV of 2024 then can I recommend trawling through the 52 or so posts I've made in 2024 and picking the carrots out of the vomit yourself? Have a good one!