[rating: 3] Everybody needs an origin story. Batman's got one, James Bond's got one, even Captain Kirk's got one. So you'd better believe Santa Claus has got one. Granted, it's a little strange to think of Santa, of all people, as a fresh faced youngster just starting on a promising career like, I don't know, Scarlett Johansson in Scoop, but there it is. Boy, that was a weird example, wasn't it? Anyway, that's not really important (though Scoop is a pretty good movie). Courtesy of our narrator, Fred Astaire, we learn the story of where Santa came from, how he met Mrs. Claus, how he came to deliver toys on Christmas Eve—just about everything you'd want to know about ol' Kris Kringle. It's almost as if Fred Astaire did some serious investigative reporting about Santa, like how in Scoop Scarlett Johansson is investigating Hugh Jackman. It turns out that Santa was once just a wee baby like the rest of us—a foundling, in fact, who was taken in by a family of toy-making midgets named the Kringles. And not just any toymakers, these Kringles. In days gone by they manufactured the greatest playthings in all the world and were the First Toymakers to the ...

[rating: 3.5] I quite like 1968's The Little Drummer Boy, one of the most enduring of the many Rankin Bass Christmas specials. In a way, it's representative of the contradiction of sorts in my relationship with Christmas as a whole. Though I'm militantly anti-theist, I'm totally gaga for Christmas and within Christmas I'm very fond of this little cartoon about Jesus. Of course, Jesus only puts in an appearance at the end of the show. The Little Drummer Boy is really the story, if you can believe it, of a little drummer boy. His name is Aaron and we first meet him as he's being kidnapped and forced to perform by an obese desert showman. We then learn that, some time before, people burned down his house and killed his parents. As a result, he hates all people and has love only for his animals, a camel a donkey and a sheep. (Sometimes Camels are buy-one-get-one-free at the Village Pantry, so I can understand his fondness for them. But donkeys and sheep?) So right in the first few minutes we've got kidnapping, slavery, murder, misanthropy, and an unnatural love for sheep. Merry Christmas! After enraging the crowd that has gathered to see him perform ...

[rating: 0] Have you ever thought to yourself What I'd really like to see is a direct-to-video Strawberry Shortcake Christmas cartoon made almost twenty years after the last time anybody cared about Strawberry Shortcake. Of course you haven't. You'd be certifiable if you did. And, yet, Berry, Merry Christmas exists. I know the depths of depravity to which humanity can sink—mass murders, the Stanford prison experiment, acts of terrorism, Catholicism—but I usually think I have a handle on it, that I understand what evil lurks in the hearts of men and have enough useful perspective on the matter to go about my life. Then I see something like Berry, Merry Christmas and realize that all past evils were mere throat-clearing in preparation for this, the main event. When you watch a Strawberry Shortcake cartoon, prepare to stare into the abyss and see only unending blackness staring back at you, crushing your spirit and leaving your soul as withered as a dead fig tree. In case you don't know, Strawberry Shortcake is a little red-headed girl who lives inside a piece of fruit and doesn't have any parents or guardians. She breaks into shocking non-sequitur songs, related to nothing that comes before or after them. ...

[rating: 4] I confess I was sorely afraid that Bah, HumDuck! A Looney Tunes Christmas would be untrue to its source material. Not to Dickens' A Christmas Carol—it's been adapted enough times and can handle a few deviations from the script. No, I worried this would besmirch the name of Looney Tunes by being only a pale imitation of the classic Warner Bros. cartoons we all love so much. I'm pleased to report that those fears were wholly unfounded. This little movie was just great. The story does play a little fast and loose with the specifics of A Christmas Carol, but that's just fine; fast and loose is the very essence of Looney Tunes. Here Daffy Duck is the cruel but staggeringly wealthy owner of a department store. He forces his employees—including his forever put-upon assistant manager Porky Pig—to work extra long hours with no overtime, heaps abuse on everyone he sees and, of course, hates holidays. That kind of miser is just asking for a haunting and that's what he gets, first in the form of the ghost of Sylvester the cat, the "unscrupulous CEO" who was Daffy Duck's idol. That's right, Sylvester is dead. Squashed by a forklift, in fact. Sylvester warns ...

[rating: 1.5] There was no way How the Grinch Stole Christmas was going to be anything but disappointing. Dr. Seuss' classic book is beloved by generations of people. The 1966 animated television adaptation translated the story perfectly to the screen; in fact, it's probably supplanted the original book as the first thing that springs to most people's minds when you talk about the Grinch. For that matter, it's probably the first thing that springs to mind for many people at the mention of Christmas. So in a way this picture was fighting a battle it couldn't possibly win. It could, however, have been disappointing by comparison but still good enough. Alas, that's not the case. I should probably say right off that, while the movie isn't a good one, the fault doesn't lie with Jim Carrey in the title role. That may shock you, as I make no secret of my disdain for Carrey's style. This, however, is just the sort of role that's suited to his screen persona: a cartoon character made flesh. Carrey brings the right level of energy to the Grinch: cartoonish, but actually toned down a bit from the insanity of the roles that initially brought him fame. Where, then, ...

[rating: 1.5] A Charlie Brown Christmas is a classic in the world of animation and is beloved the world over by millions of people young and old. That's why I'm saving it for later in the month. On the other hand, I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown is a rambling, plotless mess that can't be considered a classic of any kind and is beloved by nobody. In style, it is similar to the equally forgettable It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown. That is, instead of having an actual story developed over the course of a half hour, it's just an assemblage of individual Peanuts strips that are sort of about the same three or four things. Each strip is recreated word for word to make the dialogue. When only one strip appears in the paper each day, it's not really a big deal for the first panel to say the same thing about what's going on; when one strip appears every twenty seconds, it gets a little tiresome to have every third sentence be: "Maybe Santa will bring me a dog." Since the special is so weak on story, at least we can take solace in the fact that it ...

Uruguayan Trekkies have much to cheer about, as Broad Front candidate José Mujica handily defeated his opponent to win the country's Presidential election. What does that have to do with Star Trek, you might ask. Just take a look. José Mujica, Pros: Beaming up Miracle worker José Mujica, Cons: Will be forced to spend over seven decades trapped in a transporter beam until rescued by the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D Cannae change the laws o' physics

[rating: 1.5] You know those times when you hear about a movie or a show and think to yourself “Man, I can’t friggin’ wait to watch that?” And then time goes by, maybe even a few years, and you don’t ever see the thing, but at last you do and you’re just thrilled? But then you finally see it and basically it sucks? That’s the exact situation with me and this My Little Pony cartoon called A Very Minty Christmas. It tells the story of Christmastime in Ponyville. The trees are being decorated, gifts are being wrapped, goodies are being baked. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and Thistle Whistle (seriously) are all fixin’ to have one rip-roarin’ Yule, especially after completing the biggest annual Ponyville tradition: the creation of the Here Comes Christmas Candy Cane. The Here Comes Christmas Candy Cane is, well, a big candy cane. It goes on the top of the tallest Christmas tree in Ponyville where it gives off an eerie/festive glow. This glow acts as a beacon for the Christmas Big Man himself, Santa Claus, so he’ll know where to stop to deliver all the pony presents. But then along comes Minty. Minty’s a green pony (duh), she’s the only pony ...

[rating: 1] You probably don't recognize Bob Clark by name, but he is the creative force behind Porky's, one of the all-time greatest teen raunch comedies. He's also the man behind two Christmas pictures. One is A Christmas Story, a movie I hate more than Hitler and broccoli combined; the other is Black Christmas, a 1974 holiday horrorfest. Before the movie was remade in 2006 you'd probably never even heard of it, though you may have seen it in the video store under the title Silent Night, Evil Night. If you've never heard of that either, don't worry; it's just a stupid Bob Clark movie. It's hard to believe that a movie with Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussey and John Saxon could turn out so poorly, but if anyone could make that happen, Bob Clark could. Of course, when I say it turned out poorly, I mean poorly even for a schlocky B-horror film. While some such movies can be a goofily corny way to spend 95 minutes, these are 95 minutes I desperately want back. The first several of those minutes introduce us to Olivia Hussey, some guy who looks just like Gene Shalit, a dirty-mouthed Margot Kidder who always sounds like ...

Last night I put up the Christmas tree at my parents' house. Since that's the kind of thing that puts you in a Christmasey mood right quick, when the tinsel was strung and the ornaments hung I put in my copy of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and sat down to watch it. And of course I enjoyed it, as I always do. I love watching Rudolph and Charlie Brown and the Grinch, and I love being able to watch them whenever I feel like it. But I also miss the days before everybody had everything on video tape and then DVD. There was an added fun about watching these various Christmas specials when they were on TV exactly one time a year, and if you missed them you were screwed until the next December. Watching the major specials was a huge event when you only had one opportunity each winter. Further, with the specials only being on one time each year, when you sat down to look at Rudolph's adventures with Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble, you knew all your friends were doing the same thing. When you watched Linus tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about, you knew that kids and ...