It’s been a busy holiday season here at chez in-laws, but I was able to escape the swarming nieces and nephews last night long enough for my own Xmas tradition: the viewing of a sacred story about 31st-century murderous robots. I picked the second such episode because I watched the other two in previous years, and I stumbled on a forgotten gag that I just had to share with you all. (Click through to see the captions on those four pics.)
Pictured: NYT domestic political coverage pic.twitter.com/au5F7qx3j6
— Tynan! (@TynanPants) December 24, 2019
(For context, Robot Santa had his naughtiness threshold set incorrectly; he thinks everybody but Zoidberg has been so naughty they should be killed. I suppose he’s more of a Rod Dreher than a Dean Baquet, but I digress.)
What are your favorite offbeat holiday stories? As cliched as it is, we had some folks over for a Die-Hard screening a couple weeks ago, which was good fun. And I need to revisit Bad Santa. Maybe next year.
Open thread!
John Revolta
Here’s my must-watch Holiday ritual youtu.be/QJV_3NgzDQ8
Peace On Earth, MGM cartoon, 1939. A bunch of cuddly bunnies and chipmunks celebrate the extinction of Mankind in a horrible war. Festive!
Mike J
For action movie fans, The Long Kiss Goodnight is better than Die Hard.
Gremlins is a Christmas classic.
Maybe Anna and the Apocalypse? (It’s sitting in my queue on someone’s rec, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.)
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: I’ve seen gremlins as an adult once and my jaw hit the floor during the scene where he explains why he hates Christmas. Lol
tarragon
The family requires the traditional White Christmas and Albert Finney Scrooge.
Personally I go with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil
West of the Rockies
It’s not the Christmas season until I hear those five magical words…
“Welcome to the party, pal!”
Major Major Major Major
p.a.
Always liked Carpenter’s The Thing as a winter, if not xMas, movie. Family Man w Nick Cage, Don Cheadle, & Teá Leoni has a nicely ambiguous ending.
trollhattan
I’m down to “Christmas Story” and “Bad Santa.”
MazeDancer
Netflix “The Two Popes” is lovely. Fictionalized Peace on Earth moment. (Except for the nuns=servants part.)
And the acting! What can we say but…OMG!!
Brachiator
I like the 1994 movie, The Ref, with Judy Davis and Denis Leary. It also stars Kevin Spacey, who may be unacceptable to some folks now. But a very caustic, witty black comedy set at Christmas time.
Major Major Major Major
The swarming children have returned, so I’m gonna nibble on an edible and go play. I’ll be checking in though.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Hogfather
Major Major Major Major
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I haven’t seen the adaptation, but that book is great.
Different author, but this reminds me that a dear departed friend of mine used to read Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel out loud every year.
Bruuuuce
Call me a sentimental fool, but my must-watch Christmas video is A Wish For Wings That Work, and it’s not Christmas until Opus ascends.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Major Major Major Major: Michelle Dockery as Susan. It’s excellent.
Mnemosyne
We usually watch at least one of the classic MST3K Santa Claus movies, though we’re a bit behind this year.
Christmas Eve is for “The Shop Around the Corner.”
chopper
@Bruuuuce:
always a classic.
hells littlest angel
In a world in which The Godfather Trilogy is shown on TV as a family holiday special, it’s only warm and fuzzy traditionalists who really appreciate the Futurama xmas episodes
NotMax
John Huston’s swan song, The Dead. Also too, Rare Exports.
And the traditional annual watching of a Dobie Gillis episode, which anyone who has ever interacted in a retail environment with customers will find empathy with.
Bonus Xmastime grin for the pet people.
Major Major Major Major
@hells littlest angel: lol!
Miss Bianca
@hells littlest angel: We just watched the one that M4 referenced last night! I told my friend D that if I had seen Death Santa as a kid, it would have confirmed my worst suspicions about Jolly Old Saint Nick!
Mike in NC
Reindeer Games is pretty off the wall (Xmas heist flick).
meander
The 50s Film Noir “Lady in the Lake” is set around Christmas. The first real scene is on December 22 and the last scene on or just after Christmas.
“Lady in the Lake” is a quirky experiment: except for a short intro, the whole film is scene from the perspective of the main character (private detective and writer Philip Marlowe). It’s impressive that they could pull that off with the bulky cameras of the time. Worth seeing if you’re a Noir fan or like slightly experimental cinema.
Some of my favorite TV episodes: 30 Rock’s Ludacris-mas, Christmas Attack Zone, and Holiday Special (outstanding acting by Elaine Strich); Community has one where ‘the gang’ gets transported to Claymation land to work out their problems.
Jeffery
Auntie Mame, Rosalind Russell 1958
Jim Parish
What, nobody’s thought of The Lion in Winter?
FlyingToaster
The traditional Xmas films at Chez O’Neil:
Die Hard
The Ref
Comfort and Joy (Bill Forsyth, 1984, free on YouTube since I can’t find it on any other medium available to Region 1/A/North America)
The Lion in Winter
No, we’re not normal. I’d also throw in non-Xmas films like “The Great Race” or “Topkapi” or “The Maltese Falcon”, just because.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Jim Parish: I love that one. First watched it with my dad at age 10. Kate Hepburn, Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton on the same screen.
mrmoshpotato
Someone (Nicole?) mentioned Rare Exports the other night. I haven’t seen it in a while.
Miss Bianca
@meander: Bell, Book, and Candle, starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, is also a weird little movie set at Christmas time.
@Jim Parish: Ugh, I just watched that movie and *hated* it! I never imagined I’d find dynastic politicking reduced to family squabble soap opera so utterly *dreary*, but I did!
Percysowner
I totally agree with Hogfather. For laughs, Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck. Meet Me in St. Louis has a great Christmas sequence, if you like Americana.
Splitting Image
No votes yet for Blackadder’s Christmas Carol?
Not the best episode of the series, true, but it always inspires me to re-watch all of the others.
The “Party Games” episode of Yes Minister is also a Christmas episode.
SteverinoCT
The original We’re No Angels, Humphrey Bogart, Leo G. Carroll
Tehanu
An old Jon Cryer sitcom, The Famous Teddy Z, had a wonderful episode called “Season’s Greetings from Al Floss,” which was basically A Christmas Carol, with Alex Rocco as the Scrooge-ious Al Floss and the great Bill Macy as his former boss, Murray (or rather, Murray’s Ghost).
Of course I always watch Christmas in Connecticut (Barbara Stanwyk! S.Z. Sakall! Sydney Greenstreet!) and The Ref. As for that horrid Jimmy Stewart movie, you’d have to tie me in a chair and tape my eyelids open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange to make me watch that again.
Sasha
“Your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missile!”
Sasha
Krampus. Modern classic.
tokyokie
I introduced my family to Rare Exports last year, and although I think my oldest brother and my sister-in-law liked it, I don’t think the brother whose house we were visiting did. And hey, what’s not to like about a movie in which Santa is a kiddie-torturing demon? So we didn’t watch anything. (Although I noticed they had White Christmas in the DVD player; I refrained from pointing out that Vera Ellen was always photographed with high collars because she was anorexic.)