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31 Aug

Marvel’s Hawkeye TV Series is a Christmas Show

New DVD release, , ,
Superhero movies and TV shows set during the holiday season are pretty rare beasts. Sure, we’ve had the occasional vaguely holiday themed episode of an Arrowverse show from time to time (since those shows, at least pre-pandemic, tended to operate more or less in “real time” with their broadcast schedules), and of course both Iron Man 3 and Shazam! were set around the Christmas season. But it’s rare that they really revel in the atmosphere of the season. That’s going to change with Marvel’s new Hawkeye series coming to Disney+ in November, which according to executive producer Trin Tranh is…
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24 Dec

Where in Fiction Would You Spend Christmas?

New DVD release, , , ,
It’s been a staying-in kind of year. That New Year’s Resolution you made to travel more? It’s gained 20 pounds, started cutting its own hair and is now in a jigsaw club with your neighbour Ken. The only marathon you’ve completed in 2020 is a Battlestar Galactica rewatch. The only mountain you’ve climbed is the metaphorical one it takes to shower daily. That beach trip you’d planned? It went okay actually. You made some bells by selling coconuts to Nook’s Cranny and dug up a bunch of Manila Clams with a flimsy shovel. For obvious reasons, escape is on our…
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22 Dec

Soul Review: Pixar is Bringing You Some Christmas Magic

New DVD release, , , ,
It takes nearly 12 minutes before Disney and Pixar show their title cards in Soul. By then, we’ve met a guy named Joe, basked in his dream to be a professional jazz pianist, and watched him fall down a manhole that’s led him to the other side. Now he’s being confronted with a bright multi-hued light called the Great Beyond, which draws souls to it like a bug zapper collects flies, and he’s understandably fleeing in the opposite direction To say that Soul is ambitious for a kids’ movie, or even a Pixar film, is an understatement. Here is a…
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21 Dec

The Ghosts Christmas Special Will Warm The Very Cockles Of Your Heart

New DVD release, , , ,
Kiell Smith-Bynoe isn’t much of a Christmas person. “I don’t like the whole build-up and I despise the idea of people putting up their Christmas trees on the 1st of November. I’m horribly against it!” he tells Den of Geek over the phone. “If that makes some people happy then fine, but no, I’m not really a Christmas guy at all.” That didn’t stop him from feeling a touch of the Christmas spirit when filming the Ghosts special in February this year. “That actually felt very festive. It really had that Christmas feel. As well as the decorations, they added in some scents that made the set…
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19 Dec

Scary Christmas Stories: A History of the Holiday’s Ghostly Tradition

New DVD release, , , , , ,
“It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story” – Jerome K. Jerome, 1891 In the English countryside, dinner had ended, and the company retired to the drawing room. They gathered around the fire as the parson, who sat in a high-backed oak chair, proceeded to tell of goblins and ghosts. The squire, not a superstitious man himself, listened intently  as the parson spoke about the crusader who rose from his tomb for a nighttime ride. The old porter’s wife added to the tale with her own of the crusader’s march on Midsummer Eve, when fairies became visible. Such was…
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18 Dec

Ranking The Bill’s Christmas Specials From Best to the One Where Reg Plays the Back End of a Panto Cow

New DVD release, , , , ,
Christmas is where you find it. Sometimes you find it in Canley Borough Operational Unit Command, Sun Hill. It’s a rough joint where the hours are long and life is short. It’s where the cops play hardball, the dames play hard to get, and the dame-cops do both, in sensible shoes. (That’s right, some of the cops are dames – though admittedly, not really until the 1990s, and they rarely make it past Inspector.)  Over its 27-year history, British police procedural The Bill aired 2,425 episodes, just five of which were Christmas specials. They represent 0.0020% of the total output, and 100%…
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18 Dec

Die Hard 2: Making the Sequel to the Greatest Christmas Movie of All

New DVD release, , , ,
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – for Die Hard fans. While there may be a little less festive cheer to go around this December, one thing remains constant during the holiday season: the debate about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. And one man who probably knows better than most is screenwriter Doug Richardson. Besides Bruce Willis himself, Richardson has had a hand in more Die Hard films than almost anyone out there, starting with the similarly festive follow-up Die Hard 2: Die Harder. While Willis is firmly in the “no” camp on the question of…
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18 Dec

RiffTrax: A Guide to Christmas and Holiday Episodes

New DVD release, , , ,
Since its inception, RiffTrax has regularly visited the crazy world of Christmas movies and shorts because when you get down to it, Christmas is a crazy time and Santa’s such a rich concept that it’s easy to go completely off the rails with him. Here’s a look at all the various Christmas-related movies they’ve watched. Luckily, all of them are available on-demand, so you can buy them and download the entire movie with the audio already synced up. A handful of the shorts were featured in previous editions of RiffTrax Live, but are also available on their own. Then there’s…
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15 Dec

Link Tank: Why You Should Watch Children of Men This Christmas

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Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men is the dystopian science fiction movie you should watch this Christmas. “The best christmas sci-fi movie isn’t very cheery. When thinking about holiday movies, spirited romcoms like Happiest Season and family-friendly fare probably come to mind. Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron’s gritty, sci-fi masterpiece may not even be on the radar as a go-to Christmas movie, but it should be.” Read more at Inverse. Does your family hang a pickle on your Christmas tree? Learn about the origin of this curious tradition. “Every family has its own holiday traditions. Maybe they open Christmas presents after…
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14 Dec

The Rod Serling Christmas Movie You Never Saw

New DVD release, , ,
A Christmas Carol is the definitive Christmas story. Yes, you might try and argue it’s the nativity, but the volume of movie adaptations begs to differ, and I can tell your heart’s not in it. And yes, I see those of you rushing to the comments to tell us it’s Die Hard and I think you’re very big and clever. But A Christmas Carol has everything, all the trappings of Christmas, that sliver of darkness running through the whole thing, and above all a strong seasonal message to remind us what Christmas is about. The story has been reimagined and…
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14 Dec

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 10 Review: A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas

New DVD release, , , , , ,
This The Simpsons review contains spoilers. The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 10 It’s beginning to look a lot like Dominion Day in “A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas.” That’s a Canadian holiday which falls in July, as Springfield passes for Canada passing for small-town America in The Simpsons season 32, episode 10. This is a festive dismantling of yuletide cheer. The episode tells the heartwarming story of the making of a Christmas movie. The “Heartmark Channel” sends Mary Tannenbaum (Ellie Kemper), its top candidate to head their Homemaker Mysteries Division, to save A Christmas Ornament for Christmas. Christmas movies are…
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12 Dec

Christmas Movies on Disney+ Streaming Guide

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Like frozen fractals spiraling all around, winter is here once more, and with it is the most wonderful time of the year. Tinsel is being strung around trees, cookies are in the oven, and millions are practicing the hazardous art of exterior illumination. When the days are short, and the nights long, it’s the perfect time to lean into family tradition, and maybe watch a traditional classic movie or two. Of course with everyone glued to the nostalgia emanating from what is sure to be a new family tradition—Disney+—you might be wondering what holiday gems are hidden in its streaming…
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11 Dec

Link Tank: Fun Facts About The Muppet Christmas Carol

New DVD release, , , ,
Check out these fun facts about one of the winter holiday season’s classic movies, The Muppet Christmas Carol. “‘Tis the season to be jolly, joyous, and watch The Muppet Christmas Carol. Maybe you know every word to this charming Muppet musical. Perhaps you count it as your favorite adaptation of Charles Dickens’s tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. But do you know all the secrets behind this holiday classic’s creation?” Read more at Mental Floss. One of the biggest criticisms of the Justice League movie is its treatment of Wonder Woman, and her solo movie director Patty Jenkins agrees. “I hate how…
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11 Dec

Disney+ Christmas Movies for Kids: The Best Family Films to Watch this Holiday Season

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It’s the time of year when you can’t enter a store without hearing those familiar holiday jingles as your shopping soundtrack. With many families reducing their gatherings this year, it’s a good time to snuggle up, stay in, and share some Christmas movies with your kids. Here are some of the best that Disney+ has to offer. Lego Star Wars Holiday Special This season’s brand new holiday special features the cast of the Star Wars Sequel trilogy celebrating Life Day. Rey feels she’s failing Finn as his teacher in the ways of the Jedi, so she seeks out an ancient…
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09 Dec

Why Chronicles of Narnia’s Santa Claus Celebrates Christmas with Weapons of War

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Anyone who adapts the works of C.S. Lewis for the screen will find they have a few odd things to contend with. We have never seen a screen version of Prince Caspian, for example, in which young children Susan and Lucy go around cavorting with Bacchus, the god of wine, and his wild Bacchants, for the very good reason that it comes across as seriously strange and more than a little disturbing. But the oddest moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis’ first written The Chronicles of Narnia novel and the most often adapted, cannot be so…
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03 Dec

Christmas TV Comedy Episodes List: Where to Stream Friends, The Office and More!

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In a perfect world, TV streaming services would offer a playlist feature – imagine the joyful nerdery of shareable Top 10 episode lists. When it came time for a Christmas binge-watch while you’re wrapping gifts, or spraying pine cones silver, or gently weeping and glugging Advocaat from the bottle (whatever your festive tradition is, delete as appropriate), you could fire up hours of comedy specials without having to expend a single calorie of energy on touching the remote. Until that glorious day comes, this is your next best thing. It’s a directory of the major US and UK 1990s-2010s sitcoms’…
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02 Dec

Doctor Who: the Weird Anomaly of the 1965 ‘Christmas Special’

New DVD release, , , ,
To be abundantly clear: the first Doctor Who Christmas Special was ‘The Christmas Invasion‘ in 2005. However, the first time the show was broadcast on Christmas Day was in 1965, the seventh episode of ‘The Dalek Master Plan’. The previous two years also had also seen Dalek stories at Christmas, with the first ever Dalek story starting broadcast in December 1963 and the final episode of ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ arriving on Boxing Day 1964, because Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a volcanic eruption by the Home Counties. ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ capitalised on the initial success of…
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02 Dec

The Christmas Chronicles 2: Who or What is the Belsnickel?

Netflix, New DVD release, ,
While Netflix’s 2018 holiday film, The Christmas Chronicles, didn’t have a clear antagonist—it was more about saving Christmas—the 2020 sequel pits Santa Claus (Kurt Russell) against an elfin protégé-turned-human-rival, Belsnickel (Julian Dennison). But while Belsnickel, with his odd garb and anti-Claus vendetta, might initially seem not to fit into The Christmas Chronicles 2, the character is actually rooted in Yuletide tradition. According to German folklore that dates back to at least the 18th century, Belsnickel is a foil of sorts to Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus: a disheveled man dressed in tattered furs and dirty clothes, often wearing a mask…
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01 Dec

Link Tank: The Most Popular Christmas Movies by Country

New DVD release, , ,
Did you know that Elf is Canada’s favorite Christmas movie, or that Singapore loves Home Alone? Check out the most popular Christmas movies by country! “The start of the holiday season means it’s time to recommence the annual debate over which Christmas movies are the best. If you’re discussing the matter with a friend from France or Brazil, they might be arguing hard for Gremlins, the 1984 cult classic that may or may not actually be a Christmas movie. India, on the other hand, is home to many fans of 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Read more at Mental…
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01 Dec

DuckTales Season 3 Episode 18 Review: How Santa Stole Christmas!

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This DUCKTALES review contains spoilers. It’s hard for any TV show to surprise me but when they opened that gift and discovered Scrooge was actually delivering coal all this time? I gasped. WHAT A BETRAYAL. Scrooge, how dare you! But… it made sense. DuckTales has done a lot of work in growing Scrooge from the person we first met in the premiere who only cared about money. He’s slowly grown to love his extended family and isn’t quite as much of a curmudgeon as he used to be. Still though, just because Scrooge has changed some parts of himself doesn’t mean he’s…
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DVD Guide reviews current dvd releases of movies and TV shows. The reviews of these dvd releases are my thoughts and understandings of the movie, dvd releases or TV show and not be taken as fact.

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