santa

20 Dec

Why the Studio Kept Santa Claus Being in Miracle on 34th Street a Secret

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If you ever sit down to watch 20th Century Fox’s original trailer for Miracle on 34th Street, a few things might appear strange. Right off the bat it’s unique—unprecedented even—to market a new release without any real footage from the film. Other than a few seconds of the movie’s opening titles and an actual shot from the picture’s final seconds, audiences were told nothing about Miracle on 34th Street other than it was “hilarious!” “exciting!” and, dare they say it, “groovy!” There was of course a reason for this: 20th Century Fox, and more specifically studio head Darryl F. Zanuck,…

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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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07 Dec

How The Simpsons Enjoys a Special Relationship with Santa Claus

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Santa Claus has been a consistent presence on The Simpsons from the very first episode, and not strictly contained within the holidays. Homer wanted to be him. Abe and Bart wanted to kill him. The family dog is named after him, and Mr. Burns routinely releases the hounds on him. The very image of Santa once saved Homer’s life. The town of Springfield brought a class action suit against him, even if they do trust him enough to hawk TV savings at Sprawl-Mart or buy Dancing Santas off YouTube. Here are the many ways in which Santa Claus has impacted…

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04 Dec

Dear Santa

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Dear Santa shines a light on the 100-year-old Operation Santa Program of the United States Postal Service. Each year, hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa arrive at Post Offices around the country. Through Operation Santa, the United States Postal Service makes it possible for the public to safely adopt these letters and make children’s dreams come true. The film invites audiences along for the magic of this massive endeavor. Traveling the country, much like Santa does on Christmas Eve, the film focuses on select Operation Santa Centers: some in metropolitan areas like the massive operation in New York City…

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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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25 Nov

The Christmas Chronicles 2 Review: Kurt Russell’s Hot Santa Sequel is Too Nice

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While nearly every Santa Claus-centric movie concerns the potential loss of Christmas, arguably the fear of missing the holiday is most keenly felt in 2020. Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles (the 2018 film that kicked off this jolly old franchise) indeed tapped into that when it starred two kids learning to believe in Santa, or else; and Chris Columbus’ The Christmas Chronicles 2 strikes at the source of Yuletide cheer again with a plot to destroy Santa’s Village at the North Pole. But what could be the root cause that’s so extreme as to endanger the entire magical foundation of Christmas…

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23 Nov

Fatman Review: Mel Gibson as Santa is Not Your Normal Christmas Story

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It’s almost a certainty that you’ve never seen a Christmas movie like Fatman. You know how they wanted to make all superhero films in that “gritty, realistic” style that Christopher Nolan turned into billions of dollars with the Dark Knight trilogy? In Fatman, writers/directors Ian and Eshom Nelms (Small Town Crime) take the greatest superhero of them all, Santa Claus, and transform him into a struggling, borderline alcoholic curmudgeon who may lose his business, and has a killer after him to boot. That’s right: As played by a more grizzled than usual Mel Gibson, whose voice emanates from somewhere deep…

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19 Oct

The Christmas Chronicles 2 Trailer Has Kurt Russell Back as Santa for Netflix Film

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The Christmas Chronicles 2 will see Kurt Russell’s rendition of Santa Claus back in his sleigh to haul holiday cheer, and close out a year in dire need of just that. Indeed, the Netflix movie sequel’s trailer will whisk you away to a colorful, wintry peppermint-favored reality in which the worst thing we have to worry about is a dastardly ne’er-do-well (played by Deadpool 2’s Julian Dennison,) who’s trying to steal Christmas. Chris Columbus, an esteemed director who knows a thing or two about Christmas classics from having directed the first two Home Alone movies, steps behind the camera for…

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