Yule Rue the Day! - Dec 24th - Friday Video Distractions

 

     Tomorrow is Christmas, and as I type this I still can't quite accept it. I'm certainly not ready for it, but I'll do what I can, and otherwise hope it's going well for most of you. Before that, though, it's the penultimate Friday of 2021, and Christmas Eve, so something's being posted here today.

    Along with what some of us think of as an assault of Christmas/holiday music each year, there are specials and skits. In an Internet age, even if they're not officially rebroadcast by someone, most of them are still out there... lurking.

     I know that I've never, at any age, been the target audience for these holiday specials. In some cases it's a strict formula, and in others it's such a forced concept that it surely came down as a command from on-high at the network that they had to have one of those holiday special things - the bulk of the entertainment's in looking for signs that the participants are asking themselves how they got into this.
     One especially contrived one I've only recently become aware of (and I haven't made it far into it, as I've had to remain sober due to other responsibilities) is 1984's Scrooge's Rock 'N' Roll Christmas (just over 42m, though officially it keeps being listed as 44). Back in '84 that was a Sunday night, and it didn't seem to be on the schedule of any of the three broadcast networks at the time (CBS had it's then-normal slate of Sunday night shows on, while ABC was running Superman (1978) and NBC had The Sound of Music (1965), so it must have been a syndicated special to be distributed on WTBS or USA Network, or whatever else was lurking on cable back then.
     Referenced as a tv movie, the core premise seems to be either a mild acid trip or a weak Twilight Zone episode, as a young woman (presumably from 1984) on Christmas Eve steps into what she expects is a local, familiar record shop, only to find it instead is Scrooge & Marley's money-lending establishment, with the surviving proprietor hard at work. Scrooge is played by cantankerous, crazy-eyed character actor Jack Elam. She decides he's too grumpy for the holiday, so she brings out a magic snowglobe to badger the grizzled, befuddled man with a series of older pop/rock performers (including Three Dog Night, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Association, Merrilee Rush, Bobby Goldsboro, Mary MacGregor, Mike Love, and the Dean half of Jan & Dean) lip-syncing to covers of holiday "classics" as they pose and amble through winter scenes at the Goldmine Ski Resort. The stout of heart, morbidly curious, and/or besotted can find it free (because watching it may already be too high a price) on DailyMotion, over on Tubi, or here, via YouTube.

     I'd only ever known this next piece as a purely audio item - I don't seem to recall them integrating it into the SCTV show - and if anyone's still listening to radio, I'm sure it's still getting airplay around this time of year. (Certainly, I'd much rather come across this than, say, the two or three seconds of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer I'd hear before shutting it off by any means necessary.) The animation doesn't do much, good or ill, but it gives you something to watch other than a static image while listening. It's Bob (Rick Moranis) & Doug (Dave Thomas) McKenzie's 12 Days of (Canadian) Christmas.

     The characters began as throw-away bits by the pair. They were created in response to the request in 1980, for the show's third season, for two minutes per show of Canadian-focused content. This was

because with that third season they'd moved to CBC, and the U.S. market the shows were syndicated to  packed in commercials more aggressively, so the network wanted the extra minutes to be focused for a Canadian audience. As the show had been done for two seasons with a Canadian cast and crew, Moranis and Thomas saw it as an unnecessary focus, and so decided to fold in every cliche about Canadians they could think of, with the intent being of giving the suits reason to regret meddling in the show's content.
     Taking a single camera, they'd drink beer, cook back bacon and hot snacks, and improv their way through bits they expected to make the network rethink their request. Instead, those bits became breakout spots for the show, and this included the U.S. audience as some of them had made their way into the show. By the end of '83 the characters had peaked, with exposure not only via increased time in the show, but also by a Grammy-nominated, Billboard Top 10-charting comedy album, The Great White North (which included the above carol) and a feature film, Strange Brew. I remember feeling overexposed to this back then, and I've no idea how many years it's been since I last listened to it. The album's ready to play on YouTube if their song didn't completely scratch that itch. For completeness' sake (though off-topic for this seasonal post) Strange Brew (1983  1h 32.5m)is also sitting on YouTube.

     Swinging back to A Christmas Carol, having seen that it's available on Hulu, Paramount +, Tubi and even on YouTube, the 1984 version starring George C. Scott has been roundly praised -- and to the best of my knowledge it's a version I've not yet seen. It was a joint British-American production, shot in the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire. Referenced generally as a made-for-tv film, it was first shown in the U.S. on December 17, 1984, and was shown theatrically in Great Britain.
     So far I haven't much been in the mood for the story this season, but perhaps tonight. As I have the options, I'll likely go for either Paramount+ or Hulu. Here's A Christmas Carol (1984   101m)

     While it should have multiple points to commend it, I'm particularly interested in seeing David Warner as Bob Cratchit, as most of Warner's more memorable roles had sinister aspects, and I expect my mind will be importing some of those despite his character here being nothing but amiable and downtrodden.
     Next up is a 1994 short feature on the making of 1966's instant classic, the animated How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Hosted by Phil Hartman, including interview segments with  the key people who were still around at the time, specifically artist/animator Chuck Jones, incredibly bass-throated singer Thurl Ravenscroft, composer Albert Hague, and Ted (Dr. Seuss) Geisel's widow. Runs 19m 19s.

     A slightly unpleasant memory I have associated with this - I'd forgotten it until rewatching it - is that I remember watching this back in 1994 and reacting badly to one aspect of it. This was the fourth Christmas for elder son, Travis, and the second for his brother, Nick, so we were into holiday tradition-building mode. Adding the Grinch, something that had started around my fifth Christmas, was an easy choice. Anyway, what struck me all over again was that despite liking Phil Hartman in just

about anything, his presenter persona here was too much like his Troy McClure character on The Simpsons. A self-absorbed, former, forced celebrity -- someone to invoke to lend faux gravitas to some minor event or PSA in a doomed-to-fail attempt to spin it up into something bigger. As such, it seemed terribly out of place in a piece talking about such a start-to-finish triumph for broadcast television. At least for me, there's an implicit archness without any target.
     This could easily be a case of my carrying baggage they really didn't bring. Your mileage may very well vary, as mine likely would have had I seen it for the first time a year or two later, when I might have taken it, instead, for his Bill McNeal character from the sitcom News Radio. In 1994, however, that show had yet to begin.
     What makes the memory unpleasant for me is mostly recalling that it's a rare bad association with Phil, and some part of me feels a little guilty about that as four years later he'd be gone at the absurdly-young age of 49. That's how my mind works, unfortunately. I remember some departed person fondly, and my memory will immediately deliver a cringe-inducing kick, as I recall that time I was thoughtlessly dismissive or even directly mean to them. Ah, well, Phil never knew.
     As for How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) itself, NBC appears to have that tied up. They'll be airing it on their main network Saturday night at 8 (Eastern), and otherwise have it on their Peacock streaming service -- behind their paywall, of course.
     Shifting back to the nearly innumerable versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol that various media have delivered and/or unceremoniously dumped on us over the decades, I felt I had to repeat one from a mid-December piece last year. A supercut of films, tv shows, commercials, comic books, etc. iterations of the story that Heath Waterman maniacally spliced together back in 2016. It's Twelve Hundred Ghosts (54m). Maybe this is the new holiday tradition you're looking for?

     Just to toss a few, unrelated, new items in here at the end - while I should also remind myself to look back to the previous several Friday posts for things I haven't yet gotten to.
     There's some odd impulse to throw myself suddenly into a a pop cultural and musical pool I'm wholly unacquainted with, via the mockumentary (a scripted film shot as a documentary) - also referenced as a psychological thriller comedy - The Nowhere Inn.
     Grammy award-winner Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is unknown to me, though I've at least heard some things from the two acts she was part of prior to going solo, both The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens' touring band. I suspect that I'll be the old man at the party who has no idea what information to catch as significant, and so will miss most references and  jokes. Still, it's good to stretch a little this way, and at least here, as an unobserved audience in my bubble, I don't also have to be part of the joke. There's more than enough of that in real life.
     Anyway, The Nowhere Inn (2021   91m) landed on Hulu a week ago. Here's the trailer.

     Arriving today on Netflix (and out in limited theatrical release since December 10th) is the satirical science fiction film Don't Look Up (2021  138m). Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Rob Morgan, and Jonah Hill -- among a star-studded, international cast. Truly, it seems that one won't go long between "oh, look who else is here!" moments.
     The premise is that a pair of astronomers (played by DiCaprio & Lawrence) discover a hitherto-unknown comet heading straight for Earth. Its trajectory makes it 100% certain to hit, and its mass assures them that it will be a planet-killer, wiping out most of the life on Earth. The film is mainly about how the authorities, media, and general public each selectively process (or mostly fail to) the information in the most self-serving way possible. In our world of seemingly endless public health crisis, and a media environment that caters to selective bubbles of infotainment created to selectively reinforce nearly anyone's views, the broad, satirical premise of the film is understandable and, unfortunately, natural. The term "facts" has become slippery at best, with the self-entitled notion that reality is truly selective, instantly politicized, we can partake of or pass over the details that do or don't suit us with not only impunity but pride.
     The light scan of critical reviews is mixed, with many praising the cast, but finding the satire heavy-handed.
     At the moment, not having a very uplifting holiday so far myself (it's not been a great week), this may be the new item I'll go for first sometime today. (Well, after this week's installment of The Expanse.) Here's the trailer:

      Also arriving today on Netflix is an 8-part sci-fi thriller series from South Korea, reuniting some of the cast of Squid Game (cast, not the characters) in a dystopic, nearish-future setting where a global environmental crisis on Earth has led to selective rationing of water. A team is assembled to go to Balhae, a research station on the Moon, to retrieve a research sample from a hush-hush project that ended mysteriously and very badly for the 117 people stationed there five years earlier. Hidden agendas lead to a critically under-detailed briefing, and the team has no clue what they're walking into until it's too late.
     It's The Silent Sea (2021)

     Reviews have me approaching this one expecting it to be largely unsatisfyingly derivative of better films, specifically James Cameron's Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), to a degree that it largely buries the more unique aspects.

     As ever, there's always more to be reached for, but I've run out of time. However you observe this time of year, I hope you're able to enjoy and share it with someone. Indulge yourself, but not so much that you'll regret it tomorrow. Oh, turn it up to 11 if you want. It's your life.
     Take care, and I hope to see you here a week from now, as we pause on the final day of 2021.
     I'm making a late addition, as I just saw Micky Dolenz post a link to this as a holiday remembrance of his now-absent friends and bandmates. - Mike