Happy holidays from The A.V. Club
This Christmas is turning out to be a little odder than we expected, isn't it
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Welp, it sure looked like we were finally going to have a nice holiday season again this year, until the Omicron variant raised its ugly head and ruined just about everything. Nevertheless, we at The A.V. Club are still taking advantage of the holiday break to take a few days off. Not to worry, we’ll have some new stuff running next week (like the best songs of 2021, a proper farewell to Insecure, and some peeks ahead into January). But in the meantime we’ll be on our annual long winter’s nap, as it were, eating up all the extra leftovers due to a flurry of last-minute cancellations from our Christmas dinner guests.
If you are stuck at home as well, may we suggest that this is an excellent time to catch up on all of our end-of-year content. Like best 2021 movies, TV, albums, film scenes, movie and TV performances, trailers, TV episodes, and underheard artists. Check out our film and TV reviews to see which streaming stuff is worth checking out, this roundup of the best hidden gems of TV, or these Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon lists to see the best films readily available this month. You can also take a look at our biggest news stories and newsmakers of the year to remember some non-disease-related 2021 headlines. And if you’re a gamer, take a look at this listing of this year’s big, dumb shooter games. Or just ponder what the heck is up with the popularity of Yellowstone?
Still feeling a bit seasonal, despite the bleakness of your Twitter feed? Well, bless your heart. We’ve got some holiday jams from this very year, some vintage Christmas specials to view online, and a list of the most interesting Hallmark/Lifetime/Netflix-type romantic holiday films (you know the kind). Or if you want to dive into a certain Xmas movie, check out these essays on newer holiday classics like The Family Stone and Carol.
We’re hoping that your holiday is going a little better than ours is (seriously, just who is going to eat this 10-pound roast) and that if it isn’t, browsing The A.V Club can offer opportunities for some welcome distraction. As always, we are grateful for your visits to the site, your insightful comments, and the fact that you’re as obsessed with the myriad twist and turns of the pop culture discourse as we are. Take care and we’ll see you next week!
42 Comments
Happy Hogswatch Everyone!
HO. HO. HO.
Nice mask.
As always, we are grateful for your visits to the site, your insightful comments…*farts for several minutes*
Have fun in L.A. traffic!
Sure hope this SPR3 jam makes the best songs of 2021 list!
Right now, I’m actually watching this:(Lots of talented people on Youtube, there’s really good matching of appropriate video to audio!)
That might be the best video ever, but I will never know because I can’t click on a video with that thumbnail.
It’s a mix of footage from all across the 25 plus years of various iterations of one of the most influential animes of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Big mecha anime battling the impending end of the world. It’s relatively harmless IMO with a good mesh of chosen images to lyrics but it helps if you know the show for context.But the actual song itself separate from all that is a safe alternative choice as well.
Happy Everything to Everybody. I hug you with all 8 arms.
“Wait, where are you going? I just want to give you a hug for Christmas!”
Don’t you mean legs?
Not that I’m trying to talk you out of wrapping them around me.
I mean LOVE!
I love 8-limbed hugs.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Hey, I can actually see my immediate family this year, so it’s automatically better than last year. Happy Everything!
Spending my Xmas on Reddit (the antiwork sub) and hanging out with my family. Woo hoo.
I’m at work but I read r/antiwork a lot these days.My work’s been good to me, though especially since I have time to read r/antiwork at work.
Happy holidays or whatever you are doing today. I’m with family and we could really use a good bad movie to watch. Just finished Troll 2 last night, going to have to find something to top that. Suggestions that aren’t Samurai Cop/Miami Connection/Hard Ticket To Hawaii/Neil Breen?
Just Friends with Ryan Reynolds. An underrated Christmas classic. Enjoy!
Thanks for the suggestion, but that doesn’t seem to fit the ‘good bad movie’ theme!
If you can track down The Astrologer I think it’d fit the bill – https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/the-astrologer/1975s-the-astrologer-is-the-greatest-cult-classic/
Thank you, exactly what I’m looking for! The Internet Archive has the full version, will absolutely be digging into this tonight!
I hope you enjoyed it, and would be really interested to hear your thoughts on it either way.
It was pretty good. I didn’t find it laugh out loud funny as much as it was just plain weird. I think the director actually had a little bit of talent (the seemingly unlimited money he had to spend really helped) and there were some scenes that I genuinely thought were well done (the bar scene in Tahiti was a remarkable slice of life sort of film set to music, which I think was very ahead of its time), and the ‘meta’ concept and plot was pretty wild, too. I think it’s well worth a watch and would recommend it, but I’m not entirely sure it’ll ever sit among the pantheon of the best good bad films. Still a real oddity, though!
The worst thing I’ve seen lately is Things.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_(film)I don’t know if it’s so bad it’s good, but it is very very bad indeed, and it has much more than its share of hilarious ineptitude.
Now I’m not saying this is made up of three films (at least one of which was never completed/released) edited down and some questionable and incongruous bridging material made to link it, nor am I saying the whole in its entirety is also on Youtube.I’m also not saying it’s also on Youtube in full under the title of “Night Train of Terror” by mistake.Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying any of that.
Oh you are a true gem. That looks wonderful. Tomorrow’s film for sure. Thank you!
Glad you (potentially) liked the sheer camp of it all!The dance/music video interludes are truly something else.
Hogfather and Holidays in Handcuffs.
Dangerous Men. From a different Iranian expatriate in the Amir Shervan school of filmmaking, this one is even more inept than Samurai Cop, as it’s a thriller that the guy couldn’t complete in the eighties, then in the nineties, until he ultimately released it in 2006. So, you have two different casts a decade apart, with two plots clumsily brought together. And the guy also wrote the score.White Fire. It’s a completely non-sensical French thriller shot in Turkey, starring Robert Ginty and Fred Williamson that the director infuses with some obvious obsession over brother-sister incest. Gotti. Starring John Travolta. It’s like watching Goodfellas + The Godfather written and shot by people who went through a lobotomy.The Apple. Some 1980 futuristic musical about Adam and Eve directed by Mehamem Golan with a lot of disco music, terrible songs (unless they are Donna Summer rip-offs), bland leads, and a deus ex machina that’s actually God in a car. If you can’t find it, try Can’t Stop the Music (the Village People musical) instead.Puma ManAnything by Bruno Mattei (a frequent collaborator to Claudio Fragasso, director of Troll 2) from the 80s, including Hell of the Living Dead. The films are worth tracking down.Any “collaboration” between Godfrey Ho and Richard Harrison. Ho hired Richard Harrison to star in a couple of ninja films in the early 80s. Due to the magic of splicing and dubbing, these were turned into many more, without Harrison’s agreement.
Oh that’s a treasure trove. Thank you! I’ll look into those.
Hogfather, Muppet Christmas Carol, and Tokyo Godfathers for me.
Oh boy, hard pass on all three of those movies thank you.
Southland Tales!
Oof, Richard Kelly movies may be too rich for my blood. That might be too cringe for me. But thank you for bringing that disaster to my attention.
Now that the presents have been opened, and lots of food and drink consumed, gather round your ol’ Uncle Floyd for a real Christmas evening treat. You may wonder why us old timers piss and moan constantly about how “much better the AVC was 10 or 15 years ago” so I’m going to give you a peek at the commentariate of years ago. Let’s have a warm round of applause for the Spirit of Comment Threads Past, as they present to you The Traditional AVC Christmas Pants Crapping Thread. You’ve been pretty good this year, and all deserve some joy in life. The entire thread is entertaining, but the main event begins a few comments in from the oldest.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/avclub/this_holiday_message_is_brought_to_you/oldest/ Merry Christmas, AVC. May our 2022 be far better than this current mess.
Merry Christmas, bitches!
Happy Happiness to everyone here!
I hope everyone has or had a great holiday season. Enjoy.