Holiday films and specials are a favorite American pastime. Whether you watch the same cherished movie with your family every year or you’re running out to the theatre Christmas morning to see that potential Oscar contender on its premiere date, holiday specials never fail to work their way into our lives as a beloved tradition.

However creating a Christmas classic certainly requires a magical mixture of ingredients.  A few cups of sentiment, a drop of imaginary wonder, spoonfuls of yuletide joy and unforgettable quotes that make it a definitive holiday trademark.

15. “Elf” - “Buddy the elf, what’s your favorite color?” Will Ferrell stars as Buddy, who thinks he is one of Santa’s little helpers, but is clearly out of place. One of the most hilarious Christmas stories ever written and Ferrell at his finest.

14. “A Christmas Carol” (Original B&W Version) - The 1951 British classic stars Alastair Sim as Scrooge and has its share of darkness and happiness as old Ebenezer is haunted by three spirits on Christmas Eve. The funniest moment is when Scrooge’s housekeeper Mrs. Dilber awakes him on Christmas morning and he raises her pay from 2 shillings a week to 10, she responds almost half frightened, “Merry Christmas Mr. Scrooge. In keeping with the situation!” (more…)

Poor Thanksgiving; it certainly doesn’t generate as much holiday ruckus in Hollywood as Halloween or Christmas do. While it may not be Tinseltown’s favorite holiday, there are still several television shows and films that center on Turkey Day.

As you prepare to fill up on stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, I’ve whipped up a short list of favorite Thanksgiving moments on screen.

10. “The Mouse and the Mayflower” – I watched this made-for-TV movie growing up, and it’s probably my all-time favorite Thanksgiving story. The score really sets it apart from the rest, with original songs “November” and “Mayflower,” which my family and I always associate with the holiday. Families will love it for the cutesy mice and the fun little story about how Thanksgiving came to be.

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9. “Pieces of April” - Before she was Mrs. Cruise, Katie Holmes starred as April, the family oddball who is stressed about preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her entire clan in her small apartment with a broken oven. If anything, it’s kind of a hoot to see Holmes dressed in punk clothes. (more…)

Our buddy Kyle Smith points out that the Daily Beast has made a laughably pathetic attempt to gin up some controversy over a line from the movie “Horrible Bosses,” which is in theaters today.  From NewsBeast’s Ramin Setoodeh:

In the new comedy Horrible Bosses, Jennifer Aniston plays an overbearing dentist named Julia who tortures her assistant Dale (Charlie Day) by sexually harassing him. She’s one of three managers (along with Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey) meant to be so detestable that their underlings plot to murder them. She constantly corners Dale, asking him to perform lewd sexual acts. In one scene, Aniston’s character calls him into her office, wearing nothing but a white lab coat. When he expresses discomfort, she taunts him like a high-school bully. “You’re starting to sound like a little faggot there, Dale,” she says.

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A common refrain used by progressives against conservatives is a deconstructionist war against the concept that there even is such a thing as the Left: “There’s so much diversity and disagreement in ‘the Left’ that you can’t just call it ‘the Left.’”

This is just a defense mechanism the leftist employs to avoid having to actually examine their movement. Cult members need to have criticism of their cult obscured. It’s the equivalent of “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club…”

There’s a grain of truth here, though. All leftists share core ideas – particularly hatred of conservatives and an infinite faith in big government – but there is a range of thought, not unlike denominations within religions. There are variations in doctrine and tactics between Marxists, Alinskyites, Mother Jones populist progressives, Nation socialists, Daily Kos Democrats, Counterpunch communists, and Dissent social democrats. Grouping them all together under the label “the Left” is no more inaccurate than describing Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans as Christian.

Today, thanks to the extraordinary journalism and research of Ben Shapiro for his must-read book Primetime Propaganda, the focus is on one “church” in particular: the Hollywood Left. (more…)

The U.K. Independent publishes this must-read piece on Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, which is out Tuesday.  Watch this space for more on this important book:

That’s the claim by a right-wing author who says he’s exposed a left-wing plot behind some top TV shows

The TV series Friends undermined family values; Sesame Street taught ethnic minorities about civil disobedience; Happy Days had a subtle anti-Vietnam subtext; and the 1980s cop show MacGyver tried to persuade pistol-packing Americans that guns are bad. That, at least, is the considered opinion of Ben Shapiro, an investigative author and right-wing columnist who will publish a detailed exposé tomorrow telling how Hollywood producers, writers and actors have been secretly using TV to promote what he calls a “radical” left-leaning political agenda.

Shapiro’s book, Primetime Propaganda runs to 416 pages and revolves around comments by 70-odd industry heavyweights who he approached for interviews. The book promises to “profile the biggest names in showbusiness over the past 50 years” and includes a series of “gotcha” moments, in which the architects of the best-watched TV shows of modern times tell how they tried to use the medium of broadcasting to, as Shapiro puts it, “shape America in their own leftist image”. (more…)

Jeff Zucker is out as the President of NBC and the new owners, Comcast, will be taking full control of this legacy network very soon.  While NBC is one of the biggest names in broadcast history, buying this network is not like a billionaire buying the New England Patriots.  Thanks to years of mismanagement and decisions that seem to have been made after of a bender of Schlitz, pixie sticks, and PCP, the network is in shambles.  For a buyer, this is like sinking your money into the Detroit Lions and hoping for the best. 

There was a considerable span of time where NBC was the dominant force in television.  They were behind a long series of hit shows that included The Cosby Show, Cheers, Night Court, Will and Grace, Seinfeld, Hill Street Blues, etc.  NBC’s “Must See TV” lineup gave people reasons to stay conscious on a Thursday evening that didn’t involve preparing their livers for a Friday night of clubbing.  Something happened in 2004.  Maybe it was the re-election of George W.  Bush or maybe it was the ending of their last truly great series “Friends,” but at some point in time that year, something broke both NBC’s spirit and their brain.  

It started simply enough.  Then Network President, Jeff Zucker, tried to replace “Friends” with two sub standard shows, Coupling and Joey.  Coupling was a British show that NBC tried to bring to an American audience.  The problem was that this program was the Brits low rent version of Friends.  Replacing a popular show, with something that looks a little like it, but without the charm is sort of like trying to replace your first love with a latex based product bought at a Fredrick’s of Hollywood outlet.  It’s just not the same.  Coupling didn’t work out and neither did the show, Joey.  Building a spin-off around the least intriguing character of the Friends cast was a mistake on par with the New Coke, the show After M.A.S.H. and “Hope and Change.”  After that the bad decisions just kept on coming.  (more…)

So, during that week while the world was fixated on “important” matters like trapped miners and political debates, a more monumental event took place: David Arquette and the chick from Friends separated.

Yep. This news sent shock waves through my soul, as I could only wonder if a drill bit existed that could extricate Mr. Arquette from the deep, deep hole his mouth dragged him into.

I speak of his interview with Howard Stern a few days ago. In it, Arquette spilled the beans on his marital troubles. He told the world that his wife initiated the separation, quoting her telling him, “I don’t want to be your mother anymore.” He then confessed they didn’t have sex for five months and that after they split up -he had casual sex with “the girl in the paper.” He differentiated sex with her and sex with his wife, in a manner that did him no favors.

You can find what he said, here. 

And so the disarming, goofy actor made the biggest mistake a married man could ever make: he was honest. (more…)

The Drew Barrymore-produced romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You has made the jump from catch-phrase to self-help book to movie hit. With an all-star cast this classic ‘chick flick” appears to be winning the weekend after posting a spectacular $10.5M in opening day ticket sales. That should mean a 3-day start of $27.4M or so, easily out-pacing holdover Taken (Fox) and three other new wide releases. With this kind of opening, Not That Into You could reach almost $60M by the end of next weekend (a 4-day Presidents/Valentine’s combo), which would forecast a potential $90M in US ticket sales.

The new movie developed by New Line and now released by Warner Bros is based on the book of the same name co-written by former Sex & the City scribes Greg Behrendt and Liz Tucillo. The line itself has come to be a reassuring fallback for women in the dating scene (and I’m guessing single guys have adopted the mentality as well in the rough-and-tumble world of dating).

(more…)