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…)

At what point does the stress of modern living become too much to bear, so much so that it can cause a perfectly good person to snap? That question has been the focus of two of the most memorable films in recent decades – “Taxi Driver” and “Falling Down” – and now a new film called “Super” is adding its own potent and surprising answers to that question.

Starring Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Schrute on the popular NBC sitcom “The Office,” “Super” follows last year’s “Kick Ass” as a film that explores what would happen if an average person without special powers donned a superhero costume and strived to fight crime anyway. Both films pack a subversive punch, as “Kick Ass” focused on children and teenagers swearing and battling their way through a crime wave, while “Super” walks a daring tightrope by mixing comedic moments with suddenly shocking violence and an unflinching and sympathetic depiction of a man’s wrestling with his faith and calling in life.

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Wilson plays Frank, an utter weakling who has been comically stepped on his entire life. The one good thing in his life is his gorgeous wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), but even she is caught up in a ravaging drug addiction and has started disappearing for hours on end.

When a mysterious and utterly sleazy guy named Jacque (Kevin Bacon) shows up at Frank’s house looking for Sarah a day before she clears all her stuff out and leaves for good, Frank reaches his breaking point. He has earlier revealed that he’s prone to humorously bizarre visions of Christ advising him on his life, but now he falls to his knees in a scene that’s almost difficult to watch in its sincerity and naked emotions.

Asking God why He allows some people like him to never catch a break in life and to always suffer, Frank vows that if he can just win his wife back, he will do anything for God and will never ask another favor again. He immediately feels the call to become a superhero, fashioning a suit and persona he names Crimson Bolt, and proceeds to fight the crime on his city’s streets.

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You would think that after last year’s Perez Hilton debacle Miss USA officials would have put some serious controls over the questions this year’s judges were allowed to ask the pageant contestants.  Instead, Sunday’s event had actor Oscar Nuñez of NBC’s “The Office” grilling Miss Oklahoma on the recently passed anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona.

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NBC gives new meaning to the phrase “green screen” next week, spreading a pro-environmental message across five of its prime-time entertainment programs – AP News.

When Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” it was rightly seen as a brilliant allegory to the House Un-American Activities Committee.  It was a brilliant piece of drama about the Salem Witch Trials of the late 17th Century with obvious corollaries to the political climate of post-World War II America.  And no matter where you fall on the political spectrum you must recognize the play as a classic in the canon of American drama.

My admiration for much of Miller’s work gives me enough confidence to say that he would view the current efforts to ham-handedly inject political statements into television sitcoms as absolute crap.  It takes a deft hand to send a message without it seeming like you are sending a message… and the writers of “The Office” and “30 Rock,” as glib as they may be, are no “Arthur Millers”.

I love “The Office.”  I’m one of those apostates who actually like the U.S. version better than the original (must be my knee-jerk patriotism at work).  But I saw my very first example of lousy (and I mean REALLY lousy) writing this season when they tried to force the issue of “Volunteer-ism” into the storyline. (more…)

The most annoying creature in the pantheon of Hollywood cliches is the “free spirit,” the heedless, hedonistic waif whose responsibility-free lifestyle shows us uptight squares just how empty and soulless our lives of meeting obligations and delaying gratification truly are.  But there’s nothing free about free spirits in real life – they flit along like eternal infants while other people get to pick up the figurative and literal bill – people like you, and me and TV’s most amusing everyman Hank Hill.

Tonight Fox will run the series finale of King of the Hill, the saga of Hank and his gang of associates living in their exurb paradise of Arlen, Texas.  King has a helluva a pedigree.  It was created by fellow UC San Diego grad Mike Judge, who also developed the criminally under-appreciated Beavis and Butt-Head.  The co-creator was Greg Daniels, who previously worked on The Simpsons  and wrote the classic Lisa’s Wedding episode.  Together, they made King the most subversive comedy on television. (more…)

Is it possible for a film to be both a brilliant, exciting piece of entertainment, and also a completely illogical piece of heavy-handed political propaganda? It is, if the new science-fiction oddity “District 9” is any indication.

Led by a stunning performance by Sharlto Copley, who is not only unknown to audiences outside South Africa, but who had never acted in anything but short films before, “District 9” blasts through its running time with a furious mix of action and satire. Yet its central plotline, focusing on what might happen if space aliens approached Johannesburg and were then held in a segregated district for nearly three decades, is riddled with holes and bangs viewers over the head with its allegories of racial discrimination harkening back to the evil days of that nation’s apartheid policies.

The film kicks off with a fast-paced blend of fake newscasts and faux-documentary footage shot by a camera crew that’s been assigned to cover a mass evacuation of aliens from their home in the city’s District 9. The aliens had come in a giant mother ship back in 1982, but no one has ever figured out why they arrived and left the ship to hover eternally over Johannesburg. (more…)