A Very ScreenFix Christmas

It’s that time of year again folks, the magical day that children spend all year waiting for: the day the winter Doctor Who special airs. To celebrate, each member of our writing staff is contributing their favorite movie featuring the other important event of Doctor Who Day- a minor holiday called Christmas. Enjoy.

A Muppet Christmas Carol (Ryan)
What happens when you mix the beloved Dickens classic about the true meaning of Christmas with a bunch of singing felt puppets? It may sound like your 11th grade English Teacher’s “progressive teaching style,” but it is in fact one of, if not the, best Muppet movie of the 90’s. The 90’s were a magical time when the Muppets started redoing classic pieces of literature with their own Muppet-y twist, starting with A Christmas Carol. There are so many reasons to love this movie. Gonzo as Charles Dickens, the omniscient story-teller, Kermit as Bob Crachet, and of course Michael Caine playing the original Scrooge. The movie is filled to bursting with memorable songs, hilarious jokes, and a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Dickens’s most well known work. With the Muppets well on their way back to the top, why not grab the entire family and force them to sit down and watch the Muppets for the second holiday in a row. Trust me, they’ll thank you when it’s over.


How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Brian)
When you want wisdom dispensed with equal parts zany premise, made-up words, and sometimes-strained end-rhyme, there is no better source than the esteemed Dr. Seuss. To champion the cause of environmental conservation, you have the Lorax (he speaks for the trees). For graduation gifts, a copy of “Oh the Places You’ll Go” is expected, generally with a three-copy minimum. And at Christmas time, you complain about the interruption of regular television, and find yourself watching the animated classic from the 60s, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, sometimes in various states of inebriation. Seuss manages to convey the meaning of Christmas without any specific religious message or inherent Santa Claus mythology, and we somehow get a happy ending out of lies, thievery, cruelty, bitterness, and jealousy. Maybe the reason I enjoy How the Grinch Stole Christmas so much is that the Grinch actually spends the vast majority of the feature ruining Christmas, delighting my inner-Scrooge. Roast beast is, after all, a feast I can’t stand in the least, either. And let’s not forget my favorite Christmas carol, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” which is also excellent for teaching simile and metaphor, and also does nicely for particularly unpleasant breakups. With several airings on most major networks and a few cable channels, such as ABC Family, during the holiday season, it’s not hard to find and definitely worth catching to assuage your Christmas stress.


Home Alone (Amanda)
What says Christmas more than the story of a busy family forgetting to pack their 8 year old son for the holiday vacation in France? Thus begins the story of Home Alone. Macaulay Culkin stars as Kevin, who thinks being forgotten is the perfect Christmas gift. Shortly after the beginning of his personal party, he discovers that his “empty” home has become the target for two of the most inept thieves ever seen who call themselves the “Wet Bandits.” Unfortunately for the thieves, Kevin is, perhaps, the most industrious and creative child ever left alone to defend his home. What isn’t to love about the series of tricks and traps Kevin plots for the unsuspecting criminals? (except for the mess he left for his parents to clean up but it serves them right for forgetting him.) Home Alone is packed with comedy the whole family can enjoy and for other children of the 90’s it’s a trip down memory lane!

And if you enjoyed the first one, try the second movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. This time, Kevin’s family forgets him at Christmas for a second year, except this time he’s on his own in New York City.


Elf (Zoe)
I will probably watch this one at least three more times before Sunday while I consolidate and wrap my presents. It just puts a smile on my face every time I watch it; hell, I’m smiling right now just thinking about it. Elf is about Buddy, a baby human who stows away in Santa’s toy bag and ends up back at the North Pole. Raised by elves, he grows up to be Will Ferrell and the single most cheerful person I have ever seen on my TV. After discovering that he was adopted, Buddy goes on a quest to find his biological father in New York City, who happens to be on the naughty list. It sounds really silly when you type it out like that. However, the plot really isn’t the important part here. The reason this movie works is almost exclusively Will Ferrell. It’s as if he took that feeling you got when you were a kid setting out the milk and cookies for Santa (and carrots for the Reindeer of course) on Christmas Eve with the lights dimmed and the tree glowing softly, when everything is just about family and the Christmas spirit, not all the stuff you’re going to get when you wake up in five hours, and made a character out of that.

Relentlessly optimistic, excited and faithful in his own way, Buddy is pure Christmas spirit with none of the cynicism about Christmas that we gather as we age. Elf is hilarious to boot, with a terrific score and featuring a blond Zooey Deschanel (whose last name I spelled correctly on the first try, hoo-rah). Honorable mention- Hogfather (It’s on Netflix, look it up).


A Charlie Brown Christmas Special (Scotty)
There comes a time in one’s life where Christmas isn’t the same. The things that used to excite you as a child now seem dull. The presents, the decorations, and the pageantry all seem vapid and material. And it sucks big time.

Charlie Brown is going through this midlife crisis while still in primary school. All the aspects of Christmas from which his friends seem to be deriving joy don’t really interest him anymore. His attempt to recapture the wonder of Christmas fails miserably. Plus, there was almost a case of tree homicide. Chuck almost gives up on Christmas entirely until Linus schools him and pretty much everyone in earshot.

This is why A Charlie Brown Christmas Special is so great. It shows that the way to get over the adult melancholy of Christmas is not to revert to a childlike state where commercialism still amuses you, but to look beyond the superficial and find the deeper spiritual meaning behind the holiday. Christmas is not about Santa, elves, gifts or having a pretty Christmas tree. It’s about something small and almost insignificant having the promise of bringing great joy.

That and the soundtrack is awesome.

(Cue Linus and Lucy)


Die Hard (James)
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the Nakatomi skyscraper
Not a creature was stirring, except the guard with his newspaper.
John McClane stalked terrorists in air-ducts with care
In hopes to save his wife with her huge 80’s hair.

The children were home, all snuggled in bed
With an illegal immigrant watching over their heads.
Without any socks or even a shoe
And no outside help, what will McClane do?

When down on the plaza there arose such a clatter,
Al sprang from his post to see what was the matter.
A body from a window falls down on his car
He wondered where all of the other police are.


“Come Karl, and Tony, and Fritz, and Theo!
And you Uli and Heinrich, and Kristoff, and Franco!
To the top of the roof, I’ll fight you all!”
And defeated every one in a mighty brawl.


Down to the garage goes the evil man
Hanz thinks he’s finished his dastardly plan
When from out of the night comes Argyle quickly
and rams the terrorist with his limo.


Up sprang McClane, with a plan for attack
He pulled out a gun from the tape on his back
And I heard him exclaim as he shot down poor Hanz,
“Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!”


What do you think? Did we miss your favorite Christmas film? Let us know what you think in the comments, and from everyone here at ScreenFix, have a Merry Christmas!

Every Day They're Shuffling: The Walking Dead Hits Season 2 Midpoint

On November 27^th, AMC’s survival horror series The Walking Dead aired its midseason finale, “Pretty Much Dead Already,” before going on hiatus until February 2012. According to the show’s Facebook page, The Walking Dead is the most-watched show on cable television (a post that received over 30,000 likes), and 12,000+ people liked the finale episode’s feedback post and left over 10,000 comments. It’s fair to say that the show has generated some buzz, on the Internet at least. But does it deserve it?

Though hardly new to the science fiction or horror genres, zombies have become increasingly popular in the last five years or so with the advent of video game and movie franchises such as Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Left 4 Dead, and Zombieland, among numerous others. The challenge for AMC’s graphic novel-based series, which first debuted on Halloween in 2010, was to distinguish itself from those franchises in order to become successful on cable. To do that, The Walking Dead inverts the focus of modern zombie fiction (murdering as many zombies in as many creative and disgusting ways as possible), blending the horror/suspense element innate to classic zombie films (such as Romero's Night of the Living Dead, released in 1978) with something comparatively innovative: daily life in a post-apocalyptic world. The Walking Dead asks the question: what do the survivors of the zombie apocalypse do when they aren’t murdering their former-fellow men?

The second season of The Walking Dead has been an exercise in patience for many of its viewers. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but if you truly want to enjoy the suspense of the series and aren't up to date, you may want to bookmark this review and get caught up. In the second season, the protagonists find themselves quite stationary, tied down to Hershel's farm by Carl's need for medical attention, the search for Sophia, and the appeal of relative safety from the walkers. This also pits them against Hershel and the rest of the farm survivors with their own unique set of values and, of course, secrets. The deficiency of motion and action in general had some viewers concerned that the show was stalling out and losing its narrative momentum, but in light of the excellent midseason finale episode, I think we can cast the previous six episodes in a different light, starting with the show's own title.

When The Walking Dead’s introduction sequence concludes, the title is revealed on screen word by word, displaying first “The,” followed by “Dead” and “Walking” in that order. Perhaps it’s excessive analysis, but that simple graphic fade always makes me ponder one of zombie lore’s essential questions: are the real zombies the infected, or the survivors who have had the misfortune to withstand the early days of the apocalypse? The Walking Dead's second season has forced survivors to confront their conflicting definitions of civility, what is justified and when, and whether honesty or secrets have a place in this new world.

I would be remiss if I did not go more specifically into what made the finale episode so enjoyable. It served as a proper culmination (as anything called “finale” ought to) of numerous minor and major plots, including Shane's increasing craziness (murdering Otis and advocating violent solutions), Andrea's decreasing craziness (the disapperance of her suicidal tendencies, her marksmanship training, and accidentally wounding Darryl), Carl's injury, Sophia's disappearance, Lori's pregnancy, and Glenn's girl-next-door troubles, to name only a few. Because the series has been so quiet and stationary, the writers were able to plant plenty of dramatic plot mines all around their audience, and the moment we stepped outside the boundaries, they started to go off. Every major and minor character converges on one location, one source of tension, and in a series of gasp-inducing moments, the plot, the characters, and the antagonism are all brought to their proverbial (and sometimes literal) knees. Whether you saw the last zombie coming or not, you cannot say to me that you had no reaction when it emerged, and that you didn't spend those thirty seconds of tension running through the various ways it could play out, even though you knew how it would end. It was masterfully done, and I was entirely absorbed into the world of The Walking Dead for the last twenty minutes of the episode; possibly even to the point that I would not have noticed if the actual zombie apocalypse began to occur. To the skeptics: yes, it was that good. To everyone else: I KNOW, RIGHT?!

There still remains an entire second half of this season, and the midseason finale has left viewers with numerous questions. Will new relationships continue or be destroyed? Will we remain geographically rooted, or is that now impossible? When the dust settles on the group's power struggle, will its leader be different? Will Rick's role as leader be more stringently defined hereafter? And all of that without any mention of certain medical concerns.

I for one am looking forward to The Walking Dead's return in February. Any restlessness I felt during the first half of the season I now recognize as the false sense of security that the characters were also feeling. With all of that turned on its head, it's anyone's guess what's next for the genre's latest hit series.

Do you feel that The Walking Dead has stalled out so far this season? Do you disagree that the midseason finale contained some of the series' best moments to date? Do you have other comments about AMC's zombie show? Share your thoughts!

Very Special Episode

So, we’re doing something a little different today. We will be speaking as one person as we co-write this article and it will be about the most serous topic we can imagine: Glee.

Glee is the show that we love to complain about and yet still we watch it. Maybe it’s the musical numbers that keep us coming back or perhaps complaining gives us as sense of self-importance like our opinions matter. Of course, if we were to write comprehensively about all the issues we have with Glee, we would have a 200-page thesis, and probably a PhD. (That’s how you get a PhD, right? By writing a really long paper?) So, for our sakes and yours, we’re going to address the one topic we take the most issue with, a single character’s story arc.

Quinn.

The Princesses and the Merchandise

I went to Disneyland yesterday and it was awesome. I rode lots of rides, ate a bunch of overpriced food and spent way too much money on stuff I now have to figure out how to get back home. It made me really want to revisit those movies I love like Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story. It wasn't until I got home that I realized what Disneyland had not instilled in me: a desire to see any of the more recent Disney movies like Tangled or The Princess and the Frog which I have heard all my friends talk about and compare but still haven't seen. In fact it seems every time I listen to other people talk about the two movies it’s to compare them. In spite of that, besides a Tiana (look her up, I had to) Christmas ornament and a stuffed frog, there really wasn't any merchandise for either movie in the Main Street stores. It exists too; anyone who's been in a Disney store recently knows how much it exists. So why is none of it in Disneyland (outside of Fantasyland)?

A Review of The Muppets, or “If there was a ever time I wanted them to adapt a movie into a television show it would be now.”

I wish I could bring myself to begin this review by writing the opening lines to the original Muppet Show “It’s time to play the music/ It’s time to light the lights” but that seems silly. Yes, the Muppets are back: Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, The Swedish Chef, Dr. Benson Honeydew et cetera et cetera. If you had a favorite Muppet, they probably show up along with a number of celebrities who have cameos from the glimpse, Mickey Rooney, to plot point, Jack Black. It’s like playing “Gosh, that person looks familiar, aren’t they famous?” Bingo.

The movie follows Walter (Peter Linz), a Muppet, and his human brother Gary (Jason Segel), longtime fans of the Muppet Show on their way to Los Angeles to see the old Muppet Studios. In reality, the trip is to celebrate Gary and his girl friend Mary’s (Amy Adams) ten-year anniversary. When the trio reaches the Muppet Studios, they discover it is in disrepair and will be sold to Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) who wants the property in order to get the oil underneath. That is unless Kermit buys back the theater, although he seems to have forgotten about it.

What ensues is a movie light in plot but big in laughs. Yes, Walter, Gary, and Amy have to find Kermit. Yes, they go off and get the Muppets back together. Yes, they need to raise an absurd amount of money in order to save the theater and studios. Yes, they have to put on a show, including finding a special guest. Finally, yes, Gary ignores Amy leading to your standard romantic comedy split and rejoining of the couple, which I will admit was rather cute.

The movie is entertaining, and the musical numbers are fun if not necessarily worthy of a Flash Mob. The various minor plots that form the movie were interesting enough to keep me from looking at my cell phone in the theater, a rare occurrence I assure you. The Muppet performers were as amazing as ever, and while they sounded older, it added to the film, giving it a quality found only in sipping a fine wine or aged cheese. The human actors were as entertaining as their puppet counterparts; Jason Segel and Amy Adams were adorable together. With Chris Cooper playing up his villain to a ridiculous yet restrained level. I applaud them.

If there is one criticism I have of this otherwise entertaining delight of a romp through nostalgia, it is that despite its name, the Muppets at times felt like an afterthought. The time would be better spent on the Show itself, its acts, and reminding the audience, old and young, just how crazy and fun the Muppet Show could be. Instead of the shortest romantic comedy filmed. I also did not care for Walter: the nerve he struck was not quite Jar Jar Binks, but more aggravating than Revenge of the Sith Padmé when she gives up on life because her husband is emo. I ended up wanting Walter to fall into a volcano and have no one try to rescue him.

Overall, I enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Although, as an individual who grew up only on reruns, that trip was rather brief, I suppose in the end it was more like a trip around the memory block to the corner store. If there were ever a time I hoped a company would decide to try and rake in as much money as possible out their franchise, now is that time.