The Top Ten Christmas Films OF ALL TIME

10: It’s A Wonderful Life

Synopsis:

James Stewart is a very nice man he is so nice that everyone else walks all over him and then he gets very depressed because of this so he meets an angel.

Our Take:

We didn’t know much about this film until very recently - it’s always cited as a film that everyone can enjoy, but those sort of films usually end up to be Papist Propaganda that nobody really enjoys. There are films which everyone claims to like, you see, even though they aren’t very good. The Godfather is an example of a film like this. Well put together, well acted, and boring boring boring boring! We were wondering it ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ would be the same, seeing how it’s in black and white and all that, but it turns out that is actually is quite a nice film. Not excellent (the ending peters out), but rather nice indeed. And you don’t even care that it’s in black and white!


9: Gremlins

Synopsis:

A boy gets a pet and he splashes it with water and it gives birth to Gremlins that destroy his town.

Our Take:

We’ve never seen this film, but when you put together a list of anything you need to include at least one thing you’ve never seen but has cult appeal, because then you appeal to a wider demographic. So we’re including Gremlins, because it’s apparently very funny and very anti-Christmas, and including anti-Christmas films is half the point of making a list about Christmas films.


8: A Muppet Christmas Carol

Synopsis:

Michael Caine sees Muppets everywhere he goes and then meets five ghosts who persuade him to stop being so mean all the time.

Our Take:

The best version of A Christmas Carol (although just wait until Thursday…), the Muppets manage to improve the original story by Dickens through their use of mouse puppets. The strangest thing about this film is that the characters – Rizzo the Rat and Gonzo excluded – are all taking it very seriously, for some reason. Miss Piggy and Kermit and Fozzy Bear are all in character instead of being themselves, which is slightly disappointing but still makes for quality entertainment. Add Michael Caine to the mix, and you’ve got yourself a faaaaantastic slice of film magic!


7: A Nightmare Before Christmas

Synopsis:

Halloweentown decides to try celebrating Christmas instead of Halloween despite having no idea what Christmas actually is and then Santa gets kidnapped.

Our Take:

Tim Burton’s animations typically have nothing to do with Tim Burton at all (he didn’t even direct it! What a swizzstick) and so we refuse to put his name in the title. Henry Selick was the director of this particular stop-motion masterpiece, which features a winningly macabre storyline featuring several horror characters like “Jack Skellington” and “Sally”, who is a Frankenstein patchwork woman. And these are the characters we’re meant to (and do) sympathise with. The storyline, which features some terrific set-pieces such as the attempted kidnap of Santa, twists and turns all over the place, and is punctuated by several absolutely ballistic songs (sung by Danny Elfman, yay). It makes for a superb alternative Christmas film.


6: Trading Places

Synopsis:

A rich white man becomes poor and a poor black man becomes rich and it’s all because of two old white rich men so Jamie Lee Curtis gets topless.

Our Take:

Well, there’s some snow in the film, and maybe at one point a Christmas tree? We’ll be honest, this film has about as much Christmas in it as “Groundhog Day” does (when is Groundhog Day, actually? Maybe it is near Christmas.) but we’ll forgive it that because it’s a fun little film that actually makes use of both Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy. Those two are talented, but you wouldn’t know it to look at their film career. In this film, anyway, we have two old men who decide to engage in some social experimentation – like Davina McCall! – and give money to a poor man and bankrupt a rich man, to see how they react. In doing so, they set off a chain-reaction which ends with blackface and gorillas. It’s everything a Christmas movie should be.


5: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Synopsis:

No idea; but it’s awesome.

Our Take:

Just so very, very, awesome. And the Christmas setting means that Michelle Monaghan gets into this outfit:



But her aside, the film also features Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer working together on some sort of detective case. We have the film on DVD, it’s a favourite here at Wilftonville so we’ve watched it several times… we still don’t really get what’s going on. And again, there isn’t that much Christmas in it. Do you feel cheated? We certainly do. To make up for it, we’ll make sure that the top four are all Very Christmassy Indeed.


4: Home Alone 2 Lost In New York

Synopsis:

A small boy takes the wrong plane and ends up in a different country than his family during Christmas and then is chased by two criminals whom he viciously assaults at the end of the movie.

Our Take:

The first film started the trend (shock!) but the second one is unarguably the best of the series, which is now up to something like 6. With that Culkin kid whose name we can’t spell returning, and Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern and Catherine O’Hara also in the same film, you know you won’t be going wrong. And this story doesn’t disappoint. Everything is leading up to the point where the two burglars (Pesci and Stern) try to kill off our child hero by entering the building he lives in and snuffing him out, so you could be forgiven for fast forwarding to the last half hour. It’s in watching the various traps unleashed on the villains; which include electrocution, fire, and brick-throwing amongst others; that the film is entertaining. It’s Joe Pesci’s greatest role.


3: Elf

Synopsis:

A boy raised by Santa as an Elf is told that his real dad lives in New York so he goes to New York to meet his dad and is ill-prepared for life in the city.

Our Take:

Will Ferrell was funniest when he was still trying to find a comedic voice for film, and Elf was his breakout role. Hence: funny. He plays the elf of the title, as he heads to New York and tries to reconcile with father James Caan. It’s all very much in the spirit of Christmas, as the film has barely a nasty character in it. The humour is gentle but actually funny (much like Wilftonville itself, of course) and Ferrell’s performance feels earnest and real. Sadly, he’s lost that recently, as all Hollywood comedians must in order to fit in. But the highlight of the film is Zooey Deschanel, who is charming and delightful throughout the whole film, and even gets the chance to sing a few times. Elf is a film anyway can enjoy, fact.


2: Die Hard

Synopsis:

Terrorists take over a building and hold everyone hostage but luckily Bruce Willis is also in the building and he kills them all and it’s also Christmas.

Our Take:

This is a film which every list has to include, because then they can say “oh well remember – it’s set at Christmas!” It’s one of the oldest facts that exist, and everyone knows it. For the sake of consistency, then, we’re going to include it in the list even though it’s not really a Christmas film at all. What it is, however, is a stonking action pie with fist-punching truffles and a side of explosive cream. “Explosive Cream” – if ever there was a good name for a band…
But yes, Die Hard is one of those films which gets better each time it’s watched over, and Bruce Willis has rarely been more out-of-his-depth and superb. Plus he hangs this one German guy, but the German guys survives and comes back at the end and is all “kablammo!” but then this other policeman is like “no way, punk!” and shoots him back. It’s so cool.


1: Jingle All The Way

Synopsis:

A man wants to gets a present for his son to prove that he isn’t a bad father but the toy is sold out across most of the World and he can’t find it anywhere and then he starts getting desperate.

Our Take:

The best Christmas film of all time? Oh Wilftonville, you merry purveyors of sexist gags, you’re having us on surely? This must all be some sort of joke! NO. Jingle All The Way is one of the best films ever made, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has never been better as he fights a city for possession of a crappy toy his son wants. The fact they haven’t made the sequel yet is proof enough that Arnie needs to get the hell out of politics and back into movies: it is essential that he gives us more of the Quality Christmas Fun that can only be found when one man needs a Turboman Doll.


Seriously: great film.... or greatest film ever?

18 Things To Try During Bonfire Night

1: Rocket Russian Roulette

2: Fancy dress costumes of Guy Fawkes post-execution

3: Cellotaping fireworks together

4: Revolution

5: An incendiary fetish

6: Baking drugs into parkin cake

7: Sparkler lightsabre battles

8: Making jokes outside Andrew Sachs house about where the loud bangs are coming from

9: Visiting the zoo

10: Burning peasants

11: Throwing plastics onto a public bonfire

12: Writing lewd letters to Katie Melua

13: An elaborate sacrifice to the great Lord Ra

14: Attaching a Catherine wheel to your hat

15: Standing in a hospital reception while laughing at all the injured people who arrive

16: Re-enactments of The Towering Inferno

17: Hiding in unlit bonfires

18: Begging whilst dressed as a burn victim

The Problem With Children Nowadays

I’d like to stir up trouble. There are lots of famous bloggers out there who get watched through every minute of their typing days, and I’d like to get knocked up onto their rung of the Internet ladder (at the top are LOLcats. I never said the Internet ladder was fair!) alongside all the cool Bloggers. To do so though, you need to really grab the attention of the World. You need to say something that will get everyone talking – and the best way to do this, in my case, is to say something so terribly horrific that the Daily Mail organise a stoning expedition to my home in protest. So with that in mind, I’d like to talk about child killings.

Got your attention yet, World? Yes, I am intrigued by child killings in Britain. Recently, there have been many, many murders amongst children in my country, and the worst thing about it all is that a lot of these murders are performed by other children. Gun crime and knife crime are presumably on the rise, although I have no research or inclination to prove such a thing. But I have SAID IT, so it is TRUE. Children used to go and strangle their talking Elmo doll when they were angry – nowadays they go and find something less red and furry (I am here referring to 'other children', in case you didn’t comprehend my elaborate metaphor at this stage). It is a bad thing, certainly, and we should all try and stop it.

But how can we? There’s nothing we can do to keep children off the streets of Britain and at home in front of the TV where they belong, because they have “free will” and “human rights”, which are nonsensical liberal ideas which aid terrorists in their quests to do whatever it is that terrorists like to do (terror, right?). So firstly, we cannot do anything to the children to stop them. Secondly, we cannot do anything to the parents, because parents are immune to all forms of emotion. It’s been tried many a time, but there is almost nothing that can persuade a parent to keep their child indoors. It’s a lost cause, you might say… but if you do say this, then you clearly haven’t heard of my new idea to save children from themselves, have you? It’s very simple, really.

Let all the paedophiles out of prison.

This will have an overwhelmingly positive effect on the nation. There are, off the top of my head, at least four things that allowing this to take place will achieve:

1: It will encourage parents to look after their children better, and in the process make parenting more important.
2: It will provide employment to ex-convicts, thus giving them useful roles within society.
3: Children won’t be so eager to go outside and stab each other anymore.
4: It will help us with overcrowded prisons that are a drain on the economy.

Now, I’m not saying that the murdering paedophiles should be let out, or anything – I’m just talking about the hobbyist paedophiles. I don’t want a spate of child murders on my hands! Ha! But seriously, and I’m not just saying this for the huge spike in reads that it will bring my blog, mostly from bemused Daily Mail readers and inland Americans (“howdy” to “y’all”), we should definitely consider letting the paedophiles out of jail. I’m not saying this to be offensive! I’m just thinking of the children, that’s all. In the long run, this will help the country.

As a side-effect, however – I’m looking at both sides of the coin here, don’t worry. I’m like Two-Face, in this regard – enacting this might help send the BNP to Downing Street. So if we are going to free the paedophiles, we’re going to have to think of a way to stop the BNP from capitalising on our idea and making it seem “wrong” and “immoral”. My solution here is simple: We fill Parliament with paedophiles.

Honestly, there is absolutely no problem with society that can’t be fixed with paedophiles.


....See you on Technorati, everyone!

Terrible Diseases We Can Already Prevent

There are many horrific illnesses in the World which are contracted seemingly at random and kill millions of people a year, but the very most terrible thing is that for quite a few of them, we already have a cure prepared. Yes folks, if you were wondering how Illicitly Eating Flowers could get any more offensive, now we’re going to target people with terminal disease. Please don’t read this blog.


1: AIDS

Especially in Africa – as if they haven’t already got enough on their plates what with all them genocides and racist murders and civil wars and third-world debt and that – AIDS kills millions. First you get HIV, and AIDS gets you too. It’s not good, it’s really not. You can pass it on to other people through intimate contact (SEX) or through swapping blood with someone who is already infected. Really, it’d be nice if people didn’t do that anyway, even with people who aren’t infected. That’s yucky.


The Cure:

Condoms! Yes, wear a damn condom! Sure they look like that creepy tubeworm House pulled out of someone on that one episode which was especially disgusting, but they stop you getting fatal diseases! Also, did you ever get those lectures at school where they’d show you pictures of diseased body parts that owed their existence due to their owners having unprotected sex? After seeing those, why would anyone then choose not to use a condom? It stops your bits falling off! So if you don’t want to get AIDS, this is pretty much the best thing to do. We can’t cure the whole HIV/AIDS thing yet, but we can sure as hell stop you from getting it in the first place!

Also: avoid sharing syringes with tramps. Sure, it seems a good idea at the time… but it tends to backfire. No pun intended. (sorry)

Some Other People Who Helped Kill Diana

I have pity for Mohammed Al Fayed. His son was killed, for God’s sake! That’s an awful thing for anyone to have to go through. Having said that though, his continual insistence that only a major government conspiracy could be responsible for the death of his son is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. At the Diana Trial this week (yeah, they’re having another one) he accused the Royal Family, MI5, MI6, the media, and every Judge who has ever disagreed with Him (seriously) of being in on the conspiracy. But that is merely the tip of the iceberg. Illicitly Eating Flowers stealthily got into the courtroom on the day of his testimony, and there were many other people he blamed who the papers didn’t have space to mention. Here then are just a few of the other people who were responsible for the death of Princess Diana:


The Medical Profession
France
All Landmine Victims
Nicholas Cage
Private Eye Magazine
All Car Manufacturers
People Who Don’t Shop At Harrods
The General Public
Every Football Team in England Except Fulham FC
Everyone Who Isn’t Called Mohammed Al Fayed.

Reimagining A Sarah Jessica Parker Film As A Child Abuse Morality Tale

The Family Stone: A Well-Groomed Comedy Of Dubious Taste!

Synopsis:

The Stones gather for Christmas. Dad's a professor in a Connecticut town; mom has a secret; there's a gay, deaf son and his lover; a pregnant daughter and her child; a daughter who's judgmental and acerbic, like her mother; and a laid-back observant brother. Everett is the eldest, bringing his fiancée Meredith to meet the family and, probably, to ask for grandma's ring to give her. She's self centered, uptight, and seven years old. Instantly, almost all give her a hard time.
Meredith calls her little sister to come and help, and Meredith, her sister, and the family stone conflate. What does Everett see in Meredith, and doesn't she deserve someone to love her for who she is? Someone who doesn't have to break the law whenever he wants to make love to her? Go see "The Family Stone", and find out!

Rating:

3/5 (years old)