Happy Christmas. How's Your December Going?

May you get the gift you want the most tomorrow or today (depending on when you're reading this)! Or in the next week. Don't rush Santa. Since the next two months we'll be jampacked with awards festivities televised and otherwise -- and the Film Bitch Awards comin' up real soon and daily -- there will be precious little time to recap. So herewith an ICYMI roundup so that Team Experience can take a 24 hour break for gifting and egg-noggy boozing before we're back to the holiday-movie-Oscar-buzzing-year- in-review madness. If you've only recently been tuning in for awardage and are catching up with the year's movies frantically and wanting to read about them, catch up!

Don't Miss These Dozen Baked December Goodies
• Jessica Chastain - an interview with Miss Sloane herself
• Golden Globe Gaiety - imaginary parties with the nominees
• La La Land Fact - It's an absolute rarity 
• Where is Kyra? - and how should we celebrate La Pfeiffer's return?
• The Wolf Man (1941) - all movie werewolves are in its debt
• The Ladies Who Lush - cheers to these wine-loving ladies
• Rogue One - reviewed
• Edward Scissorhands (1990) - a Christmas classic
• Yes No Maybe So - Spider-Man: Homecoming AGAIN?!?
• Asghar Farhadi Returns - an Oscar finalist again for The Salesman 
• Avocado's Hate-F***ing Other Avocados - aka the Makeup Oscar finalists 
• Florence Foster's Aesthetic -from ersatz Valhallas to potato salad bathtubs

Happy Holidays from Ava Gardner and The Film Experience!

Newish or Brand New in theaters but some we wrote about long ago in case you're like "what about..." Jackie, La La Land, Fences, 20th Century Women, Lion, Julieta, Neruda, Toni Erdmann, and Live by Night. 

Highlights from Previous Months
Jan | 88th Oscars | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sept | Oct | November

Podcast: "Lion" and "La La Land"

Katey, Nick, Joe and Nathaniel talk two Best Picture contenders along with conversational detours that pop up as these detours do. The podcast will return in the New Year. 

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 LION (and movie titles) 
12:15 LA LA LAND (divisive direction!) 
27:10 BEST PIC & LIST-MAKING (tis the season)
31:13 CHRISTMAS MEDLEY (Rent, Kermit, Judy G)

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments and please have very happy and safe holidays until we're chatting at you again in January (probably around Golden Globes weekend January 8th-ish). 

Lion & La La Land

Christmas Classics: "Mixed Nuts" (1994)

Team Experience has been sharing their favorite Christmas flicks. Here's Chris...

I'm going to make the assumption that most of you haven't seen my favorite Christmas movie, Nora Ephron's Mixed Nuts. "Classic" may be a stretch as it was both a box office and critical bomb, and has since been lost to time. The film has all of the makings of a cult following that has yet to materialize: a completely silly premise, insane moments, and a cast quite literally full of familiar faces. No really - the main cast includes Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Juliette Lewis, Liev Schreiber, Adam Sandler, and Rita Wilson. Anthony LaPaglia wears a Santa suit most of the movie. Even the throwaway parts are played by Rob Reiner and Joely Fisher.

But the film is an utter daffy farce with even more off the wall subplots than famous faces. Let's do a short run down of what makes the film so crazy and special...

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Christmas Classics: Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Team Experience has been sharing their favorite Christmas flicks. Here's new contributor Jorge on a Burton special...

Edward Scissorhands, at first sight, not the most Christmassy movie. It is not an iteration of a Charles Dickens’ novella, there are no Santa Clauses, and no one is chasing anyone through a snowed-in airport. Falling snow is a big motif throughout, but only the last third takes places during that time of year.

But it beautifully captures the sentiment of Christmas in the most important sense... 

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Christmas Classics: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

A few members of Team Experience will be sharing posts on their favorite Christmas movies. Here's Tim...

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of a great classic: it was on December 18, 1966, that the world got its first look at the animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas, adapted from the 1957 book by Dr. Seuss and directed by cartoon legend Chuck Jones. There are too many ways we could quantity the importance of this television special: as the last of Jones's masterpieces before he settled into Elder Statesman status, as the progenitor of a line of generally strong Seuss adaptations that didn't stop until the beginning of the 1980s, as the third in a line of deathless cartoon Christmas specials that premiered one per year from 1964 to 1966 (Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas are the others).

But since it's the holiday season, let's start with how this is one of the loveliest and most heartfelt stories of the True Meaning of Christmas ever filmed. That is, in no small part, because neither Seuss nor Jones were overt sentimentalists: the author had a slightly arch, caustic tone to his highly precise rhyming that's too self-aware to be saccharine, and Jones built his career on anarchic cartoon comedies, making no fewer than three films on the theme "how many ways can we shoot Daffy in the face?" And with that kind of attitude underpinning the proceedings, How the Grinch Stole Christmas ends up being a little bit saltier than most of the other canonical Christmas classics. Obviously, it gets to the expected place where we all learn important lessons and feel better and embrace tradition, but it works a little bit harder than usual to make sure that it's earned.

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