Tagged: Christmas

Benedict Cumberbatch with Christmas stories for you

Benedict Cumberbatch gives us a Christmas reading of “A Visit From St. Nicholas”:

Oh, all right– here’s what you really want to see today, the preview episode of the next season of Sherlock, “Many Happy Returns’:

Sherlock happily returns January 1 in the UK, and the 19th on PBS in the US.

Oh, and did we mention the BBC is rerunning the audio play of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere for this week, starring Mr. C.? We didn’t? Well, we did now. Go. Listen. Enjoy, along with

Doctor Who cast share their thoughts on “The Time of the Doctor”

bosj8cWith Matt Smith’s final episode (well, until the hundredth anniversary, anyway) imminent, the cast (and showrunner Steven Moffat) sat down to talk about their thoughts about the Christmas adventure.  Guest Orla Brady (Tasha Lem) also discusses her experience with the show, and her experience with new Doctor, Peter Capaldi.  Read on for the juicy details.

(more…)

Michael Davis: Late? I’ll Give You Late!

davis-art-131224-150x168-6521812December 7th 2013, a date that will live in infamy, the United Parcel Service was suddenly and deliberately attacked by its own ground and air forces and soon beat themselves into a very dark place a place made of their own stupidity.

It’s Christmas. The time of love, peace and goodwill towards men.

Mike Gold is going to kill me.

I’m sending this in on Monday night, which for me on the west coast is 9 pm (ish) but for him it’s after midnight on his east coast. No, I did not wait until the last minute because I forgot or had nothing to write.

I waited for the last minute hoping to hear good news from my boy, Denys Cowan. UPS had promised good news regarding the disappearance of his most cherished pieces of art.

None came.

Imagine, if you will, being in love with the one person you have dreamt of all your life.

Imagine the love of your life leaving you for someone else. Imagine the hurt and pain you will have to endure knowing that he or she is lost to you forever. You tell yourself you will get over it and there will be other loves, other moments indeed other milestones but the love you lost was the love of your life.

Gone. Forever. But…

One day you get a call. It’s the love of your life. They have a glorious surprise for you. No, another is no longer keeping them away from you, they won’t say why or how but they will say when they will see you again and it’s tomorrow!

Tomorrow comes and it’s today!

No lover, nothing.

It’s Christmas and you want to believe the non-committal message you received (not from the love of your life but a third party) saying they are still coming just wait.

Then you think…wait for what?

All you have been told is to expect a glorious surprise. That does not mean they are coming back to you. It could mean any of a million different things.

It could mean that of the 29 pieces of irreplaceable art they are sending nine totally fucked up pieces and expect you to be grateful.

It’s Christmas, Denys his son and I started a sort of tradition of going to the mall for last minute before Christmas shopping.

That didn’t happen this year.

No. Instead UPS continues to think they are dealing with someone and something they can “handle.”

Pity.

I bare UPS no ill will. They are a global zillion-dollar mega company. Denys and I want nothing but the return of his art.

But we have been told all sorts of things (after they got served by a well thought out and predicted outrage from thousands), which, like today just, have not rung true.

UPS is moving mountains (now) to make this right. Problem is I think, they think right is something they decide.

It’s not.

Right, the only right is the return of every single piece of Denys Cowan art in the same condition it left.

Anything less is an attempt to replace the love of his artistic life with some skank gold digging bitch that’s keeps asking what Brown can do for her.

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mindy Newell: Every Time A Bell Rings

Newell Art 131223As promised last week, here’s the list of my favorite Christmas movies, starting with all my very favorite-est…

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). Directed by Frank Capra, who declared it his favorite of all his films and showed it every Christmas at his home, it stars James Stewart as “everyman” George Bailey, Donna Reed as his wife Mary Hatch Bailey, Lionel Barrymore as the banker Mr. Potter, and a veritable Who’s Who of notable character actors, including Beulah Bondi as Ma Bailey, Thomas Mitchell as Uncle Billy, Ward Bond as Bert the cop, Frank Faylen as Ernie the cab driver, Gloria Grahame as Violet the “bad” girl, Sheldon Leonard as Nick the bartender, and Harry Travers in the pivotal role of the angel Clarence Odbody. The story of an ordinary man who lives an ordinary life, driven to despair of having his dreams crushed once and for all as he faces bankruptcy and prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and who discovers that after all he has lived a wonderful life – “Dear George: Remember no man is a failure who has friends. P.S. Thanks for the wings! Love, Clarence.” – leaves me weepy every time I see it.

Miracle On 34th Street (1947) “Do you believe in Santa?” Doris Walker is a divorcee who is the events director at Macy’s, and a woman, hurt by a marriage that ended in divorce instead of happily-ever-after, is raising her daughter, Susan (Natalie Wood), in a no-nonsense, there are no such things are Santa Claus manner. Stuck when the Santa she hired for the Thanksgiving Day parade is found stinkin’ drunk below his float, Doris hires Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) as the store’s Santa. Kris is the most successful Santa the store has ever had, and Doris is basking in the shadow of his success, until it is discovered that there is just one small problem – Mr. Kringle actually believes he is Santa. The old man is taken to Bellevue’s psychiatric ward, and is in danger of being committed, but Doris’s earnest suitor, Fred Payne, is a lawyer, and defends Kris in court. The judge decides (for political expediency) that Kris is the real Santa. Everyone celebrates at a party on Christmas Eve, except for Susan, who doesn’t believe Kris is Santa (“you’re just a nice old man with a beard.”) because he could not give her what she wanted for Christmas. Driving home from the party with her mother and Fred on a route given to them by Kris in order to avoid holiday traffic, Susan suddenly yells for Fred to stop the car. She jumps out and runs into a house with a “For Sale” sign in the yard – the home she asked Kris for. While Susan is exploring the house, Fred discovers that Doris told Susan that she must believe in Kris, that she must have faith. His own faith in Doris renewed, he proposes, Doris accepts, and they decide to buy the house. Then Fred declares himself a great lawyer for having done the impossible, “proving” that Kris is Santa Claus.  But then he and Doris discover a cane that looks just like the one belonging to Kris, leaning up against the fireplace…

The film was condemned and placed on the banned list by the Catholic Legion of Decency because the character, Doris Walker, was divorced. This fact adds to my love of the movie.

The Bishop’s Wife (1947). Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young star in this romantic comedy from Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Henry Koster about a angel named Dudley (Grant) come to earth to help Bishop Henry Brougham (Niven) in his obsessive quest to build a new cathedral to the glory of God. Dudley reveals his true identity to Henry (who doesn’t really believe him), but not his true purpose, which is to heal the rift between the bishop and his wife, Julie (Young) and young daughter. There’s just one fly in the ointment – Dudley finds he is falling in love with Julia. Though Julia remains oblivious, Henry senses the truth, and, jealous, tells Dudley that as an angel, he’s no angel, and demands to know why Dudley hasn’t delivered on the cathedral. Dudley tells him that he didn’t pray for a cathedral, but for guidance.

Mr. Magoo’s “Christmas Carol” (1962). This has disappeared off of television, probably because Mr. Magoo’s near-blindness as something funny is no longer politically correct, but when I was a kid, this animated musical was something that glued me to the set. The original songs are by Broadway maestros Julie Styne and Robert Merrill, who started their collaboration on Funny Girl after finishing “Christmas Carol,” and I can still sing parts of many of them: “Ringle-ringle, coins when they jingle make such a lovely sound”

And “Alone in the World” is a melody whose lyrics reflect the loneliness of young Ebeneezer, left behind at boarding school at Christmas holiday, as Magoo, as the elder Scrooge brought back to his youth by the Spirit of Christmas Past, sings poignantly with his younger self: A hand for each hand was planned for the world, Why don’t my fingers reach? Millions of grains of sand in the world, Why such a lonely beach?”

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965).  The tree that nobody wanted. And the music by the Vince Guarldi Trio. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

TUESDAY MORNING: Jen Krueger

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Mindy Newell: Stuffing Ourselves

Newell Art 131202I may have been a nice Jewish girl, but my family loved Christmas time. It started at Thanksgiving, when we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and watched Santa on his sleigh welcome the holiday season to New York. We lived on a block trisected by three streets, and in the middle of this triangle was an island. On this island was a tall, beautiful spruce fir. Every year after Thanksgiving all us neighbors went out and had a block party and the fathers hung lights on the tree, making it into our own private tannenbaum.

Every year my mom took my brother, two of our friends and me into the city on Christmas Eve. We skated at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center and then went across the street to watch the movie (I particularly remember Father Goose, with Cary Grant and Leslie Caron) and the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall, which always included the nativity scene with camels and elephants and horses and donkeys walking across the stage and the angels singing O Holy Night and Adestes Fideles (Come, All Ye Faithful) and ending with the Rockettes performing the “March Of The Wooden Soldiers,” complete with the high kick line.

Sometimes when we came out of the theater it was snowing, and we would walk with flakes falling on our shoulders and our hats and feeling the magic of the night down Fifth Avenue to look at the Christmas windows of Saks and Lord & Taylor, which were always amazing, animated dioramas and for which there were always lines and lines of families enjoying the night, too. And then we’d get home and my mother and father would tuck us into bed and hang up our Santa stockings and my brother and I would go to sleep with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

And it all started with Thanksgiving, when we stuffed ourselves on turkey and brisket and family and friends and love.

That was once upon a time.

“I think commercialism helps Christmas and I think that the more capitalism we can inject into the Christmas holiday the more spiritual I feel about it ”

Craig Ferguson

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

“Money’s scarce

Times are hard

Here’s your fucking

Xmas card”

Phyllis Diller

“Thanksgiving openings are the new normal.”

Jose Pagliery, Money, CNN.com, November 30, 2013

Here’s a list of chain stores that were open on Thanksgiving: Wal•Mart. Target. Best Buy. Sears. Staples. J.C. Penney. Macy’s. Toy R Us. Old Navy. Kohl’s. Lord & Taylor. Michael’s. Express. Dick’s Sporting Goods. Abercrombie & Fitch. K-Mart. And most of the larger shopping malls.

I am disgusted.

I thought it would stop after the 2008 death of Jdimytai Damour. Remember him? As the New York Times reported on November 29 of that year, “Mr. Damour, 34, who was known to his friends as Jimbo, or Jdidread because of his dreadlocks, got his job at Wal•Mart through Labor Now, an agency for temporary workers. He had been trying to hold back a crush of shoppers pressing against the store’s sliding-glass double doors, the authorities said. Just before the store’s scheduled 5 a.m. opening, they said, the doors shattered under the weight of the crowd. Mr. Damour was thrown to the floor and trampled

Wal•Mart was fined only $7,000 by the Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA), the branch of the Labor Department responsible for employee health and safety. And, according to the Huffington Post, they are still fighting that charge – “For a company with sales of $466 billion last fiscal year, the $7,000 fine from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration represents little more than a single store’s rounding error. Wal•Mart would have vastly outspent that sum simply in legal fees devoted to fighting the penalty. But the world’s largest retailer is less concerned with the monetary fine than with the broader implications of the case. A negative ruling could compel Wal-Mart and other retail companies like it to take additional safety precautions for workers or face new liabilities.”

And you wonder why I’m disgusted?

But surprisingly, at least to me, I discovered – after doing a little research on the web – that Wal•Mart, the most succesful “Big Box” store, did not start this atrocity. It was K-Mart, which has opened its doors to Turkey Day shoppers since 1991. Of course many supermarkets and grocery stores have always been open on Thanksgiving, at least for a few hours, to the “Thank God’s!” of all the cooks who find themselves suddenly short on stuffing or cranberry sauce or coffee or any of the numerous condiments used when preparing the big bird. I can remember making a few runs to Shop-Rite and Shelley’s for my mom over the years, and those memories are further back than 22 years. And of course I’m aware of the importance of Thanksgiving weekend to the year’s bottom line being in the black instead of the red for retailers.

But I’m still disgusted.

And I am sure that next year even more stores will be open.

Just so we can stuff ourselves on Thanksgiving.

TUESDAY MORNING: Glenn Hauman

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

John Ostrander: ‘Tis the Season

ostrander-art-131201-150x184-7689597Well, it’s the First of December and the Christmas Season is well and truly and legitimately upon us. As I’ve noted before, I really do love this time of year and I love Christmas stories, none more than A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens and turned into umpty-bum versions in the movies, on television, and on the stage.

I appeared in a stage version at Chicago’s Goodman Theater for many years. The Goodman was and I think still is the biggest professional theater in the Chicago area but every year it hit a hole in its schedule around Christmastime. They took note that the famed Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN, performed A Christmas Carol. Starting in 1977, the Goodman decided to also produce a stage version of Dicken’s classic. They asked a veteran of the Guthrie production, Tony Mockus Sr., to direct their show.

I was cast in various absolutely vital roles like Fred’s Friend #3, Mr. Lean (or was it Mr. Round?), Dancing Man, and “Ensemble.” I did it for years and was always grateful for the opportunity if for no other reason than the Goodman paid top dollar to actors; it was great to have that bit of income at the end of the year. My very good friend, William J. Norris, was cast as Ebenezer Scrooge. Bill was and is a great actor but I used to joke that as Scrooge he really only had to “act” during the final scenes of the show, after Scrooge was reformed and loved everyone and loved Christmas. Bill sometimes is the original Humbug and takes pride in it, I believe.

For all the fact that A Christmas Carol has become a tradition at the Goodman (a rather lucrative one, I might add), it was far from a sure bet when it began. There were a lot of actors and even more costumes, sets sliding on and off, special effects and actors flying through the air. During the long technical rehearsals, there were serious questions whether or not it would all ever come together.

Due to the schedule, we had to work on Thanksgiving, doing a full dress rehearsal. Being away from my family was a little tough but the Goodman generously sprang for Thanksgiving dinner catered in the rehearsal room and we were allowed to invite guests. I invited my Mom and my stepfather and it was very cool feeling; I had often eaten Thanksgiving at her place and now she was, more or less, eating at my place – my current theatrical home. After dinner, all the guests were also invited to the dress rehearsal. They were warned we might have to stop if a problem cropped up (it was still a rehearsal, after all) but my memory of the night was it all came off well.

However, we were all still jittery as opening night came. Even if it all came off as we wanted, would the audience like it? The Goodman had a lot invested in the production; the sets and costumes et al would pay off better as they were used again and again in the following years. If this first production flopped, there would not be subsequent productions and the Goodman would have to eat the expense. It was not a cheap show to produce. It wasn’t in the vicinity of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark costs but they were substantial for the time and the place.

Opening night went without a hitch, the audiences gave us a standing ovation, and as they left the theater a gentle snow began falling. We all wondered how the special effects team managed that. They never copped to it but had mysterious smiles that suggested more than they said.

Personally, I credit Tony Mockus, Sr., one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in the theater and a very religious guy. I think he put in a word with the Big Guy/Gal.

It was also during this first production of A Christmas Carol that I met Del Close. Del was already a legend in Chicago theater as director/teacher over at Second City and also for who he was. I had heard he was a Satanist, which was untrue. He was a practicing witch by his own admission (he even wore a pentacle under his costume for the show) and he had been cast as the Ghost of Christmas Present – who is a pretty Bacchus like character and thus good casting. I was pretty square in those days and he was a real Bohemian. He was also my roommate in the dressing rooms. To be honest, I was a bit terrified of him and his reputation.

I needn’t have been. Del was affable and cordial and, to tell the truth, a little bit nervous about his part (he needn’t have been; he got glowing reviews, as did the entire production). He was also a big fan of science fiction and of comics. He was just one of the best read persons I’ve ever met. Our working relationship in comics (Munden’s Bar, Wasteland) stemmed from sharing that dressing room.

My different parts in the show often required me to tear off my clothes in the wings on one side, throw on another costume, rush to the other side of the stage behind the back wall, and become part of a crowd scene. One year as I was doing that in one of the last performances of the year, I was crossing the stage, trying to “be in the moment” as we say in acting circles, and my mind was saying, “You know, you could be making a lot more money at the typewriter.” My comics writing career had started not long before and was in the upswing. As I exited offstage, I realized that my theater career was ending. I finished the run and then retired to be a full time writer.

I’ll never forget or regret those days in A Christmas Carol. I made a lot of friends and have nothing but fond memories of that time. Thanksgiving has just passed but I’ll just say that those productions are one of the big things in my life for which I am thankful.

God bless us every one.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Not Emily S. Whitten, but…

 

Dennis O’Neil: In The Great State of Bardo

O'Neil Art 130822Here we are again, in a bardo state. (Note: “Bardo,” as all you Tibetan Buddhists know – and among our readers, you are legion – refers to an intermediate state, as between one life and the next. I’ll use it to mean any state between a current important thing and the important thing one is anticipating. I don’t know what the Dalai Lama thinks about this, but I hope he approves.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, between the end of summer and the beginning of fall. For me, this year, it seems to be a time of nostalgia. Today, for example, is the anniversary of the day, 25 years ago, that I met a woman who had been, 30 years earlier, a girl to whom I’d given, as a birthday present, a subscription to Mad Magazine. Unknown to me, she had maintained that subscription all those years and so, learning that I’d become a comic book writer might not have been deeply surprising to her, (Maybe slightly surprising? I mean, does anyone really become a comic book writer?) I’d forgotten the gift subscription and what I find interesting about it is that back then, in my late teens, I still had some tenuous connection to comics. Before the girl-turned-woman gave me a reminder, I thought I’d abandoned comics much earlier, before I shut a figurative door with the cold breath of an individual I shall call Sister Henrietta still chilling the nape of my neck.

Then, off to school plays and speech contests and the misery men know as military high school and girls…one girl in particular. There was an annual bardo, that occurred just about now, when the frolicsome summer days were expiring and school loomed and you couldn’t help but wonder what lay between you and Christmas. (Note: the days weren’t always that frolicsome because, there was work to be done, my family being one of modest means sustained by a neighborhood grocery store and I’d better get out of this parenthesis before I begin ranting about how the kids of today don’t know how good they got it…and, work or no, we did manage some fun, and even a bit of goofiness.)

Okay, now imagine a montage of uniformed service and slum living and empty highways and empty rooms and empty bottles and Manhattan office buildings and hospital wards and protests and anything else you’d care to imagine and end your montage with me meeting the girl-turned woman in the vestibule of a church, both of us a ripe middle age, accompanied by our grown children, walking between the pews to the altar to speak vows I’d typed on file cards – not great vows, but they did the job. That was August 19, 1988.

Let me tell you, August 18 was for me one hell of a bardo.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Martin Pasko

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

 

Still Not Ginger – Peter Capaldi is the New Doctor

Announced at the climax of a globally-broadcast special, The BBC introduced the twelfth actor to play The Doctor, Peter Capaldi.

He’s a BAFTA-winning actor, winning for the role of Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It.  He’s appeared twice on Who-related series, he played Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii, and John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth.  In Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, he played the angel Islington.  He is currently filming the BBC adaptation of the Three Musketeers, in which he plays Cardinal Richelieu.

Showrunner Steven Moffat says he’d considered Capaldi when he was casting the eleventh Doctor, though he decided it wasn’t quite the time.

This wasn’t  his first time traveling in time, either – He played Doug Hatton in the recurring sketch “Drunk in Time” on The All new Alexei Sayle Show.

Peter most recently appeared in World War Z, playing a physician working with the World Health Organization.  Or, as he’s listed on the IMDB, “WHO Doctor“.

No details have been yet shared as to how much a part he will played in the final two episodes of the year. Though it’s traditional for the new Doctor to only appear in the last moments of the last episode, the Christmas episode has not been filmed, and David Tennant made his first full appearance in the first Christmas episode, “The Christmas Invasion”.

Mr. Capaldi’s movements will likely be closely followed, and any appearance he makes in the Christmas episode will likely be widely reported.  The Management awaits his work with extreme interest.