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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 27, 2016 1:52:25 GMT -5
For those of you unfamiliar with my annual series, I review various Christmas specials each holiday season for the last two years, both famous and obscure. For the first two years, I posted my reviews in the What's On Tonight comment section of the old country, but this year, I'm moving them to here, both because the reviews tended to get lost in the avalanche of comments in WOT, and because it's much easier to review my archive here.
I'll be posting 6 reviews a week through Christmas. While I have this year's list planned out, I'm always on the lookout for suggestions for next year. I generally limit my reviews to specials an hour or shorter, though I do review the occasional longer special.
The first review will arrive tomorrow morning.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 27, 2016 11:11:53 GMT -5
It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown! (2015)
One thing I've learned during the years I've done this project is just how ephemeral most of the specials truly are. There have been hundreds of specials over the years, and nearly every one of them has fallen into complete obscurity. A tiny few have managed to stay on network television, a few more get annual runs on cable, and some have been released onto video and DVD, but most are available for viewing today because someone--almost never the copyright owner--have posted them onto YouTube or another streaming site. And if they're not found online, they might as well not exist at all, even recent specials I've been trying to find, without success, a special from 2008 that seems to have vanished, except for a few clips. Maybe next year...
A Charlie Brown Christmas is anything but ephemeral. It's aired at least once on network television every year since 1965 and is widely available on DVD. Even if some of the references in the special have not aged well ("The Doctor is Real In", aluminum Christmas trees), the general message of the special continues to resonate today.
To celebrate the timeless, ABC commissioned a special ephemeralness was advertised right in its title. It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown! may have won an Emmy a few months ago for Outstanding Children's Program, but given that this year is Charlie Brown's 51st Christmas, don't expect ABC to rerun it anytime soon.
For the first half, the special, hosted by Kristin Bell, is an interesting look at how the special came to be, featuring vintage clips of interviews with Charles Schultz and Bill Melendez, discussion of the music, a new interview with Lee Mendelson and the original voice of Lucy, Tracy Stratford Shaw, and even discussion of how Linus's recitation from the Book of Luke came to be included. There are also musical performances from the David Benoit Trio, playing "Linus and Lucy", Sarah McLachlin, singing "Christmastime is Here", and Matthew Morrison, singing a completely forgettable new song about Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.
The weird thing is that all that takes up the first 20 minutes of a special that runs 42 minutes without commercials. It's almost as if the producers had put together a half-hour special on the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas, only to be told at the last second it needed to fill an hour of airtime. Therefore, the second half of the special switches its focus from Christmas to Charlie Brown in general, more or less becoming a grab bag of various Peanuts-related topics. We get more musical performances of songs that have nothing to do with Christmas (Boyz II Men singing "Joe Cool" and "Little Birdie", and Kristen Chenoweth singing "Happiness"), an out-of-season salute to Charlie Brown's baseball career, a discussion about the Great Pumpkin, which Schultz (in another vintage interview), created because he thought it would be amusing if a kid got one holiday ahead of himself, and an interview with Stacey "Fergie" Ferguson, who voiced Sally in a couple of 80s specials. With the possible exception of the Great Pumpkin discussion, none of this had anything to do with Christmas in general or A Charlie Brown Christmas in particular. The unfocused direction of the second half greatly mars what had been a pretty interesting special.
The special finally gets back to Christmas with a capella group Pentatronix performing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" right before the goodnights. But I sort of think it wouldn't matter if the entire special had been a tight package. It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown! wasn't meant to survive past 2015, no matter how good it is. Emmy or no Emmy, this one will live on exclusively on streaming sites. If it ever vanishes from there, it will simply vanish.
Next time: One of the first ever Christmas specials, back when "made-for-TV opera" was a thing.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 28, 2016 16:55:48 GMT -5
Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951)
In the early days of television, there were expectations that the new medium would be used to present high culture to the masses. For a while, it did. But then, the networks, and more importantly, the advertisers, noticed that the masses were largely ignoring those presentations in favor of watching game shows, sitcoms, and westerns. Gradually, higher culture fled the networks, and today is largely found on PBS and obscure cable channels.
It's almost inconceivable that one of the major networks would broadcast an opera today, much less commission an original one, but from 1949 to 1964, NBC had its own opera company dedicated to bringing original, English-language opera to the airwaves. By far its most famous production premiered on Christmas Eve in 1951.
That opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, was such a success that NBC would re-stage it every holiday season until 1961, when it was finally recorded and reran for several years after that. Because the original productions were done live, most have been lost to history. Amazingly, though, the original 1951 production survives.
After opening remarks by composer Gian Carlo Menotti, the performance begins. Amahl has a fairly simple story. Amahl and his mother are desperately poor, but open their home in hospitality to the titular night visitors, who are the Magi, on their way to see the Christ child in Bethlehem. The neighbors come in with food, a bit of drama happens, a miracle occurs, and the Magi leave to continue on their quest--with one additional person tagging along. Then an unidentified executive from Hallmark wishes everyone a very merry Christmas.
I'm not an opera aficionado by any means, so I can't really say if this was a good opera or not. The sheer staying power of Amahl, though, probably points to its quality. And, if the story moved a bit slower than modern audiences are used to, it wasn't a chore to sit through. 12-year-old Chet Allen did a find job as Amahl, and the other performers were fine as well. It should be noted that a great deal is made of the fact that King Balthazar is black, which is why it's rather awkward for modern audiences to realize that the role is played by a white actor in blackface (it wouldn't be until 1961 before an actual African-American actor was cast in the role).
As I stated, it seems unlikely that network television will ever present an opera again. But culture on TV is not dead. After all, NBC, the network that presented this live back in 1951, will be presenting a heavily advertised production of a live musical next week. It's not too difficult to find a direct line from Amahl and the Night Visitors to Hairspray Live. And that might just be this production's enduring legacy.
Next time: An autobiographal Depression-era Christmas
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 30, 2016 14:48:06 GMT -5
A Christmas Memory (1966)
Truman Capote was a storyteller. He had no qualms about rewriting anything, including the details of his own life. He would claim lovers he never bedded, friends he never met, and experiences he never had.
By most accounts, Capote was not desperately poor growing up. He did get shuttled around to various relatives, but his family was generally middle-class. That knowledge, however, doesn't mar his 1956 short story, "A Christmas Memory", or the television adaption that aired ten years later. So what if the characters in this autobiographical story were poorer than Capote's family was in real life? He was a storyteller.
Capote himself provided the narration for the adaption, telling the story of one Christmas season for a young boy, nicknamed Buddy, and an elderly female relative who is his best friend. In the story and in the adaption, the woman goes nameless as Capote only refers to her as "my friend" and no characters in the narration use her name.
The friend is played by Geraldine Page, who is remarkable. Even though she was in her early 40s when it was filmed, she convincingly plays a woman 25 years her senior. Page won an Emmy for her performance.
There isn't much plot to the story, which makes sense as it is supposed to be a memory. Buddy and his friend pool their money together to buy the ingredients for the fruitcakes the two will be sending out as gifts. Later, they find the perfect Christmas tree, and exchange gifts to each other. It's a small story, simply told.
I can't really put my finger on what makes A Christmas Memory such a delight, but it is. Over the years, the adaptation has largely been forgotten, which is a shame. Between Page's performance and Capote's storytelling, this is a Memory worth keeping.
Next time: An Academy Award-winning TV special
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 1, 2016 13:26:09 GMT -5
A Christmas Carol (1971)
The 1973 Oscar ceremony was an interesting one. Cabaret won 8 Oscars, including Director and Actress, but The Godfather won Best Picture. Charlie Chaplin won his only competitive Oscar for his score for Limelight, even though said score--and the movie itself--had been released in 1952 (due to Chaplin being blacklisted, the film didn't play Los Angeles until 1972, at which time it finally became Oscar-eligible. There is now a rule requiring films to open in LA within three years of their initial release in order to qualify). And animator Richard Williams won the Animated Short Oscar for his 25-minute version of A Christmas Carol, even though it had premiered on ABC in 1971. Rules at that time simply required that animated shorts merely get a theatrical release to be eligible for the Oscar, which Carol got in 1972. After this, the rule was changed to specifically exclude productions made for and originally shown on TV.
Williams has had an interesting career. He won more Oscars in 1989 for his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and an Emmy for Ziggy's Gift, which I reviewed last year. He started work on his magnum opus, The Thief and the Cobbler in the mid-60s, finally had the movie taken away from him by the financiers in the mid-90s, was re-edited with new sequences, and released as an Aladdin ripoff called Arabian Knight in 1995 to poor reviews. Williams is still tinkering with his directors cut of the film.
What makes his version of A Christmas Carol so striking is his animation. He attempted to make much of the film look like Victorian woodcarvings, and the results frequently look sensational. Unfortunately, the business of television in the early 70s pretty much demanded that the show be in full color. These sequences are rather dull and ordinary looking, while scenes where Williams was able to mute the color, or even go monochromatic, were magnificent. This is a case where people who hadn't upgraded to color TV yet might have gotten a better viewing experience than those who had.
The true major drawback to the special, though, is it's far-too-short length. A Christmas Carol has six acts, but a 30-minute program only has time for three. Because of that, the story feels extremely condensed. Marley is coming through Scrooge's door only about 5 minutes into the special, and doesn't even identify himself (Scrooge's line of "You were always a good man of business, Jacob", well into the conversation is the first time either of them acknowledge who Marley was). Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past barely arrive at Scrooge's old school before it's time for Fezziwig's party, and roughly five seconds is devoted to Cratchit mourning Tiny Tim during the Christmas Yet to Come segment. Even with strong voice work by Alistair Sim, whose portrayal of Scrooge in the 1951 movie version is considered by many to be the definitive portrayal of the character, one really needs to be familiar with the story in order to follow it. Given that A Christmas Carol is almost certainly the most-adapted English-language novel, most people will be familiar with the basic outline, but for the first "proper" version, there are plenty of better sources.
Williams really needed a full hour to do a proper adaptation, and needed far less full-color scenes. But given these limitations, it's hard not to be wowed by the animation. This is not the best version of A Christmas Carol out there, but it might be the most visually striking.
Next time: Another nativity, from the perspective of the animals
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 4, 2016 12:02:02 GMT -5
The Night the Animals Talked (1970)
A common folktale is that, at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, animals are granted the ability to talk. Despite such a kid-friendly premise, it has not really been used in many Christmas specials over the years. One reason is that kiddie programming is already replete with talking animals. Another is that the legend has a distinctively Christian bent, as the animals are supposed to use their newfound gift of gab to spread the Gospel. A third reason might be that the legend is much more prominent in Europe than it is in North America.
One special that did take advantage of the tale is The Night the Animals Talked. But it's not just any Christmas, but the first Christmas. And the stable full of animals isn't just any stable but the stable in Bethlehem. And the animals use their new-found abilities to...brag about themselves and insult each other. Yes, it's a stable full of animal Donald Trumps.
To be fair, the animals agree to get along with each other fairly quickly, but then a donkey shows up, hoping to allow his very pregnant owner to spend the night in the stable. The special pretty much repeats itself at this point, with the animals that were jerks the first time around being jerky again and refusing them admittance, until the kindly and wise ox who convinced everyone to get along the first time (by pointing out how everyone was acting like humans) gets them to realize that they're doing it again. This is not a very subtle special.
Every so often the animals break out in song, having received the gift of song and dance as well. Even though the music is by the legendary songwriting team of Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (who wrote, among others, "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow"), none of the songs in this are remotely memorable, save for the opening number, mainly because the singer belts out the words "a parable" over and over and over and over and over again.
Of course, the animals eventually let the woman in, and you know the rest of the story. It does have a surprisingly downbeat ending for a show aimed at kids, but that alone isn't enough to recommend it. The Night the Animals Talked may be one of the few specials based on this folklore, but I'll stick with animated animals that never lose the ability to speak.
Next time: Before they were SNL stars
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 4, 2016 20:39:58 GMT -5
Does the special have any anachronistic New World animals?
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 4, 2016 23:42:22 GMT -5
I'm not sure what animals would have been in Israel circa 6 BC, but the barn in the special had chickens, cows, a dog, a goat, donkeys, lambs, pigs, and some random birds. They did all speak English, though.
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Post by Nudeviking on Dec 5, 2016 0:09:58 GMT -5
Have you done in years past or do you plan on doing the Twilight Zone episode from the original 1960s run, "The Night of the Meek?" It's got Art Carney in it as a drunk department store Santa and is one of the few Twilight Zone episodes that didn't end with a "Yup, everything is fucked," swerve.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 5, 2016 1:18:11 GMT -5
I'm not sure what animals would have been in Israel circa 6 BC, but the barn in the special had chickens, cows, a dog, a goat, donkeys, lambs, pigs, and some random birds. They did all speak English, though. Those sound legit. |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Dec 5, 2016 6:38:59 GMT -5
I'm not sure what animals would have been in Israel circa 6 BC, but the barn in the special had chickens, cows, a dog, a goat, donkeys, lambs, pigs, and some random birds. They did all speak English, though. Those sound legit. With one exception. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 5, 2016 8:49:32 GMT -5
The Gift of Winter (1974)
What a difference a year makes. During the 1975 holiday season, Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner were well on their way to becoming superstars, thanks to their starring roles in the new hit late-night sketch comedy show, NBC's Saturday Night (later to be renamed Saturday Night Live). That's a far cry from the 1974 holiday season, when the two of them were lending their voices to a rather odd Canadian animated Christmas special.
In many ways, The Gift of Winter is fairly typical. Taking place at a time before snow, when winter was merely cold and dark and windy, it concerns a group of citizens who decide to travel to confront Winter directly about how miserable his season is. So far, so normal.
What makes this one interesting is the animation style. The Gift of Winter has extremely limited animation. A Charlie Brown Christmas has pretty limited animation, and the animation in Gift makes Charlie look like a Disney movie. Another interesting aspect is the character design. Each character is a color--blue, green, pink, ect, and everything about them--their hair, their skin, and their clothes, are that color. One review of the short said the characters looked like "sketchbook drawings come to life", and it's hard to argue with that assessment.
The character names also double as the character descriptions. The good adults are named Goodly and Nicely, the bad adults are named Rotten and Malicious, and the two tagalong kids are named Small and Tender. For the most part, they live up to their names, though since this is aimed at kids, Rotten and Malicious aren't really that rotten nor malicious, even if their big plan is to blow up Winter's headquarters.
As for the vocal work, Radner comes off best, as she had different voices for the several characters she played. Ackroyd is a brilliant comic actor, but mimicry has never been his strong suit, so his characters all sound like him.
With the limited animation, the climax, which involves some slapstick at Winter's office, isn't all that effective, though it was amusing to discover that Winter was apparently the head of a large bureaucracy. The ending is predictable, but given that the title and the first few minutes set up what the gift is going to be, it wasn't supposed to be a surprise.
It's hard to know exactly what to think about The Gift of Winter. I liked it, but probably won't seek it out to watch again. However, I am interested in seeing what other specials might have come from north of the border.
Next time: A pair of unofficial sequals
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 5, 2016 8:59:16 GMT -5
Have you done in years past or do you plan on doing the Twilight Zone episode from the original 1960s run, "The Night of the Meek?" It's got Art Carney in it as a drunk department store Santa and is one of the few Twilight Zone episodes that didn't end with a "Yup, everything is fucked," swerve. I try to avoid episodes of TV series. That's not necessarily a hard and strict rule ( A Christmas Memory was from a short-lived anthology series), but I feel like "The Night of the Meek" is just too well-known and identified with its parent show to really stand on it's own. The old country did a write-up of that episode a few years ago when they did a series of discussion of Christmas episodes. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 5, 2016 13:13:02 GMT -5
You know, I kept looking for it, and I kept not seeing it. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 5, 2016 18:04:40 GMT -5
A Snow White Christmas (1980)/Pinocchio's Christmas (1980)
Walt Disney didn't do sequels. That's not strictly true, as several of his live-action films got follow-ups, and he had no hesitation about reusing characters in different contexts, there was never any direct sequels to his animated films, until The Rescuers Down Under came out 24 years after he died. There won't be a TV special follow-up until next year, when Frozen's Christmas special debuts. With Disney not doing any follow-ups, it was left to lesser animation houses to make unofficial sequels.
Filmation, the makers of A Snow White Christmas, and Rankin-Bass, the makers of Pinocchio's Christmas, would undoubtedly be happy to testify under oath in a court of law that these specials had absolutely nothing to do with the more famous Disney films. But make no mistake, even if they were based on the original stories and not on Disney's versions, they both owe their existences to the feature films.
I suspect that someone would have made A Snow White Christmas sooner or later even without the Disney version, if only because of the natural pun in the title. But it would have undoubtedly have been a different show. Snow White takes place a couple of decades after the original story, with Snow White and Prince--now King--Charming happily married and with a teenage daughter of their own, also named Snow White. Just after King Charming reassures his wife that the Wicked Queen hasn't been seen in years, she of course reappears and immediately freezes everyone in the kingdom except the younger Snow White and her dwarf companion, who are able to escape to the home of the seven...giants.
And here we see the influence of the Disney version. The elements of the original fairy tale, including the presence of the dwarfs, is public domain. But the specific character designs and names of Disney's dwarfs are copyrighted. If the Disney version didn't exist, the Filmation crew could have happily included their own dwarfs, but undoubtedly not wanting to confuse the youngsters in the audience who were already familiar with Disney's dwarfs, they instead substituted suspiciously similar giant versions. Weirdly, even though this isn't a musical, the giants get a obnoxiously catchy musical introduction, where one-by-one they introduce their single identifying trait (one hiccups! one cries a lot! one is a neat freak!). After that, if you've seen any Snow White movie, you can guess what happens next. There was a genuinely scary sequence during which the Evil Queen transforms herself intro a giant rat, but other that that, it pretty much follows the outline to the original story. One change did occur to highlight the difference in societal mores between 1937 and 1980. Disney's Snow White is supposed to be 14, and she gets woken up by her husband and then swept away to get married. Filmation's Snow White Jr. is 15, and while she too is awoken with a kiss, it's far less creepy.
To be fair, the storyline on Pinocchio's Christmas owe more to the original novel than to Disney's version, even if the designs of Pinocchio and Geppetto are influenced by Disney. However, it seems improbable that an Italian children's book from the 1880s would have the cultural cache to be turned into a Christmas special 100 years later without the Disney film.
Oddly, Pinocchio's Christmas acts less like a one-off Christmas special, or even a backdoor pilot, than as the Christmas episode of a series with previous episodes. Relationships are established and characters appear with little introduction, apparently relying on the audience to already know the relationships and characters. Otherwise, it works a condensed version of the original novel, with Pinocchio being alive as soon as he was carved, and the cricket (not named Jiminy in this version, of course), playing a much smaller role. It really goes off the rails during the last 15 minutes or so, with Pinocchio convincing a government official to spend the holiday with his family before ending with a Santa ex machina and another living puppet, before showing scenes from upcoming adventures that audiences would recognize only if they'd seen the Disney version.
To be honest, if Disney had tackled either of these specials, I don't know how good they would have been, though the rather mediocre Toy Story holiday specials provides a clue. Nature may abhor an entertainment vacuum, but in the case of A Snow White Christmas and Pinocchio's Christmas, the vacuum should have remained unfilled.
Next time: An official sequel that is also an official prequel.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Dec 5, 2016 22:19:30 GMT -5
Actually there are tons of swine in the Gospels—first-century Judea was pretty diverse, it turns out. I’ve been these old animated specials online—the part I found in “The Night the Animals Talked” I happened to stop on the bull when he was talking about how language was actually making them behave like those quarrelsome humans—Sapir-Whorf! The animation style in “The Gift of Winter” reminded me a lot of that sort of late sixties-through-early eighties illustration (and animation style) that seemed to be basically everywhere—something about the shape of the eyes and the sketchiness, even if it’s rendered with a bit more stylization than usual. There was enough of this lingering on through the early nineties, both on TV and in old library books, that I have an odd sort of fondness/nostalgia for it. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Dec 6, 2016 0:49:20 GMT -5
Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951) I'm not an opera aficionado by any means, so I can't really say if this was a good opera or not. The sheer staying power of Amahl, though, probably points to its quality. . . . As I stated, it seems unlikely that network television will ever present an opera again. I am an opera aficionado. You are likely correct about the staying power of this one pointing to its quality. Menotti wrote several other operas, most of which are now rarely performed. I've only heard two of his others. "Amahl and the Night Visitors" is a lot better than those two. This one has a lot going for it that make it a popular opera to perform. The music isn't too challenging. The story is simple for kids to grasp. It isn't 3+ hours long. And the music is just engaging enough for what it is trying to do. It is an okay opera. Pretty good for a short one. Incidentally, PBS sometimes in the last few years aired a version of a recent Minnesota Opera commissioned Christmas opera called "Silent Night". It is a staging of the famous story of WWI soldiers calling a Christmas Even truce. It is also pretty good. |
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Post by ganews on Dec 6, 2016 9:24:08 GMT -5
A Snow White Christmas (1980)/Pinocchio's Christmas (1980)and the cricket (not named Jiminy in this version, of course), playing a much smaller role. Well, at his first opportunity Pinocchio did squish the cricket of the book. Who then followed around as a little cricket ghost! |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 7, 2016 5:33:13 GMT -5
A Snow White Christmas (1980)/Pinocchio's Christmas (1980)and the cricket (not named Jiminy in this version, of course), playing a much smaller role. Well, at his first opportunity Pinocchio did squish the cricket of the book. Who then followed around as a little cricket ghost! Something similiar happens in the special, when, in a flashback, Pinocchio chucks something (I can't remember if it's a book or a shoe) at the cricket. Obviously, he doesn't kill him, but fake Jiminy does leave, only to turn up alive and well later in the special, and starts acting as Pinocchio's...well, they never say the word "conscience" for obvious reasons, but that's pretty much what he does. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 7, 2016 17:50:53 GMT -5
Merry Madagascar (2009)
At some point during the summer of 2005, I saw Madagascar in a theater. I remember liking it. At some point during the holidays of 2008, I saw Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa in a theater. I remember being underwhelmed. At no time during the summer of 2012 or anytime thereafter, I saw Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. As I never saw the film, I have no opinion on it, though the frequently shown commercial of Chris Rock's zebra dancing around with a rainbow-colored Afro wig on his head led me to conclude I wasn't missing much.
Even though I saw the first two films, I don't really remember anything about them, other than the very basic plot outline, that had four New York zoo animals mistakenly shipped to the titular island, and then leaving said island in the second one (and apparently making it to Europe for the third one. Since there's a Madagascar 4 in production, I'm guessing they have yet to make it back to New York City). Oh, and there were penguins who acted like secret agents along for the ride (I also have not seen The Penguins of Madagascar, either the movie or the TV show) So I was able to approach Merry Madagascar relatively fresh. What I saw didn't prompt me to catch up on the series.
Even though the special aired a year after the second movie came out, it is set before they escaped 2 Africa, since they're still stuck on the beach. For reasons that are too stupid to get into, Santa's sleigh ends up crash-landing on said beach, and the big guy himself is now suffering from amnesia. Naturally, it's up to our quartet of Alex the lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the hippo, and Melman the giraffe to deliver all the toys all over the world.
Yep, DreamWorks Animation had a chance to do a Christmas special based on two films that had grossed combined nearly $1.2 billion worldwide, and they decide the use the cliched "Santa Sub" trope. I wouldn't have minded too much, except it follows the cliches to the letter. There's the sleigh that's too hard to control at first, the fact that it's really hard to get into people's houses to deliver toys, the plan to quit in discouragement, and the 180-turn where they buck up, figure out the sleigh, and do their jobs.
The odd thing is that they got back nearly all of the movie's cast, including Ben Stiller, Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, and David Schwimmer. For some reason, Sacha Baron Cohen, who played mischievous lemur King Julian, was AWOL, with his role played by voiceover actor Danny Jacobs. As for the rest, I'm guessing they were either contractually obligated or DreamWorks backed the money truck up for them.
NBC apparently realized they had a dog on their hands, since they scheduled this to premiere on November 17, over a week before Thanksgiving. As far as I know, the broadcast networks have avoided Christmas specials that early since. I wasn't expecting greatness from Merry Madagascar, but it should have been better than what it was.
Next time: A Christmas special that never mentions Christmas
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 13, 2016 3:17:34 GMT -5
Sorry for the delay. I had planned to get caught up this weekend, but men plan and God laughs. Hopefully, I'll get caught up by next weekend.
Kung Fu Panda Holiday (2010)
Here in America, it can sometimes be forgotten that Christmas is not universally celebrated, which is why the "war on Christmas" complaints from cranks like Bill O'Reilly and our Dear Leader-elect ring hollow. Sure, commercials and stores may go out of their way to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", and schools may now give kids two weeks off for "winter break" instead of "Christmas break", but no one is going to forget exactly why winter break occurs during the last two weeks of December as opposed to mid-January or early February. However, Christmas is inherently a Christian holiday, and while plenty of non-Christians around the world happily participate via the secular aspects of the day, there are plenty of places where Christmas is barely celebrated, or not celebrated at all.
DreamWorks Animation's first two Christmas specials spun off from feature films avoided that problem. Shrek the Halls was set in a fairy tale fantasyland, while Merry Madagascar involved animals raised in New York City. Explicitly being about Christmas was fine. However, when the studio decided to do a Kung Fu Panda Christmas special, they ran into a problem--namely that pre-technological China, where the movies are set, didn't celebrate or observe Christmas, especially in isolated small towns, even ones filled with anthropomorphic animals. So the characters in Kung Fu Panda Holiday don't celebrate Christmas. Instead, they celebrate the Winter Festival, a holiday that involves putting up decorations, spending time with family, and eating festive dinners. Meanwhile, one character's clothes are pretty much a dead ringer's for Santa's clothes, and red and green powder lights up the sky at one point. So, nothing to do with Christmas.
The plot involves Po, the titular character, having the responsibility of preparing the legendary Winter Feast for all the kung fu masters in China. Naturally, this is to take place the night of the Winter Festival, and Po's goose father was expecting him to help in the family noodle restaurant that evening. What will Po choose to do?
The plot may be hackneyed, but the special was sitll quite amusing. Jack McBrayer has some fun voicing a rabbit desperate to be killed by Po, and there's a clever sequence showing Po as he shifts between his various responsiblites.
Yes, the holiday in Kung Fu Panda Holiday is Christmas in all but name, but I still admire DreamWorks for not compltely ignoring reality in their special based on a series about a talking panda who becomes an expert at martial arts. Kung Fu Panda Holiday is not an all-time classic by any means, but as far as holi...er, Christmas specials go, it's definitely above average.
Next time: Another DreamWorks non-Christmas special.
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Post by ganews on Dec 13, 2016 8:55:44 GMT -5
Jack McBrayer has some fun voicing a rabbit desperate to be killed by Po There isn't enough holiday entertainment featuring explicit suicidal tendencies. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 25, 2016 14:21:13 GMT -5
So yeah...
December turned out to be far busier than I had anticipated, and when I did have free time, I often couldn't motivate myself to write. Since I don't really feel like writing reviews for Christmas specials on MLK Day, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this feature up (hopefully) tomorrow with three more reviews, then save the other two weeks worth of specials for next year. I was sort of worried about having enough material to cover in 2017, but not anymore. Next year, I'll start trying to watch and write in October, so I don't have nearly as much to do by the time the holidays actually roll around.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Jul 17, 2017 17:13:42 GMT -5
Christmas in July!
Hey, if Hallmark can do it, so can I.
I plan on doing four or five write-ups (including this one) before the end of the month. Then, hopefully, a full run of reviews will return this holiday season.
To start off, I'm going to start off with the write-up I had teased at the end of the Kung Fu Panda review...
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury (2011)
A year after Kung Fu Panda Holiday, the powers that be behind the conversion of hit DreamWorks Animation movies into holiday specials found themselves adapting another movie that did not take place in a Christian culture. Once again, the powers that be simply created a new holiday that is pretty much secular Christmas in every way except name. The Vikings of How to Train Your Dragon celebrate Snoggletog (the special lampshades how silly the name is) with a giant decorated tree in the middle of the village, holly and lights on all the houses, and a festive party.
Oddly, after going out of its way to establish that this is indeed a holiday special, the main plot is so generic that it could have literally taken place during any time of year. The town goes into crisis when all the dragons suddenly up and fly away, for reasons no one can fathom. Naturally, there is a reason, which hero Hiccup (voiced, as in the movie, by Jay Baruchel), discovers, and it is indeed a heartwarming reason indeed. But still, there's no reason this plot couldn't have played out in March or June or September.
Most of the stuff relating to the holiday is stuffed into the subplot where young female Viking Astrid (America Ferrera) comes up with holiday traditions. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I remember Astrid being tough and no-nonsense. In the special, however, she comes across as rather ditsy, not a good look for the only major human female character in the special.
As for the titular gift, it doesn't doesn't really play a part until the very end of the special, and ties into Hiccup's attempt to allow his dragon, Toothless, to be able to fly on her own, despite a damaged tail. Tying the special around gifts does give it a holiday feel, but not enough of one to make the plotline seem any more Christmasy--or Snoggletogy--than it is.
All that said, I didn't hate Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury. It's an entertaining enough 22 minutes, and at least it doesn't involve an incapacitated Santa. Like the other DreamWorks holiday specials, it won't be becoming an all-time classic, but it is watchable.
Next time: Not even death can stop a Christmas special
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Post by MarkInTexas on Jul 24, 2017 10:30:07 GMT -5
Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas (1977)
So far, since I started doing this project a few years ago, I've only reviewed one brand new special, writing up A Very Murray Christmas only a few days after it popped up on Netflix back in 2015. A few others I've taken a look at within a few years of their original broadcast. But most specials I've watched are many years, if not decades, old by the time I watch them for this series, meaning that whatever impact they had when they first premiered has long since vanished into the ether. For the most part, I'm not concerned with the loss of that impact, but I have to admit, I would have loved seeing the reaction of people watching Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas when it first aired a week after Thanksgiving in 1977, because by the time this relentlessly happy special starring a jolly Bing Crosby celebrating a traditional English Christmas with his real life wife and kids premiered, Crosby was dead.
How did his death, which had occurred suddenly about six weeks earlier (about a month after filming the special) affect people's viewing of it? Did the many, many references to Bing's love of golf mar the mood (Crosby died of a heart attack on a golf course)? What about the most sentimental moment of the special, where Bing and Twiggy duet on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" after coming across some old letters from lovers who despair never seeing each other again? And then there was the long-winded joke told by British comedian Stanley Baxter, in full old-woman drag as the English manor's cook, that involved her husband dropping dead in the garden. Viewing them in 2017, such jokes and references flow right over me, but they might have played very differently to an audience that was just getting used to the idea that Bing Crosby was gone.
The ironic thing about the special being so closely tied to Crosby's death is that, content-wise, with one huge exception, there is absolutely nothing tying it to 1977. Indeed, at least 2/3rds of the content could have been lifted intact from 1957--or even 1937.
The plot (oh yes, there is a plot) has the Crosbys, including Bing, wife Kathryn, daughter Mary (who would go on to shoot J.R.) and the two interchangeable sons (one of whom seems to speak in a Southern accent) flying off to England to spend the holidays with a long lost relative, played by Ron Moody. Moody also pops up as Charles Dickens, a bit that leads to the special's most elaborate musical number, an extended bit in which Moody and Twiggy play various Dickens characters, allowing Moody to briefly revive his Oscar-nominated performance as Fagin. There are also plenty of jokes about Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, and Baxter even got to trot out his own (not very good) Bob Hope impersonation for a lengthy bit. He also gets to join Moody and Bing in a trio singing Sondheim's "Side By Side By Side" in a rendition that completely misses the point of the song.
For the most part, the special is clearly aimed at people who probably remembered with Crosby was the fresh new face of popular music, which makes the appearance of the remaining big guest star, David Bowie, so surreal. Bowie is only on set for one bit rather early on, where he banters a bit with Crosby (who claims to think modern music was "marvelous"), before launching into their famous duet of "Peace on Earth/The Little Drummer Boy", during which the two stared straight ahead, never even attempting to make eye contact. While Bowie is definitely in a different category than Ron Moody and Stanley Baxter, the bit doesn't stand out too much. What does, however, is the music video for Bowie's then-new single "Heroes", which pops up without warning halfway through. I can only imagine the looks on the audiences' faces when that nice young man from earlier in the special who talked about his kid's love of Christmas is now in triplicate on the screen, caressing himself while singing a song that's about the polar opposite of every other musical number on the show.
Of course, by 1977, pop culture resembled Bowie much more than it did Crosby, which meant Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas was an instant anachronism. I would have liked to see how audiences of the day reacted to the special, but I have to think that, for anyone born after World War II--or even World War I--the sheer corniness of the proceedings might have negated any sorrow from watching Bing's last special.
Next time: Simply because you're aliens on another planet doesn't mean you can't celebrate Christmas
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2017 17:12:09 GMT -5
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Post by MarkInTexas on Jul 31, 2017 17:17:44 GMT -5
So much for finishing this up in July. But August is OK, too. After all, that's when some stores begin decorating. I should have the remaining entries up later this week (I hope)
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Post by MarkInTexas on Aug 20, 2017 19:13:28 GMT -5
...or three weeks later.
He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special (1985)
As a kid, my favorite line of toys that just coincidentally had its own animated TV show was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. That didn't mean that I watched much of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, because I was a daycare kid, and by the time I got home, late afternoon cartoons had given way to early evening sitcom reruns. Still, I had seen enough of it that I was able to more or less recite the opening narration word-for-word the first time I watched the opening credits on YouTube.
I never played with She-Ra: Princess of Power toys, nor have I ever seen an episode of She-Ra: Princess of Power, though based on the opening credits of that show, I wasn't missing much. The opening credits were a carbon copy of He-Man's credits, right down to the faces of the rouge gallary leading to that show's Big Bad, Hordak. She-Ra and She-Ra came and went in a couple of years, since it turns out neither boys nor girls were all that interested in playing with or watching a distaff clone of He-Man.
He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special premiered toward the end of She-Ra's first season, but watching it, it feels almost like it should be the pilot, given that the special almost feels like A Very She-Ra Christmas, With Special Guest Star He-Man. He-Man does get a decent amount of screen time in this, but outside of the opening segment, his friends and allies are pretty much thrust into the background in favor of She-Ra's friends. I can't help but feel that the producers realized early on that She-Ra wouldn't get particually good ratings, and designed the special to get kids who had passed on the show in the fall to start watching, just in time for the first season to begin its 13-week rerun cycle.
The plot, such as it is, is pretty hokey. Orko, the incompetent space wizard who, for some reason, is one of the few people who know He-Man's secret identity, accidentally launches a rocket to earth with himself onboard, and ends up returning to the planet of Eternia with a couple of cute but annoying kids. It happens to be both the birthdays of Prince Adam and Princess Adora on Eternia and right before Christmas on Earth, so everyone decides to just combine the two celebrations while they work on a way to get the kids home. The arrival of Christmas spirit displeases Horde Prime, the boss of Skeletor and Hordak (did I even know Skeletor had a boss?), who orders the kids to be captured and brought to him.
The whole thing is agreeably silly, and by the time the kids are in the custody of Skeletor, who is, to his displeasure, turning rather cheery thanks to Christmas, it feels like the writers were well aware of how ridiculous the whole thing is. I can't say I'd recommend watching He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special (and it certainly hasn't inspired me to revisit old He-Man episodes on Netflix), but for what is essentially a hour-long toy commercial, it's not disagreeable.
Next time: We wrap up Christmas in July/August/Hopefully not September with perhaps the most meta variety special of all time.
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