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2020 JUSTIN NEWBOULD (3rd Annual) CHRISTMAS CHAOS


RIPPA

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37 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

I believe his movie was actually from the first Chaos and he was going to do it last year as a bonus. ? I deleted those messages but I think I remember which film he had.

It is mentioned in one of the Chaos threads - that is how I know it was a @S.K.o.S. selection. I will have to go back and look because I don't remember it off the top of my head.

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18 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

It is mentioned in one of the Chaos threads - that is how I know it was a @S.K.o.S. selection. I will have to go back and look because I don't remember it off the top of my head.

I know what it was, if anyone needs the title I can DM it to them.

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I watched Mixed Nuts in the theater with my mom when it came out.

We.were the only ones in the theater laughing. Not because it was funny, but because it was so fucking bizarre.  I think maybe, MAYBE, the funniest joke at the time was the obscene phone caller pestering the suicide crisis line.

Every Christmas afterwards, my mom would reminisce with me about watching that movie.  That's honestly the most enjoyable part of the movie, to me, and, since she died in 2015, it's the only thing about the movie I miss.

"Arnold, Arnold, Arnold, Arnold."

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I would put in an extra review for the Princess Switch: Switched Again that I watched on Netflix last night but it would only be 6 words.

Wowza.  Triple Vanessa Hudgens.  I approve.  

Edited by CSC
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TRANCERS (Charles Band, 1984)

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES (83/53)

SELECTED BY @Curt McGirt
 
This is a wild '80s movie that is incidentally set at X-Mas and is full of crazy shit that works despite initially seeming like a bootleg mashup of The Terminator and Blade Runner. Which it still is, but it has a verve and gusto that makes it work. Which is a pretentious way of saying it's just fuckin' cool. Don't get stuck in the Tubi version of this, go for the Full Moon one so you can go watch old Puppet Master and Subspecies films too! 

PS Thank you @odessasteps - he is responsible for this one

REVIEWED BY @Execproducer
 
What separates a great B-movie from the pack is commitment. A commitment from the director and crew to aim higher than the budget and script might normally allow. A commitment from the actors to refrain from merely going through the motions. And a commitment from the audience to cast aside excessive critical judgements and enjoy the ride. Trancers is such a film.  Starting off with a classic film noir set-up, a roadside diner and narration provided by lone wolf 23rd century cop, Jack Deth ( Tim Thomerson ), the film grabs you from the outset and doesn't let go. Deth is obsessed with hunting down Trancers, ordinary appearing humans that take on zombie-like qualities when triggered. Believing that he has already eliminated ( or "singed" ) their master, super-villain Martin Whistler ( Michael Stefani ), Deth is on a personal one man clean-up detail. But crusading cops don't go down well with the brass so his superior McNulty ( Art LaFleur ) gives him a choice: follow orders like a good boy or hit the bricks. Without hesitation Deth tosses his shield and drives off. "He was a good cop once" says McNulty, " until a Trancer killed his wife."
 
The very next scene McNulty visits the shores of Lost Angeles, the half submerged ruins outside of Angel City, 2247's version of L.A., where he finds Deth diving for salvage. The High Council has summoned him to return to duty. Martin Whistler is alive!  Deth visits the Council headquarters where he meets surviving members Chairman's Ashe and Spencer ( Anne Seymour and Richard Herd ). Their third member has been eliminated. In Republic Serial villain style,  Whistler has foolishly but inevitably left behind a hologram taunting Deth and the Council and detailing his master plan to use drug-induced time travel and go down the line to 1985 and murder the ancestors of his enemies, eliminating them from time and paving the way for his return and ultimate triumph. Whoops! Loose lips sinks ships. The procedure entails being injected with a drug that allows one's consciousness to move through time and inhabit and take control of the body of their ancestor while leaving their own body a lifeless husk until taking an antidote to the time drug that releases said consciousness and sends it back home. The Council has located the husk of Whistler and are holding it in hope of Deth following him through time and returning him to stand trial. Bad idea showing it to Deth! He singes the body of Whistler, effectively sentencing him to death without trial. Assuming, of course, he can locate Whistler's ancestor, an L.A. police detective named Weisling, and inject him with the antidote.
 
While the Council is none too pleased with this development, they have little choice but to send maverick cop Deth on his way to protect their own ancestors and save the innocent Weisling from his evil descendant. Armed with information on the Council member's ancestors, as well as an era appropriate .38 Special that has two doses of antidote concealed in the butt and a watch-like device that extends one second of time into ten for the wearer, Deth is injected by Engineer Raines ( Telma Hopkins ) and finds himself in the body of his Lothario ancestor Phil on the morning after his latest conquest, a punk girl named Leena ( pre-stardom Helen Hunt ). We know she is punk because she has a green streak in her blonde hair. Confused by the very different way in which Phil is behaving as well as his inability to pronounce Cahuenga Blvd. ...which I didn't know how to pronounce either until hearing Tom Wait's Heartattack and Vine...Leena just wants to get to her job on time and forget she ever met this weirdo. Her job is why this film made the Christmas Chaos cut as she is a photographer dressed as Santa's helper and taking snaps of a department store Santa doing his thing. Santa turns out to be a Trancer triggered by the mere sight of Deth. After a struggle Deth eliminates Santa and abducts Leena and it is off to the races.
 
Sometimes films I watched as a teenager during the Mom-and-Pop video store era don't hold up very well but I still really enjoy the first Trancers. It meets my criteria for a great B-movie. It's made with craft and humor on a $400.000 budget, the actors aren't dogging it and I don't feel the need to pick it apart. There are scenes that are so bad they are good and other scenes that are just good. When Jack employs his one-time use Long Second device, which freezes time for everyone but the wearer for ten seconds, it takes a comically excessive 101 seconds of screen time to unfold. At one point Jack and Lena go to a punk club that has to be the lamest ever. Central casting punks milling around a room like they were at a sock hop and the band isn't nearly as good as Danny and the Juniors. When they run into Leena's ex, Deth ends up knocking out four of these hapless creampuffs.  My favorite part? McNulty shows up in the body of his ancestor, a nine year-old girl ( Alyson Croft as Baby McNulty). He has orders to bring Deth back. After they exchange tough guy banter, Deth casually lifts Baby up and deposits him* outside. In a callback to his arrival, Deth and Leena are about to make love when Baby sneaks back in and zaps Jack with a dose of antidote. After meeting with Ashe, now the only remaining Council member, Deth returns to 1985..and into the arms of a blissfully post-coital Leena who lets him know that her world was truly rocked, apparently unbeknownst to her, by a very well rested Phil.
 
As 80's B-movies go, Trancers is top shelf. Even as a film indebted to several other better and more high profile films for plot points it manages some good ideas of its own. It launched a series of diminishing returns, though the ones that include Thomerson are still worth checking out. Helen Hunt returned for two of them albeit in gradually smaller roles. She is fantastic in the part.
 
Trancers isn't something I'd put into the yearly Christmas rotation but if you're a fan of these kinds of films, worth watching.
 
* It's a bitch trying to decide which pronoun to use.
 
Spoiler

trancers-1984-jack-deth-tim-thomerson-le

 

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As I've said on here before, I grew up on Charles Band's Full Moon and Empire pictures. I watched this when I was, tops, 10 or 11 years old and hadn't seen it since. It really stands up for how low budget it is, and if you've seen something like The Dungeonmaster from the '80s Empire days you know that budget could get looooooowwwwww. Tim Thomerson was better known to me as the hero of Full Moon's Dollman + Dollman vs. Demonic Toys and it wasn't until watching The Comedy Store on Showtime this year that I found out he was apparently a talented and popular improv comic before he started acting. IIRC the other really good Trancers is part III, just like Puppet Master's best was its third entry. On 4 and 5 they shot in Band's castle in Romania probably and both were set in medieval times? All I remember is Thomerson armed with a crossbow running around with scantily clad women on horseback. 

Anyway I'm glad somebody got something good and Mark is thanks for that because it was his idea and I'd completely forgotten about Trancers being set during Xmas.

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ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS (Philip Borsos, 1985)

 

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES (47/69)

SELECTED BY @driver

The reason for this pic? Harry Dean Stanton plays an angel, need I say more? It is available on Disney+.

REVIEWED BY @Travis Sheldon

Two common ingredients in classic films are nostalgia and relatability. Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation are two classics that have both. Whether it's a father getting in way over his head trying to provide for his family or the want of an old Red Ryder BB gun, both are very relatable.

One Magic Christmas (1985) has a very nostalgic 80s feeling, it was nice to see the old Toronto Blue Jays logo and the Sealtest brand on the milk. The story is also relatable, it starts with a voice, which we later learn is Santa Clause, telling angel Gideon, played by Harry Dean Stanton, to restore Ginny Grainger's, the Grainger family matriarch, Christmas spirit. 

The Grainger family has fallen on hard times due to job loss and an impending eviction from their home. Ginny, portrayed by Mary Steenburgen, has really been hit hard by the circumstances. She has a thankless job working in a grocery store and the fact that her husband hasn't found work is wearing on her last nerve. Jack Grainger, the husband in question, loves working on bicycles and wants to open his own bicycle shop. It's no surprise that Ginny has lost all her Christmas spirit.

Gideon displays some odd angelic behavior, such as hanging out in trees and playing the harmonica. He also has some very useful powers, when the Grainger's young daughter Abbie is almost hit by a car by being in a snow covered street at night, he uses his magic power to jump-cut the car past Abbie.

One thing I couldn't help thinking while watching Harry Dean Stanton was how much his role as Gideon is sort of an opposite version of The Saint of Killers from the Sandman comics. But I digress.

Ultimately Ginny is hit with an anti-It's A Wonderful Life twist and she regains her spirit in the end.

The film is enjoyable, I had a blast with it riffing and calling some of the plot twists. 

It has quite a bit going for it in the plus column, Steenburgen's performance is very good, she plays the burnt out mother role very well and her later turn is good. Harry Dean Stanton is great in pretty much anything. There's a sequence where Abbie travels to the North Pole to Santa's workshop, where Santa has dead people working instead of elves (You have to see it!). But, the story can get a tad bit too melodramatic and depressing. The thought of having your spouse gunned down in a bank robbery and losing your children to a kidnapper is pretty heavy material. Not sure that younger viewers would be able to take it all in properly.

All in all I'm happy to have seen this film and may revisit it in the future. Cheers!

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Yeah - there are only two reviews left for this year - mine and Raziel

Everything else will bonus reviews - so the rest of this week will be them.

And at least I will post my regular review next week

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BONUS REVIEW
THE WEST WING “IN EXCELSIS DIO” (Season 1, Episode 10)
By RIPPA

The first of the West Wing’s “Christmas” episodes (though honestly none of the episodes were really ABOUT Christmas more just set on the days of Christmas and with more “Merry Christmases” being said.) This episode fits in with what I have already talked about in that everything in the late 90s/early 00s around Christmas was bleak as hell.

Obviously writing about a drama that doesn’t really standalone episodes – it gets a little harder to talk about the episode without getting too much into the weeds in regards to context of the bigger plots but I will try my best but a X-Files Monster of the Week this is not (Wait… didn’t the X-Files have a couple of Christmas Monster of the Weeks???? Hmm…) I am just gonna assume you have either watched the West Wing or will never care to.

The episode aired December 1999. I mention this as a reminder to put the episode in the context of the issues of the time. The big thing is that this a pre-9/11 world (not that REALLY matters for this episode). Of course, I type that fully realizing that the issues raised in this episode are still issues 20+ years later.

There are two major stories for this episode

The first is that Toby is contacted by DC Police to identify a homeless man who died of exposure on the National mall. The man had Toby’s business card in his pocket. Toby arrives and speaks with a DC Police Official (A pre-Oz and The Wire Lance Reddick). Toby doesn’t know the man but realizes that the man was wearing a coat he gave away to Goodwill (God I am so happy they chose Goodwill so I don’t have to dance around the whole Salvation Army issue). Because it is TV, Toby is the only person who recognizes the homeless man’s tattoo identifying a veteran of the Korean War (one that Tobey later discovers also received a Purple Heart.) This leads to the story long arc of Tobey trying to contact someone… anyone… who would know the man (Walter Huffnagle is the name of the deceased veteran).

The second is that Leo is starting to plan for an exit strategy as GOP Rep Peter Lillienfield has the classified documents that not only is Leo a recovering alcoholic but he was in rehab for abusing pills. (This is were I probably should stop and remind everyone about my note of the time when this aired). Josh and Sam are ready to go to war for Leo so they devise a plan where they will go to Sam’s friend who is an escort and get the name of a highly placed GOP official so they can basically blackmail the blackmailer (we are gonna come back to what a terrible idea this is in a minute).

Other story that weaves its way through the episode is that a gay high school senior is beaten to death by other high school students. C.J. is personally outraged and is told to start floating that the White House is going to take on Hate Speech again after the Winter Break. She is then outraged when told to back off because the White House hasn’t decided where it stands yet. (Allison Janey confirmed that this snippet of a story was based on Matthew Shepard.) This is all well and good but this thread of a story basically ends up as a vehicle for her finally going out on a date with reporter Danny Concannon. Definitely not the finest moment of Aaron Sorkin’s writing here. I will say that this story line did give a very poignant moment as President Bartlett is entertaining a group of children in the lobby and in the middle of it Charlie informs the President that the beaten HS student has died and the President has to put on a brave face and continue entertaining the kids while processing the news. Again – since this was pre-9/11 – you can drop a little “West Wing predicted…” here

So…. Yeah… a Christmas episode dealing with the treatment of Veteran’s AND the Homeless. The stigma of addiction recovery. The dehumanization of sex workers along with hate crimes. AND the death of a high school student. Merry Fucking Christmas.

And I haven’t even brought up the bleakest of the bleak yet. Charlie makes a comment to Mrs. Landingham that she doesn’t seem to excited that it is Christmas. Mrs. Landingham responds by dropping an ACME sized safe on your heart by just saying “I miss my boys”. You come to find out that Mrs. Landingham had twin sons who were in Medical School when their numbers came up in the draft (for the Vietnam War) at the same time. While they could have gotten a deferment to finishing med school they both readily signed up to serve so they could help people (despite the begging to not go from their parents.) On Christmas Eve – their platoon gets ambushed and both boys are killed. Mrs. Landingham says “You have to think that at that moment they wanted their mother.” and just concludes “So yeah… I miss my boys.” I barely hear her because 18 minutes in and I am openly weeping.

Ooof….

Okay – to wrap up Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber (Sam and Josh). After being specifically told by Leo to not talk to Sam’s friend, they do it anyway. It goes as about as disastrously wrong as you can imagine. (Mainly since they forget that Democrats can’t keep it in their pants as much as Republicans can’t.) It really gets Sorkiny as there is a lot YOU ARE THE GOOD GUYS!!! nonsense that makes me wanna throat punch a bunch of folks. Apologies are made. Leo rightly yells at them too. Now with the benefit of having watched the entire show, you realize that this is the setup for both an important thing in Season 2 and a series long theme of Josh and Leo always being there for each other (except when they aren’t) and sometimes being dumb assess.

I guess in the angle more befitting of the season, Toby has to deal with red tape trying to contact someone, ANYONE, who might care about Walter Huffnagle dying. This makes him more and more determined to do something to honor the man. Toby arranges for a military funeral with full Honor Guard for Walter by pulling strings using the President’s name. He finds out that Walter has a special needs brother who is also homeless. He brings the brother and Mrs. Landingham (who asks to attend the funeral too) to Arlington National Cemetery and the end of the episode is the funeral all while a boys choir is sing Little Drummer Boy in the White House lobby. So yeah… I am weeping again.

The filler of the episode is Mandy being Mandy (I still can’t get over her and Rob Lowe were originally to be the focus of the show) and the President sneaking off to do Christmas shopping which is a concept that Sorkin really loves (see The American President).

There is also some Leo and Margaret and some Josh and Donna stuff.

All in all one of the more “known” and better received episodes. Also considered in the top two of their “Christmas” episodes. But that is more another time. Highly recommend watching just know you won’t really be happy for awhile.

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I have to echo what @Curt McGirtsaid about Full Moon pictures.

In the 80s and 90s, I haunted a few different video stores and always looked forward to whatever had a Full Moon logo.

Trancers and Subspecies were probably my favorites from their franchise titles.

Never was a fan of Puppet Master, but they had quite a few lesser known films I enjoyed like Doctor Mordred, Oblivion, and The Dead Hate the Living.

They always seemed to get the most out of their (low) budget.

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On 12/16/2020 at 6:06 PM, RIPPA said:

Ultimately Ginny is hit with an anti-It's A Wonderful Life twist and she regains her spirit in the end.

I'm dying to know what an "anti-It's A Wonder Life twist" is. She's shown how much better the world would be without her in it?

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