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I don't know if your Christmas week is anything like mine (if you even have a Christmas week, that is), but every year, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the couch.  It's a good way to be with family without having to, y'know, talk with anyone.  I usually lay there, using my mind only to ponder how full my belly is and wondering how long it will take me to digest enough to make room for another slice of pecan pie. But this year, instead of mindless entertainment, I intend to engage with some movies!  Maybe that will take my mind off of food.  For a little while, at least.  Here's what's good this week, in the central/eastern format.  I'm also moving overnight movies to the prior day write-up, which is my policy from here forward.

Monday, December 22:

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Hey, kids. Frosty the Snowman here. I gotta say, I’m not feeling the love from the Screengrab this holiday season. I was certain this week would see their Top 10 List of Greatest Snowman Movies Ever. After all, there are so many great ones to choose from. Who doesn’t shed a tear every year during their annual viewing of Jack Frost, the heartwarming tale of Michael Keaton becoming a snowman and learning to be a better dad? And then there’s, uh, the other Jack Frost, about the mutant killer snowman, and its sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.

But no, instead we get this list of The Best and Worst Stage-to Screen Adaptations of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight). What does that have to do with snowmen? And even when they do acknowledge the Christmas season, as in the 12 Days of Christmas Marathon (Bad Santa and The Star Wars Holiday Special) or Yesterday’s Hits: The Santa Clause, my brothers in snow get nary a mention.

Still, I’m willing to rise above it all and point out a few of my favorite posts of the week, if only they’ll turn up the air conditioning in here.

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Welcome to installment #2 of the Screengrab's leisurely holiday stroll through some of the most beloved Christmas movies in holiday history:  the 12 Days of Christmas marathon!  You certainly don't have to do what I did, and watch all of these movies in a row over a period of two days, but if you do go that route, make sure you have a really comfortable chair and a lot of stuff to mix with your eggnog.  For our second go-round, we decided to follow the path set for us by The Nightmare Before Christmas  and move on to another movie with a somewhat jaundiced view of the season.  But while The Nightmare Before Christmas was a harmless kid's toy, the equivalent of a scampish M-80 in the toilet of Christmas cinema, today's movie is substantially more dangerous and unpredictable, a grenade pitched into a urinal.

Released in 2003, Bad Santa was the second narrative film directed by Terry Zwigoff, and his first attempt at full-blown comedy.  It's a movie that could easily have gone astray:  the last thing the world needs is another picture about a cynical, world-weary rogue who cons his way through Christmas only to find redemption and learn to love again at the hands of a good woman and/or an adorably winning urchin.  And to be sure, Bad Santa has those elements in spades, to the degree that plenty of people, already leery of Zwigoff's ability to handle broad humor as adeptly as he'd handled teen angst in his previous effort Ghost World were getting pretty nervous.  Casting Billy Bob Thornton, who had already been tempted to the dark side of mediocre but high-paying blockbusters, didn't help much.

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Well, it’s the holidays again, and that means that Christmas movies are back in season. But while Christmas movies have long been an annual tradition, in the last few decades the market for new holiday-themed classics has grown by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when scruffy little movies like A Christmas Story would do decent business in theatres only to become classics on video and cable. Today, Christmas movies are big business, and rare is the big budget holiday movie that doesn’t clean up at the box office. For my next three Yesterday’s Hits columns, I’ll be taking a new look at three of the biggest holiday hits of all time, to get you all in the spirit of the season. This week, I’ll begin with the 1994 blockbuster The Santa Clause.

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Thanks to reader Cameron for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run in two weeks) see the bottom of this post.

I only have myself to blame. When I first came up with Reviews By Request, I did so in the hope that some loyal Screengrab readers would be recommend some treasures I hadn’t yet seen. However, there was always that fear that I’d left myself open for someone to come along and request something really terrible, and I would be committed to it by my word. And now, sure enough, it’s happened. I can’t begin to guess why reader Cameron might recommend William Girdler’s Three on a Meathook. Perhaps he legitimately likes the movie, or maybe he wanted to shake up the format a bit by recommending something crappy. Perhaps he’s one of those democratic souls who believe that every movie deserves a fair shake. Whatever the reason, I’ll honor his request. I’ve given my word, and I’ll be damned if Three on a Meathook is the movie that’s going to make me break my word.

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In case you’ve slept through this past weekend, the summer movie season got off to a roaring start with the big-budget adaptation of Iron Man. With many more comic book movies in store this summer, and even more after that, I figured it was about time to catch up with former Screengrab contributor and all around good dude Kent M. Beeson. As a comic-book fan and movie buff of long standing, Kent recently secured a position with the Web site comiXology, writing a bi-weekly column entitled The Watchman. Kent was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule- which also includes numerous freelance jobs as well as a wife and 14-month-old daughter- to conduct this interview via e-Mail.

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The good thing about being Judd Apatow right now is that you can get starring vehicles for practically your entire stock company. The bad news is that...

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NEW YORK: At Warner Bros. during the prime days of the studio system, Joan Blondell was the platonic ideal of the wisecracking dame, always a pal to the heroine or the hero, hard-working and always dependably lively and funny and likable. She never became a star in her own right, but she was one of those performers who audiences came to be grateful for, knowing that even in bad pictures, she could be counted on to provide some entertaining relief from the dull center of the movie. She kept working long enough to appear in the 1977 John Cassavettes film Opening Night and inspire Seymour Krim to call her "the last of the great troupers." In a move guaranteed to get them on Santa's good side, the Museum of Modern Art pays her tribute with "Joan Blondell: The Bombshell from Ninety-First Street", running from December 19 through January 1. The schedule of golden oldies includes a couple of her many collaborations with James Cagney, including the Busby Berkeley musical Footlight Parade — remember, the baby Jesus cries whenever anyone blows off a chance to see Cagney dance — and such choice, juicy Pre-Code melodramas as Night Nurse (1931), with Joan advising Barbara Stanwyck on how to deal with a household terrorized by a violent, sexually mesmeric Clark Gable, and Three on a Match (1932), in which Humphrey Bogart grins and mimes rubbing something under his nose to tip off the hipsters in the audience as to why Ann Dvorak is acting so tense and hysterical and looking even more wide-eyed than usual. The schedule also includes the 1947 carny noir Nightmare Alley, featuring the older, irresistibly blowzy Joan in one of her best later roles as the fortune teller Zeena, who tutors Tyrone Power in the dark arts of fleecing the suckers, with results that bring happiness to no one.

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