Directed by Justin Knodel, who wrote it with Chris Levine (who stars as Nick) and Christopher McGahan, Saint Nick is about Diane (Rachel Alig), who has a business trip over the holidays. Her son Trevor’s (Alex Lizzul) father can’t pick him up, so she’s forced to ask her brother Nick to watch him.
Nick spends all of his time in a bar and is the last person you’d want to watch your kid. But as you’ll learn, spending a week together over the holidays is probably the best thing that could happen to the two of these characters.
Everyone goes above and beyond in this indie comedy to make it way better than you’d expect. It makes fun of the schmaltz of Hallmark holiday movies without falling into the same problems. I had fun with it and if you’re looking something new over the holidays, this might be it.
This film promises “An AI generated “Al Gore” exposes the climate scare as a political tool to undermine capitalism and impose big government socialist ideals upon voters.”
Except that the AI for it is from Eleven Labs, the same site I use to create voiceovers for my podcast. It’s AI as much as it’s a program that does voices but it isn’t a program that can take on the mind of another human being and answer questions as them.
Director Joel Gilbert, who worked for Gore when he was a Senator, has learned that Harvard professor Roger Revelle was the source of Gore’s climate alarmism, in spite of Revelle supposedly rejecting those theories.
You may watch this and start to believe that, but there’s also the 2014 movie Merchants of Doubt, in which its explained that alate in his life, Revelle agreed to coauthor a paper with Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia Fred Singer.
Soon after he agreed to write it, Revelle had a near-fatal heart attack. Singer then wrote most of the paper, including several sections arguing that climate change wasn’t the threat everyone says that it is nor is it understood enough for the government to be involved.
After Revelle’s death, Singer began telling people that Revelle shared his views on climate change. Revelle’s family and graduate student Justin Lancaster claim that Revelle regretted working with Singer and saw global warming as a serious issue up until his death.
Singer sued Lancaster over his claims, but some believe that these lawsuits were to undermine scientific evidence and prevent the public from distinguishing between legitimate and sham research.
Alright, two claims down.
But anyways…
Let me give Joel Gilbert a break and keep on explaining this movie.
Gilbert learned that the real origin of Al Gore’s climate apocalypse came from his time at Vanderbilt Divinity School and also explains how Gore plagiarized a radical environmental book from the 1940s to produce his 1992 manifesto, Earth in the Balance.
Most of this movie is Gilbert confronting what they refer to a an AI generated ‘Al Gore about his entire life story, such as his struggle to fulfill the political ambitions laid out for him by his parents.
Again, if you look at the credits, the AI is used to simulate the voice of Gore. Perhaps it was used to write some of the script, but almost every word feels inserted into the former Vice President’s mouth. There’s also a credit for the lip animation, which is why the “AI” Al Gore looks like he’s saying the words.
By the end of this movie, Gilbert believes that he has exposed “the climate scare as nothing more than a political tool used by groups who wish to undermine free-market capitalism and impose big government socialist ideals upon unsuspecting voters.”
Gilbert is also from Pittsburgh, just like me, so we need to get a beer and talk about the movies he’s made that I’m more interested in, like Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison and Elvis Found Alive. In no way to I want to talk about The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America or Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad’s Coming War For Islamic Revival And Obama’s Politics of Defeat. He’s also made several — many, many — Bob Dylan movies.
I mean, maybe I don’t want that beer. Look at this, from Wikipedia: “In 2019, George Zimmerman, represented by Larry Klayman, filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Trayvon Martin’s parents (Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin) as well as Attorney Ben Crump, who had represented the family. Zimmerman’s lawsuit was based on the allegations made in Gilbert’s book.” He also made Dreams from My Real Father, in which he claimed that President Obama’s “real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a communist from Chicago, and that Obama’s mother posed for nude photography.”
He’s also classified his Paul and Elvis movies as mockumentaries before going into political films.
Are we now in a world where we can interview people we always wanted to even if they don’t want to be interviewed, all so they can say exactly what we want them to say?
I watched Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and didn’t enjoy myself, saying “Am I too old? Did I not grow up on Twitch?”
There were some very interesting comments that I read that explained why it meant something to other people. I went into I Saw the TV Glow with an open mind, as I was hoping I’d find something here that was missing for me.
Happily, I found it.
In 1996, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) feel isolate yet bond over a show called The Pink Opaque, which has Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey “Snail Mail” Jordan) using their psychic powers to save themselves from Mr. Melancholy (Emma Portner), who can warp reality.
Owen’s parents are strict and he’s not allowed to stay up late, so he sneaks over to Maddy’s house to watch it. When he can’t, she gives him VHS tapes of it. She confesses that the show is more real to her than life itself.
Two years later, the two decide to run away. Maddy has an abusive stepfather who won’t leave her alone and she gets out. Owen stays behind as people wonder where Maddy went with her mother dying of cancer never seeing her daughter again. The TV show is cancelled. Life moves on.
Ten years later and Owen is still living with his father Frank (Fred Durst) and working in a movie theater. One night, Maddy appears and claims that she’s been living in the show for eight years. She makes Owen rewatch the tape of the last episode, as Mr. Melancholy buries the heroes alive and traps them in the Midnight Realm. He has a nervous breakdown and puts his head through his TV set.
Maddy reveals that she is Tara and that the episodes they watched are the real stories of their lives and reality is the Midnight Realm. She tries to bury Owen alive to show him the truth but he doesn’t go with her again and never sees her again.
Years later, after his father has died of a stroke and he’s moved on to work at an arcade, he watches The Pink Opaque and it isn’t how he remembered. It’s boring and a bit silly, but he has bigger things like being an adult to worry about.
Sixteen years later, Owen is still working in that arcade when he feels like he’s going to die. He makes his way to the bathroom and slices his chest open to reveal a TV playing the show. He staggers back out into the real — is it real? — world, apologizing to everyone.
What would is real? I wonder, Maddy refers to her friend Amanda as a “secret agent sent here to make my life miserable.” Amanda is played by Emma Portner, who is also Mr. Melancholy, Marco and the evil clown. Maybe Maddy is on to something.
If The Pink Opaque came back for a sixth season, its heroines would have climbed out of their own graves, just like Buffy did in season six, episode one of her show.
Schoenbrun wrote this movie three months after they had begun undergoing hormone replacement therapy. While this avoids making transitioning or coming out explicitly central to the plot, it informs the story. They said that this was about the “egg crack,” a moment in a trans person’s life when they realize their identity doesn’t match their gender.
They went more into this subject, saying “TV Glow is about something I think a lot of trans people understand… The tension between the space that you exist within, which feels like home, and the simultaneous terror and liberation of understanding that that space might not be able to hold you in your true form. I think many people, even if they are sympathetic to narratives of biological-family estrangement, still want to believe in resolution or restorative reparative work. And I think this does a disservice to queer people who are not in control of whether that work can be done.”It’s also no accident that Amber Benson is in this. She was Tara on Buffy, which The Pink Opaque seems similar to, in addition to Pete and Pete (Michael C. Maronna and Danny Tamberelli from that show appear) and Twin Peaks. But seeing as how it has the same font as Buffy…
Producer Dave McCarey directed the film Brigsby Bear, which gets into some of the same ideas. A lot of it is similar to the creepypasta show Channel Zero‘s first season, “Candle Cove.”
As a straight male, I know a lot of this won’t be understable to me. But I’m trying. And I know what it’s like to disappear into TV shows and movies when the real world hasn’t lived up to what you want it to be or when it just seems too dark. That’s universal, at least for some of us, and that feeling of belonging within something no one else knows, of being in a secret club, and perhaps that club could be real? That’s what this movie understands and articulates so well.
It has also taught me to be patient, because even if you don’t like one film, you should perhaps watch it again or give a filmmaker another chance.
Katie Pendleton’s (Amanda Jordan) horse sanctuary may be forced to close unless she can convince her grandfather Ben (Stuart Johnson) to show up at a Christmas benefit concert. Yet the one-time bluegrass star has been hiding for years. Why is it closing? Because the Breckenridge family — Jim (Mike Shara) and Grant (David Pinard) — want to race a horse named Chocolate and Katie won’t allow them, so they take all their money away.
Well, Grant actually isn’t all that bad. And he wants to date Katie and learn more about her grandfather because he loves bluegrass. I have no knowledge of this music genre — or horses — so I am the perfect person to review this.
Her grandfather refuses to perform, so he gets country star Claire Crosby (Chelsea Green) to show up. Now this is something I do know. She’s a pro wrestler who used to be Laurel Van Ness in Impact and Reklusa in Lucha Underground, as well as wrestling for Pro WrestlinG Stardom in Japan. Before she came to WWE full-time, she was Daniel Bryan’s physical therapist Megan Miller and in an angle said he cheated on his wife Brie Bella with her.
This has nothing to do with Christmas, horses or bluegrass.
Almost every movie director Marco Deufemia has worked on is a holiday film. Writer Chris Dowling directed and wrote the series Blue Ridge. If you’re looking for a holiday movie that has a concert and horses, well, you came to the right stable.
Imagine: A Satanic epic that predates The Witch but made on a farm in the 1970s. And also an adult movie. Let’s learn about Zebedy Colt and The Devil Inside Her.
Norma (Brooke Shields) is stuck with a broken down truck when she’s picked up by Roger (Perry King), who is on his way to his cabin in the woods. Roger is a dream man, a lover of fine food, opera and antiques. However, he tells her that he hopes to get back with Joanna, who just so happens to get back sooner than our thieving woman — oh yes, Norma may not even be her real name — expected.
“Good evening, creeps. And welcome aboard Tales from the Crypt Scare-lines Flight 666, offering direct service from your living room straight to Hell. As we will be experiencing some tur-boo-lence, we recommend that you keep your seat belts fastened and your vomit bags handy. So slip on your dead-set and get ready for tonight’s in-fright entertainment. It’s a nasty tale about my favorite kind of ghouls: dread-heads. I call it: “Came the Dawn.””
Norma may be a killer who murdered her husband and his lover. Yet she’s come up against someone — maybe more than just a single person — instead of getting to steal everything in the house. Michael J. Pollard also shows up and Valerie Wildman appears as the first victim. This has a big twist that I will let you find out for yourself.
This episode was directed by Uli Edel, who made Christiane F. How insane that he made his way to America — where he also directed Last Exit to Brooklyn and Body of Evidence — before working on TV shows like Twin Peaks, Oz and this episode. He also did The Little Vampire! What a strange career! Ron Finley, who wrote this, made five scripts for the series.
This is based on the story “Came the Dawn” from Shock SuspenStories #9, which was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Wally Wood. The description of that story is a little different: “A man thinks that the girl he has met in the woods may be a dangerous escaped lunatic because she matches the description, but his girlfriend ends up meeting a grim fate as the latest victim of the true escapee.”
Directed by Jesse Palangio and written by Rossa McPhillips and Simon Phillips, Blood and Snow is going to invite critical comparisons to The Thing, as its about a meteor landing near an oil well in Canada and a woman named Marie (Anne-Carolyne Binette) who is infected by it. She’s taken back to the base by Sebastian (Michael Swatton) and Luke (Simon Phillips) and — as you probably guessed by now — something isn’t right.
It’s always nice to see Vernon Wells in a movie. Here, he’s The Professor, one of the few scientists who might be able to figure this out. As for Marie, she wants to spread the virus inside her, starting with the rescue team that is coming to save everyone.
This obviously has nowhere near the budget that it needs to have, nor does the way too quick ending close things up the right way. But for what it cost — and tempered expectations — it’s a fine cold weather alien movie. There’s hardly any gore, either. Movies don’t need it, but when you’re expecting something based on what this is cribbing notes from, a little guts would be lovely.
The Cleopatra Entertainment blu ray of this movie has a trailer and slide show. You can buy it from MVD.
Starting as a YouTube series, Infinite Santa 8000 starts at the end of all things, as humanity has been destroyed. Somehow, some way, Santa Claus (Duane Bruce) and his cyborg wife Martha (Tara Henry) have survived. Instead of getting the rest he deserves, mutants and robots keep attacking, as they hate what Christmas means.
When Dr. Shackleton steals Martha, Santa must get in his sleigh, power up his robotic reindeer and make his way through whatever is left on our planet, battling monsters and even the Easter Bunny.
Created by Greg Ansin and Michael Neen, this Director’s Cut has new scenes, re-animated and retouched shots, and has been recut to match the original script. It’s not for kids — unless your children want to see a robot-eyed Santa blow away mecha bats and kill for food — but for the older amongst you, this will make a fine holiday special. It has a death count of 854 and a rough and dynamic animation style that constantly has a fight happening almost every single moment.
The Synapse blu ray features commentary with creators Ansin and Neel, the complete original 13-part web series, multiple interviews with cast and crew, original promotional trailers and two music videos.
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