Banter is one of those things I really dig in movies and TV.

Some actors really nail banter.

Dennis Leary and Kevin Spacey are two of those actors. And they’re both at the top of their game in The Ref. (Which happens to be a Christmas movie, in case you didn’t know.)

Family gatherings at the holidays can be stressful things. We see that clearly in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. For every bit of utter silliness in that movie, there’s equal measure of darker dysfunction in The Ref.

For some reason, that sort of dark holiday comedy didn’t play well to the movie-goers of 1994.

But there was an audience, a pretty solid and continually growing one, for this sharp and biting commentary-filled dark comedy.

If you haven’t seen it, you should.

Watch me talk about it in today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…”

Words spoken by a man who’s traveled across the country to spend the holidays with his ex-wife and daughter. He stopped in at her company Christmas party.

Things went… poorly.

That (kind of) sums up the basic setup for one of my favorite Christmas movies, Die Hard.

I’m not sure everyone realizes it’s a Christmas movie. Let alone that it’a a pretty good Christmas movie (it is, after all, kind of about family and hope and giving just the right gifts and just the right time…).

It’s also one of the best action movies of all times. High bullet count. A suitable number of explosions. More than it’s fare share of quotable bits. One of the best villains ever. And a doggone iconic American action hero in Bruce Willis’ John McClane.

It spawned more than a couple of sequels (only one of those is really even close to being as good as the original) and introduced more than a couple of sayings into the lexicon of the general population.

Plus, it’s good fun.

Watch me go on for a bit about it in today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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I love most episodes of The Twilight Zone (both the original and the “new” one from 1985-ish… we don’t talk much about that 2002-ish version, better to pretend there were only one or two episodes of that).

There’s one particular episode, though, that I really try to watch around Christmas. The Night of the Meek is high on my list of favorite TZ episodes for a number of reasons, not the last of which is the great performance by Art Carney.

It’s just one of those stories that helps to remind me that good is something that can happen, sometimes unexpectedly, in the most unusual ways… no matter what history and experience have to say about it.

In today’s vlog, I talk about it a bit.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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There are few characters more easily recognizable than Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. One of the reasons for that is how prominently they’ve been featured in various media forms over the years.

For those of us in Generation X, there’s a really good chance that when you think of those (and so many other) characters, you think of the animated (either stop-motion or classic style) versions put out on TV by Rankin-Bass from the mid-60s through 2001.

Here’s a quick list of all the Christmas-related specials they did in that time:

• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)
• Cricket on the Hearth (1967)
• The Little Drummer Boy (1968)
• Frosty the Snowman (1969)
• Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970)
• ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974)
• The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
• The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow (1975)
• Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (1976)
• Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (1976)
• The Little Drummer Boy, Book II (1976)
• Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977)
• The Stingiest Man in Town (1978)
• Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979) (summer)
• Jack Frost (1979)
• Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980)
• The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold (1981)
• The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985)
• Santa Baby! (2001)

That’s… a lot of shows piling up in subsequent years (like all through the 80s). Honestly, I don’t even remember all of these, so we can safely say that some were much better than others.

Tell me which one is your favorite.

And watch me go on about these in today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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There are a handful of movies that pretty much became instant Christmas Classics in my life.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is one of those movies.

It’s got a high-talent cast working with a script from one of the 80s best comedy writers (John Hughes) and touches on something a whole lot of people can related to: all the craziness that just staying home for the holidays can lead to.

More important, it’s got heart. That one scene when Clark’s stuck up in the attic watching old home movies? Utterly fantastic.

This is one of those yearly “must watch” movies for me. Same goes for a lot of people I know.

Watch me go on a bit out it in today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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