Top 5 “Classic” Christmas film Countdown!

There’s only 29 days until Christmas! Have you done your shopping yet? (If not, I have some brilliant hints for you here: http://hazny182.blogspot.com/2011/11/top-ten-tips-for-christmas-shopping.html)

Anyway, to get you into that Christmas spirit, I thought I’d run down my personal top 5 Christmas films, some classics some… well, you’ll see. I may, at a later date, do a list of my least favourite too (because there are some truly awful Christmas films out there… and some that should be awful but are in fact ruddy marvellous)

I would like to remind you now that all this is my own opinion and that I haven’t been sponsored or anything like that (for a start, I’m nowhere near famous enough to be influential…)

So, in the words of a very famous, fictional, Italian plumber – Here we go!

5.       The Santa Clause (1995) – the Christmas film that puts the laughter in manslaughter… fairly sure they didn’t put that on any of the promotional material, but it’s true. Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) accidently kills Santa and gets more than he bargains for when he dons the suite himself. I think what made the film for me is the brilliantly dry and sarcastic elf Bernard (David Krumholtz). The second film (The Santa Clause 2) is also good however “Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause” I found to be a bit of a let-down, possibly because of the severe lack of Bernard but mostly due to the annoyingly cheesy ending.

4.       Die Hard (1988) – It’s set at Christmas, so it counts. Fact. Bruce Willis (who still has hair at this point) plays New York cop John McClane who ends up stuck in a sky scraper that’s been over-run by terrorists and is the only one who can save the hostages from the building’s Christmas party – including his wife. It’s full of brilliant stunts, violence and explosions and McClane’s humour is the icing on the Christmas cake. The other 3 films in the series are also excellent, but sadly only the first and second films have any relevance to Christmas… but, hey, that’s two films for you guys to argue with your partners about watching!

3.       Home Alone (1990) – a brilliant, if terribly unrealistic, film full of comedy to suite the whole family. 8-year-old Kevin McCallister is left behind by his family when they go to Paris for the holidays and comes up with various ingenious ways to stop two dim-witted burglars from breaking into his house. The idea of a young child out-smarting two fully grown men is funny in itself, but McCallister’s witty lines and the copious amounts of slap-stick add to the hilarity and make it suitable for all ages.

2.       The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) – It’s a Charles Dickens’ classic with the Muppets and Michael Caine in it… what else could you possibly want? Essentially a re-telling of the traditional story where Scrooge (Michael Caine) is visited by three ghosts that just so happen to be puppets… The whole thing is narrated by Gonzo the Great and Rizzo the Rat, whose relationship adds an extra layer of hilarity to an already funny film.

1.       Scrooged (1988) – Bill. Murray. That is all…

Frank Cross (Murray), a cynical and selfish TV executive, is visited by 3 ghosts on Christmas Eve whilst he tries to put on a live performance of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” which, as I’m sure you can imagine, has hilarious consequences. The modern twist this film put on the Dickens classic makes it both more relevant and funnier and Bill Murray is excellent, as usual.

You will never understand how hard it was to narrow it down to just 5 films… Some other brilliant films that didn’t quite make the cut (but possibly would have if I had made this list a few days ago or a few days from now) include:

·         Gremlins (1984)

·         Miracle on 34^th Street (1994)

·         Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

And, arguably not a Christmas film, but there’s snow so I think it counts:

·         Edward Scissorhands (1990)

So, there you are. If that’s not enough to get your Christmas juices flowing, you should probably start practising saying “Bah-humbug!”

Until next time, merry 29 days ‘til Christmas!

Top Ten Tips for Christmas Shopping

There are just over 45 days left until CHRISTMAS!

I’m not over excited at all… what are you talking about?

If gender stereotypes are to be taken as accurate portrayals of reality then most of us women have already done some of our present-shopping, or at least written a list of what we’re going to buy for who, whilst the men are too preoccupied with sport/cars/half naked photos of women to have even realised that Christmas is next month. If you’re one of those people who has yet to give Christmas a thought (male or otherwise), here are my tips for how to successfully pretend you spent a lot of time, effort and money when buying your gifts. Enjoy!

(Please note, whilst a lot of this may well be quite practical and/or logical, this is really meant to be more of a bit of fun than a way to live your life – I am in no way responsible for any negative effects of following my ‘advice’… though I am credible for all positive out-comes… true fact… as far as I'm concerned anyway...)

1.       Start your prep work early – because thinking about who to buy for and what to buy for them takes time, as does buying the gifts, getting nice wrapping paper, find nice cards that aren’t too mushy-sounding and actually doing the wrapping.

2.       Make a list of who to buy for – even if you don’t write down what you’re going to buy them, make sure you have a list of everyone you need to buy a gift for and cross off people once you’ve bought their gift. There’s nothing worse than having all your nearest and dearest in one room, sitting round the fire as you pull out gifts from the big sack of presents you’ve bought, handing them out one at a time and realising the bag is empty without you having given your dearest mother/partner/10-year-old sibling their present.

3.       There’s no harm in asking – as long as there’s still more than 3 weeks before Christmas. If you ask someone what they want for Christmas much after this time, and they’ll either lecture you on why you should do your shopping earlier or get offended that you’ve only just bothered to ask and that “you should just know anyway; don’t you listen to anything I say? Don’t you know anything about me?”

4.       Pay attention! – It’s fairly easy to work out a great idea for a gift for someone even if they don’t tell you what they want (“Oh, you don’t need to get me anything, silly!” isn’t very helpful, I know). Either buy something they’ve been talking about  -  if they’ve been talking about a pair of shoes, a coat, a mug or something they like a lot then that’s normally a good hint that you should buy it for them – or something that has meaning; romantic, comic or otherwise. For example, getting a nice photo of you and your partner made into a print or canvas, or even just printed off and put in a nice frame, is always a good plan or, alternatively, if your friend spent a day talking about jams and pickles, a little hamper of mini jars of them would make a funny yet thoughtful gift. Failing that, women like chocolate and/or teddy bears and men like sport and/or technology – take it and run…

5.       The internet is your friend – despite what’s suggested in the Avenue Q song, the internet is not just for porn. Hopefully you should realise this, seeing as you’re reading my blog about Christmas shopping right now… It’s great for finding presents cheaply; sites such as “Amazon” and “The Hut” have loads of different items that could make great presents often for a much lower price than on the high street. Not always, but sometimes. Plus, there are sites like “I Want One Of Those” which have a large variety of unusual and quirky gift ideas, in case you’re still stuck.

6.       Think outside the box, then put it in one! – Buying something interesting and unusual is always a positive, as long as you’re sure the recipient will like it; there’s no point buying a mini hadron collider just to be unusual if your friend/relative/partner hates physics… unless they like smashing science-related things, particularly anything to do with particle physics… Anyway, if it’s an unusual shape, don’t worry about the awkward wrapping, but it inside a box! If you can’t afford or find a gift box, an appropriately sized cereal or tea box will work just as well, and if you don’t turn it inside out, you get the added bonus of seeing their face unwrap a box of Frosties*unexpectedly.
* Other brands of sugar coated flakes of corn are available, lol

7.       It’s all in the presentation – using nice wrapping paper, cellophane, gift bags, bows, bits of stringy-paper-shredded-fluff and the like not only makes it look more posh but also suggests you’ve taken greater thought when wrapping. Even just using a nice wrapping paper and putting a little ribbon and/or a nice tag on a gift instantly makes it look nicer and more cared for. Definitely don’t scrunch loads of newspaper round it and then wind it up in sticky tape; not even Ryan Reynolds would be forgiven for that.

8.       Take a break and a friend – if you intend on physically going shopping to get your gifts, you’re going to want to make several trips and bring someone along with you. For a start, you don’t want to feel pressured as you shop and knowing you have a friend there to help and the ability to continue shopping another day will certainly ease this and make it feel more like a social outing than a military exercise. Plus, it’s always handy having another set of hands if you’ve got a lot of people to buy for.

9.       Don’t leave it to the last minute – seriously. Just don’t. You’ll never get away with it.

And, finally:

10.   If you DO leave it to the last minute – there are better places than a petrol station to get presents! Forecourt flowers and a pine air freshener is not the only option available to you. Most supermarkets and even a lot of shopping centres will still be open on Christmas Eve. Some of them might even be open until late, you never know. Even if they’re not, take a drive down a motorway and stop at a Service station – at least they have proper shops with CDs, DVDs and books most of the time. And, if push comes to shove, you can always pretend you bought something online and “it hasn’t arrived yet; damn those postmen!” and try to make it up by offering your beloved some lovely cake you baked at half midnight by way of an apology.

Alternatively, you can ignore my advice and do what Joey and Chandler did on Friends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mi0EnuF4B0

Either way, until next time – Merry 45-days-until-Christmas!

***Bonus News Stuff***

Asteroid Yu55 didn’t crash into Earth (as you may have noticed). I have yet to find out what scientists have found out about the asteroid, however I do know that they were looking for signs of water as well as trying to work out the chemical composition of the material that it’s made from, though it is believed to be a common carbon-rich asteroid. Experts have run models to predict the asteroids path over the next 100 years and do not see it as being a threat to Earth within that time span (or after this time, despite not having run it through any models.)

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1109/Asteroid-2005-YU55-looks-like-a-giant-rock-floating-through-space-reports-astronomer