{"id":14477,"date":"2015-12-21T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T00:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=14477"},"modified":"2015-12-19T02:00:51","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T02:00:51","slug":"christmas-fall-and-winter-movie-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/21\/christmas-fall-and-winter-movie-roundup\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Fall and Winter Movie Roundup!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"namcopacxmas\"<\/a>Usually at the end of summer, I\u2019ll write a blog about the movies I saw during the past few months, as I see a lot of movies during that time. It\u2019s pretty rare for me to see a bunch of movies any other time of the year, but this Fall and Winter I did.\u00a0 So I decided to write a little blog about what I saw, just for fun.\u00a0 I\u2019ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but just in case something slips out, you\u2019ve been warned!<\/p>\n

Rifftrax: Miami Connection<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite TV show of all time is Mystery Science Theater 3000. They would show old movies while a guy and two robot puppets would make fun of the movie via silhouettes at the bottom of the screen.\u00a0 The show\u2019s not on anymore, but some of the people who worked on MST3K do something very similar called Rifftrax.\u00a0 It\u2019s like MST3K without the robot puppets on the bottom of the screen.\u00a0 While I do miss those puppets, Rifftrax is still pretty funny and sometimes they do live performances that are simulcast to theaters around the country. You pay more for that, which I don\u2019t like, but it\u2019s still worth it most of the time.\u00a0 In the Fall they did a movie called Miami Connection that I went to see, and it was full of 80\u2019s cheese.\u00a0 This was also about the time that ninjas were popular in the 80\u2019s, so the movie was full of that, too.\u00a0 If you ever wondered where video games like Streets of Rage, Final Fight, and Ninja Gaiden got their ideas, this was one of them!\u00a0 In the movie, a group of friends who practice martial arts and also play in an awful rock band fight drug lords protected by a group of ninjas.\u00a0 I wish my brother Jeff could\u2019ve watched it, too, as he likes 80\u2019s cheesy movies, and he wasn\u2019t even BORN in the 80\u2019s!\u00a0 Someone must\u2019ve had an influence on him, you think?<\/p>\n

Rifftrax: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny<\/strong><\/p>\n

In December I saw another Rifftrax screening of three Christmas shorts and a feature film. The theme of all these were how WEIRD and BIZARRE you could get!\u00a0 In the first short, from the 1930\u2019s, Santa Claus tells kids about Monkey Santa, who gives gifts to all the good monkeys.\u00a0 They then show monkeys dressed up like people doing things, which I guess was entertaining back then.\u00a0 The next short, which was done in the 60\u2019s, was a Christmas poem about a girl and her mouse, cat, dog, and dragon named Custard.\u00a0 The actors were kids dressed in crappy costumes.\u00a0 In the story, a pirate breaks in and tries to rob the place, but Custard eats him all up and opens up his Christmas present early: a cage for him to sleep in.\u00a0 The next short, also from around the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s, tells the story of one of Santa\u2019s workshops and a costumed wolf and skunk who work there, and they look like something out of Five Nights at Freddy\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The main feature was also done in the 70\u2019s, and is about Santa getting stuck on a Florida beach. Kids come and bring livestock to try and pull his sleigh out of the sand, but it doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 Santa then tells the children a story about Jack and the Beanstalk, which has crappy props and takes up most of the movie.\u00a0 And finally, the kids get a rabbit mascot, called the Ice Cream Bunny, from a nearby theme park to come with a car to drive Santa away.\u00a0 And that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Normally I hate to blame drugs on things people make that are a little strange.\u00a0 But in this instance, I\u2019m sure drugs were involved in at least one of the films!\u00a0 It was just too weird to feel like Christmas!<\/p>\n

The Peanuts Movie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite being computer animated, I think they really got the feel of the classic animated Peanuts specials, and I really liked it. Heck, I even liked the Peanuts Movie better than The Good Dinosaur, and it\u2019s pretty rare for me to rate anything above Pixar.\u00a0 But then, Peanuts were really popular in the 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s when I was a kid.\u00a0 Actually, newspaper comic strips in general seemed more popular back then.\u00a0 Do kids even read comic strips anymore?\u00a0 At any rate, the Peanuts Movie is just a nice, wholesome G-rated film with good messages that you can take the whole family to see, and there are not a lot of movies like that anymore.<\/p>\n

The Good Dinosaur<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just because I liked the Peanuts movie more, it doesn\u2019t mean I didn\u2019t like The Good Dinosaur. It was still a good movie.\u00a0 I liked how creative they were about the whole \u2018asteroid missing the Earth that killed the dinosaurs\u2019 thing, and depicting dinosaurs as farmers and ranchers.\u00a0 The problems I had with the movie was that half of it felt like The Land Before Time, and the other half was full of typical Disney stereotypes in terms of plot and events.\u00a0 I also didn\u2019t care much for the short that preceded the film, but I wouldn\u2019t mind seeing it again with some of my Indian friends to see if they felt the short treated their beliefs with dignity and respect.<\/p>\n

Star Wars: The Force Awakens<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, so first of all, I want to say that I\u2019m going to try and write about the new movie and not have any spoilers. The only things I\u2019ll mention are things you can already see in the trailers. So are we cool? Cool.<\/p>\n

But first a bit of background. Star Wars first came out in the late 70\u2019s and early 80\u2019s when I was a little kid, and it was really big for me back then.\u00a0 Definitely a large part of my childhood.\u00a0 That was one of the few toy lines I got into as a kid.\u00a0 But I\u2019m still not a HUGE Star Wars nut.\u00a0 I don\u2019t play any of the games outside of LEGO Star Wars and I don\u2019t read any of the books or any of the side stuff.\u00a0 I just enjoy the movies and remembering having fun with them as a kid.\u00a0 I think the reason why the first three movies worked so well was because of timing, since there weren\u2019t any movies out at the time that were quite like that.\u00a0 They also kept things simple.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s why the newer set of three movies (Episode 1, 2, and 3) weren\u2019t as good because there were already movies out like that, so it didn\u2019t have the timing like the original did.\u00a0 And they mucked up the plots with useless political trade blockade senate stuff that nobody wanted to know about anyway.\u00a0 Actually I don\u2019t think the first 3 Episodes are THAT bad, but they certainly aren\u2019t as memorable to me.\u00a0 But at the end of the day, most of the Star Wars movies are just fun science fiction flicks you can take nearly the whole family to see, and that\u2019s all I\u2019ve really viewed them as.\u00a0 I guess some would say that I\u2019m not a TRUE Star Wars fan because I like characters that everyone else hates.\u00a0 Yes, that means my favorite characters are the Ewoks, and I don\u2019t really even mind Jar Jar Binks that much.\u00a0 But then, I do tend to like annoying characters, and those ones certainly were annoying!<\/p>\n

So what do I think of The Force Awakens? Well, they played it safe with this one, and it worked!\u00a0 Why fix what isn\u2019t broken?\u00a0 They kept things simple like the first three movies, and there wasn\u2019t a slow or dull point in the two and a half hours, which is an amazing feat.\u00a0 So they are on the right track to reclaiming Star Wars\u2019 former glory.\u00a0 Normally when I see a movie, even one I really like, I don\u2019t go see it a second time in a theater.\u00a0 But I\u2019d be willing to see The Force Awakens in a theater again, that\u2019s how good it was.\u00a0 And if you watch the movie with \u2018little kid\u2019 eyes, (or even marketing eyes), so many things in that movie would make cool toys!\u00a0 You can probably guess who my favorite character was.\u00a0 Yup, that\u2019s right, the little rolling droid named BB-8 or B-88 or whatever.\u00a0 Is it just me, or did anyone else want to sing \u2018Na naaa, na na na na naaaa, Katamari Damacyyyy\u201d whenever that little guy was rolling around?\u00a0 I came up with a name for him myself: Katamar-2 D2.\u00a0 My favorite vehicle was also in the trailers.\u00a0 You remember that little floating motorbike thing that one of the characters was driving about in the desert?\u00a0 I liked that one because it looked like a Fudgesicle.\u00a0 Fudge\u2026sicle\u2026cycle\u2026Fudgecycle.\u00a0 So in short, it\u2019s a good movie.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t say anything more about the movie, but I will talk about the theater we went to see it in. My family and I went to see it opening night at one of those theaters where they serve you food as you watch the movie.\u00a0 But this one was really nice and the seats even reclined and you could put your feet up, and the food was decent, too.\u00a0 They even had Star Wars themed menu items, so you know I had to get those.\u00a0 The one I got was called The Dark Sliders, and they were little fancy sandwiches with pork and brie and prosciutto cheese.\u00a0 They also had the Jabba the Hut Dog and Bagels & Lox.\u00a0 I don\u2019t get why bagels and salmon was Star Wars themed, but then, I never even heard of bagels & lox until after I graduated college because I\u2019m from the South and bagels aren\u2019t as big down here as they are up north.\u00a0 They also had some Star Wars drinks, too.\u00a0 The Skywalker and Vader-ade were colored blue and red, respectively.\u00a0 And they even put a blue or red glow stick in the drink, like a lightsaber!\u00a0 There was also a non-alcoholic beverage for kids called Padowan Punch, but nobody ordered that one so I don\u2019t know what it was like.\u00a0 And that was the movie!\u00a0 I had a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

In the comments section, let me know what movies you\u2019ve seen lately, too! That\u2019s all for now! Later!\u00a0 And Merry Christmas!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Usually at the end of summer, I\u2019ll write a blog about the movies I saw during the past few months, as I see a lot of movies during that time. It\u2019s pretty rare for me to see a bunch of movies any other time of the year, but this Fall and Winter I did.\u00a0 So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14479,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14477\/revisions\/14479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}