Mrs Heathen enjoys trolling the category lists on the Tivo this time of year, mostly looking for the specials of our youth in the innocent 70s, but about a week ago — during a visit by Mama Nia and the Ultilopp — we saw something that sounded so awful and ill-conceived that we just had to tell the Tivo to grab it.

Last night, with the same company over, we watched it.

Oh. My. God.

The film in question is the unparalled and completely unequaled Santa’s Slay, from 2005 (straight to video, for reasons that will become obvious). It’s a Christmas-themed comedy horror, although it’s really only unassailably in one of those categories, since it’s neither funny nor scary enough to qualify for the other two. At least it’s clearly Yuletide.

The argument is this: Notwithstanding what you’ve previously been told, Santa is the product of a second immaculate conception, this time between the devil and the Virgin Erica (we’re sure that’s an inside joke we don’t get). This original Santa was as evil as the normal one is beneficent, and the wintertime “Christ mass” we all know and love was originally undertaken by the faithful to seek protection from his annual murderous rampage.

With me so far?

At some point, ol’ Santa loses a curling match with an angel, and as a consequence is forced to be nice for a thousand years, a period that conveniently expires at the start of the film, thereby laying the groundwork for the carnage that ensues.

And so it begins. Santa — played, of course, by an enormous Jewish wrestler — makes his entrance in the movie’s first minutes; during a dysfunctional Christmas Eve dinner at (an uncredited) James Caan‘s opulent family home, Santa descends the chimney, bursts through the brick mantle a la Kool Aid, and brutally dispatches the family (Chris Kattan (kicked into hutch), Fran Drescher (set afire; drowned in egg nog — this may have been the high point of the film), and Rebecca Gayheart in cameos) before moving on to spread his particularly lethal brand of cheer.

There is, of course, a good-hearted teen, the sometime object of his affection (Lost‘s Emilie de Ravin), a crooked pastor Dave Thomas, naturally), and the apparently-crazy-but-really-wise grandfather (Robert Culp) who has mysterious but longstanding anti-Christmas views. The town’s deli — where, of course, both teens work — is run by a not-long-for-this-world Saul Rubinek, who meets his end pinned to the wall with a menorah.

You can imagine the rest of the film, I’m sure. Good-Hearted Teen (“GHT”) discovers, more or less simultaneously, that Santa is an enormous killing machine AND the “real” story behind Santa from his perhaps-not-so-nutty grandpa, who is easy to peg as the aforementioned angel well before the origin sequence.

(Said origin bit is actually another high point: it’s done in a halfassed Rankin-Bass style (think Rudolph), which makes it clear the filmmaker was at least trying for something smarter or at least cleverer than he ended up with here.)

Santa pursues our GHT with the help of his Viking-themed sled, pulled through the holiday skies (of course) by a man-eating white ox, and loaded (of course) with explosive presents he throws like grenades. There is, obviously, massacre in a strip club (quoth Santa: “Naughty!”), a snowmobile chase, a showdown in an ice rink, a curling rematch, and a gun nut with a bazooka who saves the day.

I swear, as God is my witness, I am not making ANY of this up, and it’s easily as bad as I’ve described here.

(However, it’s still better than this.)

Tim Burton to direct Alice in Wonderland film.

We’ve been enjoying The Big Bang Theory for two main reasons: one, it features a Houstonian and alum of our favorite local (and sadly defunct) theater company; and two, it’s doing a fine job with actual geek humor and personality types.

What we didn’t realize is that the names of the main characters — Sheldon and Leonard — are a tribute to a film and television producer, director, writer, and actor who, among other things, played Nick the bartender in It’s A Wonderful Life.

Techdirt points out the most interesting thing about Viacom’s decision to offer South Park online for free: What many have by now forgotten is that South Park began life as a viral video passed around on the Internet.

Here is our copy, preserved from back when its size actually was a problem (50MB Quicktime), around 1997. We first saw it a bit earlier, on videotape, via a friend of ours who was working at LucasArts at the time; we put this around New Year’s ’95-96 or ’96-97 (no earlier; the short was created for Christmas 1995).

The upcoming Watchmen film has a blog that includes some stills of the lot that look PERFECT as well as casting information.

I’m nearly certain they’re going to fuck this up, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still hope for the best.

(Via MakingLight.)

Terminus is a pleasantly weird short (8 minutes and change) about a man being stalked by a figure made of concrete who, apparently, only wants to dance.

No, seriously.

(Widely linked.)

We are complete and unrepentant fanboys about few things, but Blade Runner is on the list, and there’s a really awesome 5-DVD reissue coming out for Christmas. You do the math.

A DVD set of the first couple seasons of Sesame Street has a disclaimer on it: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

I [NYT writer Virginia Heffernan] asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

Elyse Sewell has some amusing pirate Arrested Development DVDs:

In Hong Kong, I bought a pirated box set of Arrested Development. You can watch it with Chinese or English subtitles.

Imagine you’re a poor sap working at the pirate DVD factory writing the Chinese subtitles for this show. There’s no Chinese alphabet, only ideograms, so when you have to subtitle a word like “Michael,” or “Lindsay,” or “Buster,” or “Warden Gentles,” the only thing you can do is pick out a couple of ideograms whose pronunciation roughly approximates the sound of the name.

So, you might pick the character “mai” and the character “ko.” It wouldn’t matter what the ideograms meant in Chinese as long as they sounded pretty much like “Michael” when read aloud.

Fine.

But this is a pirated DVD — whoever made it didn’t have access to the faithful English subtitles that would accompany a legitimate Arrested Development DVD. So they had to write their own at the pirate factory. And for some reason, they didn’t make the English subtitles using the audio from the show. They back-translated the Chinese subtitles.

Madcap hilarity via screencap ensues. Click through for giggles.

So, Fox has announced that Joss Whedon will be helming a new show starring Buffy alumna Eliza Dushku called Dollhouse.

Based on Fox’s prior behavior, there is already a petition online to keep Fox from cancelling it.

“Winona Ryder to suckle Spock in Star Trek XI.”

Ze Frank returns from retirement to provide us with some commentary on the Writers’ Strike, among other things. Don’t miss it, especially if you’re Mrs Heathen.

We pay more attention to cast than most people, we guess, since we’re constantly hitting Wikipedia and IMDB on the living-room laptops when we find ourselves wonder “Hey! Who is that guy?”

Tonight we hit something funny. Geeking out, watching Bionic Woman, we long-ago noticed that Jaime’s handler/minder/repair tech appeared on Friday Night Lights as Herc, Jason Street’s rehab wheelchair rugby buddy. What we didn’t know, though, is that a much earlier role for him was a minor appearance on Buffy, as the nasty brother to Tara Maclay in the “Family” episode back in 2000; we had to check the YouTube clip a couple times before we were convinced. He rather disappears into a role.

Guy’s name is Kevin Rankin, and his debut was, oddly enough, in another film we love: The Apostle, and he guested on Six Feet Under several times as well.

Check out this clip from the Christianist anti-commie schlockfest that is If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? The film, a product of the feverishly paranoid mind of New Albany, Mississippi preacher Estus Pirkle (what a name! Call Pynchon!), paints a bizarre picture of the dangers facing America from Godless Communism. If you thought the work of Ed Wood was bad, well, this stuff makes Plan 9 look like the Godfather.

Webb is back.

We’d kill for a copy of Corn Flicks on DVD.

Quash fan-driven sing-along theater showings of a popular episode of a cancelled tv show.

So, last night the accumulated Heathen tribe gathered at our Offsite Film, Drum, and Violin Headquarters for food and cinema; this week’s pick was The Science of Sleep.

Without really trying to, we’ve actually managed to track the intertwining careers of writer/director Michel Gondry and his sometime collaborator Charlie Kaufman. “Sleep” is a Gondry-only joint, but on two prior occasions Gondry has directed Kaufman scripts: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which we (and all right-thinking people) loved, and Human Nature, which we’ve missed somehow. It doesn’t take a particularly astute observer to note Gondry’s interest in the subconscious and unconscious aspects of our minds.

Kaufman, with other directors, is responsible for such gems as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, so it’s sort of fun to use these data points to plot out what constitutes Gondry+Kaufman, and what elements occur only in their solo work; a clear element in common is an interest in the idea of consciousness, both above and below the awareness water-line.

This game gets easier when one factors in Gondry’s short-form work in music videos, most famously with Bjork, for whom he did “Human Behavior” and (our favorite) Bachelorette. He’s also responsible for the Foo Fighters clip for Everlong, which includes a visual shared with Stephane’s dreams in “Science of Sleep.”

(Something we didn’t realize: Gondry directed David Chappelle’s Block Party, which only intensifies our desire to see it.)

In any case, Gondry has two more bits coming up, though neither involve Kaufman. Set for 2008 release is Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. (Click through for a synopsis and you’ll understand our enthusiasm; squint a bit and you can still see Gondry’s obsession with perception and consciousness.) Following that, presumably, is the adaptation of Rudy Rucker’s Master of Space and Time, currently said to be “in development.”

For his part, Kaufman will direct his own work for the first time Synecdoche, New York, also in development.

We can’t wait.

Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, presented by the Leprechaun Brothers.

This reminds us of the previously noted excellent Muppet Matrix, and the previously unlinked excellent Pulp Muppets.

Joey Devilla has put up (but did not compile) a fairly exhaustive side-by-side list of scenes from the Simpsons with their celluloid antecedents. Odds are you caught some of these, but we’ll bet dollars to donuts you didn’t catch them all.

NBC has no shows at iTunes now, we hear, because they didn’t like Apple’s terms, and because they wanted stricter DRM. Here’s why this is stupid: they’ve essentially forced anybody who wants to watch something not on the TV to download it. Already, Australia and Great Britain account for an enormous portion of illegally downloaded American TV — not because those places are rife with scofflaws, but because that’s the only way they can get those shows without waiting for them to be released on DVD or shown locally. Taking Show X off iTunes means that folks who want to watch that on their iPods on their morning train ride will have to resort to illegal means to do it. NBC is, in effect, encouraging piracy. Clever move, boys!

These films about regret are bitter, but they’re also very funny. Enjoy. (Via MeFi.)

It turns out there are far more Trunk Monkey ads than we previously realized. Here’s a compilation (that, oddly, omits the last 2 listed at the link — watch them first, to avoid spoilers). (Thanks, Rob.)

We’re not sure how we got there, but we’re very disturbed to discover that the actress who played Newt in Aliens is now a 31-year-old California schoolteacher.

Yikes.

Yeah, so Milch’s latest has been given the kiss-off by HBO, which is understandable, we reckon, since its 10 episodes required actual thought in a world dominated by television shows that penalize said. It was still good, and fun, and thoughtful, and if that wasn’t enough, it used a Joe Strummer track for a theme song. Here’s a video clip of Strummer playing said song on Letterman only a few years back; enjoy.

Minesweeper: The Movie

(Via MeFi.)

Via MeFi, here’s a NYT article on the guy Simon based Omar on. Good stuff.

“Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are satisfied.”

No Country For Old Men is based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.

This time, they bring back a pile of Coen regulars, augmented by heavy hitters like Tommy Lee Jones, newcomers like Deadwood/John from Cincinnati’s Garret Dillahunt, and character actors like Stephen Root and Barry Corbin (Maurice Minnifield!). It’s set for limited release in November. We can’t wait.

(Via Ectomo.)

Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso.

The Village Voice ran an interview with Zala, Strompolos, and Zala earlier this month. The film based on their film of a film is still on-track, and the article includes a shot of the “three boys” with Speilberg, which would be a great ending to the story even if they weren’t making the movie.

It’s no surprise that some bits of Kentucky Fried Movie are on YouTube, of course, but this morning we’ve come across two bits we all know and love:

• “Life without Zinc Oxide;” do kids still watch awful, dated educational films?
• “Christ, did a cow shit in here?“

Enjoy.

Occasional Superheroine points out that 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of What’s Opera, Doc?:

“Opera” is more than just an icon of several generations’ childhoods; this piece is perhaps Jones’ best work, and was voted the #1 animated short of all time by a poll of animation pros. Jones is also the only animator with three shorts selected for preservation in the National Film registry; the somewhat surreal One Froggy Evening (YouTube) from 1955 and the fourth-wall-demolishing Duck Amuck (YouTube) from 1951 round out his trifecta (they are, incidentally, #5 and #2 in the aforementioned greatest-cartoon list). Enjoy.

All 260 iterations of ‘fuck’ from the Big Lebowski, condensed into 2:14. It is: the most beautiful things we’ve seen today.

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow got some great shots of a street in New Haven completely re-dressed in 1950s drag for some exteriors shot for the new Indiana Jones movie. The level of detail is pretty spiffy.

Bob Harris has just about convinced us that Tony Soprano is dead. David Chase put a lot into that last episode that points pretty clearly to that conclusion, if you’re watching carefully.

Two years ago, we wrote of Richard Yates, the least well-known of the postwar writers, and the only one who used to be our neighbor 16 years and a lifetime ago in Tuscaloosa. His most famous work, Revolutionary Road, may now find the audience it’s always deserved, as MeFi reports it’s becoming a film helmed by Sam Mendes.

A few years ago — say, before seeing The Departed — we’d have been discouraged by the casting, since it reunites Leo with Kate as the protagonist Wheelers. We’ve mellowed, though, and the once-annoying DiCaprio has matured a bit, so we remain optimistic.

Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (no, not this one) is reportedly in talks with DC to continue Veronica’s adventures in print, thereby allowing him to use currently-fallow 4th season storylines after all.

Hey, good enough for Joss Whedon is good enough for Veronica.

We just caught the tail end of Leaving Las Vegas on IFC, and were amazed to see the following appeared in the film. We figure we need to see the whole thing again just to verify:

• Richard Lewis, Steven Weber, and CSI:Miami‘s Emily Proctor (though she’ll always be Ainsley to us) are all in the first scene (at the restaurant)
• Law & Order’s Carey Lowell
• Third Rock from the Sun‘s French Stewart
• Fucking R. Lee Ermey as a “Conventioneer”
• Mariska Hartigay — i.e., daughter of Jayne Mansfield, now famous as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU — as “hooker at bar”
• Julian Lennon as “Bartender #3 in Biker Bar”

Control, a biopic of Joy Division‘s Ian Curtis, opened at Cannes this year.

Why Frances Conroy is in this movie, and why that movie is on “American Movie Classics.”

So, Patriot Games is on cable.

Uncomfortable moment: watching Sean Bean as Sean Miller stalk Thora Birch as Sallie Ryan, and realizing you’ve seen Sallie Ryan’s tits.

She totally owns Colbert. Watch Colbert actually lose the character and blush like a schoolboy, which is hilarious.

We’ve been calling it the “horny whiney doctor show,” but frankly Ms Stanley at the NYT provides even better snark:

Thursday’s two-hour episode of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” in which Addison (Kate Walsh) has an emotional meltdown and flees Seattle Grace Hospital for a fancy wellness clinic in Los Angeles, serves as a prelude to a new, still untitled series centered on Addison and her new life in Southern California. It also suggests that the spinoff is doomed to be even sillier and more sex-obsessed than the original. And that is an achievement, considering that “Grey’s Anatomy” managed to squeeze in love scenes for a disfigured, pregnant disaster victim with amnesia.

Seven Minutes of Sopranos: the entire run up to now edited into a 7-minute narrative. NSFW. YouTube.

Some new Sony DVDs won’t play in some DVD players. Ever-consumer-friendly Sony has acknowledged the issue, but says, basically, they’re working as intended, and that the only fix is to update your DVD player to work around their new copy protection.

Um, Sony? You really, really suck, and people are getting really, really tired of your bullshit. Someone in some non-entertainment division of Sony — which is to say, a division with better profit numbers — should make clear to the adminosphere there just how much Entertainment’s meddling has cost them in terms of the marketplace. The company that created portable, private music can’t seem to make a decent MP3 deck, and the meddling and copyright-paranoid entertainment division is the biggest part of why. This newest DRM kerfluffle is just more evidence they’re doomed.

Wil Ferrell needs to pay the Landlord. (MeFi)

Check out the Parker/Stone parody of industrial films created when Bronfman picked up Universal; cameos by Michael J. Fox, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Demi Moore, Tracy Lords, Sly Stallone and Brian Grazer.

Serenity beat out Star Wars as best Sci-Fi movie ever in an SFX magazine poll. Of course, Whedon’s flick is actually a Western, but that’s ok since Lucas’ saga started out as a remake of a Japanese picture anyway.

Shiny!

(Rounding out the top ten: Blade Runner; Planet of the Apes; The Matrix; Alien; Forbidden Planet; 2001; The Terminator; Back to the Future. We were with them right up until the teen movie at the end.)

Watching all the Criterion DVDs and the blogging about it, like this guy. Our favorite review so far is for Rushmore.

Joey Devilla gives us two posts of 300-based Photoshop fun. Enjoy.