As we’re still unable to go to theatres at the moment, the Mischief crew have decided to bring the theatre into our homes - hooray! Their improvised show Mischief Movie Night has gone online, starting yesterday and streaming every day until New Year’s Eve. I was lucky enough to see this show in person a few year’s ago and although I’ve never been entirely comfortable with improv, you know you’re in safe hands with this crew.
Not everyone loves Christmas, obviously, and even more so when the festive season is taken out of context and moved to a different season than you’re used to.
Peter Kay’s YouTube channel popped this video of Car Share clips up recently, highlighting when Kayleigh brought her Christmas CD into the car during the height of summer. John wasn’t impressed, to say the least!
My favourite quotes:
She says that’s all she wants for Christmas, but I bet you any money if that’s all you got her, on Christmas morning she’d lose her frigging mind.
I listened to the audiobook version of this, read by Hugh Quarshie, and it was a great reading but I can’t promise that I enjoyed the book as much as I was hoping. I was surprised at how close it was to the first film in the Bond series - I recognised a lot of the scenes in my head as they played out.
This is a work of art - a brand new Christmas musical has just popped up out of nowhere! It’s not perfect, the town is ridiculous, Dolly is as camp as ever, and I have a few questions about the story but if you put all that aside, it’s lovely.
One thing that’s become clear over the past year or so of chaos is that it’s helpful to focus on the things that you can control. With that in mind, I focused in on achieving my Apple activity badges each month - the personalised ones, not the all-three-rings-every-single-day one. At first it was just a bit of fun, and then, despite my best intentions, it became a complete the full year of badges project.
I think I liked this more than the first one - the story seems to hold together better and it’s interesting to see where the characters are growing together and growing up. Snowman having constant existential crises is incredible. There were areas that felt quite dark for a kid’s film, but you can’t underestimate kids these days, I guess.
In a festive season where everyone’s plans have gone awry, we instead focus on the Christmas content we know and love. There are so many TV Christmas specials out there, but only a few that I revisit on a regular basis. Here’s a countdown of five of them…
Vicar of Dibley - The Christmas Lunch Incident Just a joy from start to finish - Geraldine trying to do the best for her parishioners at the expense of her own sanity, as usual!
Firstly, this really is an incredible cast, and I really liked the individual stories. It’s natural to compare it to Love Actually - all those separate strands winding together towards the end. Unfortunately, the ending wasn’t the best part though, because I didn’t really buy them as a family. How are those two sisters? And the Arkin, Helms, Chalamet trio seem as unrelated as it’s possible to be.
Yea, I didn’t enjoy this. I was quite looking forward to a Christmas movie that wasn’t all festive and joy and light. Die Hard, anyone? But I didn’t know what was going on, the tone of it was all over the place, and I felt like it was going to take a long time to get going so… other Christmas movies to watch, thanks. Mel Gibson looked like he was doing a good job, though.
Now that I’ve finished watching the second season of The Mandalorian, I’ve been catching up with some of the news surrounding it. Whilst the show is on, I try and avoid articles because of spoilers, even if we were all watching at the same weekly pace. A story I read recently made me think about how great this second series has been for women - strong characters, great actors, and all those behind the scenes as well.