Tinseltown - The Holiday Movie Podcast

The Mayor and Colleen subject themselves to Alvin and the Chipmunks, which is a fully dedicated Christmas movie for the first two acts and then just sort of gives up on it. Along the way, David Cross shows an admirable work ethic, Jason Lee shows the opposite of that, and, possibly delirious from recording three episodes in a row, Colleen develops an oddly plausible alternate plot.

Courtney once again rejoins the Mayor to descend into the purgatory that is Babes in Toyland, but this time on her own terms. Not that it helps. This one is a 1986 TV movie starring Drew Barrymore and Keanu Reeves, with all new songs by Leslie Bricusse and new script by... Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and novelist Paul Zindel? Huh. Okay.

The Mayor and Robbie journey back to a time when people were still afraid to say no to Jim Carrey and see where that led them with "Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas", a movie which really doesn't earn its possessive title. Fair warning: This is an UPSETTINGLY horny movie. Also, the debut of the hottest segment in podcasting, "Robbie and Brian stare at the back of a Canadian two dollar co...

Look, WE KNOW. We know we sound like raving lunatics throughout this entire review, but Lord help us, we have to try to summarize the most convoluted movie ever made by a director who's famous for making convoluted movies. Trust me, YOU ARE LESS CONFUSED THAN WE WERE. Anyway, it's me and David talking about Richard Kelly's "The Box". Get ready for a lot of us saying "It wasn't really clear if..."

The Mayor and Anton are surprised by being UTTERLY DELIGHTED by "Santa's Slay", a goofball spook-em comedy starring a number of surprisingly famous Jewish people. Featuring lots of holiday deaths, lots of terrible puns, and the most high-stakes curling match since that one episode of Little Mosque. I though about adding a brief contextualizing note about Goldberg's recent appearance in the news, w...

The Mayor is joined once again by Colleen, Miss Average Girl 1941, to review that most classic Frank Capra movie about a guy committing suicide on Christmas Eve, "Meet John Doe". Well, second most classic. We already did the other one. Discussion topics include: Some uncomfortable modern political parallels, the Academy Award for Most Speeches, and a display of 1940s sexism so insane that it liter...

The Mayor and Emily look at Love Actually, a wonderful, terrible movie set in old Blighty, eh wot, guv? We play a game of "Who's the Worst Person In This Movie" for the first time since Rent, choose the best and worst plotlines, and the Mayor does either a terrible Liam Neeson impression or a great Chris O'Dowd impression.

The Mayor and Flonk meet up to review "Iron Man 3", the first of many films on the list from noted Christmas fan Shane Black. We also review a dozen or so other recent superhero films. WATCH OUT, JARED LETO! 

The Mayor visits beautiful Oregon, America, to stay a few days with Justin. And how does he repay Justin for this kindness? By making him watch goddamn Reindeer Games, an action movie that could be about 15 minutes long if anyone in it acted like a human. You think you've seen a complicated villain plot before? YOU HAVE NOT. And we gave them SO MANY OUTS.

The Mayor and Colleen look at the fourth entry in Mickey Rooney's star-making franchise, "Love Finds Andy Hardy". A more accurate title would be "A Number of Entirely Physical Infatuations Find Andy Hardy, and he Doesn't Even Deserve That Much." Join us, as we attempt to distract ourselves from the charmless and terrible lead character by figuring out how much money he's spending once you adjust f...

Courtney returns to the Mayor's office to watch another damn Babes in Toyland movie, this time the 1961 Disney attempt. Courtney rewrites all the songs to be much better, the writers scrape the bottom of the nursery rhyme barrel, and we wonder when we're going to get Taffy in one of these. You know, Taffy? The Welshman?

The Mayor is joined by his sister Katie to discuss "The Family Man", an extremely Nicolas Cage movie which is like if A Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life had a really disappointing child. We discuss why we should all live in fear of Don Cheadle, Katie confronts her unreliable memory, and the Mayor asks for assistance from his second greatest enemy, montages. (His greatest enemy is, of cour...

The Mayor is joined by real-life movie critic and Christmas film expert Alonso Duralde to discuss Scrooge, which is certainly not the worst thing Leslie Bricusse has ever done. We discuss why people keep putting Albert Finney in musicals, we are charmed by 70s movie lighting, we examine the state of Albert Finney's fingernails, we identify every single actor as being in ten thousand other British...

The Mayor is joined by independent comics artist Scott Ziolko to discuss "Bad Moms' Christmas", a movie which even we, a good dad and a childless mayor, can tell was written by guys. Remember, every time we accidentally sound like we're reducing these women to stereotypes, that's actually the movie. We're trying our best. Topics include: Can this movie find a balance between crudeness and heart? W...

Ron "AAlgar" Watt of the Sarcastic Voyage Theater and Post Atomic Horror stops by the mayor's office to help review THE Christmas movie, "It's A Wonderful Life". No pressure here. Just the simple story of an utter sap who bums out everyone around him, and totally holds back his wife, a bridge architect/private investigator with several advanced degrees. We also discuss Mr. Potter's interior decora...

Special guest Maggie Rowbotham of the Post Atomic Horror podcast joins the mayor to talk about that most Christmassy of topics, Batman Returns. We discuss why Penguin has the worst possible henchman theme, why Chip Shreck is the best character, and whether it might be a good idea to occasionally feature Batman in a Batman movie.   Note: For personal reasons, Maggie's name is mispronounced by both...

The mayor makes a big announcement, and follows it up with several short reviews of several short movies, mostly "Mickey's Christmas Carol" and "Olaf's Frozen Adventure." Fans of the Mayor's old Disney movie blog will be pleased to see that he rambles semi-coherently about animators for a few minutes. 

The Mayor and Justin discuss Strange Days, a cyber-noir mysterio-thriller that never quite decides what it wants to be. Topics include: Ralph Fiennes' fake American accent, excessive jargon in sci-fi movies, Angela Bassett has two tickets to the gun show, and if any of the four or five movies this wants to be is actually a good one. Also featuring the classic game: "Who's the Most Evil Character A...

David Anthony of Three Pints Shy joins the mayor to review Holiday Inn. Not the hotel chain, the movie. Topics include: *Child actors and why they are terrible *Bing Crosby isn't capable of pretending to play piano *We attempt to keep a love quadrangle straight that stars Bing as Jim, Fred as Ted, and women named Linda and Lila *David briefly has trouble telling fantasy from reality *And, of cours...

The Mayor and Robbie confront the Tim Allen vehicle "The Santa Clause", which takes several big swings and we don't really know if any of them were good ideas. Discussion points: What sadist invented the Radboard? Why does the movie hate psychiatrists? Did the elves plan the murder of Santa from the beginning? Is a snow globe a toy? And is Judge Reinhold stoned out of his gourd for the whole film?

The Mayor and Robbie broadcast live from a glass house as they do countless terrible celebrity impressions while criticizing the countless terrible celebrity impressions on hand in "Rich Little's Christmas Carol". In our defense, we aren't basing our entire gimmick around impressions, and also we remember to tell jokes. WHICH IS MORE THAN WE CAN SAY FOR RICH LITTLE.

The Mayor and Emily sit down to watch "House of Yes", a Thanksgiving movie about incest and the JFK assassination that stars Tori Spelling and Freddie Prinze Jr. The only reason this wasn't more shocking than "The Nutcracker in 3D" is because we skimmed the Wikipedia article ahead of time.

The Mayor and Emily talk about Rent, the movie that takes an entertaining if somewhat problematic show, and does its best to remove all the entertainment. Topics include the perils of turning songs to dialogue, which of these people is the worst (probably Mark), what on earth is the point of setting it in 1989, and can Roger bring back the Canadian tuxedo. In this week's "Naughty and Nice" segment...

Colleen and the Mayor review "Christmas in Connecticut", a cautionary tale about conniving women trying to steal our farms.  Colleen is confounded by 1940s sexism, the mayor is mostly just elated that he finally has an impression he's actually good at. Topics include: How the movie mostly avoids being racist, which character is probably secretly gay, the secret history of square dancing (again), a...

Colleen returns to the Mayor's office to bring us "All I Want for Christmas", a reeeeeeeal 90s kids' movie. Discussion points: Sandra Day O'Connor and Nazi hunters.