Below is a list of my favorite television episodes about the Christmas holiday:
TOP TEN FAVORITE CHRISTMAS TELEVISION EPISODES
1. "Friends" - (6.10) "The One With the Routine" - Joey Tribianni's girlfriend invites him, Monica and Ross Gellar to accompany her to the taping of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve". Meanwhile, Chandler Bing, Rachel Green and Phoebe Buffay try to search for the Christmas presents that Monica gave them, so they can give her appropriate presents in return.
2. "The West Wing" - (2.10) "Noël" - Christmas bells and music forces Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman to deal with the aftermath of being shot during an assassination attempt earlier in the season.
3. "Chuck" - (2.11) "Chuck Versus Santa Claus" - An amateur criminal on the run from the police crashes into the Buy More and takes Chuck Bartowski, his sister Ellie, her fiance Devon and the Buy More employees hostage on Christmas Eve.
4. "Seinfeld" - (6.10) "The Race" - Jerry Seinfeld meets an school old rival, who suspects that he had cheated in a high school race and wishes to re-run it. Elaine Benes finds out her boyfriend is a Communist, who convinces Cosmo Kramer to become one.
5. "Magnum P.I." - (4.10) "Operation Silent Night" - Christmas Eve holds some unusual surprises for Thomas Magnum, T.C. (Theodore Calvin), Rick Wright and Jonathan Higgins when their helicopter crash on a deserted island via that the a Navy is planning to use for artillery practice.
6. "Remington Steele" - (4.09) "Dancer, Prancer, Donner and Steele" - The Remington Steele Detective Agency's Christmas party is interrupted by three gun-wielding Santas, who take everyone hostage and threaten to blow up the building.
7. "Monk" - (4.09) "Mr. Monk and the Secret Santa" - Police consultant Adrian Monk investigates the death of a police detective who dies at a S.F.P.D. Christmas party after drinking from a poisoned bottle of port that was delivered to Captain Leland Stottlemeyer.
8. "The Twilight Zone" - (2.11) "The Night of the Meek" - Art Carney starred in this classic episode as a drunken department store Santa Claus, who is fired on Christmas Eve before finding a bag that gives people anything they want.
9. "Homicide: Life on the Streets" - (3.08) "All Through the House" - When the squad face duty on Christmas Eve, John Munch and Stanley Bolander investigate the death of a streetside Santa Claus. Meanwhile, Meldrick Lewis and Megan Russert try to find a young woman's killer. And Tim Bayliss tries to hustle his colleagues in cards during a quiet night in the squad room.
10. "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" - (1.10) "The Long Christmas Eve" - Agency spies Amanda King and Lee Stetson's violent encounter with two KGB agents lead to a long night of détente on Christmas Eve inside an isolated cabin.
"STEVE JOBS" (2015) ReviewI might as well say it up front. "STEVE JOBS" is a strange film. At least to me. It is probably the oddest film I have ever seen in 2015. There are a good number of aspects about this film that makes it so odd to me. Judging from the title of this film, it is not hard to surmise that "STEVE JOBS" is a biography about the late co-founder of Apple, Inc. Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin, the movie was inspired by Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography. Sorkin's screnplay was also inspired by a series of interviews he had conducted with people who had known Steve Jobs. So far . . . there seemed to be nothing odd about this film. And it is not the first biopic about Jobs. But what made this movie so odd? Well, I will tell you.The movie is divided into three acts. Each act is set during an event in which Jobs launches one of his computer products. Act One is set in 1984 in which Jobs and marketing executive Joanna Hoffman deal with problems before the Apple Macintosh launch. Act Two features Jobs preparing for the NeXT Computer launch at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall in 1988. The final act is set in 1998, in which Jobs, who has been named CEO of Apple, Inc., prepares to launch the iMac, the computer that restored the company's fortunes. All three acts also feature Jobs interacting with the following people:*Joanna Hoffman - Jobs' marketing executive and confidant*Steve Wozniak - Apple, Inc. co-founder and creator of the Apple II*John Sculley - CEO of Apple from 1983 to 1993*Chrisann Brennan - Jobs' former girlfriend*Andy Hertzfeld - Member of the original AppleMacintosh team*Joel Pforzheimer - GQ Magazine journalist, who interviews Jobs throughout the film*Lisa Brennan-Jobs - the daughter of Steve Jobs and Chrisann BrennanBy now, many would realize that the movie really is not about those new products being launched by Jobs throughout the film. It seemed to be about his relationships with the other major characters featured in this movie. However, by the time I watched the movie's final frame, it occurred to me that "STEVE JOBS" was really about his relationship with his oldest offspring, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, who aged from six to twenty years old in this film. What was so special about this particular relationship? Well, according to Sorkin's screenplay, Jobs and Brennan had a brief fling toward the end of the 1970s, which resulted in Lisa's conception. However, Jobs had refused to acknowledge Lisa as his daughter for several years. Once he did, their relationship continued to be fraught with tensions, due to Jobs' suspicions that Lisa's mother was an erratic parent who was using the girl to acquire a lot more money from him. By the time Lisa is a twenty year-old college student, father and daughter have a spat over her apparent failure to prevent her mother from selling the house he had given them and his threat to withhold her college tuition.And this is the problem I had with "STEVE JOBS". Do not get me wrong. Most of the performances in this movie were excellent - including those by Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, Michael Stuhlbarg and Perla Haney-Jardine, who portrayed the 19-20 year-old Lisa. Michael Fassbender, in my opinion, gave a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. In fact, I feel he really deserves one. So does Kate Winslet, whom I thought was brilliant as the pragmatic and loyal Joanna Hoffman. Whether the Motion Picture Academy and the Hollywood community will remember Fassbender and Winslet's performances when the award season begins, I do not know.I also felt that the subject of this movie was interesting. I also found the various products launched by Jobs, along with his impact or lack thereof on Apple, Inc. throughout this period rather interesting, as well. And Jobs' relationships with Hoffman, Wozniak, Sculley and Hertzfeld were also interesting. But I eventually realized these topics were minor in compare to Jobs' relationship with Lisa. Even during his conversations with the other characters, the topics of Lisa, Chrisann and his own complicated childhood were brought up by the other characters. This movie was really about Jobs' role as a father. And that is why it ended in such an abrupt manner, when he and Lisa finally managed to reconcile right before the iMac launch. And honestly, I feel this was a mistake.Despite the fine performances and the interesting topics featured in this film, I left the theaters feeling somewhat gypped. I thought I was going to see a biographical movie about Steve Jobs and his impact upon the high tech community and the people he knew. To a certain extent, that is what Boyle and Sorkin gave the audiences. But this movie was really about Jobs' relationship with his daughter Lisa. And instead of admitting it outright, I feel that Boyle and Sorkin manipulated the audiences into realizing this. No wonder everyone else kept bringing up the topic of Lisa. No wonder the movie was only set between 1984 and 1998. No wonder it ended so abruptly, following his reconciliation with Lisa. And no wonder this movie failed to make a profit at the box office. For a movie with such potential, I found it rather disappointing in the end.
”THE TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY” (1991) ReviewSeven years following the release of the 1984 movie, ”THE TERMINATOR”, James Cameron wrote, produced and directed the first of three sequels called ”TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY”. Like its predecessor, the film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. It also became one of the most highly critical and successful action films of the 1990s. Although released in 1991, the movie is set in 1995 – eleven years after the first one. John Connor (Edward Furlong) is now ten years old and living in Los Angeles with foster parents. His mother Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) had been preparing him throughout his childhood for his future role as the leader of the human Resistance against Skynet. Unfortunately, was arrested after attempting to bomb a computer factory and sent to a hospital for the criminally insane under the supervision of Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen), the psychiatrist who had examined time traveler Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) in the first film. Skynet sends a newly advanced Terminator, a T-1000 (Robert Patrick) that assumes the identity of a police officer, back in time to 1995 to kill John. Meanwhile, the future John Connor has sent back a reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), identical to the one that attacked Sarah, to protect his younger self.Like the first film, ”TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY” is a thrilling and tense action film that made breakthroughs in the area special effects in film. And like in the first film, Cameron and his co-writer, William Wisher Jr. (sans Gale Anne Hurd, who only served as a producer for this film), created a story that centered around a future cyborg sent back in time to prevent a certain John Connor from ever becoming the leader of the Human Resistance against the future self-aware computer system, Skynet. Perhaps I should have said one of the storylines. Thanks to information garnered by young John’s Terminator protector, the Connors learns that the man most directly responsible for Skynet's creation is Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton), a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new microprocessor that will form the basis for Skynet. This particular storyline lead to one of the film’s more interesting scenes that feature Dyson’s reaction to the consequences his work and a great performance by Joe Morton. Another favorite scene featured the Terminator’s first rescue of John Connor from the T-1000 that had been sent to kill the latter. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s interactions with Edward Furlong not only provided some laughs in these scenes, but also a great deal of poignancy, as the two quickly form an immediate bond.If I have to name one sequence that struck me as the movie’s pièce de résistance, it had to be the one that featured John and the T-800’s attempt to rescue Sarah from the Pescadero State Hospital, during one of her escape attempts. The entire sequence began with John convincing his T-800 savior to rescue his mother from the mental hospital in case the T-1000 came after her. John’s decision came at a time when Sarah decided to make her own escape after Dr. Silberman had rejected her request to receive a visit from her son. This exciting sequence culminated in a bizarre moment that featured Sarah’s first terrified glimpse of the T-800 coming to her rescue. By this time, the T-1000 had arrived at the hospital, killing anyone who stood in its way. This is probably one of the finest action sequences I have ever seen on screen in the past decade or two. And it is not surprising that it is the one sequence that many recall when speaking of the movie.The movie had received a great deal of accolades for its special effects. Did it deserve it? In regard to the Industrial Light & Magic’s design of the T-1000, I would say yes. As for Stan Winston’s effects, I thought he did a good job. But I could find nothing to get excited about.The movie also featured some pretty solid performances from the cast. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a better performance in this film, considering that he was allowed to project more emotion than he did in the 1984 film. This is not surprising considering that the T-800 he portrayed in this film got to learn a great deal about human emotions from the 10 year-old John. Robert Patrick found himself in the same as Schwarzenegger was in the last film – portraying a remorseless and efficient killer with little emotion. And frankly, I found him just as scary. I had commented earlier on Joe Morton’s performance in a very important scene featuring his character, Myles Dyson. Not only do I stand by my comments, I would also like to add that I was impressed by his acting altogether. It was nice to see Earl Boen reprise his role as Dr. Silberman, the police psychiatrist who had examined Kyle Reese in the first film. My only gripe is that the movie never mentioned his first meeting with Sarah, back in 1984. Linda Hamilton had certainly wowed many fans of her transformation of the Sarah Connor character. In this movie, her Sarah is a tough and ruthless woman determined to ensure her son’s survival at any costs. And from the moment the camera first focuses upon her doing arm lifts inside her hospital cell, the audience gets a strong idea on how much Sarah had changed. But for me, the movie belonged to Edward Furlong, the first actor to portray future Human Resistance leader, John Connor. Furlong was around 13-14 years old at the time. And he did a superb job in combining the different aspects of the 10 year-old John’s personality – the child who had clung to his T-800 protector as a father figure, the bold and wayward delinquent that robbed from ATM machines and the tough street kid taught to survive by his high strung mother. It is not surprising that Furlong ended up winning both a Saturn Award and a MTV Movie Award for his performance.Is ”TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY” perfect? No. In fact I have more than a few “quibbles” about the movie. Let me start with my first problem with this film . . . Linda Hamilton. Yes, I realize that I had complimented her performance in the previous paragraph. There were some positive aspects to it. But it also annoyed me. I had read that it was Hamilton who suggested that Sarah Connor become psychotic in the intervening years after her encounter with the Terminator in 1984. Frankly, I wish to God that Cameron had NOT taken her advice. I realize that fans loved this new aspect of Sarah’s personality. I did not. I saw no reason to turn her into a borderline psychotic in order to make her seem tough. And the movie never really explained why after so many years, Sarah had mentally gone around the bend. My second problem with the movie centered on the T-1000. I had no problem with Robert Patrick’s performance. I did have a problem that the movie’s main villain managed to disappear from the screen for nearly an hour. After Sarah, John and the T-800 managed to evade him following Sarah’s escape from the mental hospital, he simply disappeared, while they a) headed south toward the U.S.-Mexico border and then b) returned to Malibu and met Myles Dyson; and c) helped Dyson steal the central processing unit(CPU) and arm of the 1984 Terminator.. At least 45-50 minutes had passed before the T-1000 appeared on the screen again. And my biggest problem with this film centered around the finale and the T-1000’s attempt to use Sarah to capture and kill John. Why do I have a problem with this entire sequence? It was TOO . . . DAMN . . . LONG!! It was too long. Why did Cameron forced the audience to watch the T-1000 chase down and attempt to kill John for nearly a half hour? It was not necessary. And why on earth did Sarah believe or even hope that following the destruction of the CPU, the old Terminator’s arm and the 1995 T-800’s sacrifice; Judgment Day may have been averted? She had proof standing next to her that it would happen – namely her son, John. If they had really averted Judgment Day, John would cease to exist. Without Judgment Day, Kyle Reese would never have a reason to travel back to 1984 and meet Sarah Connor.Do not get me wrong. I enjoyed ”TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY” a lot. It was a first-rate continuation of the original movie’s plot that involved one time traveler trying to prevent John Connor from becoming the Humans’ resistance leader and another time traveler sent to act as a protector. And in this movie, the protagonists also try to prevent Judgment Day. But there were times when I felt that its reputation as one of the finest science-fiction films ever made is overrated. I did not care for the psychotic turn of Sarah Connor’s character. The T-1000 managed to disappear from the story longer than necessary. In fact, the showdown between the Connors, the T-800 and the T-1000 dragged the film’s last half hour. But I would still recommend this movie to anyone who asked about it.
