At the Sofaplex 21/12/09

8-Bit Christmas (PG)

Neil Patrick Harris, Steve Zahn.

I’ve seen this movie described as an update of A Christmas Story and it definitely has shades of that, though it may be even more family-friendly. Here, present-day dad Jake Doyle (Harris) tells his young, iPhone-wanting daughter Annie (Sophia Reid-Gantzert) about a Christmas back in the 1980s when he desperately wanted a Nintendo. His parents, Kathy (June Diane Raphael) and John (Zahn), go from not exactly knowing how to pronounce “Nintendo” to being violently opposed to ever having one in their house. Young Jake (Winslow Fegley) and his friends try a variety of schemes to ensure that one of them will wind up with a Nintendo while Jake’s younger sister Lizzy (Bellaluna Resnick) works on getting that equally rare item, the Cabbage Patch Kid.

I thoroughly enjoyed this family comedy, with its Harris-narrated tale of life in the 1980s, occasionally edited to explain to his daughter that “of course all kids wore bike helmets.” The story features plucky kid-quests in search of the game system or the money to buy it while also offering really good-hearted examinations of kid social relationships — the bullies, the perceived weirdos, the habitual liars. It also does a good job with the age-old struggle between the “why can’t you and your friends just play outside” parents and the “X piece of tech is the Most Important Thing Ever” kids. A Available on HBO Max.

A Boy Called Christmas (PG)

Henry Lawfull, voice of Stephen Merchant.

Maggie Smith is the dour-seeming great-aunt of three gloomy and grieving children who comes to their house to babysit. Though they want nothing to do with Christmas this year, having recently lost their mother, she settles in to tell them a story about a boy named Nikolas (Lawfull) who lives deep in the woods in Finland in olden days. The king (Jim Broadbent) asks people to go on quests to the farthest reaches of his realm in search of something that will bring magic and hope into people’s lives. Nikolas’ father (Michiel Huisman) sets out in search of a magical place that Nikolas’ mother used to talk about, Elfhelm. After running away from the horrible aunt (Kristen Wiig) left to care for him, Nikolas also goes in search of his father and Elfhelm, taking along with him Miika (Merchant), a mouse that, to his great surprise, he’s taught how to talk.

Along the way they help a reindeer that Nikolas starts calling Blitzen and they meet a community of elves who are part of the resistance to an oppressive new elf regime run by Mother Vodol (Sally Hawkins).

This is a darker live-action Christmas tale, with orphans and parents who have died and discussions of grief and sadness. But in that dark fairy tale way, and for kids maybe in the 9-years-old-and-up range who don’t mind that kind of story, the movie is also sweet, adventure-packed and straightforward in how it deals with kids’ emotions. I think Maggie Smith’s narration, with its Princess Bride-style interruptions, helps sell that particular mood of kids working through stuff and of kids learning how to stay hopeful in the face of a world that isn’t always about loving moms and happy elves. B+ Available at Netflix.

Waffles + Mochi’s Holiday Feast (TV-Y)

The humans here include Tracee Ellis Ross, Samin Nosrat and Mrs. O (Michelle Obama), the owner of the market where Waffles and Mochi normally hang out to learn about food. In this half-hour holiday special, the market is closed for the holiday season and Waffles and Mochi, enamored of all the talk about special holiday foods, tell their friends it’s Freezie Day and accidentally invite the whole gang over for a Freezie Day feast. This leads Mochi to set out around the world to learn about a few winter-solstice-season celebrations and gather some holiday treats while back at Waffles’ house the guests talk about their own cultural winter holiday traditions. Like the show Waffles + Mochi, the holiday special is the right mix of learning, puppet-y fun, food, silliness and sweetness. B+ Available on Netflix.

Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (TV-Y)

Voices of Justin Fletcher, Kate Harbour.

Shaun, his sheep friends, the dog who watches after them and their farmer, with another harebrained scheme to make money, return in this charming 30-minute Christmas-themed special. The farmer’s attempts to sell soda at a local Christmas fair and the littlest sheep’s curiosity about gifts come together, resulting in the whole flock riding a Santa sleigh on their way to heist-like hijinks at the home of a little girl who thinks she’s been gifted a robot sheep. As usual, this story has no real words, just lots of grunts and meeps and British-y noises. Sheep silliness is the star of this very all-ages-friendly holiday fare with, as always, top-notch Aardman animation. A Available on Netflix.

Gift Guide – A book and a …

Gift ideas for book lovers

As holiday gifts go, you can’t do much better than books. They’re easy to wrap, cheap to mail, and for the most part, unperishable.

That said, they’re so easy to give that givers of books can come off looking cheap, not so much for the money they spent but for the lack of effort involved. But that’s a problem easily solved by adding a “plus one” to your gift — a complementary knickknack or two. (Think a decorative spatula attached to a cookbook.) Conversely, a book can add physical heft to an otherwise generous gift that looks unsubstantial by itself, such as a ticket to a game or a concert.

Here’s a guide to the best books for everyone on your list; we did the heavy lifting for you. Buy local if you can because Jeff Bezos is set for the year. (Note: These suggestions are all new releases, or new in paperback, although publishing information is for hardcover editions. Don’t give paperbacks if you can help it.)

For football enthusiasts: History Through the Headsets: Inside Notre Dame’s Playoff Run During the Craziest Season in College Football History by Reed Gregory and John Mahoney (Triumph, 256 pages) or It’s Better to Be Feared, The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham (Liveright, 528 pages). Plus one: game ticket or team-branded merch.

For baseball lovers: The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski (Avid Reader Press, 880 pages) Plus one: MLB Ballpark Traveler’s Map from the website and catalog Uncommon Goods.

For hockey freaks: Beauties: Hockey’s Greatest Untold Stories by James Duthie (HarperCollins, 320 pages). Plus one: warm gloves and a hat.

For horse lovers: The Last Diving Horse in America, Rescuing Gamal and Other Animals by Cynthia A. Branigan (Pantheon, 288 pages) and/or Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley (Knopf, 288 pages). Plus one: (for horse owners) bag of peppermint horse treats or (for non-horse owners) gift certificate for a riding lesson or trail ride.

For dog lovers: A Dog’s World, Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff (Princeton University Press, 240 pages). Plus one: nice leash.

For lovers of animals in general: On Animals, by Susan Orlean (Avid Reader Press, 256 pages) or National Geographic’s Photo Ark Wonders (National Geographic, 400 pages). Plus one: ticket to local zoo, or animal socks from the World Wildlife Fund.

For music lovers: The Beatles: Get Back, edited by John Harris (Callaway Arts & Entertainment, 240 pages) or Rock Concert, an Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There by Marc Myers (Grove Press, 400 pages). Plus one: gift subscription to Spotify or Apple music.

For lovers of comics: The DC Comics Encyclopedia by Matthew K. Manning and Jim Lee (DK, 384 pages). Plus one: vintage comic book or gift card to Newbury Comics.

For the Fox News enthusiast: All-American Christmas by Rachel Campos-Duffy and Sean Duffy (Broadside Books, 272 pages). Plus one: American flag.

For the MSNBC fan: Rachel Maddow, a Biography by Lisa Rogak (Thomas Dunne Books, 288 pages). Plus one: MSNBC baseball cap from the network’s online store.

For lovers of literature: A Literary Holiday Cookbook, Festive Meals for the Snow Queen, Gandalf, Sherlock, Scrooge and Book Lovers Everywhere by Alison Walsh and Haley Stewart (Skyhorse, 272 pages). Plus one: gift certificate to a local bookstore or fingerless gloves from the website Storiarts.

For fans of The Sopranos: Woke Up This Morning, the Definitive Oral HIstory of The Sopranos by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schriripa (William Morrow, 528 pages). Plus one: bag of ziti or pasta machine.

For fans of The Office: Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, The Ultimate Oral History of The Office by Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverman (Custom House, 464 pages). Plus one: Dunder Mifflin socks or shot glasses.

For car enthusiasts: A Man and His Car, Iconic Cars and Stories from the Men Who Love Them by Matt Hranek (Artisan, 240 pages). Plus one: gas card or box of Armor All cleaning wipes.

For birders: The Birds of America, a reissued work by the late John James Audubon, with an introduction by David Allen Sibley (Prestel, 448 pages). Plus one: bird-seed wreath.

For ski buffs: 100 Slopes of a Lifetime, The World’s Ultimate Ski and Snowboard Destinations, by Gordy Megroz (National Geographic, 400 pages). Plus one: ski mittens or box of hand warming packets.

For runners: Running is a Kind of Dreaming: A Memoir by J.M. Thompson (HarperOne, 320 pages). Plus one: Yaxtrax Pros and a stick of BodyGlide.

For bicyclists: The Cycling Chef: Recipes for Getting Lean and Fueling the Machine (Bloomsbury Sport, 192 pages) Plus one: fingerless cycling gloves.

For TikTok addicts: Sympathy. Don’t enable.

For new parents: How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t ***holes by Melinda Wenner Moyer (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 352 pages) Plus one: bottle of vodka and earplugs.

For writers or writer-wannabees: The venerable guide to selling your work released a new edition in November: The Writer’s Market 100th Edition (Writer’s Digest Books, 912 pages). Plus one: a journal or monogrammed pen.

For artists and illustrators: The Writers and Artists Yearbook 2022 (Bloomsbury Yearbooks, 816 pages) Plus one: a box of fine pencils or a sketchpad.

For travel buffs: 1,000 Perfect Weekends: Great Getaways Around the Globe by George Stone (National Geographic, 704 pages) Plus one: a luggage tag or airline gift card.

For foodies: Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras (Workman Publishing, 448 pages) or The Great British Baking Show: A Bake for All Seasons (Mobius, 288 pages). Plus one: a restaurant gift certificate or gift card for a delivery app.

For everyone else: A generous gift certificate to your local bookseller (or local to the recipient). Plus one: a box of bookplates.

You’re welcome, and happy holidays.


Book Events

Author events

SIMON BROOKS Author presents a storytelling event for ages 16 to adult. Sat., Dec. 11, 6:15 p.m. 185 Main St., Hopkinton. Reservations required. Call 406-4880.

KATHRYN HULICKAuthor presents Welcome to the Future. Sat., Dec. 11, 2 p.m. Toadstool Bookshop, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Visit toadbooks.com.

MEET THE AUTHOR EVENT The Belknap Mill Page Turners Book Club presents authors from Laconia, the Lakes Region and throughout New England, including Larry Frates, MJ Pettengill, Christopher Beyer, Cathy Waldron, Ian Raymond, Heidi Smith and Courtney Parsons, Janice Petrie, Rose-Marie Robichaud, Jane Rice and others. Authors’ books will be for sale. Sat., Dec. 11, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Belknap Mill, 25 Beacon St. East, Laconia. Visit belknapmill.org.

AUTHOR BOOK SIGNING Featuring New Hampshire authors Dan Szcznesy, Jerry Lofaro, Simon Brooks, Byron Carr. 185 Main St., Hopkinton. Sun., Dec. 12, noon to 2 p.m. Call 406-4880.

Poetry

NH POET LAUREATE ALEXANDRIA PEARY Poet presents a new collection of poetry, Battle of Silicon Valley at Dawn. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., Dec. 14, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

CAROL WESTBURG AND SUE BURTON Virtual poetry reading hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Jan. 20, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Book Clubs

BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email [email protected] or visit goffstownlibrary.com

BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email [email protected].

NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email [email protected] or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Album Reviews 21/12/09

Modern Nature, Island of Noise (Bella Union Records)

Here continues the saga of U.K. songwriter Jack Cooper, with whom you may be familiar if you ever indulged in the band Ultimate Painting, a garage-pop band whose best moments came when they were trying to write songs that were a few cuts above Pavement in the listenability department (which is of course one of the lowest bars to manage in art history). These days he’s regarded with some renown as an expert multi-winds player and a composer, and this project boasts help from such “free music” luminaries as saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist John Edwards and violinist Alison Cotton. Other avant-gardists of non-musical disciplines hopped on this thing as well (Booker-nominated poet Robin Robertson, illustrator Sophy Hollington, polymath Eugene Chadbourne and The Lark Ascending author Richard King). Why? Well, it’s a box set that includes a bunch of songs, their instrumental-only versions and a book. The songs do have their cogent moments — “Dunes” and “Bluster” are graceful, pretty and pensive; “Spell” reads like post-bop quietude — but even with all the goings-on going on, it does get a bit repetitive, probably mostly owing to Cooper’s obviously limited (and apparently untrained) vocal range. B

Slow Crush, Hush (Quiet Panic Records)

I roped myself into choosing this one to fill this space because it was touted as a “shoegaze” record. I suppose it is, in a way, but there’s quite a bit of neo-doom-metal going on here, which, if you want to stretch the definition, could fit I suppose. But I’ll not get pedantic; it’s good stuff for sure, and Isa Holliday’s voice is indubitably shoegaze, what with its distracted, unapproachable, heavily reverbed, sexy asexuality. The short version is that it’s a cross between My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, but there’s more to it than that, especially given that the riffing tends to get rather animated, or at least compelling, in a slightly progressive way. “Gloom” is a kissin’ cousin to Io Echo’s “Shanghai Girls,” if you have any idea what that means; this isn’t simply a Jesus and Mary Chain copycat thing, put it that way, but it could have benefitted from a little of Io Echo’s majestic bombast. It’s structurally fine, though, definitely worth a listen. A-

PLAYLIST

• Jeepers, guys, it’s Dec. 10 already, where has the apocalypse gone? I don’t know, all I care about is getting back to four-day work weeks for the summer, and I am literally counting the days, like, I wish I could be put in a people-freezer unit and left alone until the last week of May. There’s no point to this winter stuff, there just isn’t, and speaking of frostbite and pointlessness, looky there folks, it’s an electronic musician from Canada, named Jamison Isaak, who goes by the stage name Teen Daze! He has a new album coming out on the 10th called Interior. Wikipedia says that since 2015 Isaak has “shifted from an electronic-driven style with elements of chillwave, house, and ambient to more of an indie pop sound, adding his own vocals.” In other words he has given up his dream of soundtracking independent films that nobody watches and will now compete directly with M83 and every other band that’s trying to revive 1980s-radio-pop, which of course means every other band in the world right now. And etc., but for now I’ll give this fellow the benefit of the doubt and go listen to his new single “Swimming.” Huh, this isn’t that bad at all, sort of Aphex Twin-ish robot-dance stuff but with a bright Tiesto color palette. In other words it’s like Orbital; it’s not ’80s-sounding, more like ’90s, so I’ll stop being a hater and just dig on this electronic music, maybe even do a sprightly happy dance with my Roomba.

• Even if you hate hip-hop — and a lot of you do, which I know for a fact — Rick Ross’ forthcoming new album Richer Than I’ve Ever Been does have its irresistible moments of grace, especially the tune “Pinned To The Cross,” whose beat floats through the air like a butterfly while Ross spits the usual platitudes about living the weird duality of being Black and rich: “Now I’m in a McLaren, still racing those commas / I’m watching for Karen, she watching bird watchers” (the latter bit referencing the New York lady who called the cops on a Black guy who was just trying to bird-watch in Central Park). It’s really accessible, this tune, which also features the “I Wrote a Love Song”-renowned indie singer Finn Matthews warbling along in falsetto.

• Extra-weird singing person Moses Sumney has a film and a third album on the way, called Live From Blackalachia! The little I listened to doesn’t sound to me like a live recording, but I will take his word for it because I wouldn’t want him to have beef with me, because I think he’s crazy. He has a wicked high falsetto voice on the teaser track “Bystanders (in space),” which is based on the tune “Bystanders,” from his 2020 album Græ. Imagine the Stranger Things theme song, except some androgynous crazy person is singing over it in a really high voice, that’s what this is.

• Last but not least, I have to deal with Neil Young again, because he and his band Neil Young & Crazy Horse are releasing a brand new album just now, called Barn. A stand-alone film with the same title will be released on Blu-ray and directed by Daryl Hannah, who, like Neil Young, is a celebrity activist. Anyway, like all celebrity activists, Neil Young is widely adored for making lots of tweets but never donating all his millions to Greenpeace or mutual aid Twitter funds, so, as always, I am not wildly enthused about having to sit through another musical rant from him, but I will, of course, so that you don’t have to. The latest single is “Heading West,” the lyrics of which would appear to be centered on his youth, when he lived near some train tracks or whatever. As always, the soggy guitar riff was engineered to sound like your little brother recording himself on a boombox playing “Smoke On The Water,” but that is why Neil Young is so beloved: He is terrible, and people love that.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

You Can’t Be Serious, by Kal Penn

You Can’t Be Serious, by Kal Penn (Gallery, 367 pages)

You may know Kal Penn as a resident on the TV series House M.D. Or the stoner from the Harold & Kumar movie franchise. Or the Hollywood actor who took a break from all that to work in the Obama White House.

Or, like me, you know nothing about Kal Penn at all. In that case, you may have zero interest in the actor’s memoir You Can’t Be Serious, and I’m here to change your mind about that. As Hollywood memoirs go, this one is surprisingly engrossing, in part because of Penn’s intelligence and his willingness to be vulnerable and open up about discrimination he encountered as the son of Indian immigrants.

Penn, whose real name is Kaplen Modi, does his best writing in the first chapter, in which he describes assorted indignities of growing up in New Jersey, where he wore clothes from Sears (that descriptive says so much) and was called a racial slur by a “devil child [who] resembled a splintered toothpick — skinny with tiny arms.”

Early on, Penn realized that his brain worked better than those of some of his classmates, and that it preferred imagination to analytics. By middle school he had aligned with other misfits in the drama club, and he had a breakout performance as the Tin Man in the school’s performance of “The Wiz.”

By high school, however, his parents, who saw theater as impractical, intervened, insisting that he decline when offered a role in the ensemble of Godspell. It says a lot about his character, all good, that he writes, “I was more heartbroken than angry.” Penn had great respect for his family, even though, early on, they were not thrilled about his career path. (In one of his recurring jokes, his family members say, “We don’t do that. We’re Indian.”) He lovingly recounts the history of his father, who arrived in the U.S. with $8 and little else but ambition, and his grandfathers, who told him moving stories about marching with Gandhi.

In writing about his early life, Penn reveals the challenges and even violence confronting immigrants from India. Unfortunately, even when he moved to California to study acting at UCLA, and then began to audition for work, the discriminatory insults continued. He was only considered for parts that were cartoonish portrayals of Asian American, always with a thick, cheesy accent. And while Penn could do a wide range of accents, he had none naturally, leading to many instances when people expressed surprise that he was so “articulate.”

At one point he considered quitting acting altogether, but he came to accept, “I’m brown, period, and this is a white boys’ game. If the best characters that writers, producers, directors and casting teams can come up with are tired, unfunny stereotypes that we’ve seen a million times, it’s a reliable sign that the individuals I’m dealing with are seriously short on talent themselves. This reflects badly on them, not me.’

When he got work, he began to push back, suggesting script changes to writers and trying to dodge directors’ requests to make an accent more pronounced. All the while, he was being told how good an actor he was, and Penn explains how some of his early, unsatisfying work led to bigger opportunities later. In addition to House and Harold & Kumar, some of his other notable credits are the film The Namesake and the recent CBS series Clarice.

In the middle of all this, however, Penn diverts into a sort of shadow career as a White House aide to Barack Obama. This wasn’t a shocking development; in high school, he’d taken a test that was supposed to help him narrow down a career, and the results said, “Inconclusive. This student’s interests are too varied for us to provide tangible recommendations.” His guidance counselor said she’d never had a student get that result.

But Penn had seen Obama speak when he was still a senator and had been impressed enough to volunteer. And he was such an effective volunteer that Obama himself asked him to take a paid job with the campaign, and then to work in the White House. (All of which explains why Penn’s character on House was written out of the show.)

At this point, the memoir stumbles slightly, revealing its central weakness: This is a book that doesn’t know exactly what it’s about. Memoirs, of course, are recollections, but often they have a theme, a sort of overarching wisdom under which the anecdotes collect. Penn’s memories don’t stand still long enough for that; they dart about like squirrels. They are funny squirrels, so there’s that. As skillful as Penn is as an actor, he’s also a first-rate comedian, and the one-liners come fast and furious. That said, after a spate of extraordinarily thoughtful writing in the first few chapters, the book does tend to devolve into a more typical recounting of stories. By the time he wraps things up by introducing his now-fiance, a Southern man with a penchant for NASCAR, the book is feeling a bit long, like you know 100 pages more than you needed to know about this particular actor.

Whatever its blemishes, being overly partisan is not one of them. Yes, more than a third of the book contains anecdotes about his work with President Obama, and obviously he’s a fan and a Democrat (he even spoke at the party’s 2012 convention), but there’s little here that would be offensive to Republicans. At heart, You Can’t Be Serious is a quintessential story along the lines of local-boy-makes-good, with the local boy being of Indian descent, smart and funny. There may be better memoirs about Hollywood or politics, or even growing up Indian in New Jersey, but it’s safe to say this is the best one about all three. B


Book Notes

Every year I look forward to a new Christmas book, one that can join my collection of perennial holiday reads. Most years I am disappointed.

The last book to qualify for a lasting place on the holiday bookshelf was the late Stuart McLean’s Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe (Viking, 272 pages), which came out in 2017. In fact, there just don’t seem to be that many Christmas-themed books other than cookbooks. This year I could only find a collection of remembrances by Fox News personalities — All American Christmas (Broadside, 272 pages) — and a historical novel that I missed in 2017, Samantha Silva’s Mr. Dickens and His Carol (Flatiron, 288 pages).

But then I realized I’d been looking in the wrong genre.

There are plenty of Christmas books available to readers if they’re interested in romance novels, with the occasional dog book thrown into the mix. They’re not my cup of holiday tea, but apparently are quite popular, given their prevalence (and also the popularity of Hallmark Christmas movies).

A sampling: Sleigh Bells Ring (HQN, 336 pages) by RaeAnne Thayne, billed as a “sparkling and heartwarming holiday romance,” released in both hardback and paperback on Halloween, and Christmas in the Scottish Highlands (Bookouture, 294 pages) by Donna Ashcroft, which looks to be a fairly predictable romance novel embellished with holly, mulled wine and mince pies.

Other new holiday romances this year include The Holiday Swap (Viking, 352 pages) by Maggie Knox, in which two young women who are identical twins trade places at Christmas, and Dear Santa (Ballantine, 272 pages) by Debbie Macomber, in which a recently jilted young woman returns home for Christmas and writes a letter to Santa that changes her life. (In a bit of brilliant marketing, the illustration on this one shows a Santa-hat-wearing golden retriever holding a letter in its mouth.)

There’s also A Season for Second Chances (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 448 pages) by Jenny Bayliss, the author of last year’sThe Twelve Dates of Christmas (also Putnam, 368 pages), and Santa’s Sweetheart (Kensington Publishing, 233 pages) by Janet Dailey. I could go on, but you get the picture, and my keyboard is getting gritty with all the sugar.

But I did promise dogs, so check out Best in Snow (Minotaur, 320 pages) by David Rosenfelt if only to get a rush of serotonin from the cover, and It’s a Wonderful Woof (Forge, 272 pages) by Spencer Quinn.

Book Events

Author events

BRENE BROWN Author presents Atlas of the Heart. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Via Zoom. Tickets cost $30. Ticket sales end Dec. 2, at noon. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

ERNESTO BURDEN Author presents Slate. The Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester). Thurs., Dec. 2, 5:30 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

JACK DALTON Kid conservationist presents his book, Kawan the Orangutan: Lost in the Rainforest. Toadstool Bookshop, 375 Amherst St., Nashua. Sat., Dec. 4, noon. Visit toadbooks.com.

DAMIEN KANE RIDGEN Author presents Bell’s Codex and My Magnum Opus. Toadstool Bookshop, 375 Amherst St., Nashua. Sun., Dec. 5, noon. Visit toadbooks.com.

MICHAEL J. FOX Author presents No Time Like the Future. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., Dec. 7, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Tickets cost $17.99, and include a copy of the book. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Album Reviews 21/12/02

Naked Raygun, Over The Overlords (Wax Trax Records)

This Chicago post-punk band never struck me as “post” anything, just punk, but whatever; half the time, reviewers and music pundits just make stuff up when they want to sound smart. If you’re young and confused, this is a legendary band; two of the guys were in Steve Albini’s seminal no-wave band Big Black (drop everything you’re doing and go listen to one of their records), and their cult following includes Dave Grohl and Blink-182’s Matt Skiba. If you’re not young and confused, you may know these guys from their decently produced tuneage of old, so, this being their first album in over 30 years, you’d be expecting better production along the lines of Ramones when they worked with Phil Spector and all that, and you’d be right: this is still basic punk stuff but it sounds better. I love all of it, starting with “Go The Spoils,” a typical three-chord complaint into the hopeless abyss. Can you possibly put away the emo albums already and get a little fed up, kids? A

Josh Caterer, The Space Sessions (Pravda Records)

Oh, hooray, more from the frontman of Smoking Popes, the glorified fedora band that was basically like Barenaked Ladies but without the money. You can take it from right there, to be honest; either you like bovine American pub-rock or you don’t, and, as you should know if you’ve ever once read this column in your life, I sure as shootin’ don’t. I mean don’t get me wrong, Smoking Popes could be a little edgy, almost ska-like at times, but Caterer’s fetish for writing melodies that were completely “I know I’ve heard this before but I’m way too busy hate-reading my Facebook to Google it” was their Achilles heel. That’s heard here as well; the songs are solid, Caterer’s uninspiring tenor is more hearty and robust than usual (think Frank Black with a couple of voice lessons), but man, this has been done and more compellingly. There’s a retread version of the classic bum-out song “I Started A Joke” on here for some reason, and no, I don’t know why. B+

PLAYLIST

• As we move into the home stretch of 2021’s retail sweepstakes, our thoughts turn to the Christmas elves, who must load all the new albums into Santa’s sleigh, for delivery to all the Whos down in Whoville. Maybe you are a Who who plans to buy an album or three for your loved ones, and now’s a great time to do it, because a bunch of new albums will come out on Dec. 3, and you should probably buy some of them before the Impractical Jokers manage to get another gigantic cargo ship trapped in the Suez Canal and nobody gets anything for the holidays at all, except for maybe pine cones or old used tires. Echo is one of those new releases, a new album from Costa Mesa, California-based Of Mice & Men, a band that started out as a “metalcore/post-hardcore” troupe, and then, after getting the news from their parents that they wouldn’t be paying for their Vans slip-ons anymore, decided to make more melodic (but equally unlistenable) music, specifically nu-metal! The first single was “Fighting Gravity,” which evidenced that they’re going a little bit emo in the hope that some wrestler will pick one of their songs as an entrance theme, but this tune is all disjointed, running around like a drunk squirrel, a little Good Charlotte, then some screamo, then some Coheed & Cambria, and so on and so forth. If you’re going to give this to your monstrous high-schooler for the holidays, just tell them that it’s really horrible and in response they’ll probably listen to it at least once.

• Shrinkwrapped, inordinately famous country-pop star Blake Shelton will release album number who-cares this week, titled BodyLanguage! Shelton is now on three, count ’em, three different Hunger Games-style singing talent shows that are only watched by boomers and the billions and billions of record company-paid Twitter bots out there in fake-fandom land; all the shows are of course focused on finding singers who can do the the closest possible imitations of Adele or Adam Lambert, and if they fail to sound exactly like them they end up being sent back home to work on their karaoke skills for the entertainment of local drunks. Now that Shelton has found a new future-ex blonde missus in Gwen Stefani, he is gracing us, the little people, with the totally hot new single, the album’s title track, an OK song that sounds suspiciously like an amalgam of stolen pop songs from actual artists that were released over the last 30 years, but I can’t quite put my finger on what songs are being ripped off — wait, the hook is definitely from an old Human League song, that’s it. Let’s go, get this nonsense out of my sight this instant.

• If you like symphonic euro-metal and have been wondering where Angra’s singer Simone Simons has been, she’s the frontperson for Dutch band Epica these days, when she’s not busy working as a style influencer on her SwoonStyle blog. What all this adds up to is another band that would be Trans Siberian Orchestra right now if they’d only invented heavy metal and Christmas before those guys did, so let’s go look and listen to “Kingdom of Heaven Part 3” from the band’s new live album, Omega Alive! Ah, it’s Cannibal Corpse except with Simons’ opera-lady vocals, and there are flames and Flying V guitars and there’s a chandelier of contortionist hotties hanging from the ceiling. You know who’d like this is basically everyone, because it’s both super-classy and completely idiotic at the same time.

• Last but not least, it’s Chrome Sparks & Reo Cragun, with an EP called Void. Sparks is from Pittsburgh, Cragun is from Vancouver, Washington, and their collaboration mixes neo-soul with underground noise, as heard in the single “Blood,” which switches back and forth between Drake-ish chillout and floor-shaking cacophony. It’s interesting.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

At the Sofaplex 21/11/25

Home Sweet Home Alone(PG)

Rob Delaney, Ellie Kemper.

Another kid is left at home during a family trip and another feckless duo of adults attempts to steal from his house in this remake/sequel of the 1990 holiday film.

This time, it’s Max Mercer (Archie Yates) who suddenly finds himself home alone when his family, including mother Carol (Aisling Bea), has had to take two separate chaotic flights to Tokyo. A few days before this, Carol used the interesting mom-hack of stopping at a real estate open house to let Max use the bathroom. It was there he met Jeff (Delaney) and Pam (Kemper), a couple reluctantly selling their family home because a job loss has required some financial downsizing. Jeff happens to be moving a box of weird dolls he inherited from his mother and Carol mentions in passing that one particularly creepy-looking one may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Later, when Jeff checks this out with eBay, he finds that in fact, yes, the “ugly little boy” as he calls the doll may be worth more than $200,000 and be the answer to the family’s financial problems. But, when he goes to find it, the doll is missing. He suspects Max, who was sassy when Jeff denied him a soda, and he goes looking for the Mercer household to retrieve it. One thing leads to another and soon Jeff and Pam are trying to break in to what they think will be an empty home to steal back the doll they think Max has stolen from them. Except, of course, when Max overhears them talking about selling an “ugly little boy” he thinks they’ve come to kidnap him and thus does he plan an iced-over-driveway, butter-on-the-stairs series of booby traps to keep himself safe.

On the one hand, this creates a gentler setup — nobody’s really trying to harm Max. On the other hand, Max sets Pam on fire and uses thumbtacks as a weapon and just generally offers up a lot of interesting ideas for children looking to do some mayhem. So be advised if you’re thinking of showing this to younger kids (by which I mean “don’t show this to younger kids”). Common Sense Media gives it a 9+ age ranking but I might go even older than that.

As entertainment that parents might also be roped into watching, I’m equally unenthusiastic. There are some nice moments of broad comedy with Delaney and Kemper, including a few that skew a bit toward the weird, which is an appreciated bit of tartness in this corn syrupy Christmas cookie. And original Home Alone fans will like the nods toward the source material. But there is less exhausting fare out there for family viewing. C+ Available on Disney+.

Finch ( PG-13)

Tom Hanks, voice of Caleb Landry Jones.

Cranky engineer Finch Weinberg (Hanks) is desperate to help his dog Goodyear survive without him in a post-apocalyptic world in this movie with shades of Castaway, WALLE and also George Clooney’s downbeat Midnight Sky, which you probably didn’t see and don’t need to.

Living alone with only the dog and rover-bot named Dewey, Finch is, as the movie starts, putting the finishing touches on a bipedal AI-run humanoid, which eventually calls itself Jeff (Jones). Finch needs Jeff to be smart and adaptive enough to take care of Goodyear in a world where all food must be scavenged from abandoned stores and the heat and ultraviolet rays of the sun can cause skin to sizzle after a few moments. Apparently solar flares at some point in the recent past have turned the ozone layer into “Swiss cheese,” as Finch explains to Jeff, and now much of the continental U.S. is a dune-filled desert, beset by sandstorms and other extreme weather. After some number of years living in such an environment, Finch is now dying from the radiation exposure.

Finch is not quite finished uploading data into Jeff when a superstorm is predicted to hit the wind-powered St. Louis-based factory where he and Goodyear (and Dewey and Jeff) live. Without the food (or the longevity) to last the 40 days that the storm is predicted to be overtop him, he decides to pack his canine and robot family into a fortified RV and head out toward San Francisco, the only region of the country he doesn’t know for a fact is some kind of hellscape.

So it’s a road trip movie! And along the way, Finch tries to teach Jeff, who is extremely emotive, how to be a real boy and convince Goodyear, who isn’t so fond of this new robot caregiver, to treat Jeff as his new “person.”

Granted, my current appetite for apocalyptic entertainment is at a particularly low ebb. But this movie grated from the beginning, with its seemingly-cobbled-together elements from previous movies and its insistence that I root for (and find charming) what is essentially a walking Siri.

So I will stipulate that I am probably not this movie’s ideal viewer. And, look, Hanks is fine in this role — I mean, of course he is, he’s done it before. And the movie has some nice visuals — both in terms of scenery and how Jeff and Dewey are presented. But it’s not an enjoyable watch and it does not give me the “triumph of the human spirit” glow that it seems to want to deliver. C+ Available on Apple TV+.

Madres (18+)

Ariana Guerra, Tenoch Huerta.

A couple expecting their first child and newly moved to a rickety old farmhouse is terrorized in Madres.

Diana (Guerra) and her husband Beto (Huerta) leave 1970s Los Angeles to move to a small town in agricultural California where Beto will manage a large farm and pregnant former reporter Diana plans to write a book. They get to the house that Beto’s boss Tomas (Joseph Garcia) has secured for them to find a lot of faded paint, creaky floorboards and a shed whose door can scarily flap open at random. Beto tries to calm Diana by explaining it’s the country, weird sounds abound, but pretty quickly visions of a ghostly woman in red and a creepy music box that seems to follow her around convince her that there is more going on than Beto wants to believe. She also finds a cache of pamphlets and newspaper clippings from the home’s former occupants, many of which suggest that a condition called Valley Fever, experienced by lots of the Latin American women in town, may be related to the pesticides the farm uses.

Diana’s ability to suss this out — and just to make friends in general with Beto’s coworkers — is stymied a bit by a language barrier. Beto, a recent immigrant from Mexico, speaks fluent English and Spanish but Diana, a woman of Hispanic background born in the U.S., is shaky at best when speaking Spanish, the main language of many people in their new town.

Are the women of this town cursed, as local healer Anita (Elpidia Carrillo) says they are? Or is something more man-made causing the illness (and strange dreams and odd visions) that Diana herself begins to experience?

This movie won me over almost instantly with its little moments exploring Diana’s self-consciousness about not speaking Spanish and various socioeconomic tensions within the Mexican-American community in this town. These elements offer a nice bit of complexity to the story.

Then we get to the real evil and, if it isn’t the most horrifying Bad Thing I’ve seen in a horror movie ever, it is still pretty high on the list. This movie winds up in a pretty unsubtle place but it is well done and the impact is exactly as gut-punching as it should be. A- Available on Amazon Prime.

Zog and Zog and the Flying Doctors

Lenny Henry, Hugh Skinner.

Both of these shorts are unrated and based on books by Julia Donaldson, both illustrated by Axel Scheffler, who also illustrated her Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo books. These shorts very much have the look of those books and the same gentle rhythm in their tale of the dragon Zog (voiced by Rocco Wright as a young dragon, Skinner as an older one), who learns assorted dragon skills like breathing fire and roaring but eventually becomes part of a team of flying doctors with Princess Pearl (voice of Patsy Ferran in both movies), a young woman who prefers medicine to fancy dresses and crowns. Also patching the ouchies and illnesses of the enchanted land is Gadabout (voice of Kit Harrington in the first movie, Daniel Ings in the second), a knight who has realized that splints and bandaging is his true calling.

The movies — from 2018 and 2020 — are charming, funny and pretty adaptations of the books, with very little in the way of story addition. Instead, the movies fill in the expanded storytelling space with dragon silliness and often impressively light-touch visual gags. I think I laughed as much as my kids when we watched these two. While perhaps not the absolute perfection of the 2012 Room on the Broom short (which is a must-see), these two shorts are a sweet delight and perfect for, maybe, kindergarten and up. The stories subtly reinforce the “you can be who you want to be” message while providing plenty of gentle fun. A- Available for rent or purchase.

Queenpins (R)

Kristen Bell, Kirby Howell-Baptiste.

Connie (Bell), a former Olympic athlete who medaled in speed walking, and JoJo (Howell-Baptiste), a victim of identity theft who is trying with minimal success to make her makeup business work, are best friends, neighbors in their Phoenix suburb and couponers, who load up on deals so that they can “buy” more than a hundred dollars worth of groceries but only pay $16. Does Connie, who is struggling after the miscarriage of a baby, really need all the diapers and toilet paper she stockpiles? Maybe not but she definitely doesn’t need IRS auditor husband Rick (Joel McHale) and his constant badgering her about money and their debt to the fertility clinic. The coupons are, as she tells us in voiceover, her only real wins right now. But then a chance encounter with that biggest of big wins, the “one item free” coupon, sets her on a path to an international crime caper: She and JoJo find employees at the printer in Mexico that produces all the “free item” coupons to help them obtain (i.e. steal) coupons that they can then sell in the U.S. for half the value of the item. The buyer gets a good deal and the women make a very tidy profit.

They make so much money — and the sudden influx of coupons becomes so noticeable to the companies making the cereal and diapers — that they attract the attention of a supermarket’s loss prevention investigator, Ken (Paul Walter Hauser), for whom the illegal couponers become his white whale. He attempts to get the FBI to join him on the case and eventually gets the Post Office involved in the form of postal investigator Simon (Vince Vaughn).

I get the sense that the movie has some opinions about, like, gender and corporations but it has too much going on to really be able to do much with these ideas. Still, I liked all the performances here and even some of the sillier stuff. You get the sense that this movie sometimes thinks it’s doing a The Big Short but it reminded me more of Buffaloed, another recent light ladies-doing-crime movie. B- Available on Paramount+.

The Guilty (R)

Jake Gyllenhaal, Adrian Martinez.

Joe (Gyllenhaal) is a Los Angeles police officer working as a 911 operator. We learn through bits of dialogue that he is in deep personal and professional trouble and perhaps staring down more trouble due to something that’s going to happen in court tomorrow. His stresses are all the greater as he works a shift in a smoke- and fire-filled Los Angeles with all sorts of frantic calls coming in. But then a woman who Joe eventually learns is named Emily (Keough) calls pretending to talk to her child, allowing him to figure out that she’s been abducted. Joe quickly becomes invested in Emily’s predicament, leaning on various law enforcement agencies to try to get her situation investigated.

I don’t know that I buy everything the movie seems to be saying message-wise (if it is saying anything) but as a straightforward “90-ish minutes of tension” exercise, performed by a very small cast in a very small number of locations (basically just Joe’s call center and a few neighboring rooms), The Guilty is sort of fun. It’s a little bit puzzle, a little bit chase, a little bit detective story. It’s like a less goofy version of Fox’s 9-1-1 drama but just as stripped down when it comes to the action.B- Available on Netflix.

The Protégé(R)

Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson.

And having a boatload of fun is Michael Keaton, playing somebody IMDb claims is called Rembrandt, though actually I don’t recall his character having a name. He’s sort of a “vice president in charge of killing” type for a rich and powerful Big Bad. Michael Keaton is sent to “take care of” Anna (Maggie Q), the titular protege for Moody (Jackson), a top-notch assassin. An inquiry about a person connected to one of Moody’s old assignments gets her and Moody the notice of Michael Keaton’s employer. Anna finds Moody dead and decides to go after everybody involved.

Along the way, Keaton’s character and Anna develop a kind of “game recognizes game” relationship of mutual respect, trying to kill each other and also having the hots for each other. I suppose I can suspend disbelief and buy this aspect of the movie, but I also don’t know that it was entirely necessary and it is one of the times the movie needs to be either smarter or way dumber to really work. As it is, The Protégé is doing its best work in its choreographed fight scenes and feels a little half baked at all other times. Maggie Q, Jackson and Keaton are all good in these roles, but — outside of the action sequences — they don’t always feel like they are exactly in the same movie. I liked this movie fine as low-effort, lazy-night- on-the-sofa entertainment but I don’t think I’d rush out to rent it or anything. C+ Available to rent or own.

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