I Am Santa Claus

I recently watched a documentary that chronicles a year in the life of four professional Santa Clauses. It provides an inside look at what these men go through in an entire year. January through September are lean, boring, lonely months. From October onward, Santa Claus suddenly comes in demand. These men make a lot of money for just two months’ work leading up to the big day.

The four Santas are very different. There is Lonely Santa, Gay Santa, New Jersey Santa, and Swinger Santa. Each has a vastly different lifestyle. What we see is that these are regular guys with the same problems as everyone else. The movie also includes WWE wrestler Mick Foley, who has been obsessed with Christmas since an early age, and documents his first attempt at playing Santa.

Some of the Santas get more screentime than others. Lonely Santa probably gets the most, as he’s got the most sympathetic story. He’s just a single guy, no family or friends to speak of, who toils away in his basement apartment, clinging to the hope that he’ll get hired on for another Christmas. Living paycheck to paycheck is hard on him, and you certainly feel he sadness.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Money

It’s a good sign when a film’s poster contains multiple characters that were not in the source material.

It’s no secret that I despised The Hobbit Part 1, and I wasn’t looking forward to watching Part 2. In fact, I waited until it aired on HBO, because there was no way in hell I was shelling out my hard earned cash on this travesty. And as impossible as it sounds, Part 2 is actually worse than Part 1. Somehow, Peter Jackson managed to pull it off.

To be fair, I will admit that the beginning of the movie was pretty good. The dwarves and Bilbo enter Mirkwood Forest, get lost, are waylaid by spiders, and eventually are rescued. This hewed fairly close to the source material, and ended up being the highlight of the movie. Similarly, the only good scene in Part 1 was the Riddles in the Dark scene, which again, was the only scene that stuck to the source material. Hey, Peterson Jackson, guess what? Following the source material for the whole fucking thing would have been a good idea.