Holiday Movies that Don't Suck.

Some of us are getting a little tiresome of just seeing It's A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street every holiday season - here are some alternatives.

1. Scrooged - If you're a little sick of the normal telling of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol" - and it's ok to admit; it's not actually a declaration of war on Christmas - you should definitely take a look at this update. For those unfamiliar, Bill Murray plays Frank Cross, a "work around the clock" money miser who dodges his nearest relatives for the holidays and works his underpaid assistant to the bone, completely ignoring the assistant's troubled child. And his secret regret is not sticking with his kindhearted young adulthood love. Sound familiar? Well, the differences are Frank is a high-powered TV exec, his Jacob Marley is his old boss - "the man who invented the mini-series" - and the whole movie takes place in 1980's New York. The always-genius Murray is complemented by wonderful performances from Bobcat Goldthwait, Carol Kane, Karen Allen and Buster Poindexter. The script manages to keep the heart and meaning of Dickens' tale and put it in such an unfamiliar setting (and more adult humor) that you'll find yourself looking for parallels to the original after your 20th viewing. My favorite? Taking Scrooge's "A bit of undigested food" explanation for Marley and referring to the warning spirit as "A hallucination! Russian vodka...poisoned by Chernobyl!"

2. The Nightmare Before Christmas - One of the highlights of Tim Burton's career, Nightmare is the story of the king of Halloweentown, Jack Skellington, as he and his spooky friends try to adopt Christmas as their own holiday. Released in the early '90s, this is a gleefully CGI-free stop-motion feature, and one of the few musicals with tolerable songs (all by Danny Elfman).

3. Love, Actually - This English ensemble romantic comedy shows the lives of over a dozen characters intersecting and humorously finding their true loves. I'm not a romantic comedy person at all, but the charm and fun throughout Love, Actually - from Hugh Grant's new prime minister with a boyish crush on his assistant to Liam Neeson's absurdly supportive stepfather helping a little boy get the attention of the object of his affection - win me over every time I see it.

4. Trading Places - Definitely a classic, though not much about Christmas. Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy play perfect opposites - the former an upper-class milquetoast with a butler, the latter an impoverished con-man. Aykroyd's evil bosses decide to place a bet on nature vs. nurture: if they ruin Aykroyd's life overnight and hire Murphy as his replacement, will the men take to their new roles or were they "born into" their places in society? Jamie Lee Curtis plays Aykroyd's would-be girlfriend - a prostitute who takes pity on him and helps him get his life back, for a percentage. It takes place around Christmas, of course, and one of the highlights is seeing Dan Aykroyd go back to his office completely drunk, in disguise as Santa, and seeing the mayhem that follows.

5. Elf - Will Farrell is Buddy the Elf, who, as a baby, snuck into Santa's sleigh and hitched a free ride back to the North Pole from an orphanage in New York. He's twice the size of everyone else there (including his foster father, Bob Newhart) and at one point he decides he has to go back to meet his real family in New York - including his real father, James Caan, a children's book publisher with a heart like a lump of coal. Zooey Deschanel shines as the cynical department store elf whose lack of enthusiasm is eventually warmed by Buddy's faith and naivete about the holidays. I wasn't crazy about Elf when it first came out, but Newhart's deadpan delivery starts a snowball (no pun intended) of great performances throughout.

6. Bad Santa - If you'll excuse one more awful Christmas reference, you'll want to make sure the kids are nestled all snug in their beds before popping in this adults-only R-rated comedy with Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic burglar who uses his gig as a mall Santa to rob department stores blind every Christmas. Directed by Crumb and Ghost World's Terry Zwigoff, Thornton is supported by Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Tony Cox, Lauren Graham and Brett Kelly as he moves in with a loser kid (Kelly) under the guise of being Santa. This is about as funny as it gets, and it could make a veteran sailor blush. One of the darkest comedies I've ever seen, but definitely one of the best Christmas movies too.

7. A Christmas Story - Jean Shepherd wrote (and narrates) this amazing narrative non-fiction film about a nine-year-old kid growing up in the '60s who wants a BB-gun for Christmas. Originally published as a series of stories in Playboy from 1964 to 1966, this was adapted into the now-classic movie starring Peter Billingsley as the kid and Melinda Dillon as his mother in the early '80s. Besides a child's love of presents above all else, Christmas Story explores such classic childhood themes as being bundled up in winter clothes to the point of immobility, tongues sticking to frozen poles, fathers battling decades-old furnaces and lying to your parents to get out of trouble.

8. 200 Cigarettes - This ensemble dramedy takes place on New Year's Eve, 1981 and revolves around the lives of a couple dozen people trying to reconcile love and growing up while the clock ticks down. This is a decent flick worth a watch to break the George Bailey Doldrums.

9. A Charlie Brown Christmas - One of the few awesome classics (in my opinion). Join the Peanuts gang as they search for the true meaning of Christmas and belt out one of the most excellent Christmas songs ever, "Christmastime is Here." I'm also a sucker for that song's use in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, but it's a testament to its timelessness and nostalgia for a childhood classic.

Sneaking A Couple In for the Men

I'm becoming convinced that casting directors hire awesome actors for small parts in sub-par romantic comedies to keep the men interested - which is what I thought would happen with Liam Neeson and Alan Rickman being in Love, Actually except that it turned out to be fantastic. It seems that every time my wife wants me to see some train wreck about true love, she becomes the world's quickest salesperson. "Hey, let's go see New Year's Eve!" "Screw that!" "But it has Robert De Niro in it!" Considering that, I think the shoe is on the other foot when it comes to sliding a couple non-Christmas movies into our "Holiday Movies that Don't Suck" list simply because they take place on or around Christmas.

Die Hard and Die Hard 2 - If you find yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel to avoid your 156th showing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - and every channel seems to be showing nothing but Miracle on 34th Street - you can convince your family on the facts that both movies take place during the Christmas holiday. This is more like the Lee Marvin spoof The Night the Reindeer Died as featured on Scrooged than anything else, but what the hey - it's Christmas.

The Long Kiss Goodnight - Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson kick ass in this action-comedy about a thirtysomething suburban housewife with amnesia who suddenly regains her memory and realizes she's a high-ranking spy for the U.S. government. Sam Jackson is her low-ranking private eye who gets dragged into her world of espionage and uzi-happy action scenes. Not only is this movie full of hilarious jokes and convincing action, but the whole thing revolves around Christmastime.

Gremlins - A little fuzzy creature who pops out rapidly-multiplying green homicidal monsters? Well, they are green...Gremlins takes place on Christmas and is as typical '80s horror as you get - think Critters but with an adorable little mascot, whose species was later co-opted for one of the best post-rock bands on earth: Mogwai. Much like the Bill and Ted movies, the first Gremlins seems to almost take itself as seriously as it can, while the sequel is so self-parodying and -referential it's great if only for its mockery of the sub-genre.

* Note - I Googled some other cool winter holiday movies, as I was hoping to find some bitchin' Hanukkah or Kwanzaa flicks, but apparently there aren't many. I've seen plenty of great movies based on Jewish and black/African-American culture and history in general, but upon further reflection I don't feel that shooing them in as general consolations would be doing either people justice. My apologies.

Why Tori Amos's 'Night of Hunters' Might Be the Best Album of 2011.

I was as excited as any average Tori Amos fan when I heard she had a new album coming out this year - well, to be fair, about as excited as i was to hear about new music this year from Bjork, Saul Williams, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Skinny Puppy, Junius, Radiohead and everyone else whose albums I awaited with bated breath in 2011.

I was, subsequently, so intrigued by the concept and composition of the new Tori Amos record as to say my intrigue was only matched this year by Bjork's Biophilia - which involved bespoke instruments and aural interpretations of natural phenomena (like using a Tesla Coil to make a bassline for a song about electricity). The structure of Tori's Night of Hunters, as I've come to understand it, is that it is a 14-track song cycle in the tradition of classical collections like Franz Schubert's Die Winterreise - a sort of allegorical mini-opera. The story behind this album finds the female narrator on the eve of the end of a relationship, suddenly whisked away by a spirit on a journey across 400 years to see herself and her partner's earlier incarnations throughout fantasy and history.

Surprisingly, your or my opinions on subjects like fire spirits, mythical goddesses and peyote rituals - all of which are explored on the album - or concept-based albums at all are rendered irrelevant by the next trick Tori had up her sleeve in Night of Hunters' composition. All 14 songs, without exception, are either based upon or at least inspired by classical pieces from the last 400 years. It's no coincidence that the history of music she explores matches in time with the journey on which the narrator travels - nor is it coincidence that such subject matter would find itself on Tori's first release under contract with the classical-based German record label Deutsche Grammophon - but it's the near-tribute to some of the world's most renowned classical composers that acts as adhesive bridging each track into a full-length quest to the 17th century and back.

My one complaint with Night of Hunters was that as truly classic (excuse the terminology) as it sounded, I didn't recognize any of the reference material as I listened - until I realized that was really a problem with my rudimentary experience with classical music, not Tori's selection. A quick YouTube search, the benefits of which you're about to reap, quickly revealed to me the intimate and respectful true nature of the album towards Tori's predecessors - who include Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Bach, among others.

Consider Tori's new song "Battle of Trees." Here's a link to it on MySpace (just click the "Play" button, and try a couple times if it doesn't work the first time).

http://www.myspace.com/toriamos/music/songs/battle-of-trees-83864619

It's instantly memorable for several of its chord and singular note progressions. "Battle of Trees" is based on Erik Satie's "Gnossienne No. 1," written over a hundred years ago. Give it a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0

Not only is "Battle of Trees" a faithful reproduction of "Gnossienne No. 1," but Tori adds her own style and flair to it as well - and the whole album follows suit! Not all songs are as similar as their inspirations, but listening to the reference material and the Tori Amos song back-to-back are a real treat.

The amount of work that's gone into the reinterpretation and production of these songs to bring them up to the 21st century is daunting enough without considering that it manages to flow as a unified whole, and not just 14 random songs sequenced together. If it's not the most impressive and ambitious endeavor in music this year, it's certainly near the top of a short list. Night of Hunters is an absolute odyssey from front to back, but one worth hearing again and again.

One final note - an Amazon.com reviewer known as T. Fisher, in critiquing the just-released instrumental version of Night of Hunters, tracked the entire album to its sources. For your enjoyment, I'll list them as follows, with thanks to him or her for the information.

1. Shattering Sea (Alkan: Song of the Madwoman on the Sea-Shore, Prelude op. 31 no. 8)
2. SnowBlind (Granados: Añoranza - from 6 Pieces on Spanish Folksongs)
3. Battle of Trees (Satie: Gnossienne no. 1)
4. Fearlessness (Granados: Orientale from 12 Spanish Dances)
5. Cactus Practice (Chopin: Nocturne op. 9 no. 1)
6. Star Whisperer (Schubert: Andantino from Piano Sonata in A major D 959)
7. Job's Coffin (Inspired by the next song, Nautical Twilight)
8. Nautical Twilight (Mendelssohn: Venetian Boat Song from Songs Without Words op. 30)
9. Your Ghost (Schumann: Theme and Variations in E flat major WoO 24 from Ghost Variations)
10. Edge of the Moon (Bach: Siciliano from Flute Sonata BWV 1031)
11. The Chase (Mussorgsky: The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition)
12. Night of Hunters (Scarlatti: Sonata in F minor, K.466 and the Gregorian Chant "Salva Regina")
13. Seven Sisters (Bach: Prelude in C minor)
14. Carry (Debussy: The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, from Preludes I)