4: Rewatched “Bad Santa.” Here’s one that IS in my annual holiday rotation! Absolutely awash in bad taste (even more than I realized, as I just found out I’ve been watching the “unrated cut” all these years) but incredibly funny. ALL Christmas movies don’t have to be “Bad Santa,” but I’m glad one is

3: “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” a nostalgic look back at a family holiday gathering from… the early 2000s? Pre-smartphone anyway. I’ve heard this called a new Christmas classic, and it might be if you connect with the film’s vibes. I didn’t, so it probably won’t go into my holiday rotation

2: “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.” A 1979 basketball comedy where a lousy team starts winning after an astrologer begins running the team (the roster’s all-Pisces.) It’s not good, but genuine reasons to watch are:
- the title!
- stars Doctor J!
- a pretty great Thom Bell Philly soul soundtrack!

If you want to take one thing away from the art of the New Deal it is - in my humble opinion - that throwing money at *NORMAL* artists to decorate public buildings makes the world a much nicer place, particularly if you charge them with making the decorations evoke the history of where they are.

I ask myself this every time I watch it

“Credit cards work on a completely different kind of lock”

4: It’s Christmas movie month, so a rewatch of “Joyeux Noël” fits
TRUE(?) STORY OF: The Christmas truce of 1914 along the western front in France.
The story of the truce itself is always cool; this movie also shows a less-repeated angle, which is how much the truce really ticked off the higher-ups