Would love to travel back in time to watch this in a packed theater.

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Light 4 / heavy 3.5 maybe. 🤷‍♂️ Fun and well directed! Always appreciate superhero fight scenes that are actually thought out.

There’s a particular shot in this of Harriet Sansom Harris towards the beginning that’s just immaculately lit. Combined with the grainy b&w effect, it just nails the look. I just wish it continued that look throughout. This is an homage to classic horror, but it only really emulates classic horror in very specific moments (the dolly in on Laura Donnelly being another). It really does skew more Marvel than Universal in its DNA.

But it’s still fun! A nice short lil spooky story. Also love love love the trope of the good guy being pals with a misunderstood monster. Just always hits right. 😌

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Horrific. Difficult to understand the target demographic here. If it’s young children, there are some questionable takeaways, such as letting the dogs devour an entire gingerbread house, roast turkey, and a plastic Santa’s face. Actually, come to think of it, it’s a perfect short to watch to dissuade your kids from getting a puppy. So it really does earn that half star. A Christmas miracle 🎄

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In my video editing work, sometimes I need to make sure two videos match up perfectly, frame to frame. This could be for a variety of reasons, but today it was because I was conforming an edit that was done in Premiere Pro, to finish it with color and audio in DaVinci Resolve. “Conforming” encompasses a lot of things, but for my purposes it basically means, “Did this timeline make it ok from one program to the other? Did anything break? Are all the shots lining up?

I usually start by firing off an export from the original app as a reference video, and lay that reference video on top of my imported timeline in Resolve. Then, I change its blend mode to “Difference.” That does exactly what you’d think – it highlights the differences between the top and bottom clips in the timeline. So when I watch back the program, I should hope to see nothing but blackness, because everything matched up perfectly, right? …right?

Shoot. Here I had a clip that used Premiere’s “Modify → Interpret Footage” workflow for slow motion, something that doesn’t carry over via XML to Resolve¹. So I slowed my 30 FPS clip down to 80% and started slipping it left and right, frame by frame, until the most satisfying moment:

Ahhhh.

Conforming can be an annoying, frustrating experience at times, so I think it’s important to take a bit of joy in moments like these. Plus, sometimes clips with Difference blending that are slightly off sync can yield some cool results when in motion:

Wait… this movie can’t be over… there’s at least three minor characters that haven’t given an impassioned monologue about family and truth and love yet…

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Really surprised how much I enjoyed this. Although I wonder what it would’ve been like with two leads that were actually singers. Not that they didn’t do a good job... but it definitely brought it down a notch. Patrick Page steals the show with one (half of a) song.

Then again, you’d miss out on the really fun winking humor Ferrell and Reynolds bring to it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m getting fatigued by that style of tongue-firmly-buried-in-the-cheek humor. I mean, it’s pretty much Reynolds’ typecast at this point. But this felt fun to me, and genuine in a way that, say, Free Guy wasn’t.

I do want to say... there’s a certain plot point towards the end of Act Two that’s just... 👀. A bit roughly handled.

I’ve immediately forgotten all the music but I didn’t completely hate it in the moment! And I’m a real sucker for that final shot. 💕 Merry Christmas!

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“Nee-uhl!”
-Charlie

A classic for sure… but it’s kind of just holiday fried chicken. It’s tasty, but not as tasty as it is in your memory, leaves you a bit bloated, and gets a bit cold after an hour or so.

To extend the metaphor: the BBQ sauce with a kick is the hot elves with attitude.

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