Christmas movies

Today I finally watched my DVD of Arthur Christmas that I got months ago. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an offbeat Christmas movie-- it's heartwarming, family-friendly, and constructed entirely from military metaphors.

My favorite weird Christmas movie of all time would have to be Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Every year when the news starts talking about the NORAD Santa tracker, I start thinking of the line from Rare Exports about how Santa can be in many places at once. If you're not familiar with this one, do not go and watch the related shorts on YouTube first, because they'll spoil the punchline for you.

The SO belongs to the school of thought that Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie. On a similar note, the SO's Christmas tradition is to watch The Crossing, which is about the Continental Army sneaking across the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776.

Anime logjam

I had yesterday off, so I finished up both this week's column and the winter 2020 preview. Only 12 shows in the preview this time, two of which are on Netflix so they won't be simulcast.

At the other end of things, the week from Christmas to New Year's has traditionally been devoid of anime. I've sometimes had to review one straggling finale in the first post of the year due to the timing of the column and the holidays, but this year three shows of the five I've been following have post-Christmas episodes. At the same time, I've been planning to add a best-of-the-decade section to my traditional best-of-the-year post.

So to keep from cramming too much content into one post and then following it with too little since there aren't a lot of premieres coming the schedule works out like this:

• Last 2019 episodes on January 2
• Best of 2019 and the 2010s on January 9
• All the simulcast premieres on January 16

After that, I can worry about having enough shows to cover during the winter season. Welcome to Demon School will be continuing onward, so I only have to find two good ones, and a lot more that two of them look promising.