The Advent Calendar of Great Holiday Movies: Day 21 "Edward Scissorhands"

The pre-Christmas Day season of Advent is upon us. Here at SeedSing we love the chocolaty goodness of getting a piece of candy once a day until we get to open our presents. As our gift to you we will present a great movie associated with the holiday season. Many will be awesome, some will be extra awesome. Enjoy.

Day 21: “Edward Scissorhands”

Opened Doors: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15, Day 16, Day 17, Day 18, Day 19, Day 20

When most of us think of winter we think of snow. The Coca Cola company, Normal Rockwell paintings, and every other piece of western pop culture in between likes to show crisp snow on a cold Christmas evening. It does not matter that a good part of the United States will not see snow on Christmas, or all winter, the image of snow and the holidays is burned into our cultural psyche. If every other part of the holiday season has a legend associated with it’s creation, why not have a legend about where the snowfall comes from?

In December of 1990 director Tim Burton released the movie “Edward Scissorhands”. The story of a kind, not quite finished, man child and his interactions with the modern world was a big hit with critics and the audience. The film has gone on to become one of the most beloved films of the last thirty years. It made a star of Johnny Depp, solidified Winona Ryder as the it girl of the early 1990’s, and was the last major film role for Hollywood legend Vincent Price. The cast also included once and future Oscar winner Diane Wiest, future Oscar winner Alan Arkin, and an unusually buff, and menacing, Anthony Michael Hall. After the success of “Batman”, Tim Burton was given the keys to Hollywood’s best talent, and “Edward Scissorhands” was the legendary end result.

The weirdness of “Edward Scissorhands” was notable, but it was the tenderness of the story that made the movie legendary. Depp gets special recognition for his performance, but the entire cast was hitting homeruns in the movie. The scene of Vincent Price dying in his unfinished creations arms is heartbreaking. The wild topiary, dog grooming, and hairstyle creations of Edward’s are forever iconic. But the true magic of “Edward Scissorhands” comes in the moment when Ryder is dancing in the “snow” coming off of the ice sculpture Edward is creating. The music by Danny Elfman, Ryder’s look, and dance of wonderment, in the “snow”, and Burton’s flowing camera makes the scene a piece of cinematic magic. Ryder and Burton capture the joy of experiencing a quiet snowfall on a peaceful winter evening like no had before or since. In a movie filled with incredible imagery, this scene wins the gold medal.

The idea of snow coming from a Gothic mansion because an unfinished man with scissors for hands is carving an ice sculpture in the image of his beloved he can never see again sounds pretty ridiculous when you put it down on paper. Tim Burton made it into magic. We may know the real reason why the snow falls on Christmas evening, but because of “Edward Scissorhands” we can look at simple snowfall and make it a moment of holiday joy.

RD

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing. The holiday season is often a time of quiet reflection and hopeful renewal. Dolly Parton sings about these feelings with “Hard Candy Christmas”.

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The SeedSing 2016 Year in Pop Culture: Best, and Worst, in Television

This week marks the week of my "Best Of"' lists. I will do TV, movies, music, podcasts and sports moments.

Right off the bat though, 2016 has been a pain in the ass. This is one of the worst years possibly in the history of the world. We have lost so many great people, George Michael even passed last night, I mean, Jesus Christ, we have lost some legends. There is also the terrible, horrible, dreadful election that we have spoken so much of on the site and podcast. The weather, at least here in Saint Louis, has been a nightmare. To make a long story short, 2016 has stunk. This is my generations "great depression", or World War or any other bad thing you want to say. It has been a horrific year.

But, some good, maybe, possibly, even great things have come out this year, and that is what I'm going to be talking about the next 5 days. So, even though I have laid out how shitty 2016 has been, I do have some "Best Of" stuff to get to. I will also throw in one thing on each list I thought was terrible as well, but today comes my top 5 TV shows of the year. I will count down from 5-1 on each list.

So, here we go.

At number 5, I have "Horace and Pete". This show came from nowhere. Louis C.K. had been working on it for some time, and put out every episode on his site on a random Saturday in the middle of the summer. It was an odd time to put out a show, but would you expect anything different from a genius like C.K.? But, getting to what made this show so great, it was so very different from anything C.K. has been doing. It was dark and very depressing. Sure, there were some funny moments, but there was way, way more dark and deep moments. C.K. shined on the show, but so did Steven Buscemi, Alan Alda, Edie Falco and every patron at the bar, especially Steven Wright. The show was shot like a play, which I enjoyed very much. It was unique, it was ground breaking, in its own way and it had Louis C.K.'s imprint all over it. I'm sure it will be on Netflix or some other streaming device, but I recommend buying it on his site. It is only 20 or 30 bucks for the whole series, and you will never forget the greatness that you will see when watching "Horace and Pete". I still can't shake the ending, and to me, that is the sign of a great show.

At number 4, I get a little lighter with, "People of Earth". I had heard very little about this show leading to its build up, but I knew Wyatt Cenac was the star, and I'm a big fan of his. So, I recorded the premiere, which was on Halloween, and waited until 3 or 4 episodes had recorded. I watched all 3 or 4 in one sitting and was immediately hooked. The show has a very easy plot to understand. A group of people calling themselves "Experiencers" get together every week to talk about the time that they were abducted by aliens. In each episode you get to see the people getting abducted, and what they each went through during their experiences. But, there is so much more to this show than just some UFO, alien stuff. The show is very funny. I laughed out loud at parts. There were episodes that were moving and heartfelt. Cenac is a star in this role. Ana Gasteyer is equally as good. The rest of the cast does great in their roles to. The best part though is the aliens. The interactions and things that go on on the ship are great. The creators do not treat the aliens like monsters. Sure, they look like aliens, but they have squabbles and get into petty fights just like anyone else at their respective job does. Like I said, the show did not get the coverage it deserved on the lead up, but the show is great, and it is coming back in 2017 for a second season, which makes me very happy.

At number 3, I have "Luke Cage". This show kicks ass people. I watched it not because it is a superhero show, but because Ali Shaheed Muhammed, from ATCQ, did all the original music for it. But, in watching it for the music, I fell in love with the show. When my wife asked me why I was enjoying it so much, I told her it is like "The Wire", which may be the greatest television show ever, but with superheroes, and it is easier to follow the story. When "The Wire" would go deep into cop talk, sometimes they would lose me, that never happens in "Luke Cage". It was easy for me to follow everything, and I loved that about this show. Mike Colter is excellent as Luke Cage, but everyone else on the show, be it Theo Rossi, Alfre Woodard, Rosario Dawson, Masherala Ali, or anyone else in the cast, they are all stars. The show is dark and violent, but it is also incredible. I love Luke Cage's powers, I love his "origin" story, I loved watching the fight scenes, I loved everything about this show. They even had big time musical guest stars, people like Charles Bradley, Rapheal Saadiq and Sharon Jones, RIP, show up in some episodes. "Luke Cage" is the second best Netflix Original that I have seen. People need to watch it, even if you are not a "superhero" person.

The reason "Luke Cage" is the second best Netflix show leads me to my number 2 show of 2016, "Stranger Things". Honestly, has there been a recent show that has been more talked about on social media than "Stranger Things". The crazy thing about it, none of the talk was negative. I cannot find one person that does not think this show is awesome. I was skeptical at first when I heard it was a cross between "E.T." and the "X-Files", but as I watched, I found it to be a bit more like "Goonies" and "The X-Files", both of which I love. The kids on this show are wonderful. They are the true stars that are the heart and soul of what makes "Stranger Things" so good. But, the adults, mainly Winona Ryder, are just as good. They have to live in this crazy world that the Duffer Brothers created as well, and they do a phenomenal job on the show. This show kind of had it all. There were love stories, comedy, action, family drama, regular drama, monsters, aliens, weird old scientist guys, but above all else, the best Sci Fi since "Blade Runner". I do not want to give anything away in case there are one or two people that have not seen "Stranger Things", but damn is this show great. The best part is the kids, and that goes double for Millie Bobby Brown, who plays 11. Seriously, if you haven't seen "Stranger Things" yet, first, what the hell is wrong with you, but second, go watch it right now, and thank me later. This show is a true gem.

Finally, my number one show of 2016, "Atlanta". Did you really think I'd pick something else? I've been talking up this show since I saw the first trailer for it, and not only did it deliver on my expectations, but it exceeded them by a thousand miles. There hasn't been a show this original and unique on TV in quite some time. The time and effort that went into "Atlanta" paid off so much. The show was moving, funny, heartfelt, treated every character as if they were the main character, gave us some great newish actors and actresses to love and proved that Donald Glover is one of the best, and most innovative, people working in show business right now. This show had everything. All the episodes were all home runs. The show paid off and, as I have already stated, exceeded everyone's wildest dreams. Every episode with Paper Boi was excellent. Zazie Beets, who played Earn's baby's mother, was tremendous in her solo episode. When Earn and her go to her mother's party, another fantastic 30 minutes of television. But, the best episode of the season was when they had the "BET" type talk show that even included some commercials that Glover and staff made up themselves. This was the most original thing that has been on TV in over a decade. "Atlanta" was head and shoulders above any other TV show on this year, and we did have some decent TV this year. "Atlanta" was the best though, and it wasn't even close.

As far as my one bad TV show of the year goes, it cannot be anything other than "The Walking Dead". I hammeredlast season's finale, and true to my word, I did not watch one single episode of this season, but my wife did, and she said it was excruciatingly boring. They even killed off some "main" characters, but when she told me who they were, my response was something along the lines of "Who?", or "I don't even know who you are talking about". I do not care about Negan, I think the show did all it could in about 2 seasons, but now, they are scraping the barrel. People crushed "The Office" for going on too long, including me, so why doesn't everyone do the same for "The Walking Dead"? I don't get it, but from what I gathered, it was probably the worst show of the year.

That is it for today, come back tomorrow for my top 5 movies of 2016.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He picked no network tv shows because he is under the age of 60 and does not wathc network television. Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.

Ty Watches "Stranger Things"

I just finished, last night in fact, "Stranger Things" on Netflix. Now, just to get it all out of the way, this is going to be a shorter post from me today. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, I'll get into that in a minute, but I do want to talk about a show that a lot of other people have been talking about. I was, at first, opposed to watching "Stranger Things". I thought it was going to be straight horror. I was picturing nothing but gore and scary stuff happening throughout. But, after some posturing and a good talking to from my wife, I gave in and told her I'd watch with her.

Boy am I glad that I gave in because "Stranger Things" was absolutely phenomenal. My wife and I usually take about two to three weeks to finish a season of certain shows, but we finished "Stranger Things" in less than two weeks, and we were out of town for three of those days. We would sit down after putting our kids to bed and just watch. We had to see what happened next. We could not wait two or three days at a time in between episodes. The mini vacation was great, but we kept talking about the fact that we couldn't watch the show. The people we visited, we asked them to not spoil anything because they had finished the show, but we were only half way through.

I haven't felt this way about a show since I got very heavily into "Lost". I know that I write about a lot of shows, like "Bar Rescue" and "The Eric Andre Show", both of which I truly adore, but "Stranger Things" was so, so much better than pretty much anything that I currently watch on TV. Some of the shows that I watch weekly, I can go a couple of days before watching, but I craved "Stranger Things". The show was quite spectacular. I'm not going to spoil anything because this show needs to be watched. It is so god damn incredible, and just like I did not want our friends in Chicago to spoil anything, I will not spoil a single thing. I feel that is only fair.

I do want to talk about some of the things I really liked about the show though. I loved the cast. Winona Ryder really showed up for this role and she was great. David Harbour, an actor I'm not to familiar with, did a very good job. Matthew Modine was creepy and excellent. The other, older actors all did a very good job in their roles. But, the kids on this show were the stars. They were all fantastic. The middle school aged kids were great. The high school aged kids were great. And the college aged kids were great. But, the young girl that is the main character, she is the star. She was exceptional, and she is going to start doing bigger things after this. 

"Stranger Things" captured the time, the style and the attitude of the 80's in a small Midwest town to perfection. I could relate to a lot of what was going on. Which leads me to the set pieces. The sets were excellent. Everything looked like it was from 1980. It just had that look, and I know you guys know what I'm talking about. The Duffer Brothers, the creators of the show, hit an absolute home run with pretty much everything they chose to do with "Stranger Things", all the way from choosing Netflix to how each character dressed, and everything in between.

I am so grateful to my wife for talking me into this show. Sure, there was horror and gore, but there was also comedic moments, coming of age moments, fights and stories about the importance of family. I have zero bad things to say about "Stranger Things", except for the fact that it took me so long to watch it. This show was perfect in every single way. I'm sure it will be back for a second season, and I can only hope it is half as good as this first season. If you like horror, mystery, comedy and science fiction, watch "Stranger Things" immediately. Read this blog, then stop whatever else you were going to do today and binge watch it. I guarantee that you will love it. It's so good.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. When rolling the die, he thinks Netflix is rolling some true 20's. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.