The Screengrab

Here’s a first look at J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot due out next Christmas. It is, quite literally, just the intro sequence from the original ’60s television show with two notable differences. Check it out after the jump.

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For many of my peers, A Christmas Story is almost certainly the greatest unironic holiday classic, but Gremlins is probably the ultimate wicked Christmas movie. For the two of you who haven't yet seen it, it's a sly fusion of the monster movie with an idealized Norman Rockwell-style vision of the small-town Christmas. In other words, it’s a perfect Joe Dante movie, one that plays to all his strengths as a satirist of comfortable Americana. Gremlins is the kind of older kids’ movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make- with fun characters and adventure for the younger crowd, and enough of an edge to make it endlessly rewatchable even for adults. Gremlins is great any time of the year, but it’s essential around the holidays, especially for the scene where Phoebe Cates recounts her tragic (and hilarious) Christmas story. What’s even more amazing is how convincingly wholesome Cates managed to be here, just two years after her immortal scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

I love Die Hard as much as the next guy, but this is pretty hilarious. Now that Stiller has become the star of such comfort-blanket fare as Meet the Fockers and Night at the Museum, it’s hard to remember what a brilliant comic mind he used to be. Not to much a wicked impressionist- despite looking and sounding almost nothing like Bruce Willis, he manages to perfectly mimic Willis’ most famous mannerisms- the steely-eyed squint, the pained grimace, the smartass cackle. This spoof trailer originally aired on the short-lived Ben Stiller Show, and Stiller smartly enlisted the services of Taylor Negron, the baddie in the Willis-starring The Last Boy Scout, to serve Die Hungry's nefarious archvillain. Fifteen years later, in the wake of Willis’ own fourth Die Hard movie, this isn’t exactly cutting-edge anymore, but the familiarity only makes it funnier.

Bob Clark’s 1974 classic is the granddaddy of the slasher genre, and although it helped create the template for the movies it spawned, there are also quite a few atypical elements to the film. For one thing, the cast isn’t composed of the nubile nobodies who would populate most later slasher films, but a fairly classy ensemble- the gorgeous Olivia Hussey (post-Romeo and Juliet), 2001’s Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder just a year after Sisters, and future SCTV star Andrea Martin. But make no mistake- Black Christmas is no watered-down thriller. As the trailer’s narrator (James Mason- talk about classy) says, “if this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight.” If you’ve never seen this- or worse, if you’ve only seen the 2006 remake- check it out. Black Christmas is a must-see both for fans of the slasher movie and for people looking for Scrooge-friendly holiday fare. Bless its black, two-sizes-too-small little heart.

Christmas cards are a peculiar tradition. Yes, it’s nice hear from an old friend you rarely talk to, catch up a little on their lives, and know they’re thinking of you while remembering good times. But you also get those cards from people you don't know very well. They’re usually three page, typed form letters about every single thing their three children have done in the past three-hundred days wrapped in a picture of their ugliest child making a snowman. That’s just obnoxious. You see a decent balance of the good and bad types in the past three decades of Christmas cards from LucasFilms. Getting a card with pod racers on it? Obnoxious. Getting a card with Ewok on it? Festive as hell.

As the world now knows, nothing goes together like Vince Vaughn and Christmas. Good news, then, that he's working on the comedy Four Christmases with Reese Witherspoon and (newly announced) Robert Duvall.

And like Vince Vaughn and Christmas, like chocolate and peanut butter, there's remakes and Neil LaBute. The director has just signed on to remake Francois Truffaut's La Femme d'a cote (The Woman Next Door).

Your dreams have come true: a live-action Dragonball is on the way.

— Peter Smith