Cinematical

It's that time of year. We are gearing up for Cinematicalmas; the boob tube is a melange of claymation, desperate advertising pleas and Christmas trees; and the big screen shows us a little baby Jesus and a festival of lights. However, lurking behind the wholesome faces and sparkling eyes is the more deliciously insidious side of the holidays. For every angel that gets a pair of wings, there's always a John Waters to bring things back to earth with a little raunch, filth and other debauchery.

Two years ago, John Waters gave us his own jingling brand of Christmas with A John Waters Christmas. There's a little bit of quirky classics with Alvin and The Chipmunks' "Sleigh Ride", or Tiny Tim singing about Rudolph. But there are also the likes of "Fat Daddy" and "Santa Claus is a Black Man." Is there anything better than curling up with some hot cocoa during the holidays and listening to some hellsome tunes?

This year, you might have missed an added Waters Christmas goodie to help round off the season. He's on a bonus audio commentary for the recent Christmas Evil DVD release with the film's director, Lewis Jackson. If you're not familiar with the film, it gives a new perspective to the Santa myth, and what that can do to the mythtaken. We all know how the season will start to feel more like the Twelve Pains of Christmas, and when Bob Rivers just can't cut it, at least the Pope of Trash is here to help.

*Editor's Note: The previous weird formatting of the word "Christmas" noted by some of our readers was the result of some wonky code from cutting-and-pasting into our software from a word processing program, not from any freakish sense of political correctness. We apologize, however, for any misperception this may have caused. The code has been cleaned out, and Christmas has been restored to normalcy. - kdv