Maybe it's because I just sat through the lazy, depressing Fred Claus. Maybe it's because I was expecting Tyler Perry in drag. Maybe it's because my holiday spirit is at an all-time low. Whatever the reason, This Christmas came as a complete surprise. I kinda loved the thing.

Loretta Devine plays Ma Dear, the matriarch of a sprawling Los Angeles-based family with a whole lot of secrets. A whole lot. There's Quentin (Idris Elba, Stringer Bell on The Wire -- the best show on television), a musician who owes big money to some bookies. There's Lisa (Regina King), trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage with the hissable Malcome (Laz Alonso). There's Kelli (Sharon Leal), a sexually frustrated businesswoman. There's Claude (Columbus Short), in love with a woman (Jessica Stroup) he's scared to introduce to his family. Ma Dear has a secret of her own regarding Joe (Delroy Lindo), something of a surrogate father to the Whitfield clan. Oh, and Baby (R&B sensation Chris Brown)? He wants to sing, damn it!

That's a lot of stories to keep afloat, and writer/director Preston A. Whitmore II handles that list and many more mini-dramas with ease. It's quite the balancing act. Whitmore has written and/or directed several smaller projects since 1995's Vietnam drama The Walking Dead, but Christmas will put him on the map in a big way.

A few years ago, I would've been much less nervous about the news that The Big Chill, Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 accomplishment, was going to be re-made with an African-American cast. Switching race in classics can be an interesting thing -- especially in Shakespeare. I'm still bummed that I wasn't able to see Patrick Stewart's reverted theater version of Othello (where he was the only white man among a black cast). However, then came Guess Who, the "remake," if you can call it that, of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. (Then again, it actually got a bunch of nods from Black Reel Awards to Black Movie Awards...) Now I worry that a good opportunity will just be turned into a lame farce.

The plan is to re-title the movie, and keep the original script as a template -- college friends who reunite for a weekend to attend the funeral of a friend and get reacquainted -- just update it for the new cast, which will be a collection of actors in their 30's. Keeping the funeral angle will, I hope, keep its potential. This will pull the school memories out of the 60's and into the 90's, and music is said to be a big component of the film, although Variety says "the redo may stick with the original's fixation on Motown classics." Regina King (Ray) is already on the cast list as she is producing the ensemble with Reina King (her sister) and Stomp the Yard's Will Packer. She's been in some quality films, as well as her share of fluff, but hopefully King is looking to leave the goofy at the adaptation door. We should know soon enough -- the plan is to get the movie into production by the end of the year.

Back in March, we reported that ex-SNL Superstar! Molly Shannon was in final talks to star in Mike White's directorial debut, Year of the Dog, taking a role written specifically for her (she and White worked together on the short-lived TV show, Cracking Up, and clearly got along reasonably well). Not surprisingly (since "final talks" usually means "looking for a pen to sign the contract"), Shannon got the gig, and now she's snared some (pleasingly diverse) costars, as well. According to this morning's Hollywood Reporter, Peter Sarsgaard, Regina King, John C. Reilly and Laura Dern have all joined the cast of the movie, which starts shooting next month.

The film tells the story of Shannon's character, a "happy-go-lucky secretary who lives alone with her beloved dog Pencil." As you might expect, the dog dies, she gets really sad, and lessons are learned. As I said when I first reported this story, that summary makes the movie sounds alarmingly like one of those loathsome "I found a man and am now complete!" stories. But, with a screenplay by White, it's awfully hard to imagine that it will take such an obvious path -- we'll just have to wait for script reviews and set leaks and whatnot to find out what he's got in mind.

A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.