Christmas Week: "Muppet Christmas Carol" (2)

I know I've already told you about my liking of The Muppet Christmas Carol; today I'd like to show you two of the songs but this time in French.

Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine)'s introduction:

Jacob and Robert Marley (Statler and Waldorf)'s song:

Note that Michael Caine is dubbed by Bernard Dhéran.


"Ça sent bon Noël" / "It feels like Christmas" (sung by Richard Darbois)

Christmas Week: "Ernest Saves Christmas"

Let me introduce you to a sadly underrated movie, Ernest Saves Christmas. In this second film of this franchise focusing arount silly character Ernest P. Worrel (played by the late Jim Varney) the hero is a taxi driver who picks up an old man at the airport. We soon find out that he's the real Santa Claus and he's looking for a successor.

If you don't want to watch the whole film, or because you can't find it — which would be perfectly normal, for to my knowledge it was broadcast only once in Belgium and fortunately I still have the tape. This is the French version, with a brilliant voice job by Jacques Balutin and the late Philippe Dumat as Ernest and Santa, respectively.

Christmas Week: Home Alone alternate endings

I felt it very appropriate to show you some good alternate endings for Home Alone and Home Alone 2, given this is Christmas Week.

Kevin is stronger than he thought:



And he's a killer!



He gets his ass kicked:



And of course, Casey Jones saves the day:

Christmas Week: Alles kan beter (10)

Special Christmas songs!

Christmas Week: "Christmas with the Joker"

You probably remember the silly Joker Christmas song:



Hey, I found the whole Christmas with the Joker episode (from Batman: The Animated Series):

Have a happy aXe-Mas!

Christmas Week: Top Gear gifts

If you haven't still found a Christmas gift for your beloved ones, Jeremy Clarkson and his disciples May and Hammond have some suggestions:

Funny home videos

If you're fed up with the huge pile of homework you've got to do, why don't you have a short break and watch the following videos?





I love the last ten seconds!

The most surprising is this is just a small percentage of all domestic accidents that occur, because there's not always someone with a cam recorder!

Christmas Week: Miscellaneous

I'm sorry to say that it's the sixth and last instalment of the Christmas Week on this blog. I hope you enjoyed the videos I had favourited on YouTube; next year I'll do the same — but with different videos, of course!

Here are some goodies that I had forgotten in my favourites:

The song "It feels like Christmas" (from "The Muppet Christmas Carol") applied to Harry Potter…



And, if we follow the same logic, Severus Snape is Ebenezer Scrooge! Watch this video. (Embedding was disabled.)

And oh yeah, I forgot this one: Batman's Christmas Carol, Panique au village style!!!!



Brilliant!

PS. I posted the account of the first day of our trip to Amsterdam.

Christmas Week: "Little Britain"

I know that the Little Britain series had a special two-parts episode made for Christmas, called Little Britain Abroad, with characters traveling to exotic places, such as the Belgian Ardennes (a couple spending their honeymoon in a caravan) or Spain or Disneyworld (Lou and Andy were to go there, but their plane crashed on a desert island…). Unfortunately, the censors of YouTube apparently didn't like the fact that people shared funny stuff, and the episode is now only available through several fragments. The good news is that my account hasn't been suspended (yet!) and I have a scene that has something to do with Christmas. Enjoy!



I look a pillock!

Christmas Week: Mr Bean

This is probably one of my favourite scenes from the whole Mr Bean series with Rowan Atkinson. In this episode Mr Beans goes to Harrods to buy some Christmas stuff. And look what happens when he spots a nativity scene…



Exterminate! Exterminate!

I especially liked the shepherd knocking on the truck as a sign that the driver can go.

Christmas Week: "Home Alone"

Here's another Christmas film I really love: Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. (They curiously kind of disappeared from the screens after that…)

Here's the trailer of the director's cut version:

"He's a disturbed child who's searching for a home…"

KEVIN: I made my family disappear… I'm a criminal.

"He takes over their home and plans his vengeance…"

"Now Harry and Marv struggle to regain their house at any cost"

"Christmas kills once a year, when you're… HOME ALONE"

Ok, it was just a spoof. But this is frankly one of the best parodies to be seen on YouTube, along with that freaky, scary Mary Poppins re-cut trailer and Brokeback to the Future.

Admit it'd have been great to have Kevin as an evil creature coming from hell to annoy those poor Harry and Marvin in their idyllic existence, just after moving in a new cosy neighbourhood…

Here's another re-cut trailer:



So silly!

Christmas Week: "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"

The National Lampoon's Christmas Vacations ranks high in my favourite movies. I watch it every 25 December evening. It stars Chevy "Combover" Chase and other actors belonging to the Saturday Night Live show, such as Randy Quaid.

Let's start with the cartoon opening titles:



In this film, Clark Griswold is the head of a small family. He wants to celebrate Christmas with his whole family. First they have to go and cut a tree in the forest… That was quite an adventure, but it's nothing next to what happens after that…



Clark also attached 250 strands of lights to his roof…

… but it didn't work… But wait!



The attic scene:



The saucer sledge scene:



The dinner scene:



Towards the end of the film, Clark is really pissed off (due to the various disasters that happened in his house [including the burning of his Christmas tree and the electrocution of a cat]), but he was mostly frustrated because he hadn't received his bonus money, until…



I hope you enjoyed these fragments and that you might want to watch the whole film.

Christmas Week: "Muppet Christmas Carol"

Welcome to my second theme week, namely the Christmas Week!

I'll devote this week's articles to my favourite videos that have something to do with Christmas. Previously on this blog, I already showed you a tremendous parody of the Jingle Bells lyrics, song by the Joker (aka Mark Hamill) in Batman: the Animated Series…

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh what fun it is to ride
in a one horse-open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
The Batmobile lost a wheel
And the Joker got awayyyyyyyyy!
Crashing through the roof
On a one horse-open tree
Busting out I go
Laughing all the wayyyyyyyyyy! Haahahahahah!

Now it's time for me to talk about one of my top-three Christmas movies: The Muppet Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens's Christmas Carol. The film stars Michael Caine to perfectly perform the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. (By the way, in the French version, he's voiced-over by the talented Bernard Dhéran.) It features the Muppets (of course) playing different characters in Dickens's story, e.g. Kermit as Bob Cratchit, and Gonzo the Great to act as Dickens/the narrator — definitely an overt one in this case, as in the book. At the beginning of the movie, he introduces Ebenezer Scrooge…



I LOVE THAT SONG!

I also love this one, "It feels like Christmas".



As a bonus, you can also read a blog entry that I wrote on germ@namur featuring another song that refers to my new nickname… (Martin, you're gonna like it too!)

Christmas Party in Namur

Today we all celebrated Christmas — or, say, kind of — by gathering in the English literature seminar, and we chatted, we drank, we listened to music… it was thus great fun, basically.

I took a lot of pictures tonight, but as I'm leaving for a three-days trip to Amsterdam
tomorrow morning, I don't have the time to upload the pictures. Anyway, I'll do it asap. There are some gems, believe me. Just one quote perhaps:

Mr Romero: Do you want some wine, Simon?
Me: Oh yeah, but just a finger.
Mr Romero: Oh, we hardly know each other!

Silly, as usual… See you soon then!

Lost in a jungle of… bras

Here's another scene from A Christmassy Ted, the Christmas special episode of Father Ted I was telling you about a couple of days ago. In this video, Father Ted and Dougal get lost in the lingerie section of a supermarket…



Wasn't that funny? I like the The Things They Carried-like, Vietnamish atmosphere…

Note that we saw Kevin McKidd as Father Deegan (a young priest): that was quite a long time before he stars in Rome as Lucius Vorenus.

One, Two, Tree

Here's the introduction of the Christmas special episode (my personal favourite) of the brilliant Britcom Father Ted, with the late Dermot Morgan as Father Ted Crilly. This extract also features Ardal O'Hanlon as Father Dougal McGuire and Frank Kelly as Father Jack Hackett (the grumpy old man).

Father Jack: "A pair of fecking women's knickers!!!!"

The Joker Is Funny (Of Course, He Is!)

I know Christmas is 7 month away, but I found this video so funny I wanted to share it with you:



Jingle bells,
Batman smells
Robin laid an egg,
The batmobile lost a wheel
And the Joker got away!!!

The French translation is crappy:

L'horrible chauve-souris
Et son bouffon Robin
n'ont qu'à bien se tenir
car le Joker est libre !

At first, I didn't understand the second part, but I managed to find it:

Crashing through the roof,
on a one horse open tree,
busting out I go,
laughing all the waayyyyyyy hahhhhaaaahaaa!

Of course, the Joker (voice of Mark Hamill) was the only one who could have thought of hijacking a Christmas tree…

It's a Christmas-special episode of Batman: The Animated Series: Christmas with the Joker.

I wondered what was meant with the third line. Here's what I found on a serious website:

lay an egg (American, informal)
to fail to make people enjoy or be interested in something.Our first two sketches got big laughs, but the next two laid an egg.

Good to know that. I also found, on another website, the (probable) origins of the phrase.

I also wondered when I read "on a one horse open tree". What could it mean? I looked it up on the Internet, and the first thing I found was this: it can come from Dashing through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh, and altered for the purposes of the Joker song. It's in fact the original lyrics of Jingle Bells. Of course. How silly am I!

Dashing through the snow
In a one horse open sleigh
O'er the fields we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on bob tails ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to laugh and sing
A sleighing song tonight

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way;
Oh! what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

Annual Visit in Brussels

Each year, my parents, my brother and I go to Brussels just to have a walk. Our tour starts with a cup of coffie on the Place des Palais, just in front of the Royal Palace, where there's a huge Christmas tree coming from Norway or something like that—it's sad to think that these trees are 60 or 80 years old, had overlived the War and end up to be cut and (what a glorious end) be shown to thousands of indifferent citizens.
Then, our tour brings us to the Grand-Place, the most beautiful in the world, as they say.There again, you find a giant Christmas tree and also a living barn with real sheep. We walk along the famous statue of de T'serclaes (you'll get to see a picture of it with several of my English teachers in a later post) and we continue up to Brussel's most famous statue(tte): the Manneken pis. Usually, the statue is bare, but sometimes it wears specially designed costumes (e.g. Santa Claus). And everytime I go in front of the Mannekenpis, I have to take a picture of it, just like that. So, you'll get to see other pictures that look exactly the same. By the way, a couple of weeks ago, Mr Bean came to Brussel for the advertising campaing of his new film (where he makes fun of those frog-eaters Frenchies), and of course photographers were there to immortalize this moment.