The Simpsons – "Treehouse of Horror XIX"

With the show now in its twentieth season, longtime fans of The Simpsons often knock newer episodes for their far-reaching plots, but it’s nearly impossible to find fault in the show’s Halloween specials. This year, with “Treehouse of Horror XIX,” the series' writers may have not only crafted one of the best Simpsons episodes in a long while, but also one of its strongest Halloween specials in recent years.

The episode kicks off with Homer trying to vote for Barack Obama (his bulk requiring him to use a double-wide voting booth, naturally). However, the electronic voting machine counts his vote toward John McCain. When he protests, the machine mangles and kills him in gruesome fashion. A rigged election? No way!

“This doesn’t happen in America!” Homer screams. “Maybe Ohio, but not in America!”

Like all other “Treehouse of Horror” specials, this one is broken into three segments. The first of which, “Untitled Robot Parody,” Is loosely based on Transformers. When Bart is doing some last-minute Christmas shopping for Lisa at a discount store, he finds her a Malibu Stacy convertible, which just so happens to be a transforming robot. It’s much better than last year’s gift (a box full of his burps), but when Lisa’s gift assembles an army of other transforming robots to wage war against a rival race of alien transforming robots (sound familiar?), things get rough for the denizens of Springfield. There are some great gags in this segment, particularly the introduction of “Sex Toy” (“Where haven’t I been?”), the front page of the Springfield Shopper (“Christmas Occurs”), a robot plane vomiting passengers and a crying nacho machine. It even ends strong, with the robots playing a game of human foosball. Hey, Homer thought they might enjoy it.

The second section, “How to Get Ahead in Dead-Vertising,” starts off with a pitch-perfect spoof of the opening titles from AMC’s Mad Men, and revolves around Homer landing a gig killing celebrities so that advertisers can use their likenesses without paying them royalties. The highlight of this segment was a musical montage in which Homer brutally murders George Clooney, Prince and Neil Armstrong so that ad men can use their likenesses to hock George Clooney Brand Novelty Vomit (“now with more chunks!”), Prince’s Choice Drought Resistant Grass Seed and Country-Style Ragu (“It’ll send you to Mars"). After Homer begins thinning the celebrity ranks, the dead stars decide to get revenge on the living, descending from Heaven to exact revenge on everyone exploiting their image. It all ends with a dead Krusty the Clown blowing Homer’s brains out. In Heaven, Homer and Abraham Lincoln share an, er, awkward moment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The final segment—and my personal favorite—is a spoof of the Halloween classic, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. In “It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse,” our favorite blue-haired dork takes the Linus van Pelt role in waiting out in the pumpkin patch for the arrival of the so-called "Grand Pumpkin." When he finally does arrive, Milhouse mistakenly offers him some pumpkin bread, which sends him on a murderous rampage through Springfield. This segment is a nice mix of surprisingly edgy humor (the Grand Pumpkin’s a racist?) and reverent homage to the annual Charles Schultz tradition, even going so far as to borrow from its distinct art style.

Overall, this is one of the more memorable Simpsons episodes to air in quite some time and, as always, the macabre humor of this “Treehouse of Horror” special really seemed to let the creative minds behind this series run amok and push a few new boundaries as well.

To view this episode in its entirety, visit thesimpsons.com.

Image: THE SIMPSONS ™ and © 2008 TTCFFC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Lord of the Rings Conquers Consoles in January

It may be a cliché, but good things really do come to those who wait. IGN reports that Pandemic Studios’ multiplatform The Lord of the Rings: Conquest will be released January 9, 2009 internationally and January 13 in the United States, missing its previously-set fall 2008 release date.

Do you like the Star Wars: Battlefront series? Are you a J.R.R. Tolkien fanatic? If so, this game promises to combine the two in a geektastic smorgasbord that brings the awesome and brings it hard. If you answered no to both of the above questions—and probably combined your responses with an annoyed grunt of some kind—then this post must be boring the hell out of you so far. Sorry, pal.

I tried to get into The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II on Xbox 360 in 2006, and I didn’t like the distant, real-time strategy gameplay employed. It may work on a PC (see Command & Conquer, StarCraft) but I've yet to play an RTS on a console that I've actually had fun with. I’m also not a huge fan of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), so The Lord of the Rings Online doesn’t necessarily get me all hot and bothered like a Hobbit in a cake shop. But if Conquest provides the same visceral, boots-on-the-ground action that the Battlefront games have provided then this is easily a must-buy on my end.

Click here to visit Pandemic's official site for more information on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest.

Have You Seen It? The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is fast becoming one of my all-time favorite holiday films. Bold statement, I know. Directed by Henry Selick with music by Danny Elfman, Nightmare is an irresistible modern classic, although I remember not being all that fond of it when it originally hit theaters in 1993.

I first saw this film when I was nine, and I was a tad underwhelmed when I walked out of the theater with my father. I somehow expected something far different from what I saw. Based on commercials, I had no idea that Nightmare was a musical and, for some reason, I expected it to be decidedly darker than it actually was. I blame Tim Burton’s previous effort, Batman Returns. After seeing that film—with its gang of horrifyingly maladjusted clowns and Danny DeVito’s Penguin spewing black bile every time he opened his toothy maw—I expected Nightmare to give me, well, nightmares. It did nothing of the sort, and that was a letdown for some reason. I was an odd child. But I'm an adult now (snicker) and, as such, I've come to appreciate just how much this film has to offer in its musical mash-up of two wholly different holidays.

The film’s main character, Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) seems to have it all. He’s the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, celebrated for his fine-tuned scaring abilities, but there just isn’t any thrill in doing the same thing year after year. Distraught, he wanders into the forest and stumbles into Christmas Town, deciding that he might want to give the whole Santa Claus thing a shot. Everyone in Halloween Town is overjoyed at the thought of “Making Christmas” (they let you know as much through an all-too-catchy song) save for Sally (Catherine O’Hara), a lab-created living rag doll who has strong romantic feelings for Jack. She sees that Jack’s fascination with taking over Christmas will only result in disaster, and, as one would guess, she’s right. Jack succeeds only in terrifying children all over the world by taking Santa's place on Christmas Eve and almost gets Saint Nick killed at the hands of an appropriately-named boogie man named Oogie Boogie (Ken Page). But Jack saves the day, Santa saves Christmas and Jack and Sally embrace on a snowy hilltop at the end of the film. Hooray.

Whether it’s the songs, the characters or the quirky, stop-motion animation, there’s a reason why Nightmare is a holiday staple to this day. It also has a longer shelf-life than most holiday-themed movies—you can pop in the DVD from October through the end of December and never feel seasonally out-of-touch. Whip it out on New Year’s Day, however, and you’re probably asking for trouble.

Speaking of DVDs, there’s a nifty Collector’s Edition on store shelves now, which includes all-new bonus features and a digital copy that you can play on your iPod or other portable media player. Head over to Amazon.com to order it. It's also available on Blu-ray for those of you who have already made that inevitable technological leap.

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Director:
Henry Selick

Writing Credits:
Tim Burton (story)
Michael McDowell (adaptation)
Caroline Thompson (screenplay)

Original Music by:
Danny Elfman