On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema within the streaming age.
First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight film choose — one thing extraordinary from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.
Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as skilled by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s advice.
The Pitch: Then All the Cavemen (and Founding Fathers) Loved Him
The magic of a very good Christmas is an unparalleled childhood expertise, but it surely at all times ends with the anticlimactic vacation hangover that’s New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The last day of the 12 months and the primary day of the brand new one might be loads of enjoyable for adults, as they revolve round a paradoxical mixture of socially sanctioned binge consuming and a renewed give attention to health and profession objectives. But since a type of issues is off limits to youngsters and the opposite is totally disinteresting to them, it’s arduous in charge a baby for seeing the ultimate vacation as little greater than a dreaded reminder that college is beginning once more quickly.
It makes excellent sense that the Christmas Special Industrial Complex has largely steered away from the 12 months’s most adult-oriented vacation, save for the occasional “And a Happy New Year!” platitude yelled by Santa as he dashes away whereas credit roll. But after a decade of dominating the trade with hits like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass determined that 1976 was the 12 months to swing for the fences and try a full-on New Year’s particular. The end result was the completely weird “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year,” which stays a cautionary story of geniuses flying too near the solar.
The hour-long monstrosity, which aired on ABC in December 1976, serves as a direct sequel to the unique “Rudolph” particular. After guiding Santa’s sleigh by way of a Christmas Eve blizzard, Rudolph (together with his nostril so brilliant) is enlisted for a job that’s apparently extra necessary however significantly much less fascinating: serving to Father Time discover a lacking Baby New Year as a way to be sure that a brand new 12 months can start. If he fails, Santa informs him that it’ll keep December thirty first endlessly and there’ll by no means be one other Christmas.
Viewers are shortly handled to a needlessly complicated backstory that shines mild on how little New Year’s lore really exists in our popular culture. While infants are a typical NYE motif, the particular takes it a step additional to craft a convoluted mythology to elucidate the passage of years. Each December, a New Year’s child is born as an emblem of the brand new beginnings {that a} new 12 months presents. But for some cause, that child is damned to the horrible destiny of growing old a whole lifetime in a single 12 months. By December thirty first, he takes his place as the brand new Father Time, whereas the outdated Father Time disappears to his personal non-public island within the Archipelago of Last Years. His island will likely be styled with the aesthetics of the 12 months he presided over, permitting annually to spend an eternity in a tragic time capsule of his previous glories.
But the one flaw on this in any other case good system is that this 12 months’s child ran away. You may assume it’s as a result of he didn’t need to age 75 years throughout his first journey around the globe earlier than being exiled to his personal private Elba. But no, he simply ran away as a result of he didn’t like that folks laughed at him for having massive ears. So Rudolph and an incoherent coterie of unusual characters together with a clock-man named General Ticker, a caveman who dominated One Million B.C., and a person who appears and acts precisely like Benjamin Franklin however is definitely the anthropomorphic essence of the 12 months 1776 (I want I used to be joking) are compelled to traverse the archipelago searching for the lacking child.
Visiting completely different islands permits them to do one thing resembling time journey, however the free mythology permits them to go to precise historic occasions just like the Revolutionary War as simply as nursery rhymes like Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Humpty Dumpty. The total particular provides off a “let’s just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, because kids will have to like something” power, besides nothing finally sticks to the wall.
Still, it’s a must-watch for any Christmas particular completionist or fan of Seventies stop-motion oddities. The meandering try and saturate the display with recognizable faces turns “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” into one thing resembling a vacation “Magical Mystery Tour” for the entire household. If you’re nonetheless stuffed with the Christmas spirit and never able to shake the vacation vibes, this might be the dose of weirdness you could shock your system into January mode. —CZ
The Aftermath: And, Lo, the Vast Mystery of the Holiday Multiverse Grew Three (Ear) Sizes That Day
Ever since Jack Skellington stumbled onto Christmas Town, the vacation multiverse has fascinated me. Whether it’s a cinematic cross-over occasion between legendary beings à la “The Santa Clause” franchise, or the connective oral custom that’s certain seasonal tales to at least one one other for hundreds of years, the sense that every one annual traditions stem from some magical realm or supply outdoors our god-fearing world is reassuring. Or not less than, it was comforting — till “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” shot my appreciation for the idea filter of the evening sky. (Like a child flying by his laughably massive ears immediately hit by a whale’s well-aimed waterspout, I let you know!)
My understanding of human historical past is nice sufficient to know that an Earth perpetually suspended on New Year’s Eve 1976 wouldn’t be an superior one; for starters, the Son of Sam would by no means be arrested, and “Star Wars” wouldn’t come out. (OK, perhaps that second actuality can be higher.) But the acute stakes of screenwriter Romeo Muller’s space-time terrorist assault carried out through cartoon vulture — working beneath one thing resembling Andrew Niccol’s “In Time” guidelines no much less! — is simply one of many myriad mysteries that alarmed me on this baffling concoction of world-building. “Shiny New Year” had me enraged and hooked from begin to finish, providing up a puzzle of perplexing nonsense sturdy sufficient to drown out every week I’ve in any other case dedicated to cheese, remorse, and texting my ex-girlfriend.
The following are among the many limitless questions I used to be left to ponder when introduced with Zilko’s choose: an completely deranged consideration of festivity-based fantasylands with a number of the least catchy music conceivable. (It ought to go with out saying to those that have really watched the movie that “The Moving Fingers Writes” might very effectively be a chart-topping single within the torture chambers of Hell.) Some ideas:
- At what respective narrative factors are the fairytales in 1023 A.D. suspended? Is the bear household perpetually coming residence to search out blonde-haired intruders of assorted sizes invading their private house? And did Cinderella and Prince Charming simply occur to be assembly and doing the glass slipper second when Rudolph ran by way of – or was {that a} non-public, non-plot pushed foot affair they do commonly?
- If all fairytales happen through the 12 months 1023 A.D., why does Red Skelton’s Baby Bear appear to be the beaver Mel Gibson performed in that 2011 film directed by Jodie Foster? And to what god does he reply?
- There’s little or no to suggest a world dominated by a knockoff Benjamin Franklin, perpetually caught looping the Fourth of July. But there’s even much less to suggest it if that world is a purgatory for souls caught dwelling advert infinitum in pre-indoor plumbing 1776. Who are these American townspeople individuals dwelling beneath the kite-loving overlord’s thumb? Whom did they flawed? And do they not less than get some anachronistic watermelon slices and popsicle sticks?
- Happy’s baffling lack of growing old raises each metaphysical quandaries and alarming youngster welfare considerations. They say who watches the watchers, however are you able to name DCFS on Father Time? Is there a Mother Time within the image?
- If Rudolph’s shiny pink nostril can emit sufficient warmth to soften inches thick of stable ice, is Santa having him researched as a doable silver bullet for pores and skin most cancers? Or nuclear disasters, maybe?
- Moreover, why is any of this New Year’s Baby silliness Rudolph’s downside? Or Santa’s for that matter? They simply received off work; name within the Easter Bunny!
- How lengthy in human seconds is “a few bongs”? And what stoner watching a clock named a socially spineless camel “The Great Quarter Past Five”?
- Will another movie ever use the road “Come on, men! Let’s get, Happy!” so innocently? —AF
Those courageous sufficient to hitch in on the enjoyable can stream “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” on AMC+ and hire it on varied VOD rental platforms, together with Amazon Prime Video. IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight film suggestions at 11:59 p.m. ET each Friday. Read extra of our deranged recommendations from the 2023 vacation season…
