COURTNEY COX, I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE SO HOT ON THAT SHOW: A Hanukkah confession -- I can no longer sing "I Have A Little Dreidel" without drifting into the South Park version.

THEY DID NOT, IN FACT, EAT VINCENT SPANO FIRST: Four of the films of note this season -- Milk, Valkyrie, Frost/Nixon and Marley & Me -- share the fact that they are all based on real-life events, and in each film there's a question for film critics (and anyone commenting on the films) as to how much to reveal about the Act III of each -- how does Harvey Milk's tenure in office go? Does Tom Cruise kill Hitler? What happens when Frost interviews Nixon? And does anything surprising happen in a movie about an ill-behaved dog as he ages?

From what I've read, critics seem to have no real compunction about discussing the dénouements of the first three films, but at least some seem to be holding back on the fourth -- and I'm not sure why. Given how widely-read Grogan's book was, I'd have to imagine there's at least as much awareness of how that film ends among American moviegoers as there is of the success of Operation Valkyrie or the details of a thirty-one-year-old television interview. And in all these cases, to discuss whether the movie works as a whole requires discussion of their endings, doesn't it? For all these films, how much should we be able to discuss without posting major SPOILER warnings -- and, yes, everything's fair game in the Comments.

IF YOU TOUCH THAT GIRL, YOU'RE GOING TO THE SPECIAL HELL--THE ONE RESERVED FOR CHILD MOLESTERS AND PEOPLE WHO TALK AT THE THEATRE: I understand the impulse, but not the action, of the fellow in this story.

Of course, I also resent people that talk during the trailers.

THE WEASEL UNDER THE COCKTAIL CABINET ... HAS DIED:

TOBY

Died ... What has?


ROBERT

The playwright. Pinter.


TOBY

The playwright.


ROBERT

Pinter. College. Read maybe ... four of his.


TOBY

You did?


ROBERT

We did. Had to. You won't remember, of course. Always skipping class.


TOBY

Well, yes. Better things to do. You know. ...or maybe you didn't, at the time. Pinter, you say?


ROBERT

Yes.


TOBY

Died? Well. Do you remember...


ROBERT

Yes. Quite recently.


TOBY

Do you remember her? ...Susan?


ROBERT

Susan. Yes. Loved Pinter.


TOBY

In college?


ROBERT

Yes.


TOBY

No. Not really. Not at the time.


ROBERT

We read for hours.


TOBY

Read. And then?


ROBERT

And then? Oh, you know. I suppose...


TOBY

No. You didn't. Never did.


ROBERT

No. We didn't. She... I suppose she had...


TOBY

Better things to do. Yes.


ROBERT

...Yes.

IN MY DAY, TELEVISION WAS CALLED BOOKS!: So, what books have the holidays added to your infinite reading list? Me: Six Frigates, a history of the founding of the American Navy, the Forgotten Man, a history of the Great Depression, A Frozen Hell, a history of the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 and Thomas Freidman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

But first, I need to finish up the cheap set of John Carter of Mars books I picked up.

SANTA BABY: Eartha Kitt, 81, has died.

THE LAWSUIT IS TEARING THEM APART: Nikki Finke is reporting that the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has issued a preliminary order finding in 20th Century Fox's favor and enjoining the distribution and release of Watchmen by Warner Brothers. This same judge previously nailed WB with an injunction they had to buy out before releasing Dukes of Hazzard, and given that the publicity blitz has already begun, WB will pay out. (A commenter at Finke indicates that this may be a power play by Fox to get the rights to the 60s Batman TV show for release on DVD.) Keep watching the docket.

AUNT CLARA HAD FOR YEARS LABORED UNDER THE DELUSION THAT I WAS NOT ONLY PERPETUALLY FOUR YEARS OLD, BUT ALSO A GIRL: A open thread for any comments on Christmas goings-on and a Merry Christmas from the ALOTT5MA Management.

ETA: For some reason, I though Hannukah started tomorrow. Otherwise, I'd have framed this more broadly. Happy Hannukah, likewise!

Also, it was amusing that the one thing I really needed to open the clam-shell-encased Leatherman Mrs. Earthling got for me was a Leatherman.

NOW DOCTOR HORRIBLE IS HERE, TO WIPE OUT ALL YOUR FEAR: As requested, here's a thread to discuss the Dr. Horrible DVD, which either arrived in ALOTT5MA reader mailboxes last week or will likely show up as Chrismukkah gifts for other readers. I've watched some of the features (namely, the ELE applications) already, and yes, Tur-Mohel remained the highlight.

I HEAR REGGAE-INSPIRED NAMES BRING NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS AND GOOD BEHAVIOR: Via long-time readers Jeff (a.k.a. jam) and Sara (a.k.a sbr929), this special holiday request (which, unfortunately, I missed until now):

My wife and I are both long-time readers and occasional commenters. We are hoping that you might call upon the ALOTT5MA community to help us out in a moment of need.We are adopting a puppy this week, an adorable 1-year-old, female black lab mix, and we are having trouble coming up with the perfect name.

This is ironic, because for years we've spent a fair amount of idle time randomly throwing out great dog names, but for whatever reason none of our favorites is sticking to the dog that we met today and will be living with come Tuesday. It's an emergency, because we can't live with a nameless dog.

Ideally, we'd like a name that is fun, fits a puppy's personality, rolls off of the tongue, and has some subtle connotation that reflects our interests. Since this last qualification leans heavily on pop culture, we though there would be no better community to help us come up with something subtle, knowing, and fun than this one.

For example, one of our current leading contenders is Pixley, which seems to reflect the playfulness of a puppy while also bringing to mind one of our most favorite shows. We have rejected both Suki and Rory as too obvious in their references (though each has appeal on the personality front). And we've rejected many more ideas as too masculine sounding.

We've thought and thought and thought some more, all without identifying a clear winner. Can you help us out?

HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH: As predicted, this year's UK Christmas number one song is the bombastic cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" by X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke, which you can see her perform here with all the subtlety, hand gestures and tone-deafness-as-to-lyrics of a Young David Archuleta.

In a surprise second place, however, is the late Jeff Buckley's version of the song, which I'm happy to provide in studio and live formats. The song joins such other better-than-the-one-that-won #2s as "Fairytale of New York" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want From Christmas Is You" (see, also, the much-enjoyed Love Actually version by Olivia Olson).

And, of course, I can't let this post end without bringing in your old friend Billy Mack with "Christmas Is All Around," and inviting you to share your favorite songs of the season, a list surely including Eric Cartman's cover of "O Holy Night".

ESPN Page 2 - Easterbrook: Armageddon

WHERE WAS THIS IN 1991? The tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook argues today that the NFL playoffs should be changed to a format in which "the top 12 teams should be taken regardless of division or conference". Instead of seeing the Cardinals and Broncos/Chargers in two weeks ...

If the season ended today as a seeded tournament, these (using simplified tiebreakers -- I did not run every ramification) would be the pairings. Byes: Titans, Giants, Steelers, Panthers. First round: Jets, Bears or Bucs at Colts, Cowboys at Pats, Ravens at Falcons, Vikings at Dolphins. Is there one single NFL fan anywhere who does not think this seeded postseason tournament would have more appeal than the first round we're going to end up with?

Eh. I like keeping the conferences separated until the Super Bow. I like divisions. I like respecting divisional winners, even when the results are as absurd as these, because the regular season still matters and will produce a hella-fun week 17 this year. As I often say with regards to the NCAA men's basketball tournament, while we can argue about teams being squeezed out in the margins, you can't really make the case that the teams being excluded (this year, likely Chicago, Philadelphia, Tampa and two AFC East teams) have any legitimate claim to being The Best Team In Football.

What I wouldn't mind, however, is only guaranteeing division winners a playoff slot, but not necessarily a home game. In other words, let Denver travel to Indianapolis in the wild card week this year and not vice-versa, with the 10-5 Falcons hosting a wild card game rather than travel to Arizona or Minnesota. I could live with that.

49ers to sport mustaches in throwback game

CANNOT PLAY WITH THEM? CANNOT WIN WITH THEM? CANNOT COACH WITH THEM? CAN'T DO IT? As part of a Throwback Game this Sunday with retro unis and the like, the San Francisco 49ers are all growing 1970s-style mustaches.

"THE CRUISE PERSONA, LIKE A JUNK BOND, WAS NEVER MEANT TO REACH MATURITY": Stephen Metcalf on Tom Cruise, with a particular emphasis on what's been lost since Risky Business:

It is a beautiful and authentic piece of acting. To watch his performance today—and you should—is to be present again, not only at the creation of Cruise, the movie star, but at the death of Cruise, an actor bounded by normal human proportion.... The common half-memory of Risky Business conjures up Cruise in asshole eyewear, pimping out his parents' suburban Colonial. But its distinctive pathos derives from its first half, from the nocturnal weirdscape emanating out of Joel's jumbled libido. As this Joel, Cruise allowed himself to be everything the publicity team has tried to convince us, for 25 years, he isn't: insecure, sexually confused, and as Brickman's camerawork takes no pains to hide, physically small.

For more on Risky Business -- and why not? -- visit The House Next Door. As Matt Zoller Seitz notes in the comments, "It's a movie with a happy ending that's actually unhappy; the hero gets all he wanted and more, but at the cost of having the last vestiges of innocence burned right out of him. This is the story of how Ben Braddock from The Graduate turns into Mrs. Robinson's husband."

Backstreets.com: Springsteen News

THERE'S A BIG BOX ON THE EDGE OF TOWN: A new Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band greatest hits compilation will be sold exclusively at ... Walmart? Walmart, Bruce? It's the working, the working, just the working life.

I PREFER TO THINK OF IT AS AN EXODUS FROM AN UNDESIRABLE PLACE: Hejira Henry, Gator Purify, Mace Windu, Elijah Price, Mr. Señor Love Daddy, Romulus Ledbetter, Zeus Carver, Jules Winfield, and Elijah Price -- whom they called Mister Glass -- who gets better character names than Samuel L. Jackson, who turned 60 years old today?

Feel free to celebrate any aspect of his illustrious career (which didn't really take off until after he turned 40) tonight. Enjoy a beer. One things that makes me happy is knowing that if I see that Deep Blue Sea is on cable, I can wait until exactly one hour in to watch the greatest speech in film history. You think water moves fast? You should see ice ...

WILL THERE BE BAT MITZVAHS? Now, the premise "It's like Sex and the City, except with werewolves!" is awesome enough, but think about what's the most offensive, yet accurate, thing you could title this project? And, yes, they went there.

THANK GOD FOR THE HARD HATS: Comes a time every year -- and this may be a little tardy, but you're industrious -- when we recommend recent fiction and nonfiction books pertaining to this site's themes (or not) for your holiday gift-giving and reading. Along those lines, I'll again commend to you Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution, about which I've written previously, which surveys the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1967, a moment which reflected and furthered the shift away from the studio system and towards independent, more personal, youth-oriented films.

Something of a bookend to that, though I hadn't recognized this before, is Nixonland by my friend Rick Perlstein, about which I probably don't need to say too much at this point given that it's made just about every top-ten year end list from The Economist to Entertainment Weekly. The cultural revolution reflected by films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde led to a backlash from the squares which Richard Nixon recognized and shrewdly capitalized upon, turning a nation that voted 60-40 for LBJ over Goldwater in 1964 to a 60-40 Nixon rout of McGovern eight years later. It's a political history and a cultural one as well, and if you appreciate this excerpt, you ought to read the whole thing.

What books of 2008 do you recommend?

BACK AT YOU, RED: I just saw an NBC promo noting that Conan O'Brien has been "serving late night for over fifteen years." Fifteen? Wow.

IF THE POEM'S SCORE FOR PERFECTION IS PLOTTED ALONG THE HORIZONTAL OF A GRAPH, AND ITS IMPORTANCE IS PLOTTED ON THE VERTICAL, THEN CALCULATING THE TOTAL AREA OF THE POEM YIELDS THE MEASURE OF ITS GREATNESS: Via sconstant, it's high time we demonstrated some appreciation for the chart-based music reviews of Andrew Kuo in the NYT, and not only because three of the charts below mention Superchunk:

• Kanye West's "Robocop" v. Other Breakup Songs
• Lollapalooza 2 v. 2008 Summer Festivals
• Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"
  
• Trapped In The Closet
• Five Nights of Morrissey, NYC
  
• CMJ 2008
• Lil Wayne, "The Drought Is Over 5 [Grand Closing]"
• Seven Nights of Conor Oberst, NYC
• 2007 McCarren Pool Shows
• Comedic Scale of Selected References in Hot Stylz's "Lookin Boy"

Kuo, who has a blog, has inspired some derivative works as well.

GATHER 'ROUND THE POLE:Our Friend Alan Sepinwall has his annual Festivus column today---enumerating television people, shows, and events that disappointed him in this past year. Expand Alan's list to other forms of pop culture. Does Kanye West have some explaining to do for releasing an album featuring him singing with AutoTune? Does Judd Apatow need to justify Drillbit Taylor or You Don't Mess With The Zohan? I understand there are still a fair number of angry goth girls about how the Twilight series ended, as well. Air the grievances in the thread, which won't end until you pin someone.