Every year, the political correction of the holiday season becomes more evident. Soon enough, the Salvation Army Santas will be reduced to men in business suits asking for “holiday donations” - after all, jolly ol’ Saint Nick is a Christian tradition. But it isn’t the purpose of the season to simply avoid insult - or perhaps to avoid lawsuits at the hand of extremists - it’s to bring good will to men (…and women). So, while I spend the day celebrating Christ’s birth, I also wish you the merriest fulfillments of your end-of-the-year festivities. Whatever it is you celebrate, be it Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or even Decemberween, may you revel in it to the fullest. Thank you for all the time you’ve spent this year reading my inane babbling and adding some intelligence to my discourse. Here’s hoping for more in the new year.

Welcome to North Suburbia, New York. When you spend a decent portion of your episode in two of the highest-profile cities in the world but you put your finish line somewhere where little kids - probably with names like Buffy and Thurston - go to school, you didn’t plan your leg correctly. ‘Sall I’m sayin’. Anyway, it’s only a matter of time until Saint Joseph’s University buys this property and awkwardly names it after a rich alumnus. Until then, it will serve simply as the twelfth and final pit stop…in a racearoundtheworld. Previously, there was a rather enjoyable group of racers. But it got 30% less tolerable when the two most unique teams got knocked out within the first hour. But Peter had his ass handed to him both in the race and in his budding relationship. So there’s some hope for humanity, after all. There are no more eliminations, so the only question left is…who will win? Ignore the accompanying picture.

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No major thoughts on today’s reported trade of Allen Iverson to the Nuggets. I think I said all I need to say when I wrote about this in July. I’ll agree with Meredith, who, in commenting on that post, said that it’ll be awfully hard to cheer for a Sixers team that doesn’t have anyone wearing the #3 jersey. I’ll miss Iverson, and I look forward to the day when he returns to have his number retired, when he is recognized as one of the league’s best-ever players.

(Right, so…I’m dumb. And I was tired when I wrote this. No, Jerry Bruckheimer had nothing to do with Batman. After watching An Evening With Kevin Smith 85 times, I should have realized this. So let’s go ahead and change the lede.) One would think that time travel was a tired subject in film. After trying to figure out the rules behind Back to the Future and comparing them to the way that the subject is handled in the Terminator series, lesser moviegoers would be fed up with the science - or in many cases, lack thereof - in time travel movies. Enter Deja Vu, on its surface one big misstep for uberproducer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Denzel Washington (whose foresight hasn’t been all that great in recent history anyway). But behind the over-the-top trailer dialogue and popcorn-ready pyrotechnics is an intriguing time travel study.

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For all the dry, subdued humor I’ve grown to appreciate - and prefer - over the years, I must admit that I never “got” Christopher Guests‘ films. The first that I saw, his 2003 folk music mockumentary A Might Wind, struck me as poorly constructed and overstuffed with disconnected performances with no actor available to ramp up the comedy. Particularly disturbing was the fact that so many people in the theatre seemed to blindly follow were Guest was leading, which I gathered was nowhere. When I finally got around to watching his small-town musical flick Waiting for Guffman, I began to understand why people enjoyed him, but couldn’t make the jump myself. Guest’s latest film, and his first major release to depart from the mockumentary style, For You Consideration, may have made the leap for me.

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Just a tiny bit of shameless self-promotion this afternoon: your humble author has been cast as the latter titular role in the upcoming production of Beauty and the Beast at St. Bernadette’s Players in Drexel Hill. Rehearsals start next month; the show goes up in April. Start clearing your calendars now, because if anyone has ever seen the man behind the keyboard, they know that I’m a natural looker for the part.

Any of the four of you who stopped by Movie Hawk yesterday might have noticed that we were down. That’s because, for something like the fifth time, we got hacked. Anyone who came by early enough saw a particularly offensive splash screen that might have suggested the culprit was a drunken Mel Gibson. For the record, not only do we toleraet (sic) the Jews here, we’re actually big fans of many of them. Specifically Jesus. We’ll be back by the end of the day with a quick hit and back full time tomorrow with a real post.

It’s no wonder that the producers behind Casino Royale needed to track down a younger, more athletic actor to take on the Bond franchise: they needed a 007 with stamina. After four films carried by a Bond as smooth and dry as his martinis, the series needed a shot in the arm, and there’s no better way to do that than breaking out an origin story. Featuring a 20-minute sequence where our lead agent (Daniel Craig) barely says a word while taking part in a chase for a baddie through a construction site that could be confused for a gymnastics competition, Royale sets a breakneck pace that reintroduces you to and reinvents England’s most dangerous spy. The film’s biggest problem is that it requires the same marathon training from the audience; if you want to get the most out of the new Bond, you’re going to have to sit through some significant bloat.

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Welcome to Barcelona, Spain. Home to the 1992 Olympics, Barcelona is a majestic city with rich culture, beautiful landscape, and virtually nothing to make fun of. It is also apparently the tomato throwing capital of the world, but we’ll get to that later. Barcelona was the four hundred and eighty seventh (believe me, it feels like it) pit stop…in a racearoundtheworld. Last week, a bunch of bunches made up for Dustin and Kandice’s airport woes, allowing them to arrive seconds before LynLyn at the Yield. Their lack of directional fortitude got them in more trouble, though, as they arrived fourth at a Detour with only three stations and were forced to wait, landing them in last place. But the guillotine was not ready for them, as they were Marked for Elimination. Who will be the unfortunate team cast aside…next?

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Until recently, TBS has been largely known as a recycling plant for dead TV shows. From Friends to Everybody Loves Raymond to bowdlerized repeats of Sex and the City, TBS has been the go-to place if you want to relive your favorite sitcoms long after they had shuffled loose the network coil. The network has finally thrown a hat of its own brand into the ring, though, offering original programming in the form of two new sitcoms: 10 Items or Less and the charming My Boys (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.).

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