Lions long dreamed of a long run at midnight on xmas eve.  It's never been practical because all the bathrooms & food would be closed.  Midnight is the riskiest time in a lion's bowel cycle.

 

It's been somewhat practical to get half in before everything closes & run back after everything is closed.  Once again, it would be another start right before sunset & run back after dark.

 

 

This annual run is about as magical as a lion can make xmas.  The trip down entailed Messiah.   The trip up entailed Bocelli.  Once past all the traffic, the headlights went off & the lion kingdom ran with the dimly lit antlers & nose, just like old times.  After white xmas, lions ran the last 3 miles in silence so it all sunk in.

 It finished off 69 miles in 6 days.

 

 Not all was right with the world.  A chafe problem kept worsening.

 

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Lions finished 1 somewhat entertaining & 2 absolutely horrible movies.

Violent night, starwars xmas special, & Elf.

Violent night was of course a remake of Die Hard.  The big question was why so much focus was on keeping the family hostage.  It was just to re-enact Die Hard.

The most novel visual in that movie was the living room set.  All it takes is a germane rectangular room with some large windows & the right decorations.  It doesn't need a fancy ceiling, pillars, or cupolas.

 

The hottie villain is an Afgan actress who normally does stunts.  As usual for movies about heroine warriors, there's no other movie where she's a warrior.

Even a wookie cast couldn't redeem the 1978 starwars special.  The lion kingdom will never understand the love the wealthy have for TV shows & TV movies.  Despite being made well within the lion kingdom's lifetime, it looks like a completely foreign time.  Lions never saw it when it was on TV.  

 The ewok set was kind of a marvel, if only because a room like that would be millions today.  In 1978, it was a common living room.

Lions only marveled at what a feat it must have been to create 80 minutes of almost constant video effects like that in 1978.  That was a lot of chroma keying & compositing for a TV show.  A flat panel TV in those days was unthinkable. 

Lions wondered why there wasn't any product placement.  What looked like an electronics kit of the time, an early computer, cook ware, could have been based on real products & made a lot of money, but apparently it was all custom made for the movie.

Elf was the worst pile of gibberish lions ever sat through.  Its only redeeming factor was the heroine, who didn't do anything but get everyone to sing in the end.

Somehow this has become the top xmas movie for rich millennials.  There's a real disconnect between lions & the mindset of the top 1% if they're highly rating movies like Elf while lions are not.  But lions have noticed the wealthy do tend to do what they're told & be easily entertained.

The most novel detail lions noticed was the father living in the ghostbusters apartment.  Never mind how he could afford it when his day job was going under.

The lion kingdom rounded out this year's season with It's a wonderful life.  There's always something new in it. 

Noted how many animals never heard of George Bailey, despite his fame.  

Tried spotting an evolution of the sets during the movie.  The passage of time was never very obvious to us living after 1980, but it might have been obvious to someone who lived in 1947.

There's definitely an old west feel in the opening scene in 1919.

The graduation & father's death was in 1928.  Noted the evolution of the light switches from 1928-1945, all incandescent of course.  The 1st scene lions saw was the chandelier shaking.  1 discontinuity was the classmates all returning from college, the engagement & wedding all before the crash of 1929.

By 1945, the cars had all evolved to the sleek designs of the time while George still had his original model T.  It makes lions wonder how long model T's stayed on the road.  George probably got his model T after they were discontinued in 1927.

Of course, he finally wrecked it against a tree.