The days when ‘big films’ on Christmas telly were circled in red pen by enthusiastic Radio/TV Times readers have long since passed. Cheap DVDs and 950-odd movie channels have made the ‘terrestrial premiere’ have all the impact of the phrase ‘starring Jim Cavaziel’.

There’s always the big screen of course, with the festive flicks offering a welcome escape from hateful relatives or having to grind through the likes of The Krankies’ ‘It’s Behind You’ Panto Special on Channel Five (at least we don’t have the horrors of Disney Time and Holiday on Ice to glaze our brains over any more).

So join us at the movies and let’s see what’s on.

Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows

Not the one where the world’s greatest detective and his faithful sidekick pretend to be Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch. No, its arch-mumbler Robert Downey Jr and wet fish Jude Law as Holmes and Watson in Guy Ritchie’s sequel to the quite-likeable-actually 2009 adventure. This one has our sexually ambiguous investigators taking on the dastardly Professor Moriarty (Richard Harris’s lad, Jared, in comedy beard and hat combo).

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Americans, as we know, cannot read. Which is why they make perfectly decent foreign-language subtitle films all over again, just after they’ve been perfectly decent successes, with big stars who speak proper languages like English. So here comes the second adaptation in two years of Stieg Larsson’s gloomy Nordic crime thriller, beloved of public transport users everywhere. Perpetually furrowed Daniel Craig leads with sort-of newcomer Rooney Mara as the titular Girl, looking like the offspring of Noel Fielding and a newly discovered tropical plant. David Fincher is directing, so let’s hope it’ll be more like Fight Club than Panic Room.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

If you groan at the very sight of Tom Cruise then you’ll want to dodge this. That the Mission Impossible films are usually crushing disappointments doesn’t help. The point of Mission Impossible is that it’s about a team, but once you’ve had to accommodate Tommo and his ego no-one else really has room to look in. Simon Pegg’s there for his chums at Empire magazine to fawn over, whilst Alan Tichmarsh lookalike Jeremy Renner competes with Cruise in doing action stuff. Pixar veteran Brad Bird directs. Insert your own Tom Cruise/cartoon character joke here.

Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Chipwrecked

Speaking of cartoons, the young ‘uns get yet another dose of computer/live action shenanigans from the USA’s answer to Pinky and Perky. Where we trotted the singing puppet pigs off to TV hell decades ago, the Yanks still peddle the squeaky critters to easily bored kiddies. As you can guess, they get dumped on a desert island this time round, with Jason Lee the human mug acting opposite thin air. If that’s no good, there’s Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek smouldering their voices into feline avatars in Shrek prequel Puss in Boots.

Hugo

The best until last with 3D that works, a charming story, great design and characters (including an appearance by Christopher Lee, the world’s coolest nonagenarian), and a love of cinema shining throughout. However if you want something more horrific and stomach churning, there’s a film out in January that makes Human Centipede 2 look like Bambi: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. If the thought of those bus posters doesn’t make you vomit up your figgy pudding, nothing will.

Happy Christmas!

This was a guest post by Peter Sharples who has, to date, offered absolutely nothing of value to anything ever which is precisely why we like him.

Professional headcase Tom Cruise has admitted to being terrified of the melodic word with his fear coming to a very public fore while filming his new waste of time “Rock Of Ages”.

Tom Cruise is well renowned throughout the world, both as an actor, a producer and as someone who doesn’t know when a franchise is dead (See: Mission: Impossible) but his ability to sing has never been called into question. Even in 1983 “classic” Risky Business, Tom used Bob Seger as a voice double during his trouserless performance of Old Time Rock n’ Roll.

Let’s be fair to Tom though, singing is a terrifying experience. One need only spend five minutes in the company of a Glee Survivor to know that not only are their vocal chords destroyed, their careers are all-but ruined by incessant autotune abuse. DARE to say no to singing.

Still, Cruise will be playing a character called Stacee Jaxx (RAWK!) in the Hollywood version of the Broadway play, meaning he’ll be strapping on some leather trousers and cracking out his best Lulu impression to hit some of rock’s classic tracks.

Apparently, singing is more terrifying than any stunt he’s ever performed. Even that one where he climbs a mountain without any safety harnesses wearing a horrible pair of sunglasses. Or the one where he punches a helicopter out of the air (stay tuned for Ghost Protocol). He told the LA Times:

“They all have their risks.”

Most things do. The actor shied away from thanking Aliens or Master Hubbard for his “god”-given musical talent, instead deciding to thank his earthly oracle and How I Met Your Mother guest star- Katie Holmes-Cruise:

“I had started dancing because I was inspired by my wife. She kept saying, ‘You’ve got to do a musical sometime’.

“Kate’s a dancer, so she would say, ‘Let’s go to dance class’, and she would take us and that’s how I kind of came up with the idea of Les Grossman doing hip-hop. And then to take it to this level with this? It was really fun.”

It better be, Tom. It better be.

Admit it, you thought that Tom Cruise would never make Mission: Impossible IV. Or you just hoped he wouldn’t.

Either way, you’re wrong. Now that he’s back in the big league, having made a boring film about Hitler and a boring film about some lions, Tom Cruise is ready to get back to doing what he’s most famous for. No, not rabbiting on about Scientology like a wild-eyed zealot. And, no, not getting married to unexpected women who he seems to have an over-compensatory amount of love for. And not whooping with so much intensity that you fear he might be about to suffer some kind of nightmarish anal prolapse, either.

Making Mission: Impossible films. We meant that Tom Cruise has agreed to make a new Mission: Impossible film. Honestly, what is your problem?

First the details. Tom Cruise has signed up to star in and co-produce Mission: Impossible IV, with May 2011 tentatively announced as a release date.

Now the connotations. With only 15 months until its release, Tom Cruise will need to pull out all the stops. A script will need to be written or, at the very least, polished to meet everyone’s expectations. A director will need to be found. Actors will need to be cast. It’ll need to be planned, rehearsed, shot and edited in an incredibly short amount of time.

What’s more, since Mission: Impossible IV will mark Tom Cruise’s return to the A-list after several years in the wilderness, he’ll to work out a promotional strategy that’ll get him noticed to such an extent that he’ll completely overshadow the film. Maybe he could get Katie Holmes pregnant. Or maybe he could divorce her.

Or maybe he could divorce her, remarry her and then get her pregnant so that the birth of the child exactly coincides with the Mission: Impossible IV premiere, allowing Tom to deliver the baby on the red carpet, triumphantly hold the child up to the sky like in The Lion King and then chow down on the placenta in front of everyone.

Or maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In a story that you must read, purely because the picture of Tom Cruise and JJ Abrams doing the “No, YOU’RE the man!” mutual finger-point will make you want to smash your own skull to pieces with a cricket bat, BBC News reports:

Tom Cruise will return as Ethan Hunt in a fourth Mission: Impossible film to be released in May 2011, US movie studio Paramount Pictures has confirmed. JJ Abrams, who directed the third film in the franchise, will co-produce with Cruise. A director has yet to be named. “Tom and JJ are great talents and we are excited to be working with them,” said Paramount chairman Brad Grey.

There have been no clues about the plot of Mission: Impossible IV but, since Tom Cruise will be close to 49 years old by the time it comes out, there’s a good chance that it’ll have to reflect his creeping middle age. Maybe the impossible mission this time will involve him trying to go a whole night without having to get up for a wee. Or something.

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So Tom Cruise is going to make Mission: Impossible 4. Let’s get all the obvious gags out of the way now, shall we?

Hey, what’s the impossible mission this time? Reviving Tom Cruise’s career? Ha. Finding Tom Cruise a decent haircut? Ha. Trying to convince the world that Tom Cruise isn’t a boggle-eyed religious fanatic? Ha. Making Tom Cruise the size of a normal human being? Ha. Getting Tom Cruise to convincingly marry a woman? Ha. Trying to get Tom Cruise to promote a movie without making an overwhelming arsehole of himself? Haaaa.

Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

Let’s have a quick quiz. What was your favourite part of any of the last three Mission: Impossible movies? It’s a difficult question, huh? There are just so many moments to choose from. Like in the first Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise, you know, did that thing that we can’t really remember very well. Or in Mission: Impossible 2, where Tom Cruise was all like “Aargh” for reasons that seem to elude us. Or what about Mission: Impossible 3, which might have been partly set in China unless we’re thinking of another film. Classics, the lot of them.

Or at least we’re assuming they’re classics. All of them were so massively forgettable from start to finish that we usually need to be reminded who everyone is, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and why we agreed to watch them doing it every 20 minutes or so. The world needs another Mission: Impossible movie like it needs to be liked in the jaw by a horse.

So the good news is that there’s going to be another Mission: Impossible movie and Tom Cruise is involved and everything. AP reports:

Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams have chosen to accept another impossible mission. Cruise and Abrams have signed on to produce a fourth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise for Paramount. Abrams directed Cruise’s last outing as covert operative Ethan Hunt in 2006′s “Mission: Impossible III.”

It’s slightly shocking news, isn’t it? Not because Sumner Redstone famously booted Tom Cruise from Paramount after his reputation as a babbling religion-zonked lunatic stopped just about everyone from watching it, but because it just shows how desperate Tom Cruise is to be liked again.

Because, up until now, Tom Cruise’s career rehabilitation has been going horribly. Lions For Lambs was a dreary misfire and Valkyrie did the impossible and made the star of an anti-Hitler movie even less popular than Hitler in Germany. And now he’s returning to his past in an effort to reclaim his former glory. Which would be good, except that the part of his past that he’s decided to return to is the crappy part that’s sort of a sub-Bourne James Bond rip-off that nobody is really that interested in seeing.

But still, on the plus side Tom Cruise will be approaching 50 by the time Mission: Impossible 4 comes out, so at least there’s a decent chance that he’ll throw his back out while leaping around on Oprah Winfrey‘s furniture to promote it. And that’s something we’d happily watch.

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