Interesting Links for 26-11-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Chemists create the world's thinnest spaghetti

(tags:food science chemistry nanotech )

2. How Black autistic women and girls are excluded from conversations on resources and research

(tags:race autism gender )

3. Most Brits are wrong about Die Hard

(tags:movies Christmas polls )

4. The computer game my brother has been working on is now available in Alpha Test. Take a look!

(tags:games video )

Comments

[calimac]

3. But what exactly makes a film "a Christmas film"? If 'takes place at Christmastime' and 'includes Christmas-themed material' is sufficient, then obviously Die Hard counts, so the dispute must be over whether those factors are sufficient. Perhaps the other definition is 'suitable fare for cozying up on the sofa with a hot drink on Christmas night' in which case a brutal tense crime thriller might not count. That seems to be the dispute here. A couple of the movies on the test list, which I either haven't seen or don't much recall, do not as far as I know have any particular Christmas material in them, but might be suitable to watch then.

[andrewducker]

Agreed on all counts.

[calimac]

I just came across this suggestion:

Die Hard isn't a Christmas movie. It's about running around a tower at night trying to keep away from Alan Rickman. It's a Harry Potter movie.

[andrewducker]

Oh lovely! I have a Harry Potter movie not connected to bigotry. Merry Christmas to me!

3.

[channelpenguin]

I was pleased to see one of my Xmas movies make it - Batman Returns! Everyone wants Catwoman for Xmas, surely? :-)

The other (very odd) family favourite is "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". My dad picked that one year! I suppose it does have things in common with pantomimes, which are very trad for Xmas...

Re: 3.

[andrewducker]

It is very panto! I hadn't thought of that before.

Re: 3.

[drswirly]

It is very panto!

How have we gone several hours without someone replying "oh, no it isn't!"..?

[jack]

Looking at that list of Christmas films, I'm surprised how few films are really clearly Christmas films. I feel like there must be more films ABOUT Christmas, but most of the ones I can think of are Santa Something (and most Christmas films have Christmas kind of incidental)

[jack]

FWIW I think my best attempt to categorise what counted as a Christmas film was something like, having two out of three of:
- Set at Christmas or about Christmas
- Commonly broadcast at Christmas
- Generally uplifting

But it still wasn't quite right.

[andrewducker]

The ones that they asked people "Is this a Christmas film?" only about films that weren't obviously Christmas films. No point wasting time and money asking "Is Santa Claus Celebrates Christmas a Christmas movie?"

[jack]

Doh! Right, I feel silly.

But even when I do search up some lists of christmas movies, they seem to almost all be either "at christmas but it's easy to forget" or "about santa". I expected to have more like "romantic comedy set at xmas" or "kids adventure in christmas mall" etc but almost none of those seemed to be iconic.

[andrewducker]

Which ones are you thinking of?

[jack]

I randomly looked up some IMDB lists of top xmas films and intuitively sorted them into categories and it looks a bit like:

Easy to forget it's about Xmas:

Die Hard
Home Alone
Gremlins
Edward Scissor Hands
Love Actually

About santa:

Rudolph
Miracle on 34th Street
Elf
Bad Santa
Santa Claus

About Celebrating Xmas:

It's a Wonderful Life
Nightmare Before Xmas?
Scrooge?

Ones I hadn't previously heard of but look to be about xmas:

National Lampoon Xmas
A Christmas Story
Trading Places
Charlie Brown Xmas
Happiest Season

This list actually had more I hadn't heard of, other random lists I looked at I think had more in the first two categories.