Christmas is a bit like the flu. You are forced to lie around all day, watch crap TV, consume lots of food you wouldn’t normally eat, and each year both seem to arrive earlier and than the last. This year I had flu fashionably early,setting the trend  in July while London’s utterly loathsome and incompetent  major, Boris Johnson has been bribed by Disney to switch on the Oxford Street Christmas lights purely to coincide with the release of, A Christmas Carol, this week. They even allowed the films star Jim Carrey to switch the buggers on!!!!! 

Yet, directed by Robert (Forest Gump , Back to the Future) Zemeckis this 3D animated adaptation of the Dickens tale is not aimed at kids of all ages. I’d say, due to it’s thoroughly creepy protagonists, nightmarish scenes of ghouls taking their jaws off and spectres chasing ol’ Scrooge through dark alleys, it is definitely 10 year old  and upwards. Put it this way I wouldn’t advise going to see it zonked out on Acid.

Another seasonal chestnut, It’s A Wonderful Life, directed Frank Capra in 1946 releases this week for the first time in both black and white and colour on DVD. The film stars James Stewart as, George Bailey, the proprietor of a small local savings and loans (building society) who sees wrack and ruin approaching. Consequently he attempts suicide only to be saved by his guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers) who then shows him how the world would have been without him. A sobering film for many in these troubled financial times; it is as relevant today as it ever was.

And then there’s, Bruno, that, directed by the great Larry ‘Seinfeld’ Charles and written by, and starring, Sasha Baron Cohen as the  gayest man in the world and Austrian fashionista, might be the most outrageous, uncompromising mockumentary ever to hit the DVD shelves. Having lost his cred in Austria our eponymous hero travels to the US where he attempts to become a celebrity: “I am going to be the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler,” he says. What follows are perhaps the most excruciatingly hilarious series of set-ups with unsuspecting public, celebrities and politicians that I have ever witnessed. On his quest for fame at any cost we find the man arbitrating between Palestinian’s and Israeli’s s confusing humus with Hamas and doing a US Jerry Springer style talk show with the black baby he has swapped for an IPod in Africa in front of an outraged Afro American audience. When all fails he decides to go hetero.” Suddenly it hit me,” he says. “All the most famous stars in the world Tom Cruise John Travolta, and Kevin Spacey have one thing in common- they are all straight. I’ll have to give up guys and find a cockaholics anonymous!”

Subsequently, he goes to a real life God bod ‘gay convertor’ Pastor Jody Trautwein and tells him he’s got blowjob lips , goes shooting game with some proper grade ‘A’ in-bred crackers and tries to enter their ‘tent’ naked, joins a swinger’s party with a gaggle of trailer trash  and compeers a caged fighting comp in front of a crowd of Arkansas oiks. Now all that is funny enough but when one considers that, apart from Cohen, all are members of the unsuspecting thicko  American public, it is downright hilarious. All I can say is that Cohen and Charles have got some humongous  cojones.

A Christmas Carol is in cinemas now
It’s A Wonderful Life is available to rent or to buy RRP £17.99
Bruno is available to rent or to buy RRP £19.99