Here it is. Weird and definitely not what anyone was expecting but the next film to grace our local cable stations every day twice a day from Thanksgiving to Christmas and beyond will be Lars and the Real Girl. That is until some billionaire tycoon buys the darn thing and only lets it play once a season in order to preserve it. Thanks for ruining Christmas, billionaire tycoon. It's a Wonderful Life aside, Lars has all the charm, pathos, and even menace of its classic predecessor. Ryan Gosling plays Lars, a goofy under achiever who has seems happy enough in his quirky solitude despite his sister-in-law's maternal pressing for more social interaction. He is liked and respected at work, in the community and has even inspired a crush by the new girl in his office.

Not until he introduces his Internet girlfriend, Bianca, a Brazilian missionary raised by nuns, do we realize his situation is more dire than that of a solitary bachelor. Bianca is a life sized doll made to order and anatomically correct. In Lars' mind she is also a real person. His delusion is complete and Gosling's performance so nuanced that her side of conversations are filled in by your own imagination. At once Lars' brother and sister-in-law seek help as Lars' fragility becomes utterly apparent. The stunning absurdity of the situation filmed with a cunning honesty and a soundtrack that plays at a love story but weaves the underlying sadness from Lars over Bianca and subsequently, the audience, makes it inevitable that we write the dialog and story between them. Disturbing? Maybe, but Lars is loved and protected by the entire community. Not since It's a Wonderful Life has a township been portrayed with such fun and affection. Lars has touched all of them somehow, if only by finally being himself in the midst of his sadness.

Los Prisioneros formed in 1982 in San Miguel, Chile. This DVD covers the span of their career (before their reformation) from their early, ska-inflected, electro-punk pop songs to their lush, synthdance mega-hits that they made at the dawn of the '90s. Also included is an interview with singer Jorge Gonzalez and a few extra features that connect the contents with his narrative commentary.

The DVD begins with the band miming their song "Sexo" (with Jorge playing a broom instead of guitar) at his mom's house. The nattily dressed trio ham it up for the camcorder in what must've seemed like a goof to the inexperienced but talented band. For some reason they leave of the video for "La Voz de los '80" (one of their best) which they later performed on Sabados Gigantes which, at the time was still based in Chile (as well as pluralized) and helped catapault them to stardom.

Amidst all of the (well-deserved) praise for Judd Apatow's recent successes as a writer-director-producer, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that he's following a trail that was pretty well blazed by John Hughes twenty years ago. Like Apatow, Hughes made a name for himself by using a tight-knit group of collaborators to make a series of comedies that were at times slapstick, at times raunchy, at times high brow, and at all times built around a strong, essentially heartwarming story of personal growth.

Uncle Buck, Hughes' penultimate film, is a great example of this. John Candy, in one of his finest performances, plays Buck Russell, a proud bachelor that has built his life around having nothing and no one to weigh him down. After a family emergency, Buck is called upon to babysit his nephew Miles (Macaulay Culkin, at his most precocious) and nieces Maizy (Gaby Hoffmann) and Tia (Jean Louisa Kelly). He quickly gains the trust and love of the young Miles and Maizy, but teenaged neice Tia is old enough to recognize Buck for the black sheep that he is, and she intends to use Buck's stay as an opportunity to get away with things her parents wouldn't allow, especially with her boyfriend, "Bug."

The Newsroom is a Canadian series that starred Ken Finkleman stars as George Findlay - an intelligent, constipated, egotistical, cynical, immoral newsroom director who will go to any length to avoid his mother but lavishes attention on his BMW. He is primarily concerned with his stature within the beauraucracy of the television station and he effortlessly pushes sensationalist fantasies to boost the station's ratings. But, Finkleman plays George as somehow likeable unlike his unbearably unpleasant comedic descendants like Larry David or Dwight Schute.

I've seen The Newsroom compared to the UK's Drop Dead Donkey because it's set in a news studio too. That seems lazy to me. Whereas Drop Dead Donkey is wacky, laugh-tracked and therefore unwatchable, The Newsroom is generally low-key and dry although the situations are occasionally highly improbable and far-fetched. Because of its Canadian origins and its era, it can kind of be described as existing between The Larry Sanders Show and The Office with flannel and tuques (Canadian for "stocking caps").