Merry Christmas!
Depending on when you get around to reading this, it's either way early and you have your full day ahead of you, one that may include screaming kiddies and wrapping paper chaos, or you've had hours of family activity and it's time to collapse and start winding down for the evening.
Or something in between.
At any rate, there's still time for one final celebratory Christmas movie before we can turn our attention to what's really, really, truly important about the season -- Monday night's AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl (formerly the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas) and the showdown between the 'Horns and Hogs.
Aside: What the heck is AdvoCare? It's a Plano, Texas-based "wellness" outfit founded in 1993. According to the website, V100 is some sort of "synergistic combination of vitamins and minerals to help supply the body with the nutritional components it needs to maintain optimal health.*"
The asterisk refers us to this fine print: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."
But before we go Hog wild, gather the family one last time to watch one last Christmas movie for the year. Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas airs at 7 p.m. on ABC. This is Ron Howard's 2000 live-action big-budget version of the 1966 animated classic.
Big budget? The film cost a hefty $123 million to make, but brought in $345 million at the box office.
You know it's a Ron Howard film because Clint Howard is in it. Clint has appeared in 17 films directed by his big brother and would hardly have a film career without him. In this one, Ron cast Clint to play Whobris, the mayor's sycophantic aid.
After all these years, Clint's main claim to fame remains Gentle Ben, which ran on CBS from 1967 to 1969 and starred Dennis Weaver as his dad and Camden native Beth Brickell as his mom. Gentle Ben was played by Bruno the Bear.
Ron Howard also hired his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, to play "a surprised Who" in the film. She was 19 years old in 2000 and nailed surprised like a seasoned pro. She has gone on to a laudable career.
The TV-PG film, narrated by Anthony Hopkins, also stars Jeffrey Tambor as greedy Whoville Mayor Augustus Maywho, Christine Baranski as the seductive Martha May Whovier and Molly Shannon as Betty Lou Who, wife of Lou Lou Who and mother of Cindy Lou Who.
Note that in the live-action film, Cindy Lou (Taylor Momsen) is 6 years old. In the book and animated special Cindy Lou was "no more than 2."
(Update: Little Taylor grew up. Momsen is 21 these days and went on to a career as a model, actress (Gossip Girl) and rock star, fronting the band The Pretty Reckless.)
Whoville, for those out of the Who loop, is a magical village inside a snowflake. Ah, but high, high above Whoville in a cave on Mount Crumpit lives the outcast misanthrope Grinch, a nasty creature with a congenital heart defect (it's three sizes too small) that causes him to hate the Whos, Christmas and all that it stands for.
When the Grinch fails to dampen the Christmas spirit of the Whos, he schemes a dastardly, diabolical scheme.
Will loving little Cindy Lou be able to teach the Grinch the true meaning of Christmas? I'll not spoil the ending for newbies.
For my money, the Grinch's dog, Max, steals every scene he's in.
Trivia: Max is actually played by six mixed-breed shelter rescues. The two lead dogs were Kelly and Chip -- with Kelly doing most of the stunts -- and the other four were Topsy, Stella, Zelda, and Bo.
• Those Sonic guys. A couple of emails have poured in the past few weeks asking about the "Two Guys" series of Sonic Drive-In commercials. You know the ones -- the straight man behind the wheel and his wacky buddy. They eat at Sonic a lot. I mean a lot.
The duo are improvisational actors T.J. Jagodowski and Peter Grosz. The 43-year old Jagodowski is the one in the passenger seat and 40-year-old Grosz is the driver. Each commercial is a little improvisational gem, a little nugget of humor through which I never fast forward.
Actor/writer Jagodowski is also a member of Chicago's Second City Improv Group whose credits include minor parts in a couple of TV series and the Quadling mayor in Oz: The Great and Powerful.
Grosz, also an actor/writer, has appeared in bit parts in several TV shows, including The Colbert Report, where he was also a writer from 2007 to 2010.
Other than the Sonic commercials, Grosz's main claim to fame is that he was Seth Meyers' college roommate and Meyers was the best man at Grosz's wedding.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Weekend on 12/25/2014