If you’ve been reading Substream for a while, you may have seen our weekly Take Five column, where we highlight our five favorite songs from the previous week. For the month of December, we wanted to highlight of our love and appreciation of the holidays by doing something special for our readers. So for this month, we present you with a special variation of Take Five with the Holiday Five.
We’ve gotten together with some amazing artists and music industry people to chat about their five favorite holiday movies. This will be more than a weekly column, so be sure to check in every day to see who joined us to talk about their favorite holiday movies.
Our third piece comes from Brandon and Adam Phillips of pop/electro/alternative band Other Americans. Check out their lists below!
Brandon Phillips:
1) Scrooged – Bill Murray is a treasure, Bobcat Golthwait is a genius, David Johansen is perfect and Danny Elfman’s score is dark and joyous.
2) The Ice Harvest – If your experience of the holidays is light on miracles and heavy on angst, hubris and existential depression, there’s a good chance you’ll find lots to love in this Cusack-fronted, Christmastime murder festival.
3) Silent Night, Deadly Night – One of those 80’s slashers where you’re fairly certain they had the poster designed before the screenplay was finished. Whatever. Department-Store-Santa-As-Axe-
4) Black Christmas – This 1974 horror movie about sorority girls being stalked by a weirdo during their holiday break is apparently being remade and rereleased this holiday season because of course it is. Someone tell me if it’s good.
5) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (The O.G. Animated one) – This is it. This is as wholesome as I’m gonna get for the holidays. The remakes are not my cup of tea and Burl Ives voice is extraordinary.
Adam Phillips:
My list is mostly Xmas-Adjacent movies. Xmas is whack, but there are movies that take place around Xmas that I love.
1) Trading Places – Ivy League dick head played by Dan Aykroyd getting his life stolen from him by capitalist pigs, drunken in a soiled Santa suit eating a stolen smoked salmon on the subway is what Xmas is all about.
2) Edward Scissorhands – Almost as ridiculous a concept as the original story of Xmas! Plus! He uses his crazy scissor hands to make Fake snow!!! Aaaawwww, how Xmassy! Plus: the villains are the normies. Bitchin’ soundtrack. Amazing costumes.
3) Scrooged – It’s the best ever version of that story. The cast was fantastic. Can’t touch it. And it pokes great fun at the ratings whore capitalists who run the TV networks.
4) It’s a Wonderful Life – Fuck me. I know. But it’s really good and I’m super amped up about hating unbridled capitalism right now. This movie speaks to me.
5) Gremlins – It takes place at Xmas time and it stars a tiny cute little robot Mogwai that I am 99% sure is the exact same little robot they gave a haircut to and are now using as Baby Yoda. Much like the original story of Xmas, this story is scientifically impossible and totally ridiculous and there’s some really yucky racism. Plus, there’s plenty of gremlin blood and guts! This movie too, throws in plenty of anti-capitalist sentiments!
