Wind Chaser

I absolutely can't stand New England and will root for pretty much any NFC team over them. That said, I expect New England to win this one. Green Bay would have stood more of a chance. Their style of play was very similar to NE; Rodgers is probably the only QB playing on the same level as Brady and they like to bend the rules and exploit loopholes as much as Belichick does. Ryan to Jones is a good combo but New England has more weapons.

On the feature side, I can't believe I'm saying this, but the two films I'm most looking forward to are Cars 3 and LEGO Batman. The former actually looks to be continuing the original storyline and challenging its characters, rather than divert to blockbuster tropes like its predecessor. As for the latter; it's amazing that the original LEGO Movie built a brand of self-aware humor and a loving playfulness with tropes, and throwing the powerhouse Batman franchise into the mix will give them a treasure trove of subject matter. From the trailers, it definitely looks like they're capitalizing. I'm also optimistic about Sony this year with both Smurfs: The Lost Village and The Star. The latter of those two is an especially interesting concept since we haven't had an animated Christmas film set at the Nativity since at least the Rankin-Bass days. On the TV side, I can't say as much since I'm not a big fan of the shows that are really popular now, but one show that is showing definite signs of improvement season-over-season is Star vs. the Forces of Evil. I look forward to seeing some of that show while I mainly catch up on older shows this year.

I always felt that the only reason Korra got with Asami was because Mako fumbled with both of them. I never really liked how any of the characters handled relationships in this show, but then again, they're teenagers, and very realistically written at that. How many successful relationships actually start at that age? How many times has love gotten in the way of the characters' work when it shouldn't have? I'm not into shipping all that much, and in my opinion, much of the romance in Korra was more destructive than constructive. Most of the time spent mentioning love and relationships almost always put it at odds with the characters' duties. Just like Korra learned patience as the Avatar, maybe she and the others could have stood to learn more patience in a romantic context.

People like mentioning the celebrity deaths as a reason 2016 sucked because they are really, really trying to make 2016 look like the worst year ever, and it's good shorthand to use without bringing up politics. With some exceptions, many of the celebrities who died this year were no longer active in their fields. It's an inevitable fact of life; one day our icons will get to a point where they will no longer be able to do the things that made them famous (look at Mariah Carey), and they will probably die within our lifetimes. It's great to celebrate their life and work and the fact that those things will not go away for as long as we live, but we have to move on when there's much bigger problems facing our world, like never-ending war and the very real threat of all of the social progress and the world order of the last 72 years being thrown away by multiple strains of extremist backlash. Eventually, people will have to come back to reality and not waste their emotional energy on a world they only live through vicariously.

First 3 seasons of SpongeBob.

I was born in the mid-90s. Usually, the most nostalgia I'll have is for the time I actually grew up in (the mid-2000s) but there were some great things in the early-mid 90s or the late 90s that I was too young to remember that I wish I could have seen for myself. Any time before that, though, is more iffy, mainly because my family and my hometown don't really have that many good memories except for music.

I'm an avid Google Play user, with Vudu as my backup. I also have a Hulu account and formerly had one for Amazon (their policy towards Chromecast users forced me to shut off, though).

This is basically one of the nicer ways to describe Family Guy, stretching the definitions of "social commentary" and "philosophical messages" to their absolute loosest. In fact, I think it was burnout from the crass and cynical tone that pervaded so many shows like that in the late 2000s that helped turn a lot of people onto shows like MLP and Adventure Time.

The art style definitely has a lineage with the modern Mickey Mouse shorts in adapting classic designs for modern animation technology, although I wish the colors could be more vibrant. I'm surprised by the strength of the cast they got for this, not only David Tennant but also Kate Micucci (Lucy from The Big Bang Theory). I was a bit young for the original DuckTales series, but I'll keep my eye on this one. Hopefully it means a revival of sorts for Disney TV animation, which has mostly lagged in the shadow of Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon for decades, especially since the end of Gravity Falls.

Traditionally, this encompasses films like The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka (or Charlie) and the Chocolate Factory, and pretty much anything from Disney or any mainstream animated film. Most of these are films I'd watch at other times of the year anyway but I usually make more of an effort to break them out in November and December.

Yes...this is me until February.

I stay here because this is one of the most active communities I'm a part of. I'm less interested in the show than I used to be and a lot of my closest friends on here moved on, but I keep coming back here because of how welcoming, active, and generally civilized the site is compared to many other parts of the Internet, even despite some of its issues.

I haven't seen much of James Bond, but I love the Austin Powers series. Also, Spaceballs rips the hell out of Star Wars and the blockbuster era, and so much of it is still relevant today.

I definitely give Rise of the Guardians points for originality, but I think that among the best are both versions of Miracle on 34th Street, and Santa Claus: The Movie, where David Huddleston's performance rises above the over-the-top cheesiness of the rest of the movie, portraying an extremely dedicated Santa who really conveys the weight and importance of his role. Also, if he counts, Jack Skellington did a hell of a job in his one turn as Santa Claus, and though it didn't turn out for the best, at least knew how to find joy and optimism in it. Thus, he's become quite an icon in his own right. I do have to second how The Polar Express built him up with tests of faith and kept him as a distant and mysterious yet all-knowing and benevolent figure, and I'll say that this film has the best depiction of the North Pole ever put to film, really getting down the scale of what Christmas and Santa Claus should be. It manages to be firmly rooted in the industrial era and the golden age of railroads, but whimsical enough to be its own thing and doesn't get lost too much in its technology. The only downsides I'll give it are the very strange elves and that Santa Claus wasn't on the screen for long, but the buildup is very much sufficient.