A salute to all TV holiday specials, but mostly the Christmas ones. Revisit 12 holiday classics and not-so-classics each December and July.
https://adventcalendar.house
episode 2: Pinocchio’s Christmas
???? The Advent Calendar House gets overrun by earworms strong enough to burrow into wood as we carve into the 1980 Rankin/Bass Christmas special starring Pinocchio.
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???? Guests:Michael DiGiovanni (@theatomicgeeks, The Atomic Geeks, Classic Film Jerks, Pop Culture Retrofit).
Michael May (@michaelmaycomix, MichaelMay.online, Sleigh Bell Cinema, Mystery Movie Night, Nerd Lunch Fourth Chair Army Invasion, and I think that might be it… FOR NOW).
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???? Topics & Tangents:1. Two songs, Dancin’ and The Very Best Friend I Ever Had, were cut from and later restored to TV broadcasts.
2. Starstuff, a Philadelphia market, Saturday morning kids’ sci-fi TV series starring Todd Porter, the voice of Pinocchio.
3. The most disappointing gifts we’ve ever received, including what Santa gave me after I allegedly misspelled “Alpha Critters.”
4. We question the less-than-clear laws that govern Pinocchio’s lie-detecting nose, which appear to grant him a mulligan here.
5. Those classic Christmas puppet show characters, Don Quixote and an alligator.
6. The strange flash-forward to the rest of Pinocchio’s better-known adventures, even though Rankin/Bass already made a Pinocchio TV series, its first ever stop-motion animation project.
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“Pinocchio’s Christmas” ©1980 Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.
Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.