The chickens of Tweedy Chicken Farm are generally content, with the possible exception of Ginger (Julia Sawalha). She seems to be the only one who realizes that things may be fine if you are laying eggs, but as soon as the eggs stop, things aren’t so good for chickens.

Let’s face it, chickens may not be the brightest, but Ginger is a different sort, so she’s constantly planning how to escape from the farm. She just has one problem, and that’s that to get one or two chickens out is easy. To get the whole lot out is a different matter entirely.

One day, as the chickens are going about their normal business, they get a visitor from outside – quite unusual indeed, but even more so because he arrives by flying, and most chickens can’t fly. Ginger is downright ecstatic.

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With a similar premise as that of Meet the Santas, it seems that Santa is in need of a bride. Since this one came out three years before that one, I’ll have to say that they had the idea first. But who really knows?

In any case, it seems that Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) has settled into his role of Santa very well. But recently he’s been losing a little weight and it seems that the magic that made him into Santa so convincingly the first time around is leaving him. What is odd is that it took so long to happen. Perhaps there is a statute of limitations on how long Santa can operate without a wife, or maybe it’s only once someone realizes that he is supposed to have a wife. I don’t know. But it’s happening.

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This is the telling of the Charles Dickens classic The Christmas Carol. The only difference is that it is told by The Muppets (with a few humans thrown in for good measure, notably Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge).

On Christmas Eve, he is as crotchety as ever, and his employees – rats mostly, led by Kermit the Frog as Bob Kratchit – ask for the next day off, and reluctantly, Scrooge agrees. That night, however, he is visited by five ghosts. This differs slightly from the Dickens telling, because The Muppets needed to fit in Statler and Waldorf (Jacob and Robert Marley, respectively – only Jacob was in the original). Marley and Marley come to tell Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts this night. They also deliver one of the best songs in the show.

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This is an interesting movie. On one hand, I have no doubt that it will likely end up in the stable of films that are rerun endlessly at this time of year, simply because it’s a pretty decent tale, and that’s what films like this do at this time of year. But on the other, it’s rather creepy. The animation is good, and if it were ten years ago, I’m sure we would all be amazed at how lifelike the characters are. Let’s face it – it isn’t ten years ago.

While there are some pretty amazing reproductions of life here, they just don’t quite make the final step. The hair doesn’t move. It’s like a plastic wig. And while the eyes are okay, the mouth is just a bottomless pit into oblivion. Ignore those things and you’re okay. Younger kids might be able to do so, but some will undoubtedly be spooked by these aspects of the film.

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This animated (clay-mated?) film stars Wallace and his loyal dog Gromit, who as a team form Anti-Pesto Humane Pest Control, dedicated to keeping the vegetables safe from those who would eat them prior to the giant vegetable-growing contest, held annually on the gounds of Tottington Estate.

In practice, this means that they catch rabbits before they have a chance to eat people’s vegetables, but they don’t kill the rabbits. Instead, they keep them in pens beneath their house. That generally is okay, but now something has changed.

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In this latest release from the team of Disney and Pixar, we enter the world of (you guessed it) cars. There are no humans whatsoever in this one, as there have been (albeit only somewhat) in most of their other releases. This time around we are in a world that is inhabited solely by mechanized vehicles. Mostly cars, but also RVs, trucks and even a helicopter or two.

The star of the show is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), the hot rookie on the Piston Cup circuit, and he is headed to California for a three-car showdown in the final race of the season to settle once and for all who will be the winner of the Piston Cup (after a bizarre three-way tie in the last race of the season).

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