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It’s December, and that can only mean one thing: by “popular” demand, it’s time to dust off my now-traditional Christmas album and stick it here on this here blog.

For those who don’t know about it, this tradition dates back to 2007, when I put together a Christmas compilation with the help of my LiveJournal friends. I wanted to put my favourite Christmassy songs together, but I also wanted to discover some new, interesting and slightly obscurer festive tracks. This album was the result. It’s been tweaked a little most years since, but the core structure and rules remain the same: it’s largely indie/alternative, but with a couple of more well-known and poppier tracks in there. In general, it’s supposed to consist of the tracks that you don’t just hear in every shop you walk into in December. So even if they’re good, you won’t hear things like “Christmas Wrappin’” or “Stop The Cavalry” here.

(The one exception is “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, which thanks to its status as The Greatest Christmas Song Of Them All is featured not only in its original form but also as a surprisingly excellent cover by My Chemical Romance)

This year, I’ve subbed in and out a couple of tracks – Jonathan Coulton’s “Chiron Beta Prime” and She & Him’s new version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” were the things I wanted to add, so Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and the Pogues have made way (the latter because… well, as great as it is, it doesn’t really fit here, because it’s so widely-heard over the season).

Of course, if you like some of my choices but not all, you’re perfectly welcome to sub in your own tracks to make your own version! The album as it is here, though, is specifically designed to clock in at just under 80 minutes, and so to fit perfectly onto a CD-R should you wish.

Merry Chrimbo, and enjoy!

Download Now That’s What Seb Calls A Christmas Album! (2011 edition) (via Dropbox)

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
3. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
4. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
5. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
6. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
7. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
8. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
9. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
10. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
11. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
12. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
13. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
14. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
15. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
16. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
17. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. Jonathan Coulton – Chiron Beta Prime (2:51)
19. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
20. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
21. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
22. She & Him – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (3:42)
23. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
24. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

So, er, yeah. Although this has been in the pipeline for a couple of weeks (and in fact, I actually officially started work at the beginning of this week), it’s only now been made public and can be announced: I’m now the writer/editor/whatever of The Official Red Dwarf Website.

It’s still sinking in, really, even though the first weekly news updates from my pen (keyboard) are already up on the site for all to see. I’m actually, officially, part of the Red Dwarf “family”. It’s been a long and odd journey getting here – from watching the show as a nipper, to setting up my first blog about it in 2004, to playing Doug Naylor (the Doug Naylor I now work for) in a fan film, to joining the obnoxious loudmouthery of peerless fansite Ganymede & Titan, to publishing a book about the show. Even then, I never expected through any of that that I’d ever really get to have any official connection with the series – even though, like anyone else, I’ve always had a dream that I’d one day be writing it (fitting it in and around my Doctor Who and Superman commitments, of course).

But now I do. I’m responsible for the weekly site news updates, as well as keeping it generally ticking over – and some other bits and bobs of work that I can’t really talk about now, to boot. And there’ll be a lot of news updates to come – in case you didn’t know, Red Dwarf is imminently entering production for a brand new series of six episodes, to be broadcast next year on Dave. And I’m going to be seeing a lot of that first-hand, and telling the world about it. In a lot of cases (as with our already-teased big announcement next week) I’ll be the first person to tell worldwide fandom of major goings-on (although in other cases, Digital Spy will probably beat us to it as we negotiate the “Can we publish this yet?” legal minefield that they’re not bound by).

Unfortunately, this also means I have to keep my opinions about Series VIII to myself from now on, but hey ho.

It’s a bloody exciting time, though. Unlike the man I’m replacing – the eleven-years-serving, pretty-much-impossible-to-follow Andrew Ellard, now a scriptwriter/editor of no small renown – this isn’t my full-time job, and I’m not involved in the production side of things, or anything like that. I’m the part-time news-monkey, basically. But still – all of a sudden, I’m getting paid to write about Red Dwarf. Every week.

It’s definitely one of those “wish I could tell the teenage self” moments, I’ll tell you that.

Ooh, a few things to catch up on, here. So! To business! If you haven’t seen me posting about these things elsewhere:

Thing the first: Captain America!

I saw it! It was great! And I wrote about it for Film4, thusly:

It’s true that it doesn’t aspire to be anything particularly weighty or original – but at what it sets out to do, it rarely puts a foot wrong. Director Joe Johnston, in full-on Rocketeer mode, crafts a charming and entertaining period action romp that may never exactly hit an unpredictable beat, but is no less enjoyable for it.

Miles better than Green Lantern, not quite as good as X-Men: First Class, but about on a level with Thor. Splendid.

(Less splendid : Rotten Tomatoes posting the review, but not attributing it to me – just to “Film4″ generally – thus meaning it’s missing from my scorecard. Booo!)

Thing the second: New podcast!

My regular collaborator/partner in crime/argument board James Hunt and I have launched a new comics podcast, via our website Alternate Cover. It’s called The Graphic Novel Book Club, and it does exactly what it sounds like – each month, we solicit comments from our readers/listeners on a different graphic novel or trade paperback collection, setting discussion topic questions but also looking for any opinions/insights/etc. that people might have – then we throw them into the mix with our own thoughts and sit there chatting about it all for three-quarters of an hour. The first episode is now live on Podomatic and iTunes, and we’ve already posted discussion topics for the second, which we’ll be recording in a couple of weeks. Have a listen! Some people say it’s listenable and entertaining even if you don’t know the comics we’re talking about. I couldn’t possibly comment.

(And yes, it does have a slightly tautological name. “The Graphic Novel Club” might have been better, but then it wouldn’t have been as clear that we were specifically using a book group/book club format. It would have just sounded like a club.)

Thing the third: When Saturday Comes #295!

I’ve written at unnecessarily gushing length in the past about how much of an honour it is to write for When Saturday Comes, so I won’t retread all that ground again. But! This month is quite special, because for years now I’ve read their annual season preview supplement – in which one writer for each club in the league answers questions about their opinions on the previous season and expectations for the coming one – and thought about what I’d say if I were doing the section on Liverpool. So it’s quite exciting that this year, those answers are actually in the real supplement. I actually did a little double-take when I got the email asking if I’d do it. No, really.

What’s more, in the issue itself, an article I did a little while back about the history and merits (or lack thereof) of the away goals rule has made it to print. It’s not quite as exciting a piece as I was hoping when I started it – I was hoping to go into more extensive details about the circumstances of the rule’s creation/introduction, but discovered surprisingly little readily-available information despite doing some extensive library-based research and everything – but it’s still a relatively fun skim over the rule’s history and musing on whether or not it’s still a valid method of settling draws nowadays. Er, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anyway, the issue’s out in shops on Wednesday – I’d post a picture of the cover, but WSC haven’t put it on their website yet. But it’s issue #295, it costs £3.50, and it’s got Stewart Downing, Phil Jones and Jordan Henderson on the front. So, you know. Buy it, if you like.

It’s only been up for a week and a half, that’s not too late to get around to doing it here, is it? Well, this thing’s intended more as an archive for my own benefit anyway, so. I saw Green Lantern. I like Green Lantern comics. I wanted to like the film. Did I like the film?

What follows is an uninspired superhero origin story that trots out all the predictable story beats of the genre without ever adding anything new or inspired. All the good promise of both the concept and some excellent effects sequences is lost in a script that is determined to plod its hero from A (reckless responsibility-phobe) to B (world-saving hero) without ever developing or exploring his personality along the way.

So that’s a big fat “no”, then. The rest’s over at Film4.

It’s been quite a film-y sort of time recently. I’ve managed to wangle my way into a number of screenings for free – some just because I’m great, but others because I actually have to – cuh – review the things. Anyway, while you don’t get to see my detailed thoughts on Pirates 4 (bit crap) and Attack the Block (bit excellent), I now have reviews up of what are likely to be two of the best films I see this year: X-Men: First Class over at Film4, and Senna on Den of Geek. I also did a fluffy tie-in piece for X-Men at Den of Geek (in a confusing bit of crossover since it wasn’t DoG I reviewed it for, but), looking at five other superhero properties that would make great “period piece” films – one for each decade from the ’30s through to the ’70s. Meanwhile, I also interviewed (well, co-interviewed) the director of Senna recently, but was a bit slow in getting the piece over to the DoG folk, so that probably won’t be up there until early next week. Have a look, though, it’s interesting stuff.

And also, although it was a few weeks ago, I’m quite pleased with my main contribution to the Doctor Who review canon this year (we’ll ignore my sloppy, far-too-short and unfocused review of “Day of the Moon”) – I’ve been waiting a long, long time for Neil Gaiman to write an episode of the show, so there’s a good reason why my write-up of “The Doctor’s Wife” is somewhat long and rambling. But I think I hit upon a nice theme with it, and that it’s a good piece all in all, so… yeah.