Hey, kids. Frosty the Snowman here. I gotta say, I’m not feeling the love from the Screengrab this holiday season. I was certain this week would see their Top 10 List of Greatest Snowman Movies Ever. After all, there are so many great ones to choose from. Who doesn’t shed a tear every year during their annual viewing of Jack Frost, the heartwarming tale of Michael Keaton becoming a snowman and learning to be a better dad? And then there’s, uh, the other Jack Frost, about the mutant killer snowman, and its sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.

But no, instead we get this list of The Best and Worst Stage-to Screen Adaptations of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight). What does that have to do with snowmen? And even when they do acknowledge the Christmas season, as in the 12 Days of Christmas Marathon (Bad Santa and The Star Wars Holiday Special) or Yesterday’s Hits: The Santa Clause, my brothers in snow get nary a mention.

Still, I’m willing to rise above it all and point out a few of my favorite posts of the week, if only they’ll turn up the air conditioning in here.

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Film critics may be disappearing from the pages of daily newspapers by the dozen, but it’s still not happening fast enough for some in Hollywood. Specifically, as Patrick Goldstein writes in The Big Picture, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis is feared and loathed by studio brass. “It's an open secret in indie Hollywood that no one wants Manohla Dargis to review their movie, fearing that the outspoken critic will tear their film limb from limb. It's the ultimate backhanded compliment, since what they really fear is Manohla's persuasiveness -- that she'll write a review whose combination of vitriolic snarkiness and intellectual heft will actually persuade high-brow moviegoers to drop the film from their must-see list. (To be fair, she can be equally passionate about films she loves; for example, Synecdoche, New York, or anything by David Lynch.)… No one blinks an eye when a critic eviscerates a dumb summer comedy -- that's a fair target. It's the filmmakers who've aimed high and been brought to their knees by a Dargis pan who feel as if they've been gored for sport. You might say Manohla occupies a unique perch: She's the critic you love to read, just as long as you're not reading about your movie.”

Karina Longworth takes issue with Goldstein at Spoutblog.

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If you had the mixed fortune to be American, male, of a certain age, and interested in horror movies and science fiction, chances are better than good that you grew up with a soft spot for Forrest J. Ackerman. Ackerman, who died last week at the age of 92, was a legendary figure in several categories of fandom as a writer, editor, convention goer and collector of memorabilia. But he was best known in kids' bedrooms across the country as the man behind Famous Monsters of Filmland, a nostalgia-drenched photo magazine that combined stills from classic scare pictures (taken from Ackerman's vast personal collection) with punning captions and assorted trivia. Famous Monsters began in 1958 as what was first intended, by independent publisher James Warren, to be a one-shot publication based on a French magazine consisting of classic horror movie stills accompanied by captions. Warren was stymied, though, by two problems: what he saw as the dry, academic tone of the writing, and his discovery that he couldn't simply reproduce the contents of the French magazine without dealing with a mountain of copyright problems. After Ackerman assured him that he could provide stills as good as those in the original magazine, Warren agreed to go ahead with the project, provided that Ackerman also juice up the copy with strings of "Fangs for the memories!"-style puns. (Ackerman once told a reporter that Warren's great contribution to this proess amounted to sitting across from him "holding up an invisible sign reading, 'I am eleven years old, make me laugh.'") The one-shot was so successful that it became the launching pad for what became Warren Publishing, which would go on to the horror-comics magazines Eerie and Creepy, which were spun off from the Ackerman-edited Monster World, as well as Harvey Kurtzman's Help! and the '70s reprints of Will Eisner's The Spirit.

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