If you think GRUDGE MATCH is just ROCKY MEETS RAGING BULL, thick again. Sylvester Stallone and co-star, Robert De Niro, explain how boxing isn’t the message here. Plus Marvel finally admits that Paul Rudd is Ant Man, and finally an end to HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

When I had to go to work in an office everyday, I would try to save up my vacation days so I could take off the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Ostensibly, I did this because my kid had no school and needed daytime attention.

But, really, I did it because I wanted to go to the movies.

The holiday season usually sees a flood of new releases, either to amuse those home-bound kids or to qualify for the Academy Awards. A lot of the Oscar-bait is scheduled for nation-wide release when the awards will actually be presented, and they just open in a few theaters to get by the rules. Since a lot of Academy members live in New York, we luck out.

There are altogether too many Jews in my borough for me to indulge the traditional Reform observance of Christmas (Chinese food and a movie), but I hope to celebrate the end of the year with my people (by which I mean, movie geeks).

Here’s what I’m anticipating most.

Inside Llewyn Davis Not since Bruce Springsteen teamed up with Pete Seeger has a project seemed so much like it was designed specifically for me. The Coen Brothers explore the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. I expect it to be my neighborhood, my music, my sense of humor and my reasons for moving here. And then I expect to be sad because none of this is cool anymore.

American Hustle I’m not a huge David O. Russell fan, but I like a movie with a lot of cute guys in it, even when they have bad hair, bad clothes and bodies fattened for art. However …

Out of the Furnace, which isn’t supposed to be as good, is also on my list because it’s Christian Bale being his cute self, along with a set of very very masculine, serious co-stars. Come to Mama, boys.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire I’m late to this. It’s been out for a month, and I still haven’t gone. Loved the books (although I thought the last one had a weak ending), loved the previous movies, love the clothes and love Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Banks. I wish the two would remake Thelma & Louise.

Saving Mr. Banks My husband and I were both huge fans of Walt Disney (politics aside) and Mary Poppins. John liked to opine that without Mary Poppins there would be no Star Wars. I read the Travers books to my son, and they are big fun, so I see no reason not to sob like a baby through this entire film.

Frozen See above about Disney. We would often observe that, unlike so many filmmakers who went for a kids’ audience, Disney (as a studio) tended to have much better scripts. This looks like it follows in the path of what I think of as the Broadway musical animated movies (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and that’s a good thing.The Wolf of Wall Street Martin Scorsese is one of my all-time favorites. In this film, he seems to be treating Wall Street traders as if they are gangsters involved in organized crime. Sounds right to me.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues How much did you love the first one? Not as much as I did. When I go to SDCC, I try to walk around the park near the water, looking for roving bands of news teams.

Kill Your Darlings The first famous author I ever met was Allen Ginsberg. He had given a poetry reading at a nearby university, and came to our commune for dinner. Since I was just a girl, he ignored me just about completely. Still, I’m eager to see him portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe, because it’s about as far from Harry Potter as one can get.

Her  I really like Spike Jonze movies. Because of him, sometimes I wander around muttering, “Malkovich Malkovich Malcovich.” So I’m curious to see what his future is like.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Sadly, this will now seem like an elegy. A friend of mine who has to go to film festivals as part of her job saw this a few times back in the spring and said it was always fantastic. And it has Idris Elba. Yowza.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty I have no intellectual defense for wanting to see this. I like Ben Stiller. Sue me.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

The natives of the planet Clabdabalum use a language which is, at its purest, non-verbal – in fact, non-communicative. However, over the millennia, it has been corrupted by verbal elements. (In Clabdabalum version of the Genesis myth, Adam and Eve are tempted by a grammar text.) This pidgin lingo lacks every part of speech that we Terrans use except one: pronouns. The Clabdabians have only one pronoun and that pronoun has no tense, nor does it have a gender, which is not surprising considering that the Clabdabians themselves have no gender, which may be why they’ve never made it big. (They may or may not have tenses. It’s hard to tell.)

Having only a single pronoun to work with, the Clabdabian writers’ output is pretty sparse and so they have not yet evolved the need for editors. Some might say that this is a sign of advanced intelligence, but I’m not among them. (Editors are splendid creatures who miss godhood by only a dangling participle or two.) But, a Clabdabian might ask, what does an editor do, exactly?

You’re waiting for an answer, aren’t you?

Well, wait! I won’t offer a concise definition because mine is not a one-size-fits-all universe. There seems to be a number of ways to be an editor and I suspect that those who eventually become good at the job decide what has to be done and then find strategies to make the task doable with their own strengths and preferences. They’re also well-advised to beware of their weaknesses and devise tricks to compensate for what they lack.

Okay, now that we have that settled… I will, shyly and timidly, proffer another suggestion. It’s not a good idea to do what I did during my first brief attempt to be a DC Comics editor, way back in the 70s, and that was to make the scripts I edited resemble the scripts I wrote. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the best I could hope to achieve with this ill-conceived ploy was to get second- or third-rate O’Neil and what I really should have wanted was first-rate (fill in the name of your favorite comics writer). That doesn’t mean give the writer total freedom to do as the writer chooses; I have great respect for people who follow their own muses and produce what they want to produce when they want to produce it. But they, bless them, do not work for companies owned by others, as do many comics writers and almost all movie and television scripters. This need to follow… let’s call them “guidelines…” does not preclude a writer becoming emotionally and intellectually involved in the work. The great Raymond Chandler said that the trick for the commercial writer is to give the boss what he’s paying you for, but get what you want in there, too. He proved it can be done and so have legions of others.

I doubt that any of them were Clabdabian but hey… you never know.

P.S.: “Snut” is the pronoun referred to above.

P.P.S.: Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Jim McLauchlin: 

Hero Initiative is a beneficiary of Amazon Smile. If you sign up Hero as your charitable choice, a percentage of qualified purchases will go to Hero at no additional cost to you! Info: http://smile.amazon.com/about

An easy way to support a worthy organization.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: The Tweaks!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

The Day of the Doctor was everything the fans were hoping for, and the new Blu Ray 3D / DVD combo set is a perfect way to hang onto the adventure in perpetuity if you don’t want to take up space on your DVR.

The star of the package is the anniversary episode itself. The picture is perfect , with detail aplenty for those who weren’t lucky enough to catch the episode on BBC America in HD, or in the theaters.  As yr. obvt. svt reviewed and analyzed here on this site it features both Matt Smith and David Tennant, plus a heretofore unseen Doctor, played by John Hurt, teased in the last episode of the seventh season.  They all meet when the “War Doctor” chooses to destroy both armies of the great Time War, but is given a second chance to reconsider by an unexpected source – the very weapon he plans on using. Throw in Queen Elizabeth the First (AKA Mrs. The Doctor), the return of the Zygons, and a cameo that they kept right up until the end, and you’ve got a real belter.  My god did I love that gulping noise Tennant made every time he gets kissed by the Queen…

The extras are a bit slim, but what there is is cherce. Both mini-episodes are featured; The Last Day, a short adventure that chronicles the fall of Gallifrey’s second greatest city, Arcadia, and The Night of the Doctor, which featured the return of Eighth Doctor Paul McGann,  Both adventures look amazing in Hi-def – McGann’s return to the role is dramatic and gritty.  They did a wonderful job showing what happened to The Doctor through all those missing years.

A feature by BBC America, Doctor Who Explained, offers a great primer for the series.  The teaser trailer is included, as is the much-fabled Comic-Con trailer, which Moffat was able to keep secret to all who weren’t in the room with various threats and saber-rattling.

A pack of collectable trading cards rounds out the set, manufactured by Topps, who have yet to make Doctor Who cards in the US, which rather opens a promising door.  A set of twelve, they form a single collage when assembled.

The Day of the Doctor is available from Amazon.com and all purveyors of things DVDish and Blu-Ray-ey.

Things usually wind down as we get towards the end of the year, but this is not necessarily true for most freelancers, and this year it is certainly not true for me. However, I am not complaining in the least.

Last Friday I found myself scarfing down absolutely fantastic barbecue at a place in Corunna, Michigan. If you don’t know where that is, well, it’s just southeast of Owosso. My lust for great Que is perhaps legendary, but to actually get me to Corunna took some additional bait: I met up with my old and dear friend and ComicMix comrade John Ostrander.

Not wanting to destroy our mood, we didn’t talk about the Cubs’ prospects for the new season. We did open with our other usual talking points: politics, weird Chicago history, comics industry gossip, and comics industry fact that we could never utter in public. Then we got down to work.

We discussed a project we’ve wanted to do for almost a decade; one that we believe will finally get off the ground in 2014. It’s funny – I can’t remember what happened last night (maybe for a reason), but I remember a brilliant pitch from Paleolithic times. I’ve got enough brilliant and worthy pitches rattling around in my brainpan to start Second Comics, Third Comics, and π Comics. All it takes is an infinite amount of time and about 40% of Uncle Scrooge’s money bin.

Working with first-rate creators in plotting a new story or developing a new series is, for me, the best part of the job. I truly enjoy the catalytic role of making things happen. My working relationship and methodology differs with each creative team, and quite frankly working with John on a new project is very different from working with John and Timothy Truman on a new GrimJack story.

John and I have known each other since around 1971 and we’ve been working together in the comics racket since 1982, so we collaborate like an old comedy duo, like Crosby and Hope, Letterman and Shaffer, or the Smothers Brothers. Whereas I might start with a suggestion based upon my knowledge of John’s creative strengths, my job is to collaborate, reality-test, and polish – and not to create. In other words, John – and, later, the artist we entice onto the gig – do all the heavy lifting. I’m there to bounce around ideas, to represent the reader in making sure the story is getting across the plate, and to represent the business interests of the publisher. If the latter sounds anti-creative, well, it doesn’t have to be – if you’re working with a good publisher who also has a good marketing department. And good luck with that.

Because writers can write faster than drawers can draw, I got to ask John about starting another project, one we can get to once the new one I just alluded to is in the works. Of course we’ve got at least a half-dozen other concepts we’ve been wanting to do forever, but this time we thought it might be fun to start with a blank sheet of paper. Such a conversation focuses on several questions, such as “What would you like to do?” “Why does that excite you?” “How does that differ from (fill in the blank)?” and “What reference and research do we need to do?”

John and I have been swirling around a couple of specific themes for years, all born from mutual interest. He told me what he really wanted to do next – not an actual concept per se, but situations, environments, time frames, and character bits; the meat and potatoes of any story. Then, like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we take those potatoes and mold them into the shape of a… thing. Nothing too specific – that’s up to John when he spaces out in front of his computer and starts creating magic.

We finished our barbecue, made a lot of cheap jokes at the expense of friends, fools and politicians, paid the bill, and went our separate ways. Usually it’s kind of sad to separate from an old friend whom you might not see for several months, but this is the comics world. We will be working on both of these projects via ridiculously frequent emails and phone calls. We will be in constant touch – just as we have been for about 42 years now.

Damn, I’ve got a great job.

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: The Tweaks!

After nearly eight seasons, the guys at ROBOT CHICKEN area still having fun playing with toys. We sit down with creator Matt Senreich and actor Breckin Meyer to talk about what has (or hasn’t) changed over the years. Plus DC and Marvel are neck and neck another month in the comic stores, and can it really be true? A SANDMAN movie at last?!

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.