Chris Hyde's Holiday Gift Guide

Debbie celebrates the Cowboys' playoff berth.

DVDs

The BRD Trilogy
Leave it to the good folks at Criterion to put a few of the excellent late works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder together in one spiffy package just in time for the festive holidays. The three films included here (Lola, Veronika Voss, and The Marriage of Maria Braun) are all excellent examples of the somewhat more mature style that the German bad boy adopted towards the end of his career, and all employ the usual high-quality cast of Fassbinder hangers on. The films have also been padded with a whole slew of extras--audio commentaries, interviews, featurettes--and there's even a supplemental disk containing a documentary on the filmmaker as well as a rare 45 minute interview with the man himself culled from German TV. So this season, why don't you go ahead and give your favorite film-loving cynic the gift of a nice box of lies? That's what holiday cheer is all about.



Books

Demonology: Stories -- Rick Moody
Probably best known for his novel The Ice Storm (later made into a weak movie by Ang Lee), talented author Moody here shows off his storytelling gifts in a shorter, more compact manner. Unsettling stories of alienation and loss are told deftly and with humor in this 2001 collection of some of the writer's best work. These 13 tales cover a broad swath of ground, delineating insightfully the feel of the human landscape in modern America. Though all the stories have their merits, none is as poignant or powerful as the collection's title story -- a thinly disguised autobiographical yarn that uses carefully chosen prose to deliver its melancholy message.



Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood -- Marjane Satrapi
It'd be nice if as a culture we no longer needed to drag out the dreaded comics-can-be-literature trope every time a serious graphic novel came out, but given the critical meanderings when this excellent representation of sequential art hit the shelves, it seems that isn't yet the case. But all that aside, this brilliantly written and nicely drawn memoir of a girl's growing up in revolutionary Iran is one of the best autobiographical works to make it to the bookstores recently. The author's tales of that historic country in the grips of the Islamic Revolution are both intelligent and historically insightful, yet they are also told in a somewhat playful way that doesn't hesitate to cock an arched eyebrow at the dangerous absurdity of what life was like there for an upper class family just after the fall of the Shah. Great true life storytelling done here in a medium that has already progressed beyond the point where people should feel the need to apologize for it. Highly recommended.



X-rated: Adult Movie Posters of 60s and 70s -- Tony Nourmand and Bruce Marchant
Two collectors from London's The Reel Poster Gallery have amassed an amazing collection of 350 vintage porno posters, some 150 of which form the basis of this book. And while there's sure some prurient nubility revealed in this British tome that shows off the advertising used for adult entertainment from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, what's also on display here is an incredible array of period graphic design that is dazzling in its execution. The book stands as an interesting sociological document as well, and the authors should be commended for saving a bit of naughty history that most archivists would likely have swept under the rug. Buy this one now before the dollar falls apart any further!



Video Games

SSX 3
It's time to bust out the winter gear and hit the slopes--but if you'd rather do this sort of thing in the comfort of your own home, then just head over to your local electronics purveyor instead and scarf up the newest version of EA's snowboarding franchise. Each installment in this fine series seems to improve on the previous version, while at the same time retaining the tight controls and imaginative course design that are the hallmark of all the games. This time what's been added is an integrated mountain, a somewhat expanded trick system and a slightly RPG-ish means of building up your character's attributes that involves winning money as you complete goals. And hey, if you've never ventured into this blizzardy territory before, don't you worry -- five minutes into your first run, the intuitive and natural way your favorite boarder heads down the mountain will have you hooked solid and you'll never look back. The winter sports game of the year.

     

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Monday, June 08, 2026
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