Sia gets in the festive spirit on the cover art for her Christmas album, Everyday is Christmas.
Sia gets in the festive spirit on the cover art for her Christmas album, Everyday is Christmas.
Christmas is nearly upon us, which means so are this year's shameless attempts to cash in on the festive season. We round up the best - and worst - of this year's Christmas releases.
MUSIC
The words "featuring Blake Shelton" should make you shudder like it's winter and you're outside building a snowman in your togs.
If not, you clearly haven't heard You Make It Feel Like Christmas, Shelton's contribution to his girlfriend Gwen Stefani's upcoming Christmas album of the same name.
"I want to thank the storm that brought the snow," croons Shelton.
"Sweet gingerbread made with molasses," replies Stefani.
Why aren't they singing about cheese? Because You Make Me Feel Like Christmas is as gooey as Grandma's fondue.
Their double act is just one of 12 crimes committed on Stefani's debut Christmas album, one that comes with a 24-page colour booklet of home photos of the Stefanis in festive mode.
Flicking through that shows we're in for a long, interminably slow sleigh ride to December 25, because there are more festive-themed albums and movies coming out than you can shake a jingle bell at.
Boy band Hansen took to all-caps to announce Finally it's Christmas on their website, their Christmas record that kicks off with a first single of the same name.
Sadly, the video doesn't show us what an Mmmboppers' Christmas party is actually like.
Instead, it shows us Santa skipping Christmas to go rollerblading. If the choice is listening to this or taking part in a sport that died in the late-90s, I'd happily dig my neon green skates out of the garage.
Sia's Everyday Is Christmas album must the the biggest wild-card entrant on this list, and she should be congratulated for bypassing the plonky production hallmarks of Christmas music for something a little more current. This doesn't sound like Christmas music at all. And Sia, who performs here on December 5, posed for some pretty amazing photos to promote it too.
New Zealand's own Sol3 MIo are touting their own Christmas album, A Very M3rry Christmas and aside from their horrifying use of the No. 3 in their title, I'm not so mad at it.
If you want background noise to drown out the drunken jibber-jabber of your inebriated in-laws, there's only one band that will do the trick, and that band is KoRn.
But if you want a chill morning drinking rum, eating pastries and opening presents, turn Sol3 Mio up and get your festivities on.
If the choice is between this and Gwen Stefani singing about gingerbread, I'll pick this first, like the Cherry Ripes from a box of Cadbury's Roses. Wait a minute...
If you've been hanging out for a New Zealand-themed Christmas movie, well, congrats, you've been waiting a hell of a long time.
Aside from that made-for-TV movie-length episode of Outrageous Fortune, there's never been one.
Until now.
Kiwi Christmas is this year's big box office holiday drawcard, a low-budget caper in which Santa gets disillusioned with holiday season materialism and heads to New Zealand to wait it out. Dude, aren't you kind of responsible for all this?
Released next week, Kiwi Christmas features plenty of well-known faces, like Step Dave's Sia Trokenheim, music from the Wellington Children's Choir and ... ack. You're just going to go to Star Wars: The Last Jedi again, aren't you?
There's not really much else to choose from. There's Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell in Daddy's Home 2, which one critic said made him "long for death", or there's Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell in Bad Moms 2, which another critic called "shoddy, superfluous and trashy".
With an 86 per cent aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes, The Man Who Invented Christmas, which is about Charles Dickens writing A Christmas Carol, is probably the pick of the bunch.
"The very definition of festive fun," wrote one critic, who probably left his children in the cinema and went to the nearest bar to drink egg nog while he waited it out.
But let's not forget the patron saint of Christmas, Mariah Carey, whose 1994 earworm All I Want For Christmas has been turned into an animated movie called - wait for it - Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You.
Available for streaming via iTunes, Carey wrote the theme tune and sang the theme tune, and she also narrates the movie. Her songs will already be taking over shops, malls, elevators and radio stations, and now she can take over your lounge too.
One hundred per cent Mariah. If that isn't Christmas, I don't know what is.
