Cheer and loathing

Photograph: Chad Batka

Mark Loewenstern

Three years ago, Mark Loewenstern, a legal secretary by day and playwright by night, noticed that the Hallmark store near his Astoria apartment was trotting out its Christmas booty earlier than usual. The push was annoying (who wants to see tinsel when you’re trying to shop for porcelain turkeys?), but he didn’t reach his boiling point until this year, when the red-and-green merriment started encroaching on his beloved Halloween.

“They start waaay too early,” he says. “Christmas loses its meaning when it takes up one fifth of the year.”

An aspiring screenwriter, Loewenstern decided to channel his irritation into something creative. He dreamt up a plot in which competing holiday-character decorations duke it out in a greeting card store, wrote a script, asked Queens animator Kartik Mohan to storyboard it, recorded some dialogue and then shipped it all to Graphiti Multimedia in Mumbai to be completed. The result is “Holiday Rumble,” a charmingly evil flick that finds a pistol-wielding Santa Claus coming to blows with a furious Dracula, a pushover Pilgrim and other disillusioned holiday mascots.

Loewenstern, who compulsively checks the comments section of Atom Films’ website, is pleased with how the short turned out—and that the Easter Bunny, Cupid et al. are fiwnally fighting back.

SEE IT
Cue up “Holiday Rumble” at atomfilms.com/film/holiday_rumble.jsp.

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