The Spread Holiday Gift Guide
Celebrate the cinephiles in your life this holiday season
As we wrap up another year of The Spread (and I procrastinate on sending out December streaming), I thought it would be fun to put together a little holiday gift guide inspired by our programming, all under $200. Because sometimes Santa needs a little help when it comes to appreciating the breadth and depth of the cinematic arts!
(If it’s not obvious, none of these are affiliate links and I’m receiving no financial compensation whatsoever in recommending them; This is just the stuff I’m into!)
“Oceans Are Now Battlefields” T-Shirt, Super Yaki, $40
If Ridley Scott’s tepid Napoleon (2023) failed to satisfy your need for stylish recreations of historical warfare, reconnect this holiday season with Peter Weir’s aughts classic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), which definitely will. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the film follows Russell Crowe as the titular master and commander of a frigate in the British navy that is the last holdout against Napoleon’s conquering French tyranny (you see, oceans are now battlefields). This t-shirt from movie fan merch maestros Super Yaki (which seriously has some of the best customer service out there) recreates the iconic opening scrawl from Weir’s film, a quintessential bit of Dudes Rock Cinema that remains a popular staple of our household: “April — 1805; Napoleon is master of Europe, only the British fleet stands before him; oceans are now battlefields."
Polaroid 600 Barbie Throwback Instant Film Camera, Retrospekt, $169
Folks, we love pink capitalism, don’t we? In all its permutations, commercialized girlhood will always be a vibe, and it doesn’t get much better than the countless product collaborations that stemmed from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023), which put movie tie-ins back on the map! My personal favorite is this line of Barbie-themed recreations of the classic Polaroid 600 instant camera — which is back thanks to the ministrations of the nostalgia circuit — from Retrospekt. The Malibu Barbie camera might be the flashier item, but I love this Barbie camera because it looks like something Barbie herself would own, and it reminds me of some pointless Barbie accessory I would have owned in the 90s (I had a landline phone with programmed voicemails). How will I ever discover “what I was made for” or whatever if I don’t have this?
The Sergio Martino Collection, Arrow Video, $35
Embrace the sacred and profane this holiday season with the maestro of Italian giallo film, Sergio Martino, one of the great visionaries of exploitation cinema, whose keen eye for striking visuals superseded the limitations of independent filmmaking. Quentin Tarantino, upon meeting the director in Venice, allegedly fell to his knees in the hotel lobby while crying “Maestro!”… per Martino himself. This blu-ray set consists of three of Martino’s best-known giallo films, including my personal favorite, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971), a sexy (and gory!) yarn about a widow who receives a massive, suspicious payout following her uber-rich husband's premature death. His follow-up, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972), stars gorgeous genre legends Edwige Fenech and Anita Strindberg as the niece and wife of an abusive writer conspiring to murder him, in a flip of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat." I have not yet seen the third film in the collection, The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975), but it’s among the director’s best-known works, telling the story of a detective who — after the murder of a young girl — unearths an underground prostitution ring lorded over by the rich and powerful of Italy. Arrow calls these movies “frenzied webs of gaslighting and sexual promiscuity, all stained a glittering blood red that flows from a seemingly endless parade of perversely satisfying murder vignettes.”
FAO Schwarz DIY Cinema Retro Film Projector, $21
Nurture the Sammy Fabelman in your life with this really adorable toy projector set, which teaches our youngest the wonderful world of film projection, allowing users to splice together a little film of their own. So cute! This ridiculously adorable curio came to our household by way of Friend of the Spread, Olivia. Look at the little hand crank!
“Oswald” T-Shirt, Texas Theatre, $25
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