Required Seasonal Viewing
This is my favorite time of year. Next to Easter, Christmas is my favorite holiday. With this season there are a number of films and features that I make a point of seeing every year from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Here is my list in no particular order of importance.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Miracle on 34th Street (has to be B/W)
Scrooged
A Christmas Story
The Nightmare Before Christmas
A Christmas Carol (with Alastair Sim, thank you)
Home Alone
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (animated)
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frosty the Snowman
The Year Without a Santa Claus
The Little Drummer Boy
Feel free to leave your own recommendation. Be well all.
5 Comments:
A great list... a fun tradition. Very nice!
I can add none, except that great holiday action pic -- Die Hard. And I'm probably the one person who just has never understood "A Christmas Story."
Saw the Christmas Carol musical last night with Kelsey Grammer and Jason Alexander. Very nicely done, I thought. The music and coreography took an awful lot of work. It will be an addition to my list of faves, for sure.
M,
dude, I'm with you, the Christmas rocks.
I love year without a santa claus; heat miser and all that.
And I rented planes and trains the other day to watch with Mikey, who is 12, and forgot the f*** scene; you know, at the car rental counter. I was laughing so hard and so was he, but I knew if S came in the room I'd be dead meat. I love the ending of course: all the mythic reality of family beauty.
I'd add a couple: It's a Wonderful Life, which gets overplayed, but has been my fave movie for like twenty years. I actually like the newer 34th street with Dylan McDermott (sp?); what clothes. Any version of Christmas Carol moves me, including George C. Scott's, but I'm no expert on those many versions.
You have it already, but there's just something awesome about Charlie Brown's special. Linus preaching the gospel. Charlie's genuine pain. What a great one. I need to make sure I catch it this year.
And Merry Christmas Mike, to you and yours.
t
I'd have to say It's a Wonderful Life - I cannot, simply cannot, get through that movie without tearing up. It's usually at the end, when the whole town is bringing George and Mary all the money, and the telegram comes from Sam Wainwright, but sometimes other parts hit me particularly hard - Mary's coy flirting after the dance that is so innocent, yet so seductive - pure, I guess is the word; the scene where Mr. Gower boxes George's ears, then realizes he's almost poisoned a patient, and he kneels and hugs George and begs forgiveness; and, the one that gets me without fail(and, honestly, I'm choking up even thinking of it) - when the little girl Mary leans over the counter and whispers in fourteen-year-old George's deaf ear, "George Bailey, I'll love you 'til the day I die." Pure moviemaking genius. I don't care if people think it's corny and contrived, any movie that can make a grown man cry time and time again is a very special movie, indeed. I know Troy agrees, for sure.
Oh, and I forgot, Christmas Vacation. Chevy Chase's rant about what a loser his boss is kills me every time. (I got the DVD in my stocking for Christmas two years ago).
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