....we continue to watch Christmas movies long after Blockbuster has moved them out of the special display and put them back amongst the other movies. Though I don't know of any Christmas movies that I would say I didn't like, there are some I like better than others, and I'm still finding gems that I didn't know about.
The first movie is one of the latter:
I had never seen Christmas in Conneticut until this year. Starring a very young Barbara Stanwyck and the handsome Dennis Morgan, along with a great supporting cast including Sydney Greenstreet and S. Z. Sakall (you know him from In the Good Old Summertime with Judy Garland), this is a good, but not great Christmas movie. I'll definitely put it in the annual rotation, but it isn't one of my favorites..
However:
Scrooged is one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies. I love all versions of A Christmas Carol, but I am particularly drawn to the sort of off-beat takes on the story. I adore, for example, The Muppets Christmas Carol and think that Michael Caine did a fabulous job as Scrooge.
But Bill Murray may take the cake as the smarmy television president Frank Cross is busy working on a live staging of Scrooge, his version of A Crhistmas Carol. Starring the Solid Gold Dancers in gold lame and g-strings, and Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim, it's not exactly your average staging. But Frank becomes Scrooge in his own life, being visited by his former boss (John Forsythe in horrible makeup) and the three Christmas ghosts.
It's a relatively dark comedy, and I certainly wouldn't watch it with young'uns, but the Zman and I laugh our way through it every year. Carol Kane as the Ghost of Christmas Present is the highlight of the movie. All you have to do to make Zman and I laugh in WalMart is to look at the appliances and say, "Oh look, Frank, it's a toaster!" And yes, people do move away from us in the aisles.
I'm not a big Bill Murray fan, in general, but I love this one and Groundhog Day. Something about redemption that gets me every time.
Next on the list? Home Alone I think. Then The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Hey, who cares if the Blockbuster folks are looking at us kind of funny?
I adore Nightmare Before Christmas and Scrooged! The Mickey Mouse version of A Christmas Carol is alright also. J and I like to slur "With pi-pi-pistachios!" in it's honor year round.
We watched Home Alone after Thanksgiving this year, for some reason it was way more hilarious now that I'm an adult. Sadder too.
I love the idea of movies to keep the twelve days. Genius! And so available!
+JMJ+
What? No Die Hard and Die Hard 2???
Bwaaa haaa haaa!
I love both those movies, actually, and I'm a big Bruce Willis fan. But we leave 'em off the Christmas list, even though PapaC begs.