Holiday Favorites
- Sloper
- Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 10:06 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
For Christmas, nothing beats Jason and the Argonauts - nothing exactly festive about it, but I first saw it on a Christmas day and always try to watch it around that time. Trust me, it just works!
Last year, on New Year's Eve, my family and I watched The Dead, timing it so it finished just before midnight. Warm but sobering, it's the perfect film after all the exaggerated cheer and festivity of Christmas. Unless of course you actually enjoy raucous New Year's parties, in which case sticking this on probably won't win you any friends. Personally, I find that sharing in Gabriel's bleak epiphany is a great way to settle into the realisation that I have yet another whole bloody year to get through...
Last year, on New Year's Eve, my family and I watched The Dead, timing it so it finished just before midnight. Warm but sobering, it's the perfect film after all the exaggerated cheer and festivity of Christmas. Unless of course you actually enjoy raucous New Year's parties, in which case sticking this on probably won't win you any friends. Personally, I find that sharing in Gabriel's bleak epiphany is a great way to settle into the realisation that I have yet another whole bloody year to get through...
- Murdoch
- Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:59 pm
- Location: Upstate NY
Re: Holiday Favorites
Just watched Better Off Dead for the umpteenth time and it has Christmas in it, totally forgot about that! Found my go to x-mas movie for from now on.
- bigP
- Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:59 am
- Location: Reading, UK
Re: Holiday Favorites
Hehe, I'm choosing the recipitents wisely. Actually, it's a Kon heavy year as someone will be receiving Millenium Actress in their stocking too.Michael Kerpan wrote:My relatives would disown me if I gave them copies of Kon's film. ;~}
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- Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:33 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
Two Holiday films worth screening at this time of year:
Remember the Night. Directed by Mitchell Leisen, written by Preston Sturges. An unsung classic and just about the perfect Christmas film, a searing romance that's not like anything else Sturges wrote, though it has his characteristic moral relativism and view of virtue and vice as interchangeable love-carried viruses. Prosecutor Fred MacMurray feels sorry for petty thief Barbara Stanwyck and takes her into the American heartland to celebrate with his folks (and less so with hers). Like all the best Christmas movies, there's just as much pain as celebration on hand. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The best Bond film ever made is also the only one specifically set during Christmas. The timing is put to especially sardonic use, since Blofeld and Bond have no use for "goodwill toward all men". Director Peter Hunt makes excellent use of the Swiss and Portuguese locations, playing them off against each other by alternating golden summer idylls with wintry alps and chasms and staging ski and bobsled chases that are still innovative 40 years later. The holiday celebrations lend depth to the most fully developed and tragic love story in the series.
Remember the Night. Directed by Mitchell Leisen, written by Preston Sturges. An unsung classic and just about the perfect Christmas film, a searing romance that's not like anything else Sturges wrote, though it has his characteristic moral relativism and view of virtue and vice as interchangeable love-carried viruses. Prosecutor Fred MacMurray feels sorry for petty thief Barbara Stanwyck and takes her into the American heartland to celebrate with his folks (and less so with hers). Like all the best Christmas movies, there's just as much pain as celebration on hand. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The best Bond film ever made is also the only one specifically set during Christmas. The timing is put to especially sardonic use, since Blofeld and Bond have no use for "goodwill toward all men". Director Peter Hunt makes excellent use of the Swiss and Portuguese locations, playing them off against each other by alternating golden summer idylls with wintry alps and chasms and staging ski and bobsled chases that are still innovative 40 years later. The holiday celebrations lend depth to the most fully developed and tragic love story in the series.
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- Joined: Wed May 13, 2009 2:41 pm
- Location: Dead
Re: Holiday Favorites
Certainly On Her Majesty's Secret Service deserves a (second) look in the 'grim and gritty, back to basics' Craig-era.
What about Goodfellas, with its sprinkling of ostentatious festive decorations, 'Frosty the Snowman' on the soundtrack -- and definite lack of goodwill towards men, even at Christmas?
What about Goodfellas, with its sprinkling of ostentatious festive decorations, 'Frosty the Snowman' on the soundtrack -- and definite lack of goodwill towards men, even at Christmas?
- bigP
- Joined: Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:59 am
- Location: Reading, UK
Re: Holiday Favorites
It would be a tough call to decide between a festive Goodfella's and a merry Vera Drake as two which will give me the lowest Pot-Noodle eating Christmas yet. They both have their charm.Caged Horse wrote:What about Goodfellas, with its sprinkling of ostentatious festive decorations, 'Frosty the Snowman' on the soundtrack -- and definite lack of goodwill towards men, even at Christmas?
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- Joined: Wed May 13, 2009 2:41 pm
- Location: Dead
Re: Holiday Favorites
The Christmas party scene following the big heist, with De Niro's rage mounting as the mobsters arrive having treated themselves to increasingly OTT presents, is as memorably excruciating as anything in The King of Comedy.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
Brazil is usually my odd holiday choice.
- reaky
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:53 am
- Location: Cambridge, England
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- Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2008 12:39 pm
- Location: Lebanon, PA
Re: Holiday Favorites
Though I've never thought of it as such, TCM programmed THE LION IN WINTER over the weekend & yeah, it is a Xmas movie. Lots of gift-giving, backstabbing family politics ...
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- Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:33 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
Very good indeed! I ordered my copy today.
- Gregory
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
It's on DVD in the Italian Cofanetto Mitchell Leisen and also available as a DVD (-R?) from Universal's TCM Vault Collection.reaky wrote:Remember the Night. It's only on VHS but worth seeking out.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
WFMU digs up an impossibly large assortment of TV Christmas specials viewable online
- colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Re: Holiday Favorites
Featuring the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special at the bottom of their list!
- Highway 61
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:40 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
I saw White Christmas for the first time yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner, and while I didn't think highly of the film, I felt compelled to report that the Blu-ray is stunning. The colors of Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen's costumes are astonishing. Granted it could have been the settings of my aunt's television, but if what I saw was accurate, I'd say it would make an excellent demo disc.
- Cold Bishop
- Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 9:45 pm
- Location: Portland, OR
Re: Holiday Favorites
Quai des Orfèvres
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- Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
- Location: Indiana
- Contact:
Christmas Movies and TV Specials
A Charlie Brown Christmas remains my favorite Christmas-related anything.
Last edited by flyonthewall2983 on Thu Dec 25, 2014 12:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
- mfunk9786
- Under Chris' Protection
- Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 4:43 pm
- Location: Philadelphia, PA
Re: Christmas movies/TV specials
I found out this year that it still makes this cranky bearded atheist cry.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
- Location: SLC, UT
Re: Christmas movies/TV specials
Truth.flyonthewall2983 wrote:A Charlie Brown Christmas remains my favorite Christmas-related anything
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Christmas Movies and TV Specials
I'm more of a Rankin-Bass guy myself.
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- Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:31 am
Re: Holiday Favorites
Bill Forsyth's COMFORT & JOY (1984) is the kind of holiday-centered film curmudgeons like myself can enjoy repeatedly.
- Lowry_Sam
- Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:35 pm
- Location: San Francisco, CA
Re: Holiday Favorites
I usually revisit any of the following around Xmas:
Brazil
Fanny & Alexander
The City Of Lost Children
Female Trouble
The Twilight Zone "Night Of The Meek" episode
The Junky's Christmas
Dame Edna Experience Christmas Specials
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Brazil
Fanny & Alexander
The City Of Lost Children
Female Trouble
The Twilight Zone "Night Of The Meek" episode
The Junky's Christmas
Dame Edna Experience Christmas Specials
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
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- Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:31 am
Re: Holiday Favorites
You can't forget the Alan Partridge holiday special!
- Forrest Taft
- Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:34 pm
- Location: Stavanger, Norway
Re: Holiday Favorites
We watch The Homemade Xmas Video by Smith & Jones every Christmas, and I never tire of it. The same goes for a beautiful animated short from Sweden called Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton, directed by Per Åhlin from a story by Tage Danielsson.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: Holiday Favorites
My dad pulled the ol' switcheroo and put the TV on Cheech and Chong, not A Christmas Story, during family breakfast this morning, so I guess we all have room for new traditions