Great Christmas movies

Die Hard 2 is terrible.

Yeah, in the same way Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich was.

It’s an unstable madman that beat its own son to death with a spear ?

What of the many adaptations of A Christmas Carol would you recommend?

I am quite fond of the 2009 Zemeckis one.

I really love the 1938 version. And it’s only 69 minutes!

Honestly, it might be easier to list the bad ones...it is really difficult to get the story wrong.

I spent all of Die Hard 2 wondering why they didn't fly to another airport.

They hand-waved it by saying that the other airports nearby were also socked in by the snow.

Watched the aforementioned George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol again, and this year AMC clipped it for commercial time in very obvious and intrusive ways that produced Jump Cut after jump cut. Scrooge's "I'll...double your salary!" comment to Bob Cratchit was clipped right out of the movie. The end of Roger Rees' narration and the Call-Back to "God bless us, everyone" was also clipped out.

Pissed me off. Gonna have to stream it next year.

I watched 'Comfort and Joy' last night for the first time. It's a little Scottish comedy from the eighties set in Glasgow.

Bill Paterson is a radio DJ whose kleptomaniac girlfriend dumps him in the lead up to Christmas. He then gets involved with some mafia style icecream van territory wars. It's all very sweet and charming.

@lalalei: We watched the 1951 Alastair Sim adaptation over Christmas (it's also called Scrooge), and it is excellent. It has several added scenes in the Christmas Past section showing more of how Scrooge became the man he was, but is otherwise very true to the book. It's an old black-and-white film that also has a colourized version; we watched the colourized one.

A Muppet Christmas Carol is also awesome.

edited 3rd Jan '18 4:44:19 PM by Galadriel

1951 Alastair Sim is commonly cited as the best version.

The 1971 cartoon is pretty amazing, does a fine job of packing the story into 22 minutes or so.

It is, but I personally prefer the Scott version....it's closer to the book, too. I don't think that you can go wrong with either take. The Sim version has the advantage to have been around first.

edited 3rd Jan '18 7:56:12 PM by Swanpride

I watched a whole bunch of them and enjoyed the 1938 one, the 1951 Alistair Sim one, the 1970 Albert Finney musical, 1971 cartoon, the 1984 George C. Scott one, the Muppets', and the 1999 Patrick Stewart one, as well as several musical adaptations.

And Scrooged but that's rather loose. XD

My mom's favorite is Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.

edited 8th Jan '18 8:55:57 PM by lalalei2001

Check this out—400 adaptations of A Christmas Carol in one crazy supercut, featuring the Looney Tunes, Batman, Mario, Sonic, commercials, Dora, Barbie, and zombies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF_rKE3nIoI

We should totally trope this as if it were a straight adaptation XD I can already see What Happened to the Mouse? for all the zombies disappearing, Where the Hell Is Springfield? for Scrooge living in London and Canada, Anachronism Stew for the presence of Honey Nut Cheerios and Nyquil, Genre Shift and Medium Blending, and The Nth Doctor for everybody swapping 'actors'.

edited 18th Jan '18 2:59:26 AM by lalalei2001

Is it too late to revive this thread?

If I live to be a thousand I will never understand the attitude that it's bad to revive old threads.

Anyway, I have to watch Emmet Otters Jugband Christmas on Monday.

Isn't that more of a special, though?

I recorded the Laurel and Hardy Babes in Toyland, which is airing on TCM on Christmas Eve, I think. I might watch it this year, and I might not; I tried it once and I couldn't really get into it, but then again, I didn't really have a taste for operetta back then.

Edited by Aldo930 on Dec 22nd 2018 at 5:02:25 AM

TCM running what by now is their traditional Thin Man marathon on New Year's Eve. Intellectually I know the first one is the best but James Stewart sure does raise up the second one a lot.