JAMES GARNER’S DAUGHTER OPENS TRIBUTE SITE TO HER AWESOME FATHER

The Mighty James Garner’s daughter, Gigi Garner (a successful talent manager in her own right), has opened a tribute website to her father. She seems to be updating it fairly regularly with a number of terrific family photos and excerpts from Garners’ new memoir “The Garner Files,” which I loved and reviewed here.

Please check the site out.

Anyone who’s been reading me for any amount of time (or who has seen my Twitter wallpaper), knows of my all-consuming affection for all things James Garner, most especially “The Rockford Files.” You can imagine how much this tweet meant to me.

Tell me how it gets any better than that. You can’t, because it doesn’t.

The only bad news is that if this photo on Ms. Garner’s site displays the actor’s real signature, that means I got robbed on Ebay.

Cue my well-rehearsed of-course-I-got-swindled-again Rockford face.

FINALLY: AN HONEST ASSESSMENT OF HOLLYWOOD’S BOX OFFICE BLUES

With all of Hollywood and most of their sycophant entertainment media blaming box office and DVD woes on everything but bad product, this is the rare break from that absurd narrative:

Basically, films aren’t the draw they once were. With streaming and cable and TV shows getting better and better, there’s a lot more competition now, and the longer studios ignore it and try to operate like they always have (releasing all their “smart” movies at the end of December, for instance), the more it’s going to continue to decline. Almost without exception, all the decent movies I saw this year were films that the distributors considered too niche for a broad audience and almost no one saw them, because they barely had a chance to. Meanwhile this week’s top three releases have a 2, 3, and 4 next to the titles, and all had concepts created in the 1960s or earlier. If films are going to compete long-term, they’re going to have to start giving the “niche” stuff that gets people excited about movies a chance to compete with the bland blockbusters that make money. There are only so many Dark Knights. The general public has a major ambivalence towards movies right now, and if it doesn’t get better soon it’s going to turn into a grandpa medium the way late-night TV has.

And let’s not forget Hollywood’s non-stop, 15-year assault against the 70% of their audience that isn’t liberal.

Goodwill is crucial to institutional brands and this industry has arrogantly worked overtime to squander almost all of it.

Chickens, meet the roost.

SIX MORE JAMES BOND FILMS FOR DANIEL CRAIG?

“Filming has gone very well so far and I’d love Daniel to surpass Roger’s record and do eight pictures,” Michael G. Wilson told the UK’s Sunday People. “Daniel’s been an absolute pleasure to be around because he takes the role so seriously. There’s really no one more passionate about making these films work than him – he’s a filmmaker’s dream.”

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY TRAILER ONLINE TUESDAY AT 7PM PST

Gentlemen, start your nerdgasms.

I kid because I love.

EVA GREEN EYES ‘300: BATTLE OF ARTEMISIA’

Ever since her memorable turn as Vesper in “Casino Royale,” I’ve been a fan. Unfortunately, Hollywood seems to be more interested in girls than women these days, and the ridiculously sexy and womanly Green hasn’t been in much.

Hopefully, everything will work out. Not that I’ll need another reason to see this.

NEW YORK TIMES BLAMES ‘LOST’ FOR EVERYTHING BAD ON TELEVISION

This is just silly:

A similar process is under way in the post- “Lost” television world. The first three seasons of “Lost” may have approached the imaginative charms of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, but the next three were nearly as awful as George Lucas’s catastrophic prequels. You could easily picture the stumped writers of “Lost,” helpless in the face of an ever-growing pile of unsolved mysteries, madly skimming Wikipedia entries on space-time geometries and black holes.

The show’s finale was the crowning disaster, the Scooby-Doo ending to end all Scooby-Doo endings. After hinting for years that their nonsensical mess would add up to something, not only did the producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof fail to address a tiny fraction of the trillions of mysteries they introduced, but they threw out the Lostpedia with the bath water, scrapping all of those riddles for the equivalent of Lucas’s teddy-bear victory dance: a celestial moment with the survivors, hugging and holding hands in the afterlife.

This is all ancient history — or would be, if not for the fact that the implosion of “Lost” was like a dirty bomb that made the world unsafe for serial dramas to this day.

The writer then goes on to blame “Lost” for what he sees as the sloppy execution of “Homeland” and “American Horror Story.”

First off, I caught “Lost” on DVD and while some individual episodes lacked (especially during the writers’ strike), as a whole I found the series and the finale very, very satisfying. This, I think, is the best way to watch programs that work like the old movie serials from yesteryear. Waiting a week and a full summer between chapters is a completely different experience than sitting down and devouring it like a good novel.

I haven’t seen “American Horror Story” or “Homeland” yet, but I have seen enough of Kelsey Grammer’s Starz series “Boss” and FX’s “Sons of Anarchy” (two series released after “Lost”) to argue that television’s current golden age is alive and well. The writing, acting and overall storytelling occurring on the small screen these days makes life worth living.

BROADCAST NETS DOWN, CABLE UP IN 2011

The major broadcast networks continued to see an erosion of their audiences in 2011, while cable networks saw theirs expand, according to TVbytheNumbers.com. The website said on Thursday that while ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC saw their total household audience decline 3 percent this year, the audience for ad-support cable as a whole was up 3 percent and the top ten cable networks recorded a 4-percent gain.

A+ ‘EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE’ MOVIE REVIEW

The largest issue I had with this film was figuring out how to describe the effect it had on me emotionally. It’s a crushing film that will leave many moviegoers in a heap, but I don’t look at it as an overly sad movie even though the level of sadness on display is undeniable.

‘SURVIVOR: SOUTH PACIFIC’ WINNER REVEALED

This show is still on the air?

MARSHALL FINE’S ‘DRAGON TATTOO’ REVIEW

Is Fincher’s film better than Niels Arden Oplev’s? Not really. It’s different; it’s probably as good as the Swedish version. But better? Nope, sorry – which brings us back to the issue of the movie as a commodity, rather than an artistic vision.

I’m not impugning Fincher’s intentions; I’m just saying that, as good as his film may be, it’s redundant and unnecessary.

Is it entertaining and well-made? Absolutely. For the audience that would never dream of seeing a foreign film, this movie will be the last word in “Dragon Tattoo” movie-making. And they’ll get a quality product.

‘THR’ REVIEWS JOLIE’S DIRECTORIAL DEBUT

Jolie deserves significant credit for creating such a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly, even if it is these very strengths that will make people not want to watch what’s onscreen. All the director’s decisions were taken in the interest of heightened verisimilitude, from working in the Bosnian language (an English-language version is available as well) to using as many authentic locations as possible (some in Bosnia, others in Hungary) and having cinematographer Dean Semler employ a combat-ready style.

SHERLOCK RETURNS TO THE BBC: ‘HE’S DEFINITELY DEVILISH’

Superb series. Season one is, I think, still on Netflix.

There’s so much good television these days, you can hardly keep up.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

“A Christmas Carol” (1984) – Most people choose Alistair Sim’s 1951 version of “A Christmas Carol” as their favorite, and for good reason. But after watching the 1984 television adaptation again last night, I have to say that George C. Scott is my favorite Ebenezer Scrooge. The Academy Award-winner’s interpretation is the most human and down-to-earth, which gives an added impact to those classic lines of dialogue we all know by heart.

Scrooge’s redemption scene is especially poignant in this version, which was directed by Clive Donner, the editor of the 1951 film.

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINKTACULAR

‘THE DINGO STOLE MY BABY! — PART DEUX’

BRAD BIRD GIVES AN UPDATE ON HIS EARTHQUAKE MOVIE, 1906

RIDLEY SCOTT TALKS ‘PROMETHEUS’

FIRST PHOTO OF SYLVESTER STALLONE IN ‘BULLET TO THE HEAD”

‘HOMELAND’ SEASON 1 FINALE REVIEW

WILLIAM SHATNER IS COMING TO BROADWAY

‘DEXTER’ SEASON 6 FINALE REVIEW

PROFILE: PAM GRIER

‘IT TAKES A THIEF’: THE DVD DEBRIEF REVIEW

MAX VON SYDOW LOOKS BACK AT HIS WORK ON ‘FLASH GORDON’ AND ‘STRANGE BREW‘

RIDLEY SCOTT SAYS THERE WILL BE NO ALIENS IN PROMETHEUS

REAL-LIFE RUDY ACCUSED OF SCREWING INVESTORS OUT OF $11 MILLION

8 GREAT TV CHRISTMAS SPECIALS

NEW FOOTAGE FROM ‘THE AVENGERS’ IN GERMAN TRAILER

WHY ‘PERSON OF INTEREST’ IS A SUPERHERO SHOW DONE RIGHT

REJECTED GREEN GOBLIN MAKE-UP TESTS FOR SAM RAIMI’S ‘SPIDER-MAN‘

100 GREATEST JEWISH FILMS

TOP 100 CULT FILMS

10 GREAT PERFORMANCES IN BAD 2011 MOVIES

MEET THE NEW POP CULTURE, SAM AS THE OLD POP CULTURE

JOHN WILLIAMS: THE LAST MOVIE MAESTRO

6 AWESOME MOVIE AMUSEMENT PARK RIDES AND THEIR REAL LIFE LOCATIONS

TOP 15 JAMES BOND DEATHS

REVISITING THE ‘LETTERMAN’ EPISODE FEATURING ANDY KAUFMAN AND JERRY LAWLER

A LOOK BACK AT JOHN FRANKENHEIMER’S ‘SECONDS‘

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CLASSIC PICK FOR TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20

TCM:

12:30 PM  EST: Age of Innocence, The (1934) –  A young attorney risks his career for love of a glamorous divorcee. Dir: Philip Moeller Cast:  Irene Dunne, John Boles, Lionel Atwill. BW-81 mins, TV-PG, CC.

This is a rare opportunity to see the first film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1920 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an aristocratic New Yorker who meets the only woman he’ll ever love after it’s too late. However, I only recommend this as a rare curiosity.

While many films produced during the same Production Code-era (like 1936’s “Dodsworth”) were able to tell stories that covered similar themes of adultery and divorce in a mature and dramatic way, 1934’s “Age of Innocence” is pretty lacking. For starters, Dunne is miscast and the overall production is stagy and surprisingly slow moving for an 81-minute film.

This is in stark contrast to Martin Scorsese’s beautifully realized 1993 adaptation that captures the longing and loss of its source material as well as any film ever could.

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Please send comments, suggestions and tips to jnolte@breitbart.com or Twitter @NolteNC.

NOTE: There will be no Call Sheet tomorrow. I am taking a vacation day.

It simply makes no sense to uncover low audience figures for films that ought never have been made and then use those figures to argue that making Christmas films is not business-smart.

Earth to Zeitchik: The audience for Christmas movies is alive and well, the problem is that Hollywood has essentially said bah humbug to the idea of making one. When they do make them, we go.

Do you need proof? Consider Christmas movies that have debuted since the awful 2006 season Zeitchik cited: 2007’s “Fred Claus” made $72 million domestically, 2008’s “Four Christmases” made $120 million domestically (another $44 million overseas), and 2009’s “Christmas Carol” made $137 million domestically (another $187 million worldwide).

And perhaps an even stronger indicator that there’s an ongoing audience for Christmas movies is the fact that “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” air multiple times every Christmas season. (Would television stations be carrying these same two movies time and again every Christmas were they not popular enough to attract advertisers, and thereby make money?)

It seems Zeitchik’s piece was really nothing more than a strained attempt to provide cover for Hollywood producers who are not in the mood to do a new film about Scrooge, because they’re too busy being a Grinch themselves.

While I concur that we don’t need any more Christmas horror films Mr Zeitchik, I cannot accept the bogus line that Hollywood has stopped making Christmas films because “Americans would rather come to theaters to see stories about pretty much anything other than Christmas.” And trying to convince Americans that there’s any truthfulness in that claim will prove about as hard as trying to keep Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrill), from singing in the Gimbel department store’s North Pole display:

“Buddy: I’m singing. I’m in a store, and I’m siiiiiingiiiiing! I’m in a store, and I’m siiiiiingiiiiing!
Gimbel’s Manager: HEY! There’s no singin’ in the North Pole!
Buddy: Yes there is!
Gimbel’s Manager: [There] is not!
Buddy: We sing all the time!
Gimbel’s Manager: [There] is not
Buddy: Especially when we build toys!”

We love Christmas as much as Buddy the Elf did, Mr. Zeitchik: Always have, always will.

So Hollywood producers can hiss at the idea of Christmas films all they want and journalistic flacks can reach back four whole years to cover for them when the more recent past doesn’t fit their left-wing narrative, but in the meantime we’ll be watching “Fred Claus,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “A Christmas Carol.” (Of course we’ll be watching “Elf” too.)

Some years ago, my daughter asked: “…so in the olden times, Dad, when did you see movies?” Hmmmm.  Olden times.  As if the wheel, the pen, writing, music, and entertainment were invented with her generation.  I explained that there were two places to see movies.  Theaters and Television.  That was it.  No DVD, VHS, iPod, or Hulu.com.  My TV Guide search was essential to find the right movies and straighten out my schedule for the week by circling and grading the films.  After all, if a movie came on at 11 p.m., you’d be up for two hours to “The End.”

But each week, when I got the TV Guide in my young hands, it was like opening a present.  Before the internet, I explained to my daughter, we had this ancient forum called a “library” where you could get books on movies and famous actors.

“Oh,” she said.  “You actually go someplace?”

But the TV Guide was a treasure trove.  My favorites –  “The Great Escape” – A.  “Dirty Dozen” – A.  “Run Silent, Run Deep” – A.  Any film by John Ford.  And at least watch anything with Bogart, Flynn, Coooper, Lancaster, Cary Grant, William Powell, Carole Lombard, Katherine Hepburn and others.  I was delighted to discover that stunningly beautiful Hedy Lamarr was granted U.S. Patent 2,292,387 in 1942 for an early version of frequency-hopping based upon a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies.  It was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. Beautiful and designs weapons.  What a dish!

But around Christmas, the most essential movie was “Scrooge” with  Alistair Sim, a Scottish actor who portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1951 classic based upon Charles Dicken’s beloved “A Christmas Carol.” Nowadays, of course, you can buy the DVD with both color and black and white versions to our delight.

Alistair Sim

During my years of searching the TV Guide, this films was obscure and hardly remembered.  As I recall, its television screening would occur only once, on Los Angeles Independent channels of 5, 11, or 13 in the years before conglomerate takeovers.

Once.  Only Once.  For a year.

The film is now regarded as a classic but, at the time, Alistair Sim had become an obscure footnote in film history.  His stern visage and scattered hair perfectly complemented his impentrable dark miserly eyes for the role. It’s hard to believe that, with his harsh features, “in 1950 he was voted the most popular film actor in Britain in a national cinema poll.” His earliest successes as a leading man included the police detective in the thriller Green for Danger (1946); as the headmaster of Nutbourne College, co-starring with Dame Margaret Rutherford, in the comedy The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950); and as a writer of lurid crime fiction in the comedy Laughter in Paradise (1951).

He was the definitive Ebenezer Scrooge, the very personification of a miser in a vicious Humbug spirit that there was no chance of his redemption.  And then he was miraculously changed through the Ghosts into a man of such unexpected generosity that the frightened charwoman, played to perfection by Kathleen Harrison, could only flee with fear.

“Scrooge” was screened on near midnight of Christmas Eve.  It did not appear earlier in the week nor later. On Demand Media was science fiction. If you wanted to watch Sim and were one of the few people tuned in to his perfect portrayal as the definitive Scrooge, then you were a member of a group of film junkies who prized movie performances, film history, and pitch-perfect classics crystallized in celluloid.  There was a commitment one had to make to see the film.  If you missed it, you missed it.  No second chances.  No other way to see the film.  It required a decision.  Try explaining that to today’s teenager.  “All that, for a movie?!

What I remember about those Christmases was the sheer joy of Sim’s transformation.  His buoyant burst of generosity with the charwoman.  The little boy running across the snow who Scroorge beseeches to wake up the butcher for the prize meat.  “You mean, the one as big as me?”

Sim reminded me of the joy of Christmas, its real meaning, and the embrace of the Spirit in our lives to spread kindness and goodwill toward men.

Missing the film was like not seeing an old friend on Christmas Eve. Once a year, I made some time for him.  And he spoke to me.

Add his own piece of dialogue trashing organized religion.

First off, I want Zemeckis to know he didn’t get me. Oh, hell yes I was ready for it. After a decade of watching this industry crap on its own art and box office in order to childishly get off on insulting their customers, you need not be a genius to understand that there was no way a story with a number of overt positive Christian moments could survive intact.

Oh, Zemeckis gave it everything he had to lull me into thinking this one was safe: A soundtrack loaded with classic carols about “Christ being born” and all that, but I’m not Charlie Brown with the football, and sure enough…

Because I was scribbling notes, there’s some paraphrasing here, but the set up for the leftist sucker shot went a little something like this…

Scrooge (the voice of Jim Carrey) and The Ghost of Christmas Present fly high above the city. The soundtrack blares a beautiful version of “Christ is Born in Bethlehem” and then they hover for a beat near a large lovely cross set atop a church steeple. Scrooge says, “Quite beautiful,” and they fly on.

At this point you can practically hear Zemeckis chuckling as he imagines all us racist, tea bagging, Christianists smiling warmly … right before he strikes.

Scrooge and the spirit hover above a bakery, and then from completely out of nowhere comes the following:

Scrooge: Spirit, these poor people have no means to cook their food and yet you seek to close the only places in which they can warm their meager meals every 7th day.

Ghost of Christmas Present: Hear me scrooge. There are some upon this earth of yours who claim to know me and my brothers and do their deeds of ill will and selfishness in our name. These so called men of the cloth are as strange to me and my kin as if they never lived. Charge their doing to them, not us.

Gotcha’ teabaggers! You thought this one was for you? Are you crazy? We is Hollywood! Bwahahahahahaha….

For the record, here’s what Dickens wrote:

There are some upon this earth of ours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

Dickens was no fan of organized religion either, but as you can see Zemeckis thinks he knows better and took it upon himself to change a general warning about hypocrisy into a very specific slap at organized religion — at “men of the cloth” in general. No qualifiers, no “some” men of the cloth… Nope, the whole lot of them. 

Why do it, Bob? (That’s a rhetorical question)

For the same reason “The Blind Side” had to take a shot at George W. Bush. Either driven by his own bigotry, a need to inoculate himself in a town full of religious bigots who wouldn’t appreciate a purely pro-Christian film, or both — it was mandatory that something offensive to the tens of millions of us stupid enough to believe in organized religion rear its story-stopping, heavy-handed head.

From a purely artistic standpoint, to say this where-the-hell-did-that-come-from moment sucks all the goodwill out of the story is an understatement. And “goodwill” was all this soulless production had going for it.

This is the most clinical, uninspired, by-the-numbers adaptation of the Dickens’ classic yet. And to use a style of animation incapable of bringing life to the eyes of your characters in a story brimming with humanity might be the dumbest  big studio decision of the year … even dumber than the sucker shot and a couple of silly, unmotivated chase sequences.

When you add advertising expenses, Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” probably cost a total of $300 million, which means it will have to make close to $600 million just to break even – and thus far, after over a month in release, the worldwide box office has yet to crack $250 million.

If you had to clear over a half-billion dollars just to break even, would you allow an out-of-nowhere shot at organized religion in your Christmas film?

Not if profit was more important than ideology.

I’m not saying Zemeckis’ artless insult is why this Disney production is in deep, deep financial trouble, but it sure as hell doesn’t help that someone like me is spreading the word right before their last-gasp weekend to clean up some of that red ink.

And please do tell me again how Hollywood is money driven…

Anyway, in the spirit of the holiday season and to quote the mighty Clark W. Griswold, I’d like to say to Leftist Tinseltown:

Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, kiss my ass. Kiss his ass. Kiss your own ass.

…and in the spirit of adding my own little slice of dialogue to a classic: Don’t forget to go to Hell.

When it comes to celebrating Christmas, actor Jim Carrey says he prefers the “Christian” traditions he and many other people in America grew up on as children.

“I’d hate to miss Christmas,” he added.

Carrey, who gives a remarkable performance in A Christmas Carol, the new brilliant masterpiece of the beloved novel by Charles Dickens from Disney and Writer/Director Bob Zemeckis, spoke about the movie at a recent press conference Movieguide attended in Los Angeles.

At the conference, Carrey also noted that he loves redemptive stories like A Christmas Carol.

“Everyone loves a good transformational story,” Carrey said. “You know, somebody who sees the light, who finally finds out what’s important in life. And, this is one of the greatest ones ever written. It’s just a beautiful story of redemption.”

“It might be the greatest time travel story ever written in the English language,” added Zemeckis, who’s also known for his entertaining time travel stories in the 80s, the Back to the Future trilogy.

“This story definitely influenced my other time travel stories,” he said.

Zemeckis also said he thinks A Christmas Carol is a perfect story for the motion capture process he used to good effect in The Polar Express and lesser effect in Beowulf. This process involves actors performing entire scenes while hooked up to computers that can record their every movement. Once recorded, that’s when the animators, working with computers and other animation technology take over.

Zemeckis noted, “The book hadn’t been realized before in the way that it was actually imagined by Dickens as he wrote it. I said, okay, this could be a perfect way to take a classic story everyone is familiar with and re-envision it in a new and exciting way.”

And indeed, the movie, which should become a Christmas classic, brilliantly takes moviegoers back to a bygone era, Victorian London, with amazingly detailed set designs.

The motion capture technology also allows the filmmakers and actors to interact in new ways with the world envisioned by Zemeckis through Dickens, including the wonderful special effects of ghosts, spirits, and supernatural events that Dickens describes.

In the past, some have complained that the motion capture technology makes human actors too wooden, but, here, Zemeckis, Carrey, Gary Oldman (who plays the crucial roles of Bob Cratchit and Jacob Marley), and the animators do a wonderful job of bringing life and true humanity to their characters.

It also helps that Carrey not only plays Scrooge, the misanthropic protagonist. He also plays the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Present, who teach Scrooge some invaluable lessons.

And, Carrey also plays the silently menacing and terrifying Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come, who teaches the miserly, hateful Mr. Scrooge the horrors that await him if he doesn’t change his ways.

The fact that the movie is animated helps Carrey, Zemeckis, and the animators carry off the scenes between Scrooge and the spirits without stretching credulity.

Such a disconnect often happens in live action movies with lots of special effects where, all too often, the actors don’t seem to be in the same room or location as the special effects surrounding them.

“Certain aspects of the technology make things easier,” Carrey noted, “to get a lot of scenes done, to do a lot of material at once. A lot of aspects make it hugely easier to create the world you want.

“For an actor, there are actually challenges. You have to create the ambiance and the belief in your surroundings in your head. But, once you go into it, the process is very comfortable, and Bob [Zemeckis] was great.”

Zemeckis added, “I loved every morning I got to come in and I’d say, ‘Jim, who do you feel like today?’

About playing Scrooge, Carrey said, “I wanted to have that feeling that causes rheumatism, that eventually will eat you alive from inside. I based the character from the get-go on the lies that we believe about ourselves. Obviously, Scrooge felt he was unworthy of love, so why should love exist for anybody?”

Carrey also said that doing all the different roles in the movie, including the younger versions of Scrooge, was “a dream come true” for him, including the physicality required for playing Scrooge and the three spirits.

It is the three spirits who teach Scrooge the real reason for the season, Jesus Christ and his salvation message of love, in this terrific, beautiful, powerful family movie.

A Christmas Carol is one of the few movies that Movieguide considers a “must see,” not only for people who love movies but also for people of faith and values.

Briefly, “A Christmas Carol” is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), a miser who hoards his money and pays his single employee, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), the bare minimum. Scrooge lives alone in a huge, dark mansion, leading a lonely life. When his nephew Fred (Colin Firth) invites him to Christmas dinner, Scrooge berates him for being happy when he has so little money. When local charity representatives ask for support, Scrooge tells them that he supports the poor through paying taxes. “Are there no work houses? Are there no prisons?” Scrooge asks. To him, taxes are all the dues he owes to society.

Seven years after his business partner Jacob Marley (also Oldman) died, on Christmas Eve, Marley’s ghost returns to visit Scrooge and warn him about the consequences of a life selfishly lived. The money Marley hoarded in life is now chained to him in death, weighing upon him as he wanders the world without rest. Marley foretells the coming of three ghosts to show Scrooge the error of his ways. The rest of the film chronicles the visit of those ghosts and their lasting impression on Scrooge’s life.

Visually the film stuns as it takes 3D flight through London streets. It captures Christmas in all its fun, beauteous glory, but also Hell on earth in its haunting future. From the end of the Ghost of Christmas Present through the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the film’s darkness make the early November, post-Halloween release more fitting than an early December, pre-Christmas one would be. The story occasionally lags as Zemeckis shows off what he can do with animation and 3D. While the vocal acting is good, the animation can’t quite portray the more emotional moments.

But the main message—keeping the Christmas spirit alive through joyful, selfless giving—rings true. And in today’s culture of big government takeover, it is a lesson that grows increasingly important daily.

Toward the end of the Ghost of Christmas Present’s visit, he shows Scrooge two scrawny children hidden beneath his cloak. They are Ignorance and Want. “They are man’s,” the ghost tells Scrooge. The ghost attacks Scrooge’s philosophy that it is the responsibility of government-run work houses and prisons to care for the disadvantaged in society.

It is important to note that Scrooge, though he does not care at all about the fate of the poor, notes that it is indeed someone’s responsibility to do something. It just isn’t his beyond what he gives in taxes. It is the government’s role. This ideology separates conservatives and liberals, and is important to note as Congress considers health care and unemployment benefits legislation.

In Dickens’ time, prisons and work houses were dismal government-run institutions programmed to discourage the poor from remaining so. Prisons were terrible in those days—see other Dickens works for evidence of that—and work houses, as City University of New York professor Gertrude Himmelfarb notes in her article, “Welfare and Charity: Lessons from Victorian England,” were meant to be demeaning and degrading to encourage the poor to look for dignified work.

This harsh government action seems uncivilized today, but it was really a correction to the original Poor Law system, which had made relief too easily available, encouraging laziness and increasing the number of poor in England. As Himmelfarb notes, “public authorities cannot really judge the merit of individual claimants for relief.” This deceives recipients into believing that they have a right to relief, removing the incentive to work. It also creates animosity between the poor recipient and the taxed donor.

But charity is different, and it is charity, not government welfare, that Dickens supports. As editor Jonah Goldberg notes in a brief article on National Review Online, often those who oppose government welfare are more charitable than those who support it. While welfare and charity attempt to accomplish similar goals, they have one striking, fundamental difference: freedom. Welfare from a government entity draws funding from involuntary taxation. This guaranteed income leads to greater administrative cost, less effectiveness, and low selectivity. Charity relies on free will, and is generally more effective because funds are given willingly to causes that donors care about. Charities can specify to whom funds are given, and also what the recipient must do to receive funds, eliminating the entitlement philosophy.

It’s interesting to note that liberals, who often accuse conservatives of supporting the wealthy, do less on their own to support the poor. Arthur C. Brooks, of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writes in his study on religious faith and charitable giving, that conservatives, especially Christian conservatives—who tend to oppose big government and support the Republican Party—charitably contribute much more time and money than secular liberals, even when giving to non-religious, secular social interests. By looking at European countries as models, Brooks finds “a link between secular views and strikingly low levels of charitable giving and volunteering.” His findings suggest that the further the Democratic Party tends down the secular, liberal, big government path, the greater this disparity will become.

Helping the poor is a worthy goal. But our Founding Fathers did not intend the government to fund it. Nor is it healthy for the government to try. Dickens knew that, as did a great Tennessee representative from the 1800s. For a brilliant reason why governments should stay out of welfare issues, see Edward S. Ellis’ writings on Colonel David Crockett. It’s a worthy read, and though it’s a little long, at least it isn’t H.R. 3962.