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.

After he came across my stuff on the Internet, Gary contacted me and suggested getting together for lunch.  And so we did.  While reminiscing about the old days, I told him that I was still grateful that he’d taught me to play tennis.  He was surprised to hear that I still played.  But his surprise was nothing compared to mine when he said that he was grateful that I’d introduced him to good books and great music.  Quite honestly, I hadn’t realized I’d done that.  Unlike his teaching me tennis, it wasn’t something I’d set out to do.  But he assured me that I was the first person he’d ever known who read Steinbeck and Dickens, Salinger and Dostoyefsky, Hugo and Twain, Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman, and who listened to classical music. 

It had never occurred to me back then or at any time since that I was anyone’s role model.  In fact, the only time I ever set out to influence anyone’s taste in books was with my son and, in spite of or perhaps because of my efforts, he’s always hated reading anything but a hand of cards.  As for music, the only kind he ever seemed to like was the sort that people of my generation refer to as a lot of very loud noise. 

Actually, my own taste in music, as with books, is pretty eclectic.  Along with Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, I enjoy Puccini, Copland, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Barber, Prokofiev, Porter, Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, Arlen, Kern, Sondheim and Loesser.  I also have a soft spot for the best of those guys who have enhanced so many movies with their dramatic scores; people named Steiner, Waxman, Korngold, Bernstein, Legrande and Morricone.           

But it was only in the past year that I discovered and fell in love with yet another musical genre; namely, country western.  It happened quite by accident.  When I’m in my car, I tend to listen to talk radio.  But on weekends, guys like Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Miller, thoughtlessly leave me in the lurch, forcing me to fend for myself.  Well, some months ago, after station-surfing all over the AM dial and finding that the only topics under discussion seemed to be computers, vitamins and investment opportunities, I bit the bullet and switched over to FM.  It was there I discovered a country western program, and there I stayed.           

If it didn’t sound so grand, I would say that I’d had an epiphany.  For, I truly had no idea that there were still songs being written today that were not only melodic, but came equipped with lyrics you could understand and that did not appear to have been copied off a bathroom wall. 

Driving to and from tennis today, I heard about an hour’s worth of songs, and never heard anything about pimps and hos and killing cops.  Instead, I heard love songs about husbands and wives, and celebrations of fathers, mothers and even siblings.  Hard to believe, but in 2008, there are people busy writing and singing songs in tribute to grandparents, to teachers who made a difference, to soldiers and even, if you can believe it, to America.           

There are songs, too, about unrequited love, about friends who have passed and about spiritual redemption.  I even heard a clever and touching song in which a grown-up is writing a letter to his 17-year-old self in which he tries to reassure the boy that even though it seems like the end of the world because his girl friend has dumped him, things will eventually turn out just fine, although he understands that for kids that age, it’s awfully hard “to see past next Friday night.” 

Many older people lament that life in these United States has gone to heck in a hand basket, and they long for the good old days when friends and family seemed to matter more, when people married and stayed married to their high school sweethearts, and when loving your country wasn’t dismissed as a cornball emotion. 

Well, I’m here to tell you that the old days aren’t entirely dead and gone.  They’re actually alive and well, and as I recently told Gary, you’ll find them on your FM dial.

The latest PBS adaptation  of Charles Dickens’s classic novel Oliver Twist demonstrates the urgent need for reform of the taxpayer-supported broadcasting service–or an end to taxpayer funding for it.

The temptation to “improve” on classic works of culture seems all but irresistible, especially to the political radicals and social transformers who infest public broadcasting organizations in the United States and Europe. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has long been known as a very aggressive practitioner of efforts at political and social transformation through its partially taxpayer-funded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) for television and its National Public Radio (NPR) network.

Of course, supporters of public broadcasting dismiss the claims of political bias, despite the abundance of evidence. Certainly the networks produce some good things that don’t seem to have as strong a transformative agenda, but on the whole the bias is strong. And the programming providers continue on their merry way, bolstered by taxpayer dollars.

For example, as the PBS series Masterpiece Classic (formerly Masterpiece Theater, one of the good things the network has done over the years) begins a new presentation this week–an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel Little Dorrit, viewers may well hope that the producers will be somewhat more faithful to the things that have kept people reading the book over the past century and a half, and not “improve” it as they did with their recent two-part presentation of Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

Unlike the network’s superb 2005 adaptation of Dickens’s Bleak House, the producers of the Oliver Twist adaptation (in concert with the UK-government-controlled British Broadcasting Corporation) have decided to update the classic novel to conform to current political shibboleths.

The visual presentation is quite effective, wisely following the lead of the Bleak House adaptation (and the 2005 theatrical film version of Pride and Prejudice and Roman Polanski’s 2005 film version of Oliver Twist) in employing a gritty, cluttered look that vividly evokes the brilliant liveliness of Dickens’s novels. In the Masterpiece Classics version of Oliver Twist the dirty streets of lower-class London are striking, crime ring leader Fagin’s wretched den of thieves is awful in its squalor, and the home of Oliver’s wealthy would-be benefactors is a refreshing contrast while looking plausibly lived-in.

The story and characterizations, unfortunately, don’t match the faithful and evocative visuals. One of the first and most jarring notes is the appearance of actress Sophie Okonedo as Nancy, Oliver’s protector in Fagin’s den of thieves. Okonedo was born of a Jewish mother and black father and looks very African in descent.

Now, it’s just plausible that Twist’s villain, the violent and vulgar Bill Sykes, would have an African-English girlfriend, but there’s not a hint of that in Dickens’s novel. Clearly the producers are imposing an ideal of a colorblind society on a story where it adds nothing, is unnecessary, and is quite a distraction for those who know the original novel. The character, however, is as complex and benevolent as in the original story, which is all to the good.

Thus, while being somewhat distracting, the transformation of Nancy into a black woman does no major damage to the story. Other changes, however, do, and some are really contemptible, all pushing in the same direction.

Among the less offensive changes are the transformation of wealthy benefactor Rose into a Victorian female version of Sam Spade, aided by her housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin, in forays into the mean streets of London in search of Oliver. Clearly this is an attempt by the producers to create another heroic female figure in the story, and the presentation of Mr. Brownlow, another benefactor, as impatient and too willing to believe Oliver a thief makes the point that much more obvious: Men bad, women good.

Fagin, brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Spall, is a very obviously bad sort, although the producers seem intent on suggesting that what has driven him to crime is anti-Semitism, more than any choice of his own. They do, however, largely present him in his full, evil selfishness, lest the viewer fail to recognize the immense, consistent horribleness of the male sex.

The worst of the lot, of course, is Bill Sykes, brilliantly portrayed by Tom Hardy (Band of Brothers). His Sykes is a good deal less powerful and formidable than the character embodied by Oliver Reed’s excellent performance in the theatrical musical film version, Oliver!, but he’s a thoroughly rotten villain, as in the original novel.

Even here, though, the producers introduce elements that water down the power of the original story. The characterization of Sykes continually introduces a strong element of anxiety in the character, suggesting a more modern point of view in which, as with Fagin, people are driven to crime by poverty. This reaches a ridiculous peak when Sykes deliberately hangs himself in one of the film’s climactic moments.

In the Dickens original, of course, Sykes is accidentally hanged, not a deliberate suicide. Making his end a suicide destroys the original story’s presentation of a sense of cosmic justice, replacing it with a bathetic stab at evoking a measure of sympathy for a human devil.

Most revolting of all, however, is the producers’ addition of a new element to Fagin’s trial near the end of the story. In the original novel, Fagin is tried for his crimes and sentenced to death. It’s clearly the only sensible resolution to Fagin’s story, and even if we feel some sympathy for him and recognize that the conditions of his life have been far from ideal, it’s clear that his activities have earned him the rope according to the laws of the time.

The producers, however, are intent on blaming society for Fagin’s crimes, and they make this repugnant premise explicit in the trial scene. The judge looks at Fagin and asks him if he would like to obtain mercy. Fagin naturally says yes. The judge then tells Fagin to get down on his knees and ask Jesus Christ for mercy and acknowledge Christ as savior of mankind.

I should hope it needless to say that this is both historically absurd and an entirely false addition to Dickens’s story, and one which thoroughly undermines the author’s intelligent and nuanced view of social conditions and personal responsibility. Dickens was a powerful advocate of social reform while never denying that people should and indeed must be held responsible for their choices.

Thus the producers cap the adaptation with a slam against Christianity and a presentation of the standard leftist line that Christians are eager to impose their religious beliefs by force. This takes the adaptation explicitly away from everything Dickens’s novel was about and transforms it into a dreary purveyor of modern-day political shibboleths.

Unlike commercial television and radio, public broadcasting is notoriously insensitive to the needs of audiences beyond the upper-middle- and upper-class liberals whose political and economic power controls their purse strings. As this recent travesty of Oliver Twist vividly demonstrates, it’s high time the taxpayers rose up and made public television more responsive to the public and less able to indulge in a long-term scheme of political and social transformation.

–S. T. Karnick