When growing up in Los Angeles, a singular delight was getting the TV Guide in the Sunday paper and scouring it, pen in hand.  My movie search.  In the sixties, Los Angeles had the greatest number of TV channels in any city: 2-4-5-7-9-11-13.  In trips to San Diego, the Mid-West or anywhere else, you’d be lucky to get two, maybe three channels.  And not very good ones.

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.

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This British production was titled Scrooge. To add further confusion, my DVD case is titled A Christmas Carol but the disc itself is titled Scrooge. As with most things Hollywood, this is due to a cost-saving measure. The 1951 American release was advertised everywhere as A Christmas Carol, but the prints all came from the original negative retaining the Scrooge title card. So, if it’s any consolation, American moviegoers at that time were similarly confused. Regardless, the easiest way for all of us to be on the same page as to which version we’re talking about is to simply call this one The Best One, because that’s a universal understanding and no small feat considering the competition.

This is the seventh version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to place in my Top 25, making it the Die Hard of Christmas Stories. Just as there was Die Hard on a plane, boat, and train, we have any number of adaptations of this timeless tale that works again and again thanks to universal themes of redemption and forgiveness that perfectly captures the essence of what Christmas is truly about. 

We love this story so much that we’re always eager to see what a particular actor or director will do with it. Each variation that made my list brings something unique, some special area of focus to the source material, and The Best One brings two. First and foremost, from first frame to last, this is a ghost story. A creaky, creepy, cobwebby, shadow and light ghost story, and at times a truly frightening one. (more…)

This big-budget musical is yet another not terribly great movie that makes the list for two reasons. The first is a personal memory.

A hundred years ago, the day before Christmas break began, an English teacher pulled my entire freshman class out of school and bussed the lot of us down to the local 79-cent theater for a screening of Scrooge.  Besides everyone getting excited over seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness plays Marley), what I remember most about the movie is that after it was over, as we exited the theatre, the whole class burst out singing and dancing the film’s infectious “Thank You Very Much,” as we filed onto the bus … and we kept singing the whole way back to school. 

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I can still smell wet rubber boots, feel the cold green vinyl seat beneath me, and sense that ball of Christmas excitement in my stomach — you know, the one that gets smaller as you get older… 

My second soft spot for Scrooge is due to how effectively it portrays Ebenezer’s regret and heartbreak over losing the love of his life to his own ambition. That’s always been my favorite part of the timeless Dickens’ classic, and it gets me every time in all the screen realizations, but especially this one. You really feel for the old guy here, and as opposed to presenting this loss as just another episode in a wasted life, you get the sense of the permanent impact this mistake had — how it was Scrooge’s emotional point of no return. (more…)

Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture-animation version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol had a fairly blah opening weekend at the North American box office, finishing first with an unexpectedly miserly total of $31 million in ticket sales. Industry insiders had figured the film to bring in up to $45 million.

Disney studio representatives predict that this latest adaptation of the Dickens classic will do well over time, like Zemeckis’s 2004 The Polar Express. My assessment is that the biggest element limiting the film’s appeal in the pre-release period was the annoyingly frenetic and superficial quality suggested by its promotional trailers and commercials.

Jim Carrey’s noisiness appears to be wearing quite thin, and a film that features him as not only the protagonist but also three other characters sounds like far too much of a no longer good thing. Carrey would do well to follow the path of the equally obnoxious Robin Williams and move on to more serious film roles, even if it kills his career. Yes, I’m well aware that Carrey’s occasional serious performances have been pretty awful, but he’s dead either way, and it would be best to die with honor instead of ignominy. (more…)

Generally after a story has been told as a book, play, musical, numerous animated, live, made-for-TV films, and Muppets movie, its content is completely exhausted. But Disney’s latest, “A Christmas Carol,” by writer-director Robert Zemeckis of “Forrest Gump” and animated films “Beowulf” and “The Polar Express,” resurrects the classic tale through vibrant visuals while sticking to the classic story.

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. (more…)