Christmas-special rant!

[amedia]

We have our favorite Christmas specials on tape - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Barney Miller where Nick dates a hooker on Christmas Eve. Yeah. The classics.

Well, final exam time is way stressful, so we went through the Christmas listings on the TiVo and recorded a bunch of other holiday specials to watch & relax to, although we did manage to avoid all the two-hour movies on Lifetime and the Family Channel, all of whose descriptions end "... and learns the true meaning of Christmas."

Last night we watched a Rankin/Bass special from 1974 that we had mercifully never seen before and hopefully will never see again, called "The Night Before Christmas." It's about this town to which Santa refuses to bring presents because a cute little mouse wrote a letter to the paper saying he didn't believe in Santa. The town basically turns itself inside out trying to appease Santa, to the point of cruelly shunning the clockmaker whose big Santa-catcher didn't work. The message of this movie is that without Santa, and without presents, there IS no Christmas. WTF???? It's like, the anti-Grinch. Y'all know how the Grinch ends, right? SPOILER ALERT - after he steals all their presents and decorations and feast fixin's, the Who's go right on celebrating because Christmas isn't about the trappings, it's about love and togetherness. Well, this was like the Anti-Grinch: Christmas IS all about the trappings and it doesn't mean anything else! Aaargh!

Comments

Ack!!

[rh-andi.livejournal.com]

Alas!

I've watched the traditional R/B stuff for years - Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town (just watched that the other night!), Little Drummer Boy, Frosty (tho' I'm not real big on that one), The Year Without A Santa Claus....

(And then there's the Grinch....with Boris Karloff....)

I really want to find "The Man in the Santa Claus Suit" with Fred Astaire and Bert Convey. Remember that?

Re: Ack!!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I really want to find "The Man in the Santa Claus Suit" with Fred Astaire and Bert Convey. Remember that?

Oh, no, I don't remember that one! That sounds good! Was it a movie or a special?

We do have a few favorite Christmas movies on tape - The Lemon Drop Kid with Bob Hope (which introduced "Silver Bells") and The Bishop's Wife, which is just lovely, and a few others.

Re: Ack!!

[rh-andi.livejournal.com]

TV Movie. From 1979. Astaire was fabulous in it. And it warmhearted and lovely....

Heh. I have things like WHITE CRISTMAS and (my favorite) Miracle on 34th Street (original 1947 B&W). I do love The Bishop's Wife - David Niven and Cary Grant are both fabulous in it. I'm not as impressed with the Whitney Houston remake (which seemed to be more a vehicle to show off her singing), but Denzel was rather good in it.

Then again, we do have Christmas movies like DIE HARD and LETHAL WEAPON (I can't hear "Jingle Bell Rock" without thinking of Martin Riggs!).

Re: Ack!!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I did think that Denzel Washington made a nice Cary Grant! But Whitney Houston is no Loretta Young. :-(

Then again, we do have Christmas movies like DIE HARD and LETHAL WEAPON

Hee hee! I should add those to the collection. We got LOVE ACTUALLY just a year or two ago, which is quite delightful, though I never expected a Christmas film to have quite so much nudity!

I'd like to get HOLIDAY INN this year if we can track it down. And WHITE CHRISTMAS. There wasn't a Road picture set at Christmastime, was there? I'm pretty sure I've seen them all and I can't remember one like that, but I have a terrible memory.

Re: Ack!!

[bulleteyes.livejournal.com]

Have you looked on eBay?

First I look into the Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/

to see if the item I would like to find exists.

Then I go to eBay
http://www.ebay.com

and do a search for the item.

I've supplied many computer-less friends with films they never would have found any other way using this method :)

Re: Ack!!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Have you looked on eBay?

Not yet, but I probably will. It's such a fab place to find movies, as you say!

One of my friends (fortunately not on LJ so it's safe to say it here) will be happy this Christmas - I found him a copy of an old Gene Roddenberry TV movie called Planet Earth on eBay. I went through the whole tape and it plays just fine; looks like it came from an old video rental place.

I'm trying to find him the earlier version, Genesis II, but so far no dice. But I think eBay is like that mythical corner of New York City - if you look there long enough, eventually *everything* comes along!

Re: Ack!!

[(Anonymous)]

You really are delving into the works of the "Great Bird of the Galaxy"! I took some time to refresh myself on this one. It was fun reading some of the character names; John Connor and Dylan Hunt for example.

It had me remembering how much I loved "The Questor Tapes" and now I might just have to see if I can find a copy of that pilot.

I can see that friending you might get expensive for me *wink*

[pocketwitch.livejournal.com]

This is only somewhat related, but it reminds me of a childrens' book I found at work called Dear Garbage Man. It's about a garbage man who decides that it's ashame that so much stuff gets thrown away, so instead he saves it and gives it to people who can use it.

So you think, halfway through, that the message is that you should recycle and reuse, and not throw stuff away if you can find someone who will use it instead.

But then the next day the garbage man goes on his run and finds all the exact same stuff on the curbs to be thrown away because the people he gave it to decided it was crap after all. But he decides it's okay because garbage is used to fill swamps so that they can be turned into playgrounds.

WTF???!!!??? So the message is that you should throw stuff away all the time, so that there can be more playgrounds.

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

Now, you need to watch the "Star Wars Holiday Special..." THere's a horror story for the Xmas season. But it does have some good moments. Harrison Ford in tight pants...

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I have it (on a bootleg VHS tape) and I've watched it ONCE. I believe that gets me out of three levels of Purgatory! Hours and hours of Wookiee-speak without subtitles... Princess Leia singing...