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Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2008 5:55 am**

John Waters wrote:Santa has always been the ultimate movie star. Forget White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life and all the other hackneyed trash. Go for the classics: Silent Night, Bloody Night, Black Christmas or the best seasonal film of all time Christmas Evil ("He'll sleigh you"). This true cinematic masterpiece only played theatrically for a few seconds, but it's now available on videocassette and no holiday family get-together is complete without it. I t's about a man completely consumed by Christmas. His neurosis first rears its ugly head as he applies shaving cream to his face, looks in the mirror, hallucinates a white beard and begins to imagine that he is Santa Claus. He gets a job in a toy factory, starts snooping and spying on the neighbourhood children and then rushes home to feverishly make notes in his big red book: "Jimmy was a good boy today," or "Peggy was a bad little girl." He starts cross-dressing as Claus and lurks around people's roots ready to take the plunge. Finally, he actually gets stick in a nearby chimney and awakens the family in his struggle. Mom and Dad go insane when they find a fat lunatic in their fireplace, but the kids are wild with glee. Santa has no choice but to kill these Scroogelike parents with the razor-sharp star decorating the top of their tree. As he flees a neighbourhood lynch mob, the children come to his rescue and defy their distraught parents by forming a human ring of protection around him. Finally, pushed to the limits of Clausmania, he leaps into his van/sleigh and it takes off flying over the moon as he psychotically and happily shrieks, "On Dancer! On Prancer! On Donner and Vixen!" I wish I had kids. I'd make them watch it every year and if they didn't like it, they'd be punished.

Posted: **Sat Nov 29, 2008 8:20 pm**

I agree with Waters. Everyone should see Christmas Evil. That and the Selick movie are what I always watch on coal eaters day. CE is actually a lot deeper then you'd expect. Luckily it has cheese galore and the perfect ending.

Posted: **Sun Nov 30, 2008 8:00 pm**

It's not exactly a holiday movie, but I still watch it anyway: Book of Life by Hal Hartley.

Posted: **Sun Nov 30, 2008 8:25 pm**

Both Au Revoir les Enfants and Murmur of the Heart are family favorites this time of year. I would like to introduce everyone to Fanny and Alexander, so I will probably have to show the theatrical version because of the length of the TV version.

Posted: **Tue Dec 02, 2008 12:13 am**

'black christmas' and 'calvaire.'

Posted: **Tue Dec 02, 2008 2:39 am**

Sir Arne's Treasure (which I just discovered FW Murnau was indeed a fanatic for-- I knew I saw that film in Nosferatu), because of all those Santa hats..

Posted: **Tue Dec 02, 2008 1:18 pm**

HerrSchreck wrote:Sir Arne's Treasure (which I just discovered FW Murnau was indeed a fanatic for-- I knew I saw that film in Nosferatu), because of all those Santa hats..

Sir Arne's Treasure is the most gloomiest film ever made. Comparing to this, Satantango is a Southern ladies' lunch.

This holiday season, I'm going to settle down with Meet Me In St. Louis, still one of the most sublime movies of all time. It will be on TCM this Friday.

Posted: **Wed Dec 03, 2008 5:30 am**

Michael wrote:
HerrSchreck wrote:Sir Arne's Treasure (which I just discovered FW Murnau was indeed a fanatic for-- I knew I saw that film in Nosferatu), because of all those Santa hats..
Sir Arne's Treasure is the most gloomiest film ever made. Comparing to this, Satantango is a Southern ladies' lunch.

And with that, Grand Illusion scours the internets for a copy.

Posted: **Sun Dec 07, 2008 10:49 am**

My family still watches the same things we always have every year, the Rankin-Bass animated films (Frosty, Drummer Boy, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Rudolph), Charlie Brown specials, It's A Wonderful Life, and Miracle On 34th Street.

As much as I like Die Hard, if you want non-Christmas movies with Christmas settings Gremlins is my go-to option.

Posted: **Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:00 pm**

My father watches O. Henry's Full House every Christmas. This year I made it home in time to watch it with him.

I guess the last time we watched it together was when I was 12 and I totally forgot that Steinbeck handled the segways between the stories.

Posted: **Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:00 pm**

TCM had its premiere showing of one of my holiday favorites this year: THE CHEATERS, a rare Republic A starring Joseph Schildkraut, Eugene Pallette, Billie Burke, Ona Munson and Raymond Walburn. I first caught this one back in about 1981 on a PBS station, following their annual showing of the Alastair Sim CHRISTMAS CAROL. They repeated this double bill the following year. The year after thatt my first VCR and of course they stopped showing it. I've spent waaaay too much money over the years getting dreadful graymarket dubs (most of which seem to come from the same Minneapolis TV broadcast).
Fortunately I now have a splendid copy on DVDR, thanks to TCM.

CHRISTMAS EVIL, btw, is currently offered as a free On Demand title via Feart.Net. And letterboxed, yet.

Posted: **Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:52 pm**

Is there a DVD of the Rankin/Bass Rudolph Red-Nosed Reindeer that has no missing scenes? Someone commenting on this review at Amazon says that the missing scene was restored in the "new 2008 transfer" but his link goes to a box set released in 2007, so I'm not sure what he's talking about or if his information is reliable. It seems like this thing has been sliced and diced in syndication and over dozens of video releases, that I'm not sure it's even possible to get it in uncut form. Amazon lists 47 minutes as the runtime of every version I checked, probably inaccurately.

Posted: **Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:24 pm**

The version history of this seems to be fairly complicated, but Wikipedia spells it all out, albeit a little unclearly. From what I can surmise, there is no available video version of the complete version.

Posted: **Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:29 pm**

I already talked it up in the Alternate Oscars thread, but the Bishop's Wife deserves to be everyone's go-to Christmas film. Please give it a chance this holiday season!

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 2:20 pm**

Jeezus. I started this thread four years ago!

I've grown very weary of holiday classics and sentiments now.

These days my mind's been set on A Christmas Tale - not really a Christmas film, it's just as Christmasy as It's a Wonderful Life. Even though its epic family drama surrounds the holiday, it can still be enjoyed any time of the year. The mood of the film matches mine perfectly this solstice. A bit dry that is.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 2:27 pm**

My New Years favorite is the two final episodes of Haibane Renmei (also my Good Friday/Easter favorite).

If I were to pick a film for Christmas it would most likely be Lubitsch's Shop Around the Corner.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 2:36 pm**

I recently reread A Christmas Carol and was struck by how much more I liked it than I remembered -- more for its harder edges than its softer ones. Do any of the film versions really capture the terror and the dark wit and make the sentimental moments watchable?

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 3:46 pm**

Our family's consensus is that the version with George C. Scott as Scrooge (from 1984) does a pretty good job of catching much of the spirit of the original.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 4:33 pm**

Tom Amolad wrote:I recently reread A Christmas Carol and was struck by how much more I liked it than I remembered -- more for its harder edges than its softer ones. Do any of the film versions really capture the terror and the dark wit and make the sentimental moments watchable?

I think I've seen them all (except for the new Jim Carrey animated version which, uh...), and the only version I still care to watch is the one with Alastair Sim. Not only does he give a marvelous performance (definitive in my book--he's the only actor who can sell the "undigested bit of beef/fragment of an underdone potato" line), but the sentimentality is held in check and the scary parts are actually scary.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 4:43 pm**

Matt wrote: I think I've seen them all (except for the new Jim Carrey animated version which, uh...), and the only version I still care to watch is the one with Alastair Sim. Not only does he give a marvelous performance (definitive in my book--he's the only actor who can sell the "undigested bit of beef/fragment of an underdone potato" line), but the sentimentality is held in check and the scary parts are actually scary.

The Alastair Sim version is the most affecting Christmas Carol of them all. What was my teacher thinking when she screened the film to her 2nd graders? Some of us were so terrified that the teacher halted the film and scolded us, thinking we were being rascals.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 5:11 pm**

My favourite is The Curse of the Cat People - Lewton's most gentle film, subtly critical of traditional festivities (the parents are horrible) but suggesting the best Christmases are in the imagination. Plus Laurel & Hardy's Big Business - "the story of a man who turned the other cheek - and got punched in the nose" so perhaps the most honest Christmas movie ever made.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 6:45 pm**

Outstanding choices, Jonathan. It happens I'm going to be watching the same two in the next two weeks.

Another of the handful I often watch this time of year (or just as often another time of year) is Meet Me in St. Louis, but I have about five other Minnellis to watch before going back to that one again.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:01 pm**

Second the above re the Sims CC--it's still affecting, makes all the others, including the new version, irrelevant.

Where do I hide after admitting I like to watch Love Actually (only after a quart of spiced mead in me, of course).

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:20 pm**

Last year, Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godathers was definate a crowd pleaser. Less manic and more cheerful than Kon's other work, though it's certainly not without his brand of beautiful melodrama and absurdist humour - not to mention the insane storyline [brimming with religious metaphor]. It's appearing in a few stockings this year.

Posted: **Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:55 pm**

My relatives would disown me if I gave them copies of Kon's film. ;~}

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