But it is also a time for watching lots and lots of TV, as the various channels suddenly get in the festive spirit, realise that they have been broadcasting crap for the first 51 weeks of the year and decide that the nation has suffered enough and that they had better pull their respective digits out and broadcast something watchable as a long overdue gift to the great unwashed masses. So they throw all sorts of Christmas goodies at us so that we can't possibly watch everything, not even now that we have the magical invention of BBC iPlayer! So one has to be selective about what the key things are that one simply cannot get through Christmas without watching. So here are mine (was hoping to finish this before Boxing Day, but then you can't have everything). I can't say that I ever get around to watching all of them, but if I haven't had at least two or three then I end up feeling ever so slightly empty no matter how much turkey I have gorged myself on.
1) A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) Directed by Brian Henson
Yes, I know that Alastair Sim's version is often considered to be definitive, and George C Scott, Michael Hordern and Patrick Stewart all have their supporters, but for me the one thing Dickens forgot in writing perhaps the greatest Christmas story of all time (apart from the one about Jesus, obviously) was that a Christmas story really needs frogs, bears, chickens and lines like "Mother always told me. Never eat singing food." Muppets may be a bunch of commies, apparently, but I still love them (besides, if the right has Newt Gingrich, the left should have an amphibian of their own to balance the scales, so why not Kermit?)
A lot of people lament the fact that Michael Caine and Sean Connery never worked together again after The Man Who Would be King, but for me the greater crime is that he hasn't worked with Gonzo again! Caine's career was in the doldrums at this point, the wreckage of Jaws 4 still being fresh in everyone's memory. In fact the part of Scrooge was originally offered to Oscar the Grouch instead (I believe that the phrases "scram", "get lost" and "why don't you go and **** a Snuffleupagus" featured heavily in his response). But Caine actually gives one of the best performances of his career, actually playing it relatively straight (very wisely...there's no point trying to compete with the Muppets...Charles Grodin tried to out ham Miss Piggy in "The Great Muppet Caper" and lived to rue the day), at least until the end when he starts belting out tunes like "With a Thankful Heart" and "The Love is Found" (a song he also performed in a film called Get Carter), making up with enthusiasm for what he lacks in tunefulness.
But enough about Michael Caine - everyone knows that it's the rats who steal the show! While cynical types might feel that it isn't surprising that Scrooge might be a bit grumpy having to share an office with a bunch of rats who sing Carmen Miranda tunes whenever his back is turned, such people are clearly missing the point of the film. Of course the King Rat, as it were, is Rizzo, who, as he freely admits, is just "there for the food", accompanying Charles Dickens around Victorian London (a suspiciously blue and furry Dickens with a nose like Barry Manilow's) as they essentially stalk Scrooge for the whole movie whilst "narrating" the story. Poor Rizzo gets more than he bargains for, as "Mr Dickens" pushes him down chimneys, uses him to wipe a window and generally maltreats him in a manner which is probably an extremely historically accurate portrayal of some of the things "the lower orders" were forced to get up to at the time.
The other Muppet regulars are there in force of course, with Kermit Cratchit, Miss Piggy as Mrs Cratchit (who scoffed all the chestnuts, then?) and Fozzie Bear as Fozziwig (who else)? Particularly enjoyable are Statler and Waldorf as The Marley Brothers (a bit like the Kray Twins if they had been made out of foam). But whilst there is a lot of Muppety fun added to the proceedings, the basic story of the Christmas Carol is still all there underneath, and it is certainly a more faithful version of the tale than some (Ebenezer Scrooge is a duck? Now that's just plain silly!) Funny and touching, there is plenty here for both kids and adults to enjoy. So apologies to Mr Sim (and Mr Duck), but if I was forced to take one version to a desert island, this is the one it would be!
2) The Blue Carbuncle (1984) directed by David Carson
Not strictly a film, this one, only 50 minutes long or so, this is an episode from the first series of Granada's definitive "Sherlock Holmes" series starring Jeremy Brett (an actor otherwise best known for My Fair Lady and being a surrogate father to Martin Clunes...bit of random trivia for you there).
Some swear by Robert Downey Jr's rather dishevelled version of the great sleuth nowadays (and I admit that those films are fun, even though Guy Ritchie's directorial technique is INTENSELY ANNOYING and Downey Jr doesn't seem yet to have discovered that Holmes isn't Captain Jack Sparrow). More discerning folk prefer Benedict Cumberbatch's coldly calculating modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ingenious and timeless tales. But for me Jeremy Brett is still THE MAN, with Basil Rathbone (who gets extra kudos for being the only Holmes with the balls to take on the Nazis as well as Moriarty) and Clive Merrison his only serious rivals. Similarly David Burke is my favourite Watson (with his successor Edward Hardwicke, who took over in the later episodes, running him a close second). Burke has the perfect mix of humour and robustness, neither a buffoon like Nigel Bruce nor a superman action hero like Jude Law's incarnation (with Jude Law's Watson in town I am quite mystified as to why people bother getting Downey Jr's Holmes involved in the investigation at all!). And the affectionate chemistry between him and Brett is never more apparent than in this festive edition of the great detective's adventures.
The plot is simple. It is Christmas Eve. The Blue Carbuncle, one of the most valuable diamonds in the world, over which much blood has been spilled over the years, has been stolen. It turns up in the gullet of a goose which, through a series of coincidences, falls into the hands of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has then to join the dots, by rushing around London, quite literally on a wild goose chase, to work out where the goose came from and how it managed to get a diamond stuck in its digestive system. And he has to do it fast, because the police, as cloddish and wrong headed as ever, have arrested the wrong man, who risks languishing in prison over Christmas unless the real perpetrator can be unmasked. Brett is clearly having the time of his life, playing Holmes like the oddball love child of Alan Rickman and Kenneth Williams, flaring his nostrils, staring around disconcertingly at random and using his magnificently sardonic voice to great effect, smoothly coming out with lines like "I am something of a fowl fancier, you understand", complete with raised eyebrow.
True, the real villain of the piece does turn out to be one of Holmes' least threatening adversaries (a cowardly little shrimp called Ryder, who seems to have difficulty pronouncing his "r"s, yet nevertheless, when presented with the opportunity to use a pseudonym that would enable him to get around this problem as well as maintain his anonymity, he plumps for "Wobinson"!) But then again, this is one of the most light hearted stories in the series, so it doesn't really need a moustache twirling Napoleon of Crime to make it work - in fact Holmes is even able to demonstrate some festive spirit by letting the little creep go before tucking into his turkey.
Co-starring Frank Middlemass as a booze addled academic, this episode is a fast paced and witty blast from beginning to end. Other episodes I would particularly recommend in the series are "The Musgrave Ritual", which is probably objectively the best of the lot, "The Six Napoleons", where the director seems to have given the entire cast carte blanche to try and out-ham each other, with hilarious and often alarming consequences, and "Wisteria Lodge", which is unusual in that it contains a police inspector who is actually quite intelligent and a match for Holmes (an engaging Freddie Jones plays this wily fellow in a manner reminiscent of Robert Newton as Long John Silver, only without bothering with the subtlety and restraint).
3) Die Hard (1988) directed by John McTiernan
Yes it is a Christmas movie and it is perfectly legitimate to include this in a Christmas list! Complaining about this (just because a few people happen to get shot in the head and thrown out of tall buildings) would be like moaning about my inclusion of "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" on my list of favourite WW2 movies just because Angela Lansbury doesn't recreate the opening D-Day landings sequence in "Saving Private Ryan". Die Hard has been much imitated over the years, but never equalled - not even by its sequels, which have all been entertaining (in spite of the fact that Bruce Willis is looking more like John McCain than John McClane nowadays).
Personally I used to do a bit of studying in Senate House Library near Russell Square in London and I always thought that that would be a great building to set a Die Hard style rip off in. The premise: a group of medieval historians gather together for a mulled wine party which gets overrun with terrorists - and only the eminent Henry III scholar Professor Humphrey P Winterbottom, who was in the toilet at the time, can save the day. This role could not, of course, be played by Mr Willis, it would have to be someone like Richard Griffiths (Samuel L Jackson would do at a pinch). It could be titled "Die Learned", and Professor Winterbottom would be roaming around the bookshelves with a machine gun "ho ho ho" and spouting lines like "Musica delenit bestiam feram, mother****er". But until someone takes me up on this idea, Die Hard will remain the best action movie ever made.
Having said that, being of a squeamish disposition, I tend to fast forward over the bit where McClane runs over broken glass. It is a testament to how excellent Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman (the best hero-villain combo in the history of cinema - they really need to act together again) and the host of engaging and interesting supporting characters are that I retain my affection for the movie in spite of that (I have always been very sensitive about my feet!) Nothing quite gets you in the festive spirit like watching Alan Rickman getting pushed off a roof. Which, coincidentally, is precisely what Emma Thompson should have done to him in my next selection...
Love Actually (2003) directed by Richard Curtis
This movie has a lot of detractors. I have even heard whispers from some that they consider it "a bit schmaltzy", presumably because Liam Neeson's stepson manages to get through airport security and peg it halfway across the airport to declare his love to his departing American sweetheart without being shot in the back of the head (the scene where an actual terrorist manages to use this distraction to smuggle through a shoebomb and blow up a plane was deleted from the final cut!) But they are, of course, missing the point. Had Richard Curtis been setting out to create a hard hitting, gritty, Trainspotting-esque "heroin through the eyeballs" kitchen sink drama, then I agree that this film would be regarded as a failure.
But it's a Christmas film, for heaven's sake. It's supposed to be schmaltzy. You're not supposed to think about the fact that Hugh Grant reversing a half century of British foreign policy towards one of our most important allies just because he got a bit hot under the collar when Billy Bob Thornton snogged Martine McCutcheon, far from making him everyone's ideal prime minister, might actually suggest that he is a dangerously unhinged maverick! Although I can't watch the bit with him dancing now without wondering whether David Cameron did the same thing after exercising his veto a few weeks ago. It's feel good, and that's what matters. And it has one of the best British casts ever assembled outside of a Harry Potter movie (no, I'm not actually in this one, although it was filmed during my brief career as a film extra, and one of the "not quite ginger enough" fellows who I pipped to the post for the role of Charlie Weasley can be spotted standing around in the background looking slightly shifty in the "Office Christmas Party" scene).
I don't think there is a dud storyline throughout, although some might think that Kris Marshall finding himself irresistible to every hot female in Wisconsin might be a little far fetched. Even Keira Knightley is endearing (although whenever I have been watching the film with a girl, the bit where she declares herself to be "quite pretty" in her wedding dress invariably causes the aforesaid female to growl malevolently - although in fact Julie has said that she understood this scene completely once she saw her wedding photos!) The highlights for me were Bill Nighy as crazy old rocker Billy Mack, desperately pushing for a Christmas number one and not caring who he has to shock or outrage in order to get it (robbed of an Oscar nomination, he was), the Colin Firth storyline where he falls in love with his Portugese housekeeper despite their not being able to speak one word of each other's language, and the heartbreaking storyline with Emma Thompson and her philandering husband Alan Rickman which I alluded to above. Although at least he doesn't tell anyone to "shoot the glass" in this film.
Watching Love Actually with an Indian takeaway and some sparkling wine has become a bit of an annual tradition for my wife and I, and I think it is perhaps a sign that we are too familiar with the film that we both got very excited when watching stand up comedy a few years ago when we noticed that one of the comedians was "the DJ with one line at Keira Knightley's wedding".
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) directed by Frank Capra
What to say about this superb film that has not already been said? A box office disappointment at the time, it has since become a classic through the medium of TV. It stars James Stewart (of course) as frustrated banker George Bailey who has never had time to fulfil his dreams. He then has a particularly crappy Christmas Eve, accidentally losing a small fortune thanks to his bumbling Uncle Billy and the evil machinations of the richest man in town, Mr Potter, who shared none of his descendant Harry's endearing characteristics. After throwing a bit of a wobbly, Bailey decides that the only sensible course of action is to throw himself off a bridge. So far, so Christmassy.
Luckily he is rescued by a slightly camp and befuddled angel called Clarence (the brilliant Henry Travers) who transports him to an alternative universe where he never existed, making him realise that he has touched the lives of the people all around him in ways that he did not even realise. He goes back and finds that he has dozens of friends who have come together to sort everything out for him and they all sing in Christmas and live happily ever after. If you think Love Actually is schmaltzy, then perhaps best to give this one a miss, but if you have a soul, watch it now. If you want to know whether they are showing it at Christmas in a particular year, the best thing to do is watch Eastenders. If someone in Eastenders casually mentions that it's on, it won't be. If it's not mentioned, then it will definitely be on!
Others worthy of mention are:
The Great Escape (1963), another Christmas TV classic, because nothing says its Christmas like Richard Attenborough and 49 other POWs being executed in cold blood by the Gestapo (the American stars don't get the same treatment, mind you, not even the ones who aren't playing Americans, like "Australian" James Coburn, who I believe used Dick Van Dyke as his voice coach);
Miracle on 34th Street (1947/1994) - both versions are good, with excellent Santas (Edmund Gwenn and Richard Attenborough, the latter managing to dodge the Gestapo this time, only having to contend with the marginally less obnoxious Mara Wilson); and
A Christmas Toy (1986) - one from Julie's childhood this, with more Muppetesque creatures. Watch it and tell me you don't think Toy Story is a total shameless rip off!
Back in the New Year!
Al
Some swear by Robert Downey Jr's rather dishevelled version of the great sleuth nowadays (and I admit that those films are fun, even though Guy Ritchie's directorial technique is INTENSELY ANNOYING and Downey Jr doesn't seem yet to have discovered that Holmes isn't Captain Jack Sparrow). More discerning folk prefer Benedict Cumberbatch's coldly calculating modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ingenious and timeless tales. But for me Jeremy Brett is still THE MAN, with Basil Rathbone (who gets extra kudos for being the only Holmes with the balls to take on the Nazis as well as Moriarty) and Clive Merrison his only serious rivals. Similarly David Burke is my favourite Watson (with his successor Edward Hardwicke, who took over in the later episodes, running him a close second). Burke has the perfect mix of humour and robustness, neither a buffoon like Nigel Bruce nor a superman action hero like Jude Law's incarnation (with Jude Law's Watson in town I am quite mystified as to why people bother getting Downey Jr's Holmes involved in the investigation at all!). And the affectionate chemistry between him and Brett is never more apparent than in this festive edition of the great detective's adventures.
The plot is simple. It is Christmas Eve. The Blue Carbuncle, one of the most valuable diamonds in the world, over which much blood has been spilled over the years, has been stolen. It turns up in the gullet of a goose which, through a series of coincidences, falls into the hands of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has then to join the dots, by rushing around London, quite literally on a wild goose chase, to work out where the goose came from and how it managed to get a diamond stuck in its digestive system. And he has to do it fast, because the police, as cloddish and wrong headed as ever, have arrested the wrong man, who risks languishing in prison over Christmas unless the real perpetrator can be unmasked. Brett is clearly having the time of his life, playing Holmes like the oddball love child of Alan Rickman and Kenneth Williams, flaring his nostrils, staring around disconcertingly at random and using his magnificently sardonic voice to great effect, smoothly coming out with lines like "I am something of a fowl fancier, you understand", complete with raised eyebrow.
True, the real villain of the piece does turn out to be one of Holmes' least threatening adversaries (a cowardly little shrimp called Ryder, who seems to have difficulty pronouncing his "r"s, yet nevertheless, when presented with the opportunity to use a pseudonym that would enable him to get around this problem as well as maintain his anonymity, he plumps for "Wobinson"!) But then again, this is one of the most light hearted stories in the series, so it doesn't really need a moustache twirling Napoleon of Crime to make it work - in fact Holmes is even able to demonstrate some festive spirit by letting the little creep go before tucking into his turkey.
Co-starring Frank Middlemass as a booze addled academic, this episode is a fast paced and witty blast from beginning to end. Other episodes I would particularly recommend in the series are "The Musgrave Ritual", which is probably objectively the best of the lot, "The Six Napoleons", where the director seems to have given the entire cast carte blanche to try and out-ham each other, with hilarious and often alarming consequences, and "Wisteria Lodge", which is unusual in that it contains a police inspector who is actually quite intelligent and a match for Holmes (an engaging Freddie Jones plays this wily fellow in a manner reminiscent of Robert Newton as Long John Silver, only without bothering with the subtlety and restraint).
3) Die Hard (1988) directed by John McTiernan
Yes it is a Christmas movie and it is perfectly legitimate to include this in a Christmas list! Complaining about this (just because a few people happen to get shot in the head and thrown out of tall buildings) would be like moaning about my inclusion of "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" on my list of favourite WW2 movies just because Angela Lansbury doesn't recreate the opening D-Day landings sequence in "Saving Private Ryan". Die Hard has been much imitated over the years, but never equalled - not even by its sequels, which have all been entertaining (in spite of the fact that Bruce Willis is looking more like John McCain than John McClane nowadays).
Personally I used to do a bit of studying in Senate House Library near Russell Square in London and I always thought that that would be a great building to set a Die Hard style rip off in. The premise: a group of medieval historians gather together for a mulled wine party which gets overrun with terrorists - and only the eminent Henry III scholar Professor Humphrey P Winterbottom, who was in the toilet at the time, can save the day. This role could not, of course, be played by Mr Willis, it would have to be someone like Richard Griffiths (Samuel L Jackson would do at a pinch). It could be titled "Die Learned", and Professor Winterbottom would be roaming around the bookshelves with a machine gun "ho ho ho" and spouting lines like "Musica delenit bestiam feram, mother****er". But until someone takes me up on this idea, Die Hard will remain the best action movie ever made.
Having said that, being of a squeamish disposition, I tend to fast forward over the bit where McClane runs over broken glass. It is a testament to how excellent Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman (the best hero-villain combo in the history of cinema - they really need to act together again) and the host of engaging and interesting supporting characters are that I retain my affection for the movie in spite of that (I have always been very sensitive about my feet!) Nothing quite gets you in the festive spirit like watching Alan Rickman getting pushed off a roof. Which, coincidentally, is precisely what Emma Thompson should have done to him in my next selection...
Love Actually (2003) directed by Richard Curtis
This movie has a lot of detractors. I have even heard whispers from some that they consider it "a bit schmaltzy", presumably because Liam Neeson's stepson manages to get through airport security and peg it halfway across the airport to declare his love to his departing American sweetheart without being shot in the back of the head (the scene where an actual terrorist manages to use this distraction to smuggle through a shoebomb and blow up a plane was deleted from the final cut!) But they are, of course, missing the point. Had Richard Curtis been setting out to create a hard hitting, gritty, Trainspotting-esque "heroin through the eyeballs" kitchen sink drama, then I agree that this film would be regarded as a failure.
But it's a Christmas film, for heaven's sake. It's supposed to be schmaltzy. You're not supposed to think about the fact that Hugh Grant reversing a half century of British foreign policy towards one of our most important allies just because he got a bit hot under the collar when Billy Bob Thornton snogged Martine McCutcheon, far from making him everyone's ideal prime minister, might actually suggest that he is a dangerously unhinged maverick! Although I can't watch the bit with him dancing now without wondering whether David Cameron did the same thing after exercising his veto a few weeks ago. It's feel good, and that's what matters. And it has one of the best British casts ever assembled outside of a Harry Potter movie (no, I'm not actually in this one, although it was filmed during my brief career as a film extra, and one of the "not quite ginger enough" fellows who I pipped to the post for the role of Charlie Weasley can be spotted standing around in the background looking slightly shifty in the "Office Christmas Party" scene).
I don't think there is a dud storyline throughout, although some might think that Kris Marshall finding himself irresistible to every hot female in Wisconsin might be a little far fetched. Even Keira Knightley is endearing (although whenever I have been watching the film with a girl, the bit where she declares herself to be "quite pretty" in her wedding dress invariably causes the aforesaid female to growl malevolently - although in fact Julie has said that she understood this scene completely once she saw her wedding photos!) The highlights for me were Bill Nighy as crazy old rocker Billy Mack, desperately pushing for a Christmas number one and not caring who he has to shock or outrage in order to get it (robbed of an Oscar nomination, he was), the Colin Firth storyline where he falls in love with his Portugese housekeeper despite their not being able to speak one word of each other's language, and the heartbreaking storyline with Emma Thompson and her philandering husband Alan Rickman which I alluded to above. Although at least he doesn't tell anyone to "shoot the glass" in this film.
Watching Love Actually with an Indian takeaway and some sparkling wine has become a bit of an annual tradition for my wife and I, and I think it is perhaps a sign that we are too familiar with the film that we both got very excited when watching stand up comedy a few years ago when we noticed that one of the comedians was "the DJ with one line at Keira Knightley's wedding".
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) directed by Frank Capra
What to say about this superb film that has not already been said? A box office disappointment at the time, it has since become a classic through the medium of TV. It stars James Stewart (of course) as frustrated banker George Bailey who has never had time to fulfil his dreams. He then has a particularly crappy Christmas Eve, accidentally losing a small fortune thanks to his bumbling Uncle Billy and the evil machinations of the richest man in town, Mr Potter, who shared none of his descendant Harry's endearing characteristics. After throwing a bit of a wobbly, Bailey decides that the only sensible course of action is to throw himself off a bridge. So far, so Christmassy.
Luckily he is rescued by a slightly camp and befuddled angel called Clarence (the brilliant Henry Travers) who transports him to an alternative universe where he never existed, making him realise that he has touched the lives of the people all around him in ways that he did not even realise. He goes back and finds that he has dozens of friends who have come together to sort everything out for him and they all sing in Christmas and live happily ever after. If you think Love Actually is schmaltzy, then perhaps best to give this one a miss, but if you have a soul, watch it now. If you want to know whether they are showing it at Christmas in a particular year, the best thing to do is watch Eastenders. If someone in Eastenders casually mentions that it's on, it won't be. If it's not mentioned, then it will definitely be on!
Others worthy of mention are:
The Great Escape (1963), another Christmas TV classic, because nothing says its Christmas like Richard Attenborough and 49 other POWs being executed in cold blood by the Gestapo (the American stars don't get the same treatment, mind you, not even the ones who aren't playing Americans, like "Australian" James Coburn, who I believe used Dick Van Dyke as his voice coach);
Miracle on 34th Street (1947/1994) - both versions are good, with excellent Santas (Edmund Gwenn and Richard Attenborough, the latter managing to dodge the Gestapo this time, only having to contend with the marginally less obnoxious Mara Wilson); and
A Christmas Toy (1986) - one from Julie's childhood this, with more Muppetesque creatures. Watch it and tell me you don't think Toy Story is a total shameless rip off!
Back in the New Year!
Al
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