Okay, with the season upon us, I thought it only appropriate for a thread devoted to X-mas and holiday movies.

For one thing, if the story is magical in any way, the existence of Christmas ITSELF will be in jeopardy.  As if we couldn't continue well enough on our own.  Hogfather actually gave this some meaning which I quite liked, but you can really only get away with that one ONCE.

Usually in a Christmas movie, there's usually no consideration for other holidays, and unless its' strictly Christian, no mention of Christ as being the accepted origin of the holiday (instead of the Fonzie of it, having co-opted the celebration from the Pagans, but that's another issue).  it's like Christmas is a holiday severed from the religious institution, which it kind of is, to permit more people to spend money at that time of year.

I think the non-holiday movies they release on Christmas deserve some mention too, usually big four-quadrant unrisky pictures that whole families can be dragged out to see (like the upcoming "Parental Guidance") just so they can drag grandma and the cousins to see something so they get two hours of silence and a subject of conversation instead of how sick of each other they all are.

You know, for the longest time (ever since I first heard about it), I wanted to see the three-hour cut of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.  I love that flick.  Then I read the script and I realized how much bad stuff they had to cut out.  A lot of John Candy's dialogue got dropped at some point, and it really made all the difference in the world between him coming off as the lovable doof he does in the flick or being the guy Neil felt he was for the longest time.  He's really not endearing on the page.

Home Alone, holy cow, I always dug those first two films (though, like Star Trek, I took a couple years off to re-build my affection for them), and those are flicks I think could probably stand a re-make today.  And not those crummy Disney channel spin-off straight-to-TV whatevers, I'm talking about going back to the roots of this kind of jerk kid who feels totally left out and alone because of this giant family, a dependent who becomes totally independent and learns to fend for himself... there's a lot of emotional stuff at the core that's still good that you could rebuild off of... and it's all capped with zany looney tunes-style pranks and physical violence at the end (I do feel that maybe we should have been brought up to that a little bit).  I did dislike all the bird lady stuff in the sequel, though.

Home Alone did something I quite liked which was make Christmas feel grand and royal.  In the commentary track they mentioned flicks like "Great Expectations" and Dickens and gave this sort of old England regency, taste, and pomp to all the pure Christmas stuff.  It's like a Serif font.  A bit of Victorian Christmas ideal in the modern age, and I think because I saw that at such an early age (when I looked just LIKE the kid in the movie), that's what I thought Christmas should look like.

Can I be honest and say "A Christmas Story" isn't really a fave of mine.  I've seen it a zillion times but, like Elf, I feel like I'm slightly left out of the joke that everyone else is in on.  I will say that the newly-made cash-grab sequel looks terrible, and I'm in the same pain every other fan is about it.


I have no desire to see it, but it's got to be better than Randy Quaid and family stuck on a desert island in Christmas Vacation 2, right?

Some cliche scenes that seems to appear in most Xmas Flicks in one way or another....

The Big Turkey Dinner - Duh! Of course you have to have the family dinner. It's what the entire movie is usually buidling toward or centered around, which leads to....

The Wacky Relative - Be it a distant cousin or a bullying brother, whoever the family member it turns out to be, he or she is usually the source of the comedic moments that always gets the main character into trouble, one way or another.

It's funny how we perceive those things that meant something to us and how that developed. A guess a majority of them would be as a kid watching something for first time. Not to be contrary, but Christmas Story did nothing for me. The Home Alone movies just made me roll my eyes. I never bought into MaCaulay Culkin's acting, looks or the story. Not trying to be cynical. Those movies just never did anything for me. I know... Un-American.

For years, my first wife made a tradition of watching It's a Wonderful Life while putting up the tree and decorating the house. After many years of that I've grown to ignore it.

I do like The Santa Claus, well, because I'm a huge Tim Allen fan and I thought it told a pretty cool story. Miracle on 34th Street will always be cool to me.

I think one of the biggest cliche's is the protagonist not believing... in the story, the mythology, the soul. The movie is the journey to discovery

My favorite move to watch during the holidays is Scrooged with Bill Murray. Obviously it based on the Charle's Dicken's story, but with a whole bunch of twists. But at the core is The Story Dicken's wrote about.

Uh, no, missed the Dudley Moore flick... apparently for the better.