Favorite Christmas/Holiday movies? | Golden Skate

Favorite Christmas/Holiday movies?

Tonichelle

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Jun 27, 2003
We're having a Christmas Movie Marathon today through to Christmas Day - what are your favorites?

So far we've watched:
A Christmas Story
The Grinch That Stole Christmas (animation)
Home Alone
Charlie Brown Christmas & It's Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown

Next up is going to be, I think, Home Alone 2.
 
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Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Ooh, what a fun thread, Toni.

Hmmm. I love the old Cary Grant movie The Bishop's Wife, with David Niven and Loretta Young.
That movie they made out of the book Polar Express is very interesting and well made, though far more elaborate than the brief story from the original book.
If I can ever find filmed productions of The Nutcracker, I'm happy.
And I am rather partial to the first Santa Clause. My favorite quote: "We're your worst nightmare: elves with attitude."

Special mention goes to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the recent Disney/Walden one. I am a huge Narnia fan and always will be.
 

Tonichelle

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I wasn't as fond of Polar Express as I thought I would be. The technology was cool, though.

Home Alone 2 is playing now...

Next I think will be A Christmas Carol - the one Jim Carrey did with Disney a few years back...

After that hopefully Christmas Vacation (my fav Cmas movie).
 

starryxskies

On the Ice
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Dec 2, 2012
For more "recent" ones....

I loved Elf and Four Christmases was also quite enjoyable for its different take on Christmas. I've never watched New Year's Eve but I did enjoy its Valentine's Day counterpoints on a pure entertainment level (with no consideration to plot) and so I think I would love New Year's Eve as well if not just to watch the cast interact with each other.

I also tend to like Christmas episodes of my favourite TV shows...if that counts :laugh:
 

Tonichelle

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Christmas Vacation is playing - last movie of the night.

Tomorrow is church, I have an "office" Christmas party, parents have a Christmas Eve Eve service... so the marathon's on hold until Monday lol
 

dorispulaski

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Do you have the Hallmark channel? It plays almost non stop Christmas shows all season. Last year I watched many of them.

This year, I am finding they repeat them, though, which is lame of me since I am quite happy to watch the original Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Grinch as many times as they play them.
 

Tonichelle

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I'm not a fan of most of the Hallmark Channel movies... the acting is - not always the best - and the scripting is a bit too corny for even me (and I can handle a lot of corny).

Dad's favorite movies are Miracle on 34th St (the original) and A Christmas Story
Mom loves the Home Alones and Charlie Brown
I'm partial to Christmas Vacation and It's A Wonderful Life

We rarely watch them on TV though as we all hate sitting through commercials and bad cuts of the films...
 

dorispulaski

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I use the DVR that comes with the set to put them on record and start watching 10 minutes after the start time. Then I fast forward through the commercials.
 

Tonichelle

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Yeah mom can barely work the blue ray pplayer so the parentals dont have a dvr. Lol it took us over a year to convince mom you dont have to rewind dvds before you put them back in their case!
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Your mom sounds like a woman after my own heart. It took my buddies years to persuade me that a DVD player would be a good thing to have. DVR is not within my skill set yet, either.

This morning the Turner movie channel screened the Katharine Hepburn Little Women, which reminds me that any of the three main Little Women productions can be thought of as Christmas movies, and not just because the films all start with a Christmas sequence. I like all three versions for different reasons. Hepburn shines as Jo, of course, in the earliest one, and the other three sisters are well done, and the inimitable Edna May Oliver is Aunt March. (She played many other meaty dowager roles, including Miss Betsy Trotwood in the golden-age David Copperfield, and Miss Pross in A Tale of Two Cities.) The Laurie is a bit unmemorable for me. The later MGM one, with June Allyson, has been eclipsed by the first one, because who could compete with Katharine Hepburn? But it's surprisingly good, and it does an inspired switcheroo by making Amy older than Beth so they can take advantage of one of the greatest child actresses ever, Margaret O'Brien, as the doomed Beth and have Elizabeth Taylor as Amy. Then the most modern one, with Winona Ryder, is probably the lushest in terms of setting and music score (Thomas Newman), and it has hands-down the best Professor Bhaer...Gabriel Byrne. You can absolutely believe why he becomes so important in the life of the Marches. This film was made with great affection for a very low budget (that was used with tremendous efficiency to create lovely settings), and it was cast with almost uncanny prescience for spotting significant talent: Claire Danes and Kirsten Dunst played two of the girls, and Christian Bale played Laurie. Susan Sarandon is convincingly young enough to have kids that young and strong enough to be virtually a single parent while Rev. March is away. A great Christmas movie that I think people of any age can enjoy.
 

Tonichelle

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I like the one with Liz Taylor and Margaret O'Brien most of the Little Women films...
 
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It's a lovely one. I came to it late--in fact I think first I saw it all the way through just within the last year or two. I was charmed and moved by it. I think I read somewhere that June Allyson was so undone by the filming of Margaret O'Brien's death scene that as she was driving home afterward, she had to pull the car over so she could cry. O'Brien was thirteen or fourteen at the time.

One interesting choice that the Winona Ryder version made was to cast two actresses as Amy. That way, she was played by a real twelve-year-old or so at the beginning and then a young woman later on. The other versions couldn't show Amy aging appreciably because she was played by an adult actress throughout. The MGM (Allyson) version, by flipping the ages of Amy and Beth, solved the problem by having the youngest one be the sister who died, so that she didn't have to be shown as an adult. It was a really perfect choice, I think. I wonder whether any bookworm purists complained at the time.
 

Tonichelle

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O'Brien's was the first one I saw, can't watch the other two with as much enjoyment. which is weird because I adore Hepburn.
 

Mrs. P

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Not a Christmas movie, per se, but with the holiday break...it's always fun to check out Pride and Prejudice (the BBC mini series). Ah Mark Darcy :swoon:
 
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Aug 16, 2009
I have just obtained that version! The one with Rosalind Ehle and Colin Firth? I can't wait to watch it. I've seen the Keira Knightley version, which is good, and of course the Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson one, from about 1940, which is splendid. Olivier as a young man was drop-dead gorgeous and had a great ear for romantic comedy.
 

Mrs. P

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I have just obtained that version! The one with Rosalind Ehle and Colin Firth? I can't wait to watch it. I've seen the Keira Knightley version, which is good, and of course the Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson one, from about 1940, which is splendid. Olivier as a young man was drop-dead gorgeous and had a great ear for romantic comedy.

For me Colin Firth IS Mark Darcy. :biggrin:

My husband and I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" last night. It's fun for my husband because he actually works at a savings and loan. It's not as homey as the one in the movie -- but the whole scene where George Bailey says "your money is in so-and-so's house!" is quite true. It's quite an old school institution -- it didn't do the subprime lending when that was trendy and they don't sell their paper so you actually know who to talk to regarding your mortgage.

The DVD came with some featurettes. One interesting tidbit was that the movie was actually not very successful when it was released, but when the copyright holders failed to renew the rights accidentally in the 1970s, that's when television stations started airing it and got the status it now has today.
 

Dee4707

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I love Christmas Story and the 24 hour marathon of it.

I love the George C. Scott's Christmas Carol.

It's a Wonderful Life

Miracle on 34th Street

Last night they had Sound of Music on ...love it...though not a Christmas story.
 
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For me Colin Firth IS Mark Darcy. :biggrin:

My husband and I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" last night. It's fun for my husband because he actually works at a savings and loan. It's not as homey as the one in the movie -- but the whole scene where George Bailey says "your money is in so-and-so's house!" is quite true. It's quite an old school institution -- it didn't do the subprime lending when that was trendy and they don't sell their paper so you actually know who to talk to regarding your mortgage.

The DVD came with some featurettes. One interesting tidbit was that the movie was actually not very successful when it was released, but when the copyright holders failed to renew the rights accidentally in the 1970s, that's when television stations started airing it and got the status it now has today.

I love the way TV, video, and DVD have given so many movies a second life. I'm glad all the principal actors were still alive when things turned around, so they could bask in the affection that fans had for the film.

Tell Mr. P. it's great to hear about an institution like his. I know someone on another site whose mother worked for a credit union, and that's another good kind of savings institution. They stay "within the fold," so everyone knows who's involved.
 

iluvtodd

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We've seen "White Christmas" as the musical and the movie. Really liked both!
 
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