My Favorite Versions of “A Christmas Carol”

Posted on December 19, 2012 at 8:00 am

My favorite Christmas story is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and I enjoy as many versions as possible every year. I love it in just about any of its movie incarnations. “Bah, humbugs” have been muttered by Scrooges played by top-notch dramatic actors like George C. Scott and Albert Finney, former Miss America Vanessa Williams, former Fonzie Henry Winkler, former Ace Ventura Jim Carrey, and former “Saturday Night Live” star Bill Murray. I love them all. I’ve already listened to the Tim Curry and Jim Dale audio versions available on Audible.com, both delightful. And I have the book, of course, with wonderful illustrations by Ronald Searle.

Here are my very favorite versions on film and I try to watch each of them every year.

5. “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” Who better to play Scrooge than his namesake Scrooge McDuck? And who better for the part of the unquenchable Bob Cratchit than Mickey Mouse? This compilation DVD includes other Christmas goodies “The Small One” and “Pluto’s Christmas Tree.”

4. “The Muppet Christmas Carol” has the distinguished actor Michael Caine as Scrooge and the equally distinguished Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit. Special mention of A Sesame Street Christmas Carol as well.

3. “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” The voice talent is outstanding, with Broadway star Jack Cassidy (father of teen idols David and Shaun) as Bob Cratchit and of course Jim Backus as Mr. Magoo, in this version an actor playing the part of Scrooge. The tuneful songs were written by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne, who later went on to write “Funny Girl.” (The legend is that their song “People” was originally written for this movie.)

2. “A Christmas Carol” This MGM classic features the top stars of the 1930’s. Watch for future “Lassie” star June Lockhart as one of the Cratchit children — her real-life father Gene Lockhart played Bob. (He also appears in another Christmas classic, as the judge inMiracle on 34th Street.) Reginald Owen plays Scrooge and this one has my favorite Fred, Barry MacKay. I love Dickens’ description of Fred’s laugh: “If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.”

1. “A Christmas Carol” This is the all-time best, with the inimitable Alistair Sim as Scrooge. There has never been a more embittered miser or a more jubilent Christmas morning rebirth. When he orders that turkey for the Cratchits and walks into his nephew’s celebration at the end, everything Dickens hoped for from his story is brought to life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWdJ1EXf5zo

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Posted on December 13, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended fantasy violence and peril with swords and arrows, characters injured and killed, scary monsters
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	December 14, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	November 4, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00E8S2JZ4

As the second in the Hobbit trilogy is about to be released, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition). Director Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth for this “Lord of the Rings” prequel, the adventure of young Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit we meet in the LoTR trilogy as the middle-aged uncle of the heroic Frodo. We see many familiar faces, especially Ian McKellan as the wizard Gandalf, the sepulchral Christopher Lee as Saruman, Cate Blanchett as the ethereal Galandriel, Hugo Weaving as the regally gracious Elrond, and Andy Serkis plus CGI as Gollum, and the now-familiar but still marvelously eye-filling New Zealand locations.What is most different here is that Jackson has doubled the frames-per-second for a new hyper-clarity. The 24 frames per second standard that has been in effect since the beginning of the sound era has been upped to 48, giving the film a depth of detail that is so fresh it can be a little unsettling. We subconsciously associate the quality of light and focus with the video used for news programs and lower-budget sitcoms (think of the difference between the indoor and outdoor scenes in the old “Monty Python” episodes), so it can take a while to get used to it in a richly imagined fantasy, especially when close-ups reveal the pores of a character’s skin like a magnifying mirror at a department store makeup counter and the quality of light seems chillier and more sterile. We get so much visual information that it takes a while to re-calibrate our ability to separate the meaningful from the superfluous.

It does not help that Jackson himself seems to miss the forest of the story for the literal trees. Blowing out the shortest and most accessible of the books to a projected trilogy of nearly nine hours suggests that Jackson has fallen so in love with the project that he has lost touch with what it feels like not to be completely obsessed with it. Of course, he is enabled by the intensity of the fans, who are famously dedicated to every leaf, twig, and Elvish declension. But he seems to have lost track of the thread of the story and dulled his sense of how to communicate with those who are not as deeply involved with the story as he is. He glosses over the important discussion of Bilbo’s two competing heritages, one open to adventure, one devoted to home and hearth, which makes it hard to understand why he changes his mind about accepting Gandalf’s challenge. Since it is a prequel, we are all familiar with the destructive power of the One Ring to Rule Them All, which makes it confusing when we see it 60 years earlier as a simple and benign invisibility ring. Meanwhile, it takes all of 40 minutes before Bilbo leaves his house as what should have been a 10-minute scene about the unexpected arrival of a bunch of rowdy dwarves is expanded to include two different musical numbers. And yet, it still does not give us enough of a sense of who the individual dwarves are.

The action scenes are filled with vitality and dynamically staged, but the film assumes a commitment and understanding on our part that it has not earned. In a story about a quest of honor, that is an unexpected disappointment.

Parents should know that this film includes many battle sequences and scenes of peril, scary monsters, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images, smoking, drinking, and some potty humor.

Family discussion: Why did Bilbo decide to join the adventure? Why did Gandalf pick him? Why didn’t Gandalf use his powers to help the dwarves sooner?

If you like this, try: The book by J.R.R. Tolkien and the “Lord of the Rings” films

Red Dawn

Posted on November 20, 2012 at 5:58 pm

There was much to improve in the original version of “Red Dawn,” a simple-minded fantasy film about a communist invasion of small town America: the plot, which asked us to believe that Cuban and Soviet invaders would focus their attention on subduing the teenage population of a town with no military significance; the dialogue, which was hilariously wooden; the special effects (the bad guys tracked our heroes using a locator that appears to have been borrowed from a 1930s Flash Gordon serial); the acting (despite a cast of future stars such as Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, the original “Red Dawn” left the actors little to do except shoot guns and emote in their mountain hideouts); the production values (unseen artillery and aircraft shelled a lone tank in the middle of a vacant field with what appeared to be firecrackers). In fact, everything about the original “Red Dawn” had a childlike simplicity that made it endearing to audiences.

The plot of the new “Red Dawn” mimics the original in most respects. Members of the Wolverines, a high school football team, refuse to surrender to or collaborate with the invaders (this time from Asia) the way many of their disappointing parents do. They take to the hills, learn to fight and inspire a resistance movement. Along the way they learn lessons about loyalty, patriotism, and the price of the freedoms we all hold dear. Older brother Jed Eckert is played by Chris Hemsworth (Thor from “The Avengers”) while younger brother Matty Eckert is played by Josh Peck. The obligatory girlfriend who looks hot in guerrilla garb is played by Adrianne Palicki.

MGM looked at the original formula and decided that if it was going to upgrade just one ingredient, it would be the quality of the explosions. No firecrackers here, the new and improved “Red Dawn” has serious explosions and gunfire. A residential neighborhood is blown up with high definition digital effects. First time director Dan Bradley was previously a stunt coordinator and it shows. We see house to house gunfights that look and sound authentic. The new version uses realistic blood, rather than the Heinz ketchup favored by the producers of the original.

The problem is, this change in the formula disrupts the equilibrium that gave the original its charm. Every element of the original was equally unpersuasive. By making bullets more persuasive, Bradley only highlights the dumbnicity of the rest.

Worse, the new Red Dawn is a less kind movie. Along with the more realistic violence, there is more drinking and profanity. Unfortunately, the dialogue that is supposed to glue these elements together remains as insubstantial as the dialogue in the cartoonish original. (Says the young guerrilla leader: “We have to make it too hard and too difficult for them.”) One other change — the Soviet Union no longer being available as invaders, this film substituted the Chinese when it was shot a few years ago until the distributors who ended up with it after the first group ran out of money figured out that Chinese people constitute a very big audience for films, preferably ones that don’t make them the bad guys. So, the Chinese invaders were digitally altered to make them North Korean.

The new “Red Dawn” is slicker than the original but it lacks the heart that was the only redeeming feature of the first version. It is a meaner production, and probably not worth your time unless you go for the explosions, which are pretty good.

Parents should know that this film has extensive and sometimes graphic images of battle with guns and explosions, fighting, with characters injured and killed, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Why did some parents instruct their children to cooperate with the invaders? What made some people in the town choose to resist? What would be the hardest thing for you about fighting the invaders? How were the Wolverines like our founding fathers?

If you like this, try: the original 1984 version starring Patrick Swayze

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Action/Adventure Remake War

Anna Karenina

Posted on November 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Director Joe Wright and his favorite star, Kiera Knightley (“Pride and Prejudice,” “Atonement”) have produced a ravishing, highly theatrical version of Leo Tolstoy’s classic “Anna Karenina.” It is deeply romantic but has more focus on the social and political context than many of the previous versions of the story. It literally opens with the rise of a curtain over a grand proscenium stage, and throughout the film the story flickers from movie-style reality — not documentary but an integrated dramatic narrative — to something resembling a live production of a play or ballet. At one intensely dramatic moment, the story literally and metaphorically spills over the edge of the stage for a shocking denouement.

Anna (Knightley) is a young mother married to the stiff but not unfeeling husband Karanin (Jude Law). He cares for her but is very caught up in legislative and governance issues. When we first see her, Anna is preparing to leave her home in St. Petersburg to go to the aid of her brother, Stiva (Knightley’s “Pride and Prejudice” co-star Matthew MacFadyen) and his pregnant wife, Dolly (“Boardwalk Empire’s” Kelly Macdonald), who is devastated when she learns he has been having an affair with the governess. Anna hopes she can help the couple reconcile. And she is not unhappy about spending time in Moscow, going to parties and concerts and mingling with members of society.

There she meets the dashing officer Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass” and “Savages”). Vronsky is a bit spoiled by a life in which everything has come easily to him — good looks, money, women. He is flirting with Dolly’s sister, an innocent young princess named Kitty (an excellent Alicia Vikander). Stiva’s close friend Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), a shy but true-hearted landowner, loves Kitty. He proposes, but, believing Vronsky will ask her to marry him, Kitty turns down Levin’s proposal. Vronsky has just been flirting with Kitty. He is drawn to Anna. She is drawn to him, and returns home to put some distance between them. He pursues her, and finally, she is overcome. Besotted by him, she is overcome in every way, breaking every rule, ignoring every convention, the freedom as heady as the romance.

Like too many lovers before her, she believes that love is enough, that the world will support her, that nothing else matters. She once counseled Dolly to rise above Stiva’s infidelity. But she does not have any sympathy for Karanin’s humiliation or any gratitude for his willingness to stand by her, even when she is pregnant with Vronsky’s child. Vronsky genuinely cares for her and does his best but he is out of his league. When Anna realizes that society has no place for her anymore, she is devastated. Tolstoy’s focus on the reunited Levin and Kitty, far from the glittering parties and gossip, contrasts the hypocrisy, artificiality, and sterility of the upper class with the authenticity and humanity of the people who work the earth and care for the sick.

Wright has a magnificent gift for images and a remarkable fluidity of camera movement (remember that bravura sustained shot on the beach in “Atonement”), all used in service of the story and characters. The camera circles as the story does, with rings of parallel but contrasting stories. Watch Anna’s costumes, elaborate, constricting at first and then simpler. In the midst of her passion for Vronsky, they both wear white, as though they are removed from the rest of the world. Later, she’s swathed in black. Watch for images of omens, and images that compare or contrast the human world and the animal world, the fake and the real. By embracing the artificiality of the form, Wright illuminates not just Anna’s anguish but Tolstoy’s vision.

Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and situations with some explicit images and suicide and a brief shot of a mutilated body. Characters drink and abuse alcohol and drugs and there are tense and unhappy confrontations.

Recommendation: Mature teens-Adults

Family discussion: Tolstoy famously begins this book by saying that all happy families are alike but each unhappy family is different in its own way. Do you agree? How does the theatricality of the setting affect the story?

If you like this, try: the other versions of the story, especially the movies with Greta Garbo and Jacqueline Bisset, and the book by Tolstoy

Frankenweenie

Posted on October 4, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for thematic elements, scary images, and action
Profanity:	Schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Ghoulish horror images and some peril
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	October 5, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	January 6, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAIIA8

Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein was a scientist who wanted to create life. Tim Burton’s Victor Frankenstein is a kid who just wants his dog back.

Writer/director and master of the macabre Burton first developed this idea in a 1984 live action short film that got him fired by Disney because it was too scary for children. Times have changed, and Disney came to Burton to ask him to develop a feature length remake in 3D stop-motion — and in black and white. Burton, who had worked in black and white (“Ed Wood”) and stop-motion animation (“The Corpse Bride,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas”) tells a deliciously ghoulish story with visual wit, panache and a lot of heart.

It is, after all, the story of a boy and his dog. Victor (Charlie Tahan) is a bit of a loner and his dog Sparky is his best friend. When Sparky is killed by a car, Victor decides to harness the power of lightning to try to bring him back to life. At first, it does not seem to work, but then Sparky’s tail starts wagging. And then it wags itself off. “I can fix that!” the happy Victor reassures his re-animated pet. It’s just a matter of a few quick stitches.

One of Victor’s classmates is Edgar “E” Gore (“The Middle’s” Atticus Shaffer), a mishappen but cheerful kid fascinated with creepy things. (His name is “E” Gore, get it?) He pressures Victor to tell him what happened and soon all the kids are trying their own experiments. And then, perhaps because their hearts are not as pure as Victor’s (they want to win the science fair), because they are not as careful and knowledgeable, or just old-fashioned hubris, that is when things begin to go terribly wrong.

This first-ever black and white stop-action animated film is a visual treat with dozens of witty details. I loved it when Sparky’s poodle doggie crush next door (they have a Pyramus and Thisbe-style fence between them) gets enough of an electronic jolt to give her fur white streaks in tribute to Elsa Lanchester’s iconic Bride of Frankenstein. Martin Landau, who won an Oscar in Burton’s “Ed Wood,” gives a delicious performance as Victor’s teacher. Burton’s own pleasure in the twisted and demented is evident in the comic grotesquery of the characters. One creepy little girl insists on seeing omens in her cat’s poop, and when Victor’s classmates try to appropriate his methods, things go bizarrely off-kilter. It does not reach the poetry of “A Nightmare Before Christmas,” but there are plenty of tricks and treats.

Parents should know that this film has ghoulish and macabre themes inspired by classic monster stories, children and adult characters in peril, a sad death of beloved pet, some potty humor, some violence and disturbing graphic images, and some schoolyard language.

Family discussion: How is this story most like the original “Frankenstein?” How is it most different? Which monster is the scariest and why? Why was it hard for Victor to make friends?

If you like this, try: “ParaNorman,” “Monster House,” “Beetlejuice,” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”