Christmas Films On DVD
'Tis the season for the Christmas movie... Around this time of year Hollywood
studios start cranking out their Yuletide 'product' in the hopes of cashing in
on audiences battening down for their own annual family shindigs.
It's not just a recent phenomenon – even the early Silent Era of cinema had its
fare share of Christmas-themed movies, such as Edwin S. Porter's Santa Claus
short, The Night Before Christmas (1906), Thomas Edison's production of A
Christmas Accident (1912), and D.W. Griffith's melancholy tale of woe from
1909, A Trap For Santa.
Fast-forward a few decades to one of the most iconic and enduring Christmas
films, Frank Capra's
It's A Wonderful Life (1946). Starring the wonderful
Jimmy Stewart, perhaps it was the fact that he had just returned from
WWII that gave him the skill to make his conflcited George Bailey character so
convincing.
Stewart's first
film in five years was his third – and last - with legendary director
Capra. Together they created one of the greatest Christmas-themed films
ever, largely for its simple message; don't get greedy and live for the moment.
That same year came Christmas In Connecticut (1945), a screwball Christmas
comedy featuring Barbara
Stanwyck. She played Elizabeth Lane, a magazine food writer pretending
to be a down home country cook to her readers. (Really she's a New York
sophisticate who doesn't know her way round a kitchen).
Her secret is threatened with exposure when her editor tells Elizabeth to host
a special Christmas at home 'on the farm' for a WWII sailor. It's fake it or be
found out! Reportedly Stanwyck's
character was 'inspired by' real-life Family Circle writer Gladys Taber from
Connecticut. (A made-for-TV remake hit the small screen in 1992, directed by
“The Governator”, Arnold Schwarzennegger. It's a shocker..)
One of the craziest Christmas movies for kids has to be
The Grinch (2000), the live action adaptation of Dr. Seuss's classic
book about a monster who steals Christmas. Directed by
Ron Howard and starring manic comedian
Jim Carrey, it's hard to think of another actor with better acting
chops to pull off this role of the snitchy Grinch.
Carrey sails between Oscar The
Grinch and Karl Marx, cheeky and cruel, churlish and downright
depressed. Narrated by Anthony Hopkins, it's filled with good humour for all
ages and a refreshing lack of cheap sentiment.
To round it all off let's travel back to this time last year and the release of
The Family Stone (2005). This has to be one of the funniest
representations of the trials and tribulations of the 'family Christmas' ever
committed to film.
In her first post-Sex & The City role,
Sarah Jessica Parker plays an uptight city girl about to face her first
Christmas with her boyfriend's family in leafy Connecticut. They turn out to be
a handful and a half.
Diane Keaton plays
fierce Stone matriarch Sybil, while
Luke Wilson stoner brother Ben. If Christmas isn't your favourite time
of year, treat yourself to a great present by watching this little gem of a
movie.
- Megan
Megan Spencer has spent way too much of her life in the dark, all for a good
cause though - watching movies as a professional film critic. For the last six
and a half years she has been serving the ever-increasing hunger for film and
DVD reviews as radio triple j's resident film critic, and a year ago joined the
new line up of long-running SBS-TV film review program, The Movie Show.
Every now and then she pops up into the light to make her own films,
documentaries (her latest is 'Fantastic Brutality', a documentary about an
obsessed wrestling fan, to be released next year). She has also written about
film for many publications including J-Mag, Limelight, Inside Film Magazine and
the Age Green Guide.
And the impossible question to ask a film critic: what's her favourite film?
"Blue Velvet would be at the top of the list, so would Fight Club... But then
again American In Paris makes me cry every time."
Megan has also been part of the Foxtel's Project Greenlight Australia as an
on-air panelist and judge.
