Tag: A Christmas Carol

MasterChugs Theater: ‘A Christmas Story’

Congratulations. If you’ve made it this far, you’re now reading about what is my absolute favorite Christmas movie of all time. And speaking of reading, let’s get on with the review.

For the uninitiated, A Christmas Story ranks as the best holiday movie ever, better than Scrooged, better than A Christmas Carol (pick a variety), better even than It’s a Wonderful Life. Based on the book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd, it’s a period piece set in roughly 1940, telling a series of vignettes about a young boy that’s 9 years old in the weeks leading up to Christmas. He faces down bullies, witnesses a dare match over whether a tongue will stick to a frozen metal pole, gets his mouth washed out with soap, and sees the holiday turkey devoured by dogs… and all he wants is a BB gun! But as everyone tells him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”

And with that line, the movie went down into the annals of pop culture. But, there’s more to the film than just quotable dialogue. What makes this film so good? Hit the jump to find out why.  Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘A Christmas Story’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooged’

Would Charles Dickens have written the movie Scrooge? No. Would he have written The Muppet Christmas Carol? Good lord no, and stab your eyes for even suggesting as such. Truth told, he probably would have written something like Scrooged, an 80s, greed-isn’t-good update of the Dickens classic. The wittiest satire of television since Network, Scrooged gives us Frank Cross, the “youngest president in the history of television,” a man who also happens to be the completely maniacal head of the IBC TV network. IBC’s holiday programming runs toward action flicks like The Night the Reindeer Died and cheesy variety shows like Bob Goulet’s Old-Fashioned Cajun Christmas. But Frank’s pièce de résistance is Scrooge, a live-from-around-the-world Christmas Eve special, featuring Buddy Hackett as the old skinflint, Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim, and a bevy of scantily clad, oh-so 80s Solid Gold Dancers.

“We’ll own Christmas,” Frank announces gleefully.

But will it own your heart? Hit the cut, true believers, to find out the answer to that question, along with why it’s the second of three traditional Christmas-time movies for me. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooged’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooged’

Ebenezer Scrooge saw no profit in Christmas. How quaint. Scrooge would have a field day today, taking advantage of the many ways to make a buck off the holiday and taking sentimental suckers for everything they’ve got. If Dickens were alive today, he’d probably write an even more potent Christmas Carol in which Scrooge doesn’t ignore Christmas but actively works to subvert it.

Would he have written Scrooge? No. Would he have written The Muppet Christmas Carol? Good lord no, and stab your eyes for even suggesting as such. Truth told, he probably would have written something like Scrooged, an 80s, greed-isn’t-good update of the Dickens classic. The wittiest satire of television since Network, Scrooged gives us Frank Cross, the “youngest president in the history of television,” a man who also happens to be the completely maniacal — and megalomaniacal — head of the IBC TV network. IBC’s holiday programming runs toward action flicks like The Night the Reindeer Died and cheesy variety shows like Bob Goulet’s Old-Fashioned Cajun Christmas. But Frank’s pièce de résistance is Scrooge, a live-from-around-the-world Christmas Eve special, featuring Buddy Hackett as the old skinflint, Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim, and a bevy of scantily clad, oh-so 80s Solid Gold Dancers.

“We’ll own Christmas,” Frank announces gleefully.

But will it own your heart? Hit the cut, true believers, to find out the answer to that question. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooged’

Charles Dickens is a huge jerk

We know you’ve been wondering it since you were a child, and the results are in. The answer is no, Oliver Twist would not have needed more gruel, thus asking for more would have been unlikely. Thus, he never would have been kicked out of his orphanage and set on an adventure filled with thieves and murderers eventually coming out on top and being reunited with relatives.

Take that, Dickens!

Just in time for Christmas, scientists figured out that recipes of gruel that have been lying around since the first have of the 1800s actually provided good nutritional value and had a pretty decent serving size. You may know Dickens’ work from his attempt to rob a famous magician of his stage name with his book David Copperfield.

Until recently, Dickens was regarded by historians as the creator of the modern Christmas. As recently as a few years ago, he was given credit for instilling the spirit of giving to others and creating the Victorian version of Christmas that spread throughout the Western world. Today, we know his Christmas books, A Christmas Carol in particular, were nothing more than communist propaganda.

Think about it, an old rich business owner against a worker who demands health benefits and paid vacation. Much less the fact that a welfare state must be created to support Tiny Tim, or the ghosts of Christmas, which are obviously Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooge (1951)’

When it comes to favorite Christmas tales on the screen, there are probably two. There’s no confusion about the first, because there is only one It’s a Wonderful Life. In fact, Frank Capra’s classic is so expertly wrought that no one has even attempted a big screen remake. The second is a little more problematic, because there have been many worthy takes on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Case in point, we’re actually going to take a look at a few of them this month. In 1984, George C. Scott humbugged to memorable effect in a made-for-TV adaptation. Albert Finney sang and danced his way through the title role of 1970’s Scrooge. Even Mr. Magoo, the Muppets, Blackadder, Captain Picard and Mickey Mouse have taken their shots (with varying degrees of success). But widely believed to be the best-loved and most-remembered version of A Christmas Carol has to be the 1951 edition of Scrooge, with the inimitable Alastair Sim as London’s cruelest miser.

Sim, a veteran of British stage and screen, started his motion picture career in the mid-’30s and ended it in the early-’70s. In between, he appeared in over fifty films, but the role that has given him true immortality is that of Scrooge. Sim is not just one of many actors to play the part — for everyone who has seen the crisply-made black-and-white production, he is the definitive Scrooge. Everyone else, from George C. Scott to Bill Murray, is an impostor. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Scrooge (1951)’