Mainlining Christmas

Well, that's certainly not what I expected. As a rule of thumb, animated adaptations of A Christmas Carol with runtimes between an hour and an hour and a half tend to be pretty by the numbers, as far as the scripts are concerned. Occasionally they'll toss in an animal companion, but the basic story almost always sticks to the source material. I've seen quite of these now, and all follow more or less the same formula. Until now. This one is... it's weird. Really, really weird. Let's back up. This is a British animated movie released direct to video in the US. To the limited degree it's remembered, it's due to the relatively impressive cast, which features Kate Winslet, Michael Gambon, Rhys Ifans, and Nicholas Cage, among others. Simon Callow voices Scrooge and plays Charles Dickens in live-action segments at the start and end, a role he'd reprise on Doctor Who a few years later. It's also worth noting this is directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, who made Th

Revised 2/21/23: The HarperCollins strike is over! A new contract has been ratified, and this belated review is now public. The Afterlife of Holly Chase Cynthia Hand, 2017 How do I describe this book? For starters, I read it as part of this year's Christmas Carol project, and it's both the farthest from the original and the most respectful of it in a certain light. Holly is a spoiled, mean, shallow rich kid at 17, when she's subject to her own three-spirits Christmas haunting. Being a modern teenager instead of an elderly gentleman, she declares the whole thing idiotic and ignores it. Then she's hit by a car and dies. But Holly gets a chance to redeem herself after all, because the Scrooge Project, an odd hybrid of nonprofit corporation and supernatural society, hires a few actual ghosts as part of their team. So Holly becomes the Ghost of Christmas Past. Every year, the team member with foresight picks a Scrooge - someone who is a bad person but could do a lot of good

I have no idea whether or not you'll be able to watch this movie by the time we post this review. Lindsay and I stumbled across this on Amazon Prime a while back. It looked like a weird take on A Christmas Carol, so we decided to check it out. As the credits rolled... well, that's actually one of the reasons I suspect you're not going to be able to watch this. It's not that the credits are particularly unusual: the majority are indistinguishable from a typical Hollywood movie's. It's just that the typical Hollywood movie they are indistinguishable from is specifically the 2019 film, Angel Has Fallen. Once Carol's Christmas runs through its actual cast and crew, it just sort of runs a chunk of credits from Angel Has Fallen. I should note they don't start at the beginning of Angel Has Fallen's credits: they start with the stunt performers. I took a picture: I have no idea if this was some sort of mistake (i.e.: if they uploaded the wrong file, perhaps

Part of me thinks it's odd this slipped through the cracks for so long. As far as I can tell, it's the first Looney Tunes TV Christmas special, and it features some huge names in animation (Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Mel Blanc). On that level, it feels like this is something that should be important. Or at least it does until you watch it. It's not that this is bad - I'd describe two of the three segments as "fine" and the third as "pretty good" - but there's nothing in here that makes it feel bigger or more memorable than three random Looney Tunes shorts. And the one segment that might have left an impact, Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol, was supplanted four years later by the far superior Disney film with a similar premise. After a brief (though maybe not brief enough) intro sequence with Looney Tunes characters caroling, the special moves on to its spin on A Christmas Carol. This does actually feel like a transition between Mr. Magoo'

I watched and "reviewed" this back in 2011 , but those quotes are there for a reason. This is far from the only version of A Christmas Carol I'm revisiting as part of this year's project. I didn't much care for this when I last saw it, but I've seen some endorsements online and decided it was worth giving it another shot, if only to add some depth to the snarky, uninformative diatribe I wrote eleven years ago. I'll start by saying the re-watch didn't improve my opinion much, though there were a handful of good moments and aspects I failed to credit the first time around. I'll get around to those in a bit. First, let's do something else I apparently didn't feel was relevant in 2011 and actually describe the damn special. Bah, Humduck! is a homage/parody of A Christmas Carol featuring Looney Tunes characters as versions of themselves. This of course differs from versions where established characters are playing the actual characters of A Chri

This should be a short write-up, as the movie in question isn't actually a movie. Instead, this is a recorded performance of a concert version of A Christmas Carol. To be clear "concert" means this is written for a chorus, symphony, and a handful of actors playing multiple parts. The recorded version is from a 2013 staging recorded in Illinois. There are a few props and a minimalist set, but the focus is on the music.  So let's start there. Fortunately, the score is quite good overall. The concert involves a number of different styles, though the bulk feels like a blend of rock opera and classical music. That's an interesting approach to the material, and it works well. The last song is less successful: it changes direction and goes for southern gospel. I understand the logic here, but it feels too different tonally to work with the rest of the music. I also think it clashes with the story in a way the rest of the music doesn't. Note everything above reference

I almost skipped over this one. It's one of several produced in part by Hallmark Entertainment, and I haven't been particularly impressed with the others I've seen from them. And while I want to see as many adaptations as humanly possible, the reality is there are a lot  of these out there. Since it's impossible to see them all, I've been prioritizing the best regarded, then mixing in as many that seem notable or unusual as possible. On the surface, this one seemed pretty unremarkable, and I hadn't come across any diehard fans or proponents.  It stars Kelsey Grammer, who has a less than stellar track record for choosing Christmas movies, and an even worse record when it comes to this particular story . On top of that, I'm not a fan of the guy as a person (his politics are awful, and - before anyone asks - given how bad the world's gotten, I absolutely think it's fair to let that factor into your opinion of a celebrity). All that said, he's certa

The Last of the Spirits Chris Preistly, 2015 As I continue my dive into Christmas-Carol-adjacent novels, I found this oddity. I guess it's supposed to be for kids? The author seems to specialize in kid's horror, although the books advertised in the back looked like adult novels? For me this one rode an odd line. It's not that it's bad; it just seems so superfluous.   The book invents a young protagonist, Sam. Sam and his younger sister are living on the street in London due to a complex series of catastrophes. One night, Sam is so angered by the idea that some people (Scrooge) have so much when he has so little that he decides he wants to steal from him, or possibly kill him and steal from him.  However, before this can happen, Sam and his sister fall asleep in a nearby graveyard and are accidentally drawn into the world of the spirits, witnessing all of the events of A Christmas Carol. Sam is simultaneously granted his own visions of the past and of the future if he co

Netflix's new animated version of A Christmas Carol isn't a direct adaptation of the source material, but rather a loose remake of the 1970 theatrically released musical, Scrooge . When I first found out this was coming out, I was baffled as to why anyone would opt to do this. The book is public domain, so the only real reason to pay for the rights would be to gain access to the songs, which are - in my opinion, at least - among the movie's weaker aspects. There are also a handful of deviations from the source material made in the musical, but I found it hard to believe these would be appealing enough to warrant using it as a template. Perhaps the makers of this agreed, because the largest deviations are altered or removed and the songs are trimmed back, reimagined, and almost as often as not replaced with new versions. Further, the music here is secondary: I didn't try and time it, but I'd roughly estimate singing compromises between a quarter and a third of the ru

Spirited is one of the best movies based on A Christmas Carol ever made. I want to get that out of the way upfront, before we even get to what it is or what it's about. This is a fantastic musical adventure/comedy you should absolutely watch, and there's no reason to temper the experience with spoilers. So, if you're subscribed to Apple TV+, now's the time to stop reading and start watching. And if you're not subscribed, now's the time to remember they offer free one-week trials you can cancel before paying a cent. Okay, I'm assuming anyone still reading has already watched Spirited, so let's move on to the spoiler portion, beginning with something that's not really a spoiler at all. This isn't an adaptation of A Christmas Carol - it's a sequel. Also, weirdly, it starts with a virtually identical premise to a Hallmark movie released this year, Ghosts of Christmas Always . Both films are primarily centered on the ghosts, with Christmas Present

At the moment of writing this, I've seen around three dozen adaptations of A Christmas Carol this year, and while there are numerous aspects that vary from one to another, there's one mistake virtually every version I've come across shares. As you can probably guess from the title, the aspect in question relates to Scrooge himself, specifically in how he's presented at the beginning of the story. With few exceptions, he's depicted as comically mean, a cartoonishly greedy, self-centered man who cares nothing for others. He isn't merely a bad person, but rather he's presented as the worst  human being, the absolute epitome of materialistic excess. And, as odd as it may sound, I think that depiction is a mistake. I don't believe that's at all an accurate representation of the character as he behaves in Dickens's novel. If you're familiar with the book, you're probably confused right now - or perhaps you think I'm confused. You're lik