zed

Merry Christmas, Christy. Grinch with Jim Carrey always pulls me in.

“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” Makes you howl with laughter, and also brings a tear to the eye…

Merry Christmas.

Every Christmas Eve we watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

It gets me every damned time.

Christmas Holiday, Brazil, Gremlins, Lady in the Lake, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Eyes Wide Shut, Je Vous Salue Marie, Remember the Night, Comfort and Joy, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

I have to admit I was Bourne again last night.

The Ultimatum.

:)

Wow. 3rd time I’ve watched it since buying the 3-volume box set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related

I posted this downstairs, but it’s worth another go-round. Oddly (snark) you rarely hear this in the US.I guess it’s just us cynical Brits who enjoy this kind of thing. Then again, “Bad Santa” is one of my favourite Xmas movies.

Away in a Manger.

Enjoy.

(That’s our friend Cleto Escobedo III singing lead on the 2nd verse. He’s now the MD for the Jimmy Kimmel Show.)

I haven’t seen any of those yet. May or may not check them out :)

Two days ago I got “Bender’s Big Score” as an early Christmas gift. I watched it that evening and then the next day I watched most of it (with commentary) again while working out.

I’m not sure if the commentary or the movie is funnier, but they were both awesome.

Good morning Christy. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

I’ve been sitting alone at the bottom of the old thread as the “new post” flag never popped up. Glad to find you all up here!

Boston Camerata christmas musicks as well as Giraldi’s Charlie Brown one. Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. Blackadder’s A Christmas Carol. SCTV and All Creatures Great and Small Christmas specials. Babe (Christmas means carnage!). Bless Me Father Christmas episode.

merry xmas firepups…hope all are having a blessed day…my fave xmas movie? hmmm right now? its a wonderful life..

Chocolate

What do you mean, chocolate is not a food group? (a sign once in Mom’s Kitchen)

Cards from heaven have dead man talking (AP)
from Yahoo! News
AP – Even in death, Chet Fitch is a card. Fitch, known for his sense of humor, died in October at age 88 but gave his friends and family a start recently: Christmas cards, 34 of them, began arriving written in his hand with a return address of “Heaven.”

Miracle on 34th Street

I was sittin’ around the single-wide (:o) ) last night, tryin’ to work up a little Christmas spirit, listenin’ to the local Country FM station here in Myrtle Beach, and playin’ along with my new Guild. It wasn’t bluegrass; different tempos; different, and chordier, progressions…but it made me think, and made me jump back and forth from “natural” to capo, and jump fast, Like I was playin’ with Monroe. :o)

Anyhoo, it was mostly shlock, but their playlist had the occasional keeper on it, surprisingly.

Some singer whose voice I didn’t know, covered that old song “Santa Baby”, about Kris needin’ to get down the chimney in a hurry, so’s to take care of the “stocking stuffing” duty. :o)

Decades ago, Eartha Kitt did a smokin’ hot version of it, that got banned on a LOT of stations. :o) That was fun to hear.

Then, Dolly got into an up-tempo “I’ll be home for Christmas with bells on” that BEGGED for some good, hard-driving scruggs-style banjo work.
(I stayed with the guitar. :o) )

Last, and best, was Alan Jackson with:

“It’s gonna be a honky-tonk Christmas”

LOVED IT! Big ol’ Nashville roadhouse-slap-fest, with salty, twangy, country guitar, and Alan nailed it. :o)

I’m gonna find the CD it’s on and get it, just for next year. :o)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, y’all. :o)

By the way, has anyone claimed ZEN this thread yet?

The Bourne movies are the ultimate popcorn flicks. The latest is the most intense thing I’ve ever seen. The average edit length has gotta be maybe a second. The sheer amount of work they put into those films is just amazing.

Growing up in Detroit, I *never* saw It’s a Wonderful Life until moving to Chicago in my 20s.
It is brilliant.
But my childhood memories are of Miracle on 34th Street

“Donovan’s Reef” is my favorite christmas movie, even if Christmas is not the theme. It is al early ’60s paen devoted to being anti-racism.

My favorite Christmas song is “Please Come Home For Christmas,” played by Lee Roy Parnell and the Hot Links. Written by Charles Brown, but Lee Roy and the guys really made that song come to life for me. Another favorite song, though not truly Christmas-themed, is “If We Make It Through December” by Merle Haggard.

Frosty The Snowman Leon Redbone and Dr John

That is way cool.

and for CTuttle Mele Kalikimaka Jimmy Buffett

Feliz Navidad with a twist.

Silent Night, punk style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMIC48lXHY

The only Christmas music I own is Leon Redbone, Jimmy Buffett and a couple of the I think it is Special Olympics fund raiser CDs

Someone has to say ”Fairytale of New York” even if the Crooked Timber thread was full of this song.

fave xmas music?….now behold the lamb – kirk franklin, sleigh ride – ronettes, winter wonderland – darlene love

My mother loved watching old movies on cable as we decorated the tree and wrapped presents. So my favorites are “The Bishop’s Wife,” “Christmas in Connecticut,” “Holiday Inn,” and “White Christmas.” I also loved the Rankin Bass specials of my childhood. “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” is a good example. Oh, and to me, the Grinch will always be Boris Karloff.

My favorite TV episode of a series was the West Wing episode where Toby tries to get a proper burial for a homeless Korean war vet who died on a park bench wearing an overcoat that Toby donated to Goodwill. It was the first season of West Wing and the title of the episode was “In Excelsis Deo.” The final montage brings me to tears every single time.

God Rest Ye Merry Hermanos.

Lead vocal by Lenny Lopez, arrangement by Dave Richardson, brass by The Fat City Horns.

Feliz Navidad.

My favorite TV episode of a series was the West Wing episode where Toby tries to get a proper burial for a homeless Korean war vet who died on a park bench wearing an overcoat that Toby donated to Goodwill. It was the first season of West Wing and the title of the episode was “In Excelsis Deo.” The final montage brings me to tears every single time.

Me too. I remember that one.

That’s great! Thanks!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ent…..101207.stm

Lessee…Aside from Good Ol’ Chuck, I particularly like the animated Grinch (Stink! Stank! Stunk!) and Berkeley Breathed’s A Wish For Wings That Work, which was finally released officially this year (yay!).

For songs, still can’t beat The Waitresses’ Christmas Rapping and Dan Fogelberg’s Same Old Lang Syne.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation! With Juliette Lewis as the daughter and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the next door neighbor Margo.

So This Is Christmas- John Lennon. Someone did a video with pictures of war torn kids. It will rip your heart to shreds. Sorry, not link literate.

Oh Happy Day. Merry whatever to all!

Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto – Tell them James Brown sent you..)

CSPAN junkie alert.. Russ Feingold on now.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation! so funny. Now THAT was a war on Christmas.

http://www.virginmedia.com/mus…..ork_hi.php

The Beatles do “Stairway to Heaven”.

http://and-still-i-persist.com…..to-heaven/

Sorry linkie title didn’t work

Pogues – Fairytale of New York.

I caught a part of The Bells of St. Mary’s last night with Fr. Bing and Sister Ingrid. She is such a beautiful woman.

Jose Feliciano, Feliz Navidad

amd I’m Father Flannigan of Boys Town!

What to expect if Huckabee is elected president;

http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/365/…..c-1981.mp3

The Carol of the Bells

This version is from the Trans_Siberian Orchestra and has a really cute video with a little girl and a kitten. I also like David Foster’s version alot

And there’s always

Band Aid

Here’s a cleared version of

Band Aid

I’m not a saccharin kind of guy – but happy endings are ok. The darn near perfect movie is The Ref, with Scrooged a close second.

This one’s off Redbone’s Christmas Island cd. The Pixar vid is fun to watch even though it has nothing to do w/the holiday. Leon’s version of “Christmas Ball Blues” is great:

Leon Redbone- Christmas Ball Blues

Merry Christmas, Christy, Jane and all. Haven’t visited here the past several days. so much going on. Manheim Steamroller’s “O Come Emmanuel” is a favorite, and on the ligher side, Robert Earl Keen’s “Merry Christmas From the Family.”

We sang Messiah all last week, and this is my favorite part.

Masaccio I love singing that. Thanks for the vid.

My favorite Christmas Song:
Please Come Home for Christmas

Please Come Home for Christmas

Happy Christmas to you all from a heathen!
My favorite xmas films: Miracle on 34th Street, The Shop Around the Corner, The Grinch, Die Hard, and this xmas, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. Enjoy!

The entire album, “A Very Shut-Ins Christmas”, is a keeper. If you can listen to the Shut-Ins without cracking up, you need professional help.

I put this in the wrong thread:

Given that this is the 4th Christmas where our troops have been in Iraq while the chickenhawks, and particularly the guy who skipped out on his duties with the Texas National Guard while others of this age were getting killed and maimed in a war he claimed to support, who put them there have remained safe at home, the most appropriate movie scene with a Christmas song appears in Carl Foreman’s 1963 film “The Victors.” As “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” plays on the soundtrack, a G.I. is led across a snowy field and shot by an American firing squad, presumably for desertion. It is perhaps no surprise that “The Victors”, despite being a major all-star production with a roadshow release, has never been released on VHS or, to date, DVD, and is only available in low quality bootleg copies.

For movies that you can see, the best Xmas scene for Christmas 2007 appears in Stalag 17, where Ross Bagdasarian, who a few years later would inflict upon the world “Alvin and Chipmunks,” sang Harry Archer’s “I Love You” while his fellow captured airmen celebrate the holiday. What makes this scene especially effective today is its context: even though the film’s creators had no reason to portray the Nazis in a favorable light — the writers had been recent residents of a POW camp, and the director (Billy Wilder) had lost his mother, grandmother, and stepfather at Auschwitz) in “Stalag 17″ the Nazis recognize the Geneva convention and allow inspectors from the Red Cross to visit and to hear the barracks chiefs’ complaint that another POW may be being tortured that very moment. It’s a sad commentary on how far we’ve sunk that Nazis in World War II come across better than Americans in the GWOT.

I apologize if others have made similar comments before this appears in the thread, but getting my first comment on firedoglake since its “improvement” has been more complicated than breaking into Fort Knox.

Now that I’ve got a second chance, let me add something about Carl Foreman’s impossible-to-see 1963 war film, “The Victors.” (Maybe someone in the Firedoglake family who’s a biggie at a studio can see about getting this film released on DVD.) “The Victors” also contains a scene that showcases an aspect of The Greatest Generation that I’ve never seen highlighted elsewhere, even in films by WWII footsoldier Sam Fuller or in documentaries, like the recent one by Ken Burns, that touch upon the disgraceful treatment of African-Americans during World War II: Black G.I.s are assaulted and severely beaten by white GIs for having the audacity to enter a bar where whites are drinking, after which a Brit who witnessed this racist attack asks a white GI something like — I’m relying on my memory of a December 1963 viewing — “Why are you doing this? Aren’t you all Americans” and receives no answer.

When Firedoglake returns to the FISA, I’ll return to the subject of Foreman and “High Noon,” a film that many a male politician thinks is the story of his life, and why only Chis Dodd is entitled this belief.

Meanwhile, a Merry Christmas to those who created the best political blog, plus their peanut and/or poodles!

I spent the afternoon watching Joyeux Noel I highly recommend it, especially during wartime.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays everyone. I have many favorite films but my favorite Christmas movie is one I saw long ago and have not seen since. It starts out in the winter near to Christmas time and it’s called “Tomorrow”. Based on a William Faulkner story and a Horton Foote play and starring Robert Duvall, one of the greatest American actors IMHO, it takes place in the south about a generation or two after the Civil War. A poor farmer finds a pregnant woman who has collapsed in the snow…….

I was wrong in my post above about the Christmas song that played on the soundtrack of “The Victors” during the Christmas Eve execution of a young G.I. Contrary to my memory from a December 1963 viewing, the song was not “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” but Christy’s favorite, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” sung by Frank Sinatra, who, unlike the kid in the movie who was being shot for desertion, had managed to keep himself out of uniform.