What is your Favorite Christmas Movie or TV Special?

[CensoredAlso]

I was so proud of the Animaniacs doing their own Nativity story.

The Christmas Toy is one of my most favorite Christmas specials of all time. I ever watched it when it wasn't the holidays.

 

[wwfpooh]

There was also this Animaniacs Christmas episode where the Warners were dressed as shepherds and they came to the manger where they met Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. And they sang the song of the Little Drummer Boy. That was a really beautiful heartwarming episode.

That segment, entitled "Little Drummer Warners" is coupled with the Warner version of the infamous Dicken's holiday tale called "A Christmas Plotz", a Chicken Boo version of Jingle Bells, a few Good Idea/Bad Idea sketches of when to sing Christmas Carols or when to find Easter eggs, and the Warners' own take on the famous yuletide poem via "T'was the Day Before Christmas"...all on Disk 5 of Animaniacs! Volume 2.

And speaking of specials, cue a fanmade A! Christmas special.

*slips on the ice and falls over, whilst wishing all a joyous Noel*

 

[Winslow Leach]

Rich Little's Christmas Carol is another favorite. It is a 1978 Canadian TV special, shot on videotape, but it has aired here on HBO. It's a one-man show, in which Little enacts the Dickens tale through a variety of amusing impersonations.

Scrooge - W.C. Fields

Bob Cratchit - Paul Lynde

Fred - Johnny Carson

Solicitor - Stan Laurel

Solicitor - Oliver Hardy

Jacob Marley - Richard Nixon (instead of chains, he is covered in spools of audiotape)

Ghost of Christmas Past - Humphrey Bogart

Ghost of Christmas Present - Peter Falk as Columbo

Ghost of Christmas Future - Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

Fezziwig - Groucho Marx

Dick Wilkins - James Stewart

Mrs. Cratchit - Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker

Tiny Tim - Truman Capote

Businessman - John Wayne

Businessman - George Burns

Businessman - James Mason

Boy - Jack Benny

The special is available on DVD.

My all-time favorite version of A Christmas Carol is the 1970 musical adaptation, Scrooge, directed by Ronald Neame, and starring Albert Finney. The film is very close to the Dickens novella, and has a nice atmosphere. At times, it's even rather macabre and frightening, with a few sequences added that weren't in the original story, such as a ghostly coachman riding through Scrooge's home, prior to his first meeting with Marley, and the sequence set in the future, at Scrooge's death, where he falls into his grave, and meets up with Marley again, in the other place, where Scrooge is forced into a fate similiar to Marley's. This sequence is usually cut out of TV broadcasts of the film, but is included in its entirety on the DVD. Alec Guinness makes a spooky Marley, and the cast, made up of British stage and film actors, is excellent.

The score is by famed composer Leslie Bricusse.

 

[wwfpooh]

I love that version too, uncuts or edits and all.

 

[Winslow Leach]

I love that version too, uncuts or edits and all.

Yeah, the songs are very memorable, too. This film was later adapted into a stage musical, and is still performed in amateur and professional companies.

 

[wwfpooh]

Which shows its standing in this culture.

 

[anytimepally]

Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas.. especially the Carol of the Bells scene!

 

[anytimepally]

Jacob Marley - Richard Nixon (instead of chains, he is covered in spools of audiotape)

now that is funny stuff

 

[wwfpooh]

now that is funny stuff

Indeed. Gotta love classic comedy.

 

[Drtooth]

It's Christmastime Again Charlie Brown (200? TV special)

I love that one too. But just for the sake of correction, The special actually aired about 1991 or 1992. rough estimate. I also enjoy I want a Dog for Christmas and Christmas Tales... but they aren't as good as the other two. Plus, I want a dog contains comic strips that were previously animated for the Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (The scene where they fatten up Spike, especially).