A Little Bit of Christmas

Compared to last week, relatively light Christmas viewing as I caught up on various TV shows instead.
SNOW GLOBE (2007) stars Christina Milian as a young New Yorker wishing for an old-fashioned warm-and-fuzzy Christmas instead of the loud bickering that marks her Italian/Cuban family’s get-together. Then she discovers a magical snowglobe lets her enter into a fantasy Christmas town (rather like a stereotypical Christmas TV special, actually) and ultimately has to chose whether a dream of Perfect Christmas is better than the imperfect people she loves. I enjoyed this much better than I did the first time I caught it, possibly because while not great Christmas art, it’s a lot better than the films I checked out earlier this month. Unusual in that the family doesn’t learn any life lessons, Milian just learns to deal with them better. “I walk around to the other side of the tree and count the lights.”
SCROOGE (1935) is another that works better for me than the first time I caught it. Based on a stage play, it varies quite a bit from the Dickens novel, with some good scenes in Scrooge’s office and a diminished role for the ghosts (Marley’s completely invisible). In contrast to the original’s emphasis on human suffering, this shows a happy, prosperous London with a lot of emphasis on the Lord Mayor’s feast, driving home that Scrooge (Seymour Hicks) is bitter and alone (as Life and Times of Ebeneezer Scrooge notes, it also offers a happy vision in contrast to the reality of the depression). This may also explain why we see Tiny Tim’s body awaiting burial at the Cratchit home in Christmas Future—it makes a point of comparison with Scrooge, who dies alone and whose corpse is then robbed. Not the best, but worth a look “No, Bob Cratchit, after this I’m going—to double your salary!”
TWILIGHT ZONE: Night of the Meek has department store Santa Claus Art Carney lose his job on account of his drinking (“I cannot hide my emotions so I either weep—or I drink.”) only to discover a capacious sack from which he seems able to produce any gift for any person. Like One Magic Christmas, it’s the kind of Dark Christmas where the light eventually wins out. “Just once I wish that Christmas could be the night when the meek inherit the Earth.”