Java House#9: A Christmas Carol

255 Days until Dragon*Con 2011!

For this blog, I thought I would write about my all-time favorite Christmas tale, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. For the tiny few of you who have never heard this story, it is about a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge, who learns the true meaning of Christmas with the aid of three spirits who show him his past, present, and future. This story has been told and retold on TV and in Film multiple times, and I love some more than others. So here are my three favorite traditional versions and my two favorite offbeat versions.

Traditional:

1) The first is the 1980's made-for-TV film with George C. Scott. In my opinion, George C. Scott is the best Scrooge ever. He is downright heartless in the beginning and portrays an incredible warmth in the end. This film has an excellent supporting cast, including David Warner as Bob Crachit.

2) The musical with Albert Finney. Albert Finney is a marvelous actor, as evident in his role as Daddy Warbucks in ANNIE and Tim Burton's BIG FISH. The songs in this film are really cute and catchy. And I love how they expand on The Future sequence, actually sending Scrooge to Hell for a bit before he wakes up, truly showing him the extreme consequences of his actions.

3) A recent version with Kelsy Grammar. It was a musical as well. I love Christmas Present's song especially. Grammar, ever the master thespian, is of course brilliant as Scrooge.

Offbeat:

1) SCROOGED. This movie is hilarious. Bill Murray and the supporting cast really do an epic job of bringing a fresh twist to the tale while staying true to it's lessons. The one-liners are great in this film too, most of them coming from Murray and the Ghosts. But let's face it: Murray's the man in all of his films.

2) A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL. How can anyone hate the Muppets? This movie truly kept Henson's legacy alive after he passed on. The songs are beautful, and I loved how they used original characters for the Ghosts and of course added in human characters such as the great Michael Caine as Scrooge. That's not to take away from Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, and the other Muppets we life-long fans grew up with.