Tag Archive for 'kelsey grammer'

Couch Potato Pickings | A Christmas Carol Top 10

Published
by
Beth
on December 20, 2009
in Couch Potato, Films on TV and Seasonal
. 0 Comments

A Christmas Carol

For me, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without viewing at least one movie version of A Christmas Carol. You know the story - a miserly grump is visited by four ghosts on Christmas Eve and learns the errors of his ways. I love this Charles Dickens story, and I’m clearly not alone considering the amount of movie versions there are out there.

So, sometime this Christmas, the time will come when I’ll be reclining on my couch with a glass of sherry and a mince pie to hand, poised for my annual A Christmas Carol experience.

But which of the versions will I be watching?

Here’s my Top 10:

1. A Christmas Carol (1999)

A Christmas Carol,patrick stewart

This incredibly underrated version, with Patrick Stewart in the Scrooge role, is by far the best. Its Victorian setting looks amazing, and it also stars Richard E Grant and Saskia Reeves. But, it’s Stewart’s movie. His Scrooge is so powerfully depicted, you feel you really know him by the end. Guaranteed to make me cry into my mince pie.

A Christmas Carol is showing on Christmas Eve on Five at 7.05pm, and on Christmas Day on Five USA AT 4PM

2. Scrooge (1970)

I grew up with this musical version, starring Albert Finney as Scrooge. It was always essential Christmas Eve viewing when I was a kid. The musical numbers are catchy and support the story rather than detract from it. My favourite songs are the wonderfully cockney Father Christmas and the hugely ironic Thank You Very Much. Even Tiny Tim’s squeaky version of A Beautiful Day has a special place in my heart (ordinarily a rendition like that would have me reaching for the ear plugs).

3. Scrooged

Scrooged

Victorian London is replaced by 1980s America in this comedy version starring Bill Murray as a mean-spirited TV boss who is visited by a series of ghosts on Christmas Eve. I do prefer the traditional setting for this tale, but it’s always fun to see a spin on a classic text and this one works for me by pressing all right the emotional buttons.

4. Scrooge - A Christmas Carol

Most people say this vintage Alistair Sim version is the best A Christmas Carol adaptation, but I’m just not that moved by Sim’s Scrooge. I also find this version notably slower paced than my top two favourites.

Scrooge - A Christmas Carol is showing today, 20th December, on Five at 1.40pm

5. The Muppet Christmas Carol

I’m always slightly put off a movie when its stars aren’t real people, but somehow the combination of Michael Caine and those legendary muppets wins me over for this musical telling of the Victorian tale.

The Muppet Christmas Carol is showing on 21st December on Five at 4.25pm

6. A Carol Christmas

It’s not an amazing movie, but this fun contemporary telling with a gender swap spin on the classic tale is worth a look.  Tori Spelling plays a selfish superstar TV host who gets the chance to mend her ways in time for Christmas. It’s one to watch while wrapping the presents perhaps.

A Carol Christmas is showing on 23rd December on Christmas 24 at 5pm

7. A Christmas Carol (2001)

This is the animated, musical one featuring the voices of Kate Winslet, Nicolas Cage and Simon Callow. Not being a great fan of animation unless it’s done really well, I struggled with this version. However, it does feature Kate Winslet’s great song What If?, but you have to wait until the end to hear it.

A Christmas Carol (2001) is showing on Christmas Day on Film 4 at 11am

8. A Christmas Carol (2009)


This is only on my list because I haven’t seen it yet, and feel that I must. However, if the above clip is anything to go by, the movie is much more focused on action and special effects than the emotional journey of a man who’s lost his way.

9. A Christmas Carol - The Musical

Possibly boasting the most visually beautiful Victorian setting of all of the Scrooge films, this all-singing, all-dancing version starring Kelsey Grammer has an all-star cast and won an Emmy. However, I find it a bore. The singing is relentless and starts to annoy. It makes nice Christmas wallpaper if you turn the sound down though.

A Christmas Carol: The Musical is showing on 22nd December on Christmas 24 at 11am and 3am

10. An All Dogs Christmas Carol

Another animated version, but worth a look for its exclusively canine spin on the seasonal story.

The Best view - Swing Vote

Published
by
Jason Best
on September 26, 2008
in Cinema Releases and The Best View
. 0 Comments

Swing Vote - Kevin Costner & Madeline Carroll

With the American presidential race getting scarier by the day, surely only the savage iconoclasm of Hunter S Thompson could do justice to the election’s madness and mendacity. Just imagine the ferocious spleen the author of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (his account of that year’s Nixon-McGovern contest) would have unleashed on god-fearing, moose-hunting, hockey mom Sarah Palin, aka “Caribou Barbie”.

In the absence of the great Gonzo journalist, who you will recall blew his brains out with a .44 calibre pistol in 2005, it appears we will have to make do with Swing Vote, a good-natured and mildly satirical comedy from little known writer-director Joshua Michael Stern, maker of 2005’s Neverwas (Neverwhat?).

Stern’s movie stars Kevin Costner as a loveable loser named Bud Johnson, a boozy slacker who lives with his precocious 12-year-old daughter Molly (played by the equally precocious Madeline Carroll) in a battered trailer in the town of Texico, New Mexico (which sounds made up but does in fact exist). Bud has promised the civic-minded Molly that he will vote in the upcoming presidential election but passes out drunk in his truck instead.

Swing Vote

A series of contrivances then unfold, with the outcome that the entire election hinges on Bud’s un-cast vote. As a result, the media descends on Bud’s home, and so do Republican incumbent Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammer) and Democrat challenger Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper). In the days that follow, as swarms of reporters hustle for a scoop, Boone and Greenleaf, and their slippery campaign managers (Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane), bend themselves out of shape in an effort to sway Bud’s decision.

A series of hilarious spoof campaign ads show the consequences. Bud babbles a half-baked thought; the politicians pounce on it; and end up flip-flopping their most deeply held values. So Republican Boone comes out in favour of gay marriage and ecological preservation, while liberal Democrat Greenleaf starts making anti-abortion and anti-immigration pronouncements.

In the end, though, the movie is too frightened of alienating half its audience to take sides; so cautious about offending either the Red states or the Blue states that it sits on the fence. (Can a political satire be apolitical?) A bruising scene involving Mare Winningham as Molly’s estranged mother hints at the true desperation of America’s “working poor”, as Molly accurately describes Bud, but overall the movie prefers to aim for a mood of Capraesque uplift. Ultimately, Swing Vote, like Costner’s protagonist, is too benign to go for the jugular and settles instead for tickling us gently in the ribs.