Seasoned Seasonals

I am not sure anyone present for a certain Bethlehem birth would recognize Christmas in 2012. We have inflicted so many negatives on what should be a peaceful day, pressure and stress, both emotional and financial, many of us both look forward to and dread it's arrival at the same time. For some, family, friends and food are the key to a successful celebration, for others the three f's are at the core of the stress.

Many of us, in order to enjoy our time with friends and family, or to simply help us get through it, spend time during the holidays escaping into watching movies, and lots of them.

If you have read FH over the years, you know that 2011 and 2012 were transformative years for me with regard to film. I admittedly had an aversion to anything old, anything vintage, anything in black and white. Thanks however to some incredible reccomendation of films to watch, I am now firmly planted, at least as far as film goes, in the past.

George Bailey and Ralphie let us clearly know that Christmas always was surrounded by stress, but they also let us know they were equally filled with meaningful moments. Jim Carrey's Grinch doesn't hold a candle to the 1957 Chuck Jones adaptation and John Hughes should have left Susan Walker alone in the capable hands of a young Natalie Wood.

I thought I enjoyed You've Got Mail, that is until I saw the film it was based on, 1940's The Shop Around The Corner. I can't believe I saw this amazing film for this first time this year!

It is sad to me that in the future, people might think Christmas classics are all of the Lifetime version starring the thespian challenged likes of Melissa Joan Hart, Mario Lopez (shirtlessness aside) and Daphne Zuniga who seems only able to make second rate Christmas movies these days. Yes, the stories may seem the same, but the big difference is the actors.

Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan in Christmas in Connecticut, Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in Shop Around The Corner, Boris Karloff as Grinch, Edmund Gwenn, John Payne and Maureen O'Hara in Miracle on 34th all do something most of today's actors don't seem to be able to, actually take on a character and act. Zuniga, Lopez, even Meg Ryan, don't they just play themselves in movie after movie? Cheers to a time when characters, not actors filled the screen!