Brief Interlude (#25)

I made this! It is a candy cane column.
I made a pair for the the three wide doorways on my first floor.
It is a piece of dimensional lumber, sanded, shaped, and
painted white, with red ribbon wrapped around it.
I am proud of it.

Tonight's post will be brief. Christmas is arriving fast. For the third straight year, I have not had to deal with stage managing a Nutcracker season. It has helped to relieve some of the stress, not having all those obligations. Yet, it has been sad as well. At some point, I need to write more about these mixed feelings. However, not today. Nor next week. But, some day down the road.

In the meantime...

A Christmas Carol. Both the literary work and its numerous film adaptations. This work by Charles Dickens forms the cornerstone of my annual Christmas season experience, alongside gathering with family and gorging on good food. While it has been a while since I have last read the story (it has been at least three times), every year I indulge in multiple movie versions. Fortunately, my wife also enjoys my two favorite ones: the 1992 The Muppet Christmas Carol with Kermit the Frog, and the 1999 TNT A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart (apparently it is convention to list the year and the actor playing Scrooge).  Each movie will receive at least two viewings before Christmas morning.

In recent years, I have made an effort to experience other adaptations. It began as a possible blog entry, sharing my thoughts and reactions to each film. But, the season has always been busy for me, so I have yet to follow through. I would need to do start the project at least a month in advance, maybe more. And I still struggle with procrastination enough to keep me from doing it so early.

However, I refuse to avoid enjoying the story, A Christmas Carol, just because I cannot write effectively about my emotional and intellectual connections to it. So, I have made an effort these past two weeks, to watch other adaptations. Of course there are the two famous and highly acclaimed films: the 1984 one with George C. Scott, and Alistair Sim's 1951 Scrooge. I have seen both in years past, and will try and revisit them this week. Neither left a great impression. There, I said it. I have an idea why, but I will not reveal it now.

And for the record, I find the Mickey Mouse adaptation lousy and painful. Yes, go ahead and hate me for it. I do not care. It is a poor reflection of Dicken's thoughts and words. Yet, again, I am not inclined to discuss the reasons today. Sorry.

For the moment, I will list the films I did watch the past two weeks. 

1.  Scrooge (1935, the colorized and restored version) with Seymour Hicks
2.  Scrooged (1988) with Bill Murray
3.  A Christmas Carol (2003) with Kelsey Grammer
4.  A Christmas Carol (2019) with Guy Pearce

Some quick notes. The first one was meh. I did not even bother to watch the last ten minutes of it. The next one had its moments, but was cringey most of the time, and the ending dragged on forever. I am glad I saw it, but I will probably never watch it again. The third one is a musical. I found it entertaining and enjoyable most of the time. The Fezziwig scene was spectacular. I would be willing to watch it again, though maybe not annually. The last one. I will preface it with this statement. A Christmas Carol is not a long story. That is why it works. Almost all film adaptations can easily cover most of the main plot points in under ninety minutes.

The 2019 version with Guy Pearce is a miniseries nearly three hours long. Yes, they added a lot of filler, which would not easily deter me. I am open minded when it comes to adaptations and new interpretations. Yet, I drew a line with this one. I gave up after an hour. The dialogue hurt the and the relationships between characters hurt the most. The creator(s) took unjustifiable liberties. I had considered the interactions and conversations between Scrooge and Cratchit in the 1935 film to be way off from the spirit of the original text. This miniseries proved me wrong. Just, no. Ugh.

Of course, I would love to expand on all these reactions of mine. But, I still lack the confidence to write in more depth. If I am going to make assertions, I would like to back them up. And if I am going to have strong feelings, I would like to explain them clearly and concisely. And it is going late. This post should have been much shorter. My apologies.

In the meantime, there are a lot more movie adaptations to watch, and  a lot of holiday prep to complete.

Hopefully, I will return next week. If not, I will have something for New Year's Eve.