So today’s Rewind Wednesday: Holiday Edition is a double-header Scrooged and It’s a Wonderful Life. This is a personal shout out to a dear friend of mine, Radcliff who recommended Scrooged for the holiday list and why not with Christmas just a day away. And then to top it off I had to put another classic that would be near and dear to everyone’s heart.
Francis Xavier "Frank" Cross (Bill Murray) is a conceited, cynical television programming executive. He has found great success and wealth, but has become coldhearted and cruel. In the opening scenes he can be seen working out in a room with a wallpaper border that reads "Cross: A thing they nail people to".
This 1988 comedy film, is a modernization of Charles Dickens's novella, A Christmas Carol. Most of the characters in the movie represent characters in Dicken's A Christmas Carol. Frank Cross is Ebenezer Scrooge and his brother James is Scrooge's nephew Fred. Eliot Loudermilk and Grace seem to share the role of Bob Cratchit. Grace's son, who is withdrawn/autistic, is Tiny Tim. Lew Hayward, Frank's former boss, is Jacob Marley. Herman and his fellow indigents are the "portly gentlemen" who are collecting for charity and are refused financial help. Claire is Scrooge's former fiancée, Belle. The three ghosts have the same names. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a cab driver with a Brooklyn accent. The Ghost of Christmas Future appears as the grim reaper, with a TV screen for a face. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a campier female version of the ghost in the original story.
Next on the docket is a true Christmas movie for all generations!!
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) is an American film produced and directed by Frank Capra and loosely based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern. The film is regarded as a classic and is a staple of Christmas television around the world, although, due to its high production costs and stiff competition at the box office, financially, it was considered a "flop." The film's break-even point was actually $6.3 million, approximately twice the production cost, a figure it never came close to achieving in its initial release. An appraisal in 2006 reported: "Although it was not the complete box-office failure that today everyone believes … it was a major disappointment and confirmed, at least to the studios, that Capra was no longer capable of turning out the populist features that made his films the must-see, money-making events they once were.
It's a Wonderful Life was nominated for five Oscars without winning any, but the film has since been recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, and placed number one on their list of the most inspirational American films of all time.
In 1990, It's a Wonderful Life was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.
In 2002, Channel 4 ranked It's A Wonderful Life as the seventh greatest film ever made in their poll, "The 100 Greatest Films" and in 2006, It's A Wonderful Life reached #37 in Channel 4's "100 Greatest Family Films" poll. It's A Wonderful Life currently ranks 30th on the IMDB's top 250.
In June 2008, AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten" — the best 10 films in 10 "classic" American film genres — after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. It's a Wonderful Life was acknowledged as the third-best film in the fantasy genre.
A more iconoclastic viewpoint was expressed by Wendell Jamieson in a 2008 New York Times article, which posited that the film "is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife.
