What is YOUR favorite Christmas movie/special

NoBonus

NoBonus

Starter
#1
#1
Over the weekend, I watched

1. A Year without Santa Claus (Witht the heat miser and snow miser)
2. Yogi's First Christmas
3. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

It just is not the Christmas season to me if I have not watched at least Christmas Vacation and one of the other two; it's not even an option... the whole family must all sit down and watch these on TV. How can you have a 'Good, old-fashioned Griswold Family Christmas' without watching them?

Out of my overflowing merriement and overwhelming nasal congestion, I just gotta know, what are YOUR absolutlely mandatory-viewing Christmas movies/specials?
 
Warhawk

Warhawk

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#2
#2
Christmas Vacation, The Ref, Die Hard, Elf. Those would be the biggest for me. No particular order. Our son is too young to watch all but Elf right now though.
 
LoungeLizard

LoungeLizard

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#4
#4
Christmas Vacation is a tradition in my family, love that movie. Elf is a newer one that I really like. I love the old claymations Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Also like the animated version of the Grinch.
 
NoBonus

NoBonus

Starter
#5
#5
LoungeLizard said:
Christmas Vacation is a tradition in my family, love that movie. Elf is a newer one that I really like. I love the old claymations Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Also like the animated version of the Grinch.
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I am with you on the Grinch... love the old animated one.
 
pdxKingsFan

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
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#6
#6
Bad Santa, Elf, Christmas Vacation. I'll usually watch some version of A Christmas Carol every year or two. And I have a love/hate with The Polar Express, but my son loves it so we watch it regularly.

I refuse to count stuff like Gremlins or Die Hard though I quite enjoy them.
 
NoBonus

NoBonus

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#8
#8
pdxKingsFan said:
Bad Santa, Elf, Christmas Vacation. I'll usually watch some version of A Christmas Carol every year or two. And I have a love/hate with The Polar Express, but my son loves it so we watch it regularly.

I refuse to count stuff like Gremlins or Die Hard though I quite enjoy them.
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The animation style of Polar Express sickens me... why make a terrible looking cgi depiction of real people, when you could have just used real people? It is in my top two most loathed CGI films... the other one? Happy Feet. Does a Penguin's weird tounge really need to stick out of their foul maws in order for me to believe they are talking... I guess they were trying to add some anatomically correct penguin reality to the portions of the film where the penguins were talking... wait... I have seen lots of zoo penguins and I never, ever recall seeing their tounges nor do I recall their tounges whipping me into a rage.

 
Spike

Spike

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#9
#9
"Can't see a line, can ya Russ?"

Awesome Christmas movie. ELF is up there too. I'll also make sure to check out A Christmas Story, but it's hardly ever on. :|

Then of course I love me some Grinchmas, but the old animated version, not the Jim Carrey nonsense.
 
pdxKingsFan

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
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#10
#10
NoBonus said:
The animation style of Polar Express sickens me... why make a terrible looking cgi depiction of real people, when you could have just used real people?
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I'll agree that it was by and large a failure, but the attempt was to emulate the art direction of the book. In that regard they mostly succeeded. Unfortunately the eyes just didn't work. Total uncanny valley. The background characters also took a big hit in order to get this thing out the door in time for Christmas 2004. But if you look at stills and compare to the book you'll see what they were trying to do. Tom Hanks and Bob Z were overly ambitious on this one, when it was in testing pre-production everyone was thinking Oscars. I worked on it for two years and I think it was pretty clear within the first 6 months I was there that there weren't going to be any Oscars. On the other hand it did raise the bar for motion capture animation and I think lessons were learned that were applied to Monster House and Bob Z and Jim Carrey's Christmas Carol that resulted in better films. The fly through London in the latter is one of the better 3D sequences from the current 3D revival. Also Polar Express pretty much launched the current revival, I know 3D is a mixed bag, but I was a huge fan of all the cheesey 80s 3D flicks and was happy to see it back and play some very, very small part in it.

So like I say, love/hate. I wanted to show it to my son once and be done but he went absolutely crazy and demanded to watch it every day last year. This year has been a little better. I do look forward to seeing it on the IMAX screen with him in another year or two as I believe it is the only version worth seeing. Also the only way to see my credit. lol.
 
NoBonus

NoBonus

Starter
#11
#11
pdxKingsFan said:
I'll agree that it was by and large a failure, but the attempt was to emulate the art direction of the book. In that regard they mostly succeeded. Unfortunately the eyes just didn't work. Total uncanny valley. The background characters also took a big hit in order to get this thing out the door in time for Christmas 2004. But if you look at stills and compare to the book you'll see what they were trying to do. Tom Hanks and Bob Z were overly ambitious on this one, when it was in testing pre-production everyone was thinking Oscars. I worked on it for two years and I think it was pretty clear within the first 6 months I was there that there weren't going to be any Oscars. On the other hand it did raise the bar for motion capture animation and I think lessons were learned that were applied to Monster House and Bob Z and Jim Carrey's Christmas Carol that resulted in better films. The fly through London in the latter is one of the better 3D sequences from the current 3D revival. Also Polar Express pretty much launched the current revival, I know 3D is a mixed bag, but I was a huge fan of all the cheesey 80s 3D flicks and was happy to see it back and play some very, very small part in it.

So like I say, love/hate. I wanted to show it to my son once and be done but he went absolutely crazy and demanded to watch it every day last year. This year has been a little better. I do look forward to seeing it on the IMAX screen with him in another year or two as I believe it is the only version worth seeing. Also the only way to see my credit. lol.
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I also think the use of Tom Hanks for 90% of the characters was a bit over the top as well... I like Tom Hanks as much as anyone should, in a totally appropriate, movie fan manor, but they could have called this movie "It's a Tom Hanks Christmas" and the title would have been totally appropriate.
 
pdxKingsFan

pdxKingsFan

So Ordinary That It's Truly Quite Extraordinary
Staff member
#13
#13
To be fair he was like 5 characters (hero boy, conductor, hobo, santa and dad) out of dozens of models, but yeah, it was an extremely poor choice that carries the odor of vanity, though I have heard it explained away as something likely to happen in a dream (that one person's features would predominantly take over other characters in the dream). My problem with that explanation? He still hears the bell...
 
GoGoGadget

GoGoGadget

All-Star
#15
#15
There are a lot I like, and a lot that I end up watching every year, but the only two essentials for me are:

and


Family tradition since I was a very, very young'n.
 
GoGoGadget

GoGoGadget

All-Star
#17
#17
Spike said:
I'll also make sure to check out A Christmas Story, but it's hardly ever on. :|
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I suspect this may be sarcasm. But in case it's not, might interest you to know that for at least ten years one of the Turner channels has run a 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story every Christmas Eve.
 
arwen undomiel

arwen undomiel

Bench
#19
#19
Agreed!

Kaye (my all-time fave), Ellen and Donald O'Connor were vastly underrated dancers and overall entertainers.

My Christmas must-watch movies are A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott version from 1984), White Christmas and Scrooged. My husband has a copy of Elf, and I just can't stomach Will Farrell - I just don't find him to be funny. The one Christmas I flick I flat-out refuse to watch is A Christmas Story. It's been run into the ground to the point where I cringe to even see the commercials for it, and I'm sick of being told by friends "you have to see that".
 
NoBonus

NoBonus

Starter
#20
#20
arwen undomiel said:
Agreed!

Kaye (my all-time fave), Ellen and Donald O'Connor were vastly underrated dancers and overall entertainers.

My Christmas must-watch movies are A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott version from 1984), White Christmas and Scrooged. My husband has a copy of Elf, and I just can't stomach Will Farrell - I just don't find him to be funny. The one Christmas I flick I flat-out refuse to watch is A Christmas Story. It's been run into the ground to the point where I cringe to even see the commercials for it, and I'm sick of being told by friends "you have to see that".
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Yeah, it seems like, if this poll was taken 10-15 years ago, "A Christmas Story" (the live action one, not the one with the cartoon basset hound) would have been on everyone's list... it has just been beaten to death by Ted Turner.
 
VF21

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#21
#21
In no particular order:

A Christmas Story
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
A Charlie Brown Christmas
 
Spike

Spike

Subsidiary Intermediary
Staff member
#22
#22
GoGoGadget said:
I suspect this may be sarcasm. But in case it's not, might interest you to know that for at least ten years one of the Turner channels has run a 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story every Christmas Eve.
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Oh, it was. I also appreciate White Christmas, but mostly for it's contribution to Christmas Vacation. The missus loves watching White Christmas every time it's on. I think AMC is running it 3 times a day (at least it feels that way.) Now Vera Ellen, rawr!
 
kennadog

kennadog

Dog On It!
#25
#25
Wow, don't know which is my can't miss it but:

White Christmas
A Christmas Carol (I like more than one version of this story (Alistair Sims, George C. Scott), but the Bill Murphy version does make me laugh a lot.)
I'm a little overdone on it, but I do love It's a Wonderful Life.
Elf (Don't usually like Will Ferrell, but I like him in this.)
Christmas Vacation
 
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