As an atheist, I don’t believe in all the heaven and hell stuff, but if the believers are right, I think I just pinpointed the exact moment I condemned my eternal soul to hell. I just walked back into the living room, and the shows had changed and “It’s a Wonderful Life” was showing, and my immediate reaction was “Oh, fuck that shit. Not this syrupy feel good bullshit again.”
And just like that, I sealed my fate with Invisible Jeebus as I switched to an episode of Homeland.
Mustang Bobby
Then come sit next to me because I feel the same way about that movie. Watched it once, said “enh, okay,” and went on to Soupy Sales.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A young DIck Cheney spent hours in the mirror perfecting Lionel Barrymore’s sneer, and his loathing of the lazy, discontented rabble.
Omnes Omnibus
I hate, hate, hate that movie. Last night, however, I was able to watch TCM’s marathon of various remakes of A Christmas Carol with no problem at all.
Geoduck
You’ll just have to get in line behind everyone from Utah.
Suffern ACE
I can see the episode where the bloghost wakes up Chirstmas morning, realizes that smell is a cat with anal glands that need expressing, and running through the town overjoyed that the never existing experience he was having was only a dream.
Violet
I heard someone discussing Christmas movies on TV say that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was the long time go-to Christmas movie but over the last decade it’s been supplanted by “A Christmas Story” and that in turn is now being shoved aside for “Elf.”
Poopyman
I don’t care, Donna Reed is hot.
(Not that I’m going to watch it yet again.)
Keith G
Mythological critters can’t condemn you to nuttin
That said, sappy syrupy feel good stories have their place. Don’t hate.
JPL
You know who else hated that movie, don’t you.
dmsilev
@Violet: A Christmas Story was the one I can remember watching over and over again. Not as a kid, but rather in grad school. It was on the playlist for my department’s holiday party, right along with the original version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Nothing quite like an auditorium filled half with drunken graduate students and half with the young kids of the faculty, with the latter listening to the former cheering on the Grinch…
Suffern ACE
@Poopyman: in our blog remake of the movie, the Donna Reed role goes to Anne Laurie. Or is Kay Donna Reed and Ann is Gloria Graehme, the fallen Violet, who gets the loan from John to leave Balloon Juice and start again.
SiubhanDuinne
Every time John Cole says “Oh, fuck that shit. Not this syrupy feel good bullshit again,” an angel gets its wings.
ETA:Didn’t we used to have a regular commenter called Zuzu’s Petals? Whatever became of him/her?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I refuse to accept the existence of Clarence so the movie doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.
Helen
Yeah but Jimmy Stewart is kinda hot; no?
WereBear
It was a flop when it was made. The fact that the copyright lapsed made it the go-to Christmas movie for a whole generation of penny-pinching programmers.
Mr WereBear is a “Christmas Carol” fan. This year many of his presents consisted of DVDs of different versions, because we got tired of tracking who was playing what when.
If they played them at all.
geg6
@Mustang Bobby:
Me, too. Except I didn’t make it all the way through it even once. And I’m a big Jimmy Stewart fan. Hate that film with all my heart.
David Koch
Season finale of Hom3land was a big letdown, especially since the prior 11 episodes were on fire (even better than Breaking Bad).
It’s as if they ran out of time or funding and just submitted their first draft.
Citizen_X
Suit yourself. I love watching a pillar-of-the-community capitalist like Potter portrayed as a vile, bitter old shit.
Xecky Gilchrist
I’ve been giving some thought lately to why people like whichever Christmas movie is their favorite. I think it has everything to do with imprinting, like which ones remind you of happy memories of childhood, and that’s it. A lot of them are crappy movies but we love the associations.
Suffern ACE
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: well I don’t believe a bank examiner would just walk away from his investigation because there’s a bushelfull of cash in the Building and Loan’s president’s house.
Matt McIrvin
“It’s A Wonderful Life” is actually an amazingly grim story for much of its running time.
I’m not sure I’ve actually seen “A Christmas Story” all the way through. I’m familiar with the whole story, though, because my English teacher read the Gene Shepherd story that provided the basic plotline to us in the seventh grade, a few years before the movie was made. And the bit with the Nehi lamp is from another story of his that I recall seeing in an adaptation on PBS.
JPL
John Cole is an old fart.
Cacti
When a young Dick Cheney watched “Its a Wonderful Life,” he found his role model in Mr. Potter.
ppcli
Syrupy? If you leave off the completely unrealistic feel-good ending, it’s heart-wrenching. The message is that life presents you with a series of existential choices. If you do the morally correct thing, you will live a soul-crushing downward spiral that will drive you to suicide. If you do the self-interested thing, the world will become a Boschian nightmare. Camus and Dostoevski couldn’t do better than that.
SiubhanDuinne
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I like “It’s a Wonderful Life” but I can hardly express how much I dislike “A Christmas Story.” In fact, never even saw it until about seven or eight years ago, when I was at my sister’s house and it ran repeatedly on some cable channel and was hard to escape. Unfunny, badly acted, and STOOPID.
Have never seen “Elf.” Have no desire to remedy that situation.
WereBear
My favorite Christmas movie is How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Even though it has songs.
jl
@ppcli:
Maybe if there were a version without the happy ending, Cole would like that one.
Anyone one know of some cynical unhappy Christmas movies that Cole would ‘enjoy’ and get him properly grumped up for the Holidays?
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@JPL:
By my Three Stages of Falling Theory, John is not old. He’s firmly ensconced in the second stage of falling where one’s ego is more damaged than one’s body following a dive.
Suzanne
I have never seem “It’s A Wonderful Life” and that is very much on purpose, because fuck heartwarming shit.
Now, everybody has to DRINK.
Mary G
If you have to like “It’s a Wonderful Life” to qualify for going to heaven, I will be in hell with you, John Cole.
David Koch
I’m surprised the wingnuts don’t attack “A Christmas Story” since it doesn’t make any reference or inference to Jesus, nor does it have any nativity scenes, and they end up spending Christmas dinner with non-believers.
Suffern ACE
@jl: bad Santa.
James E. Powell
The film lays it on a bit thick, but it still has charm. I especially like George Bailey’s lefty political rants.
IowaOldLady
I love Scrooged. “Bitch hit me with a toaster.” Hee.
kuvasz
http://blog.worshiptheglitch.com/post/2340885027/its-a-wonderful-life-killing-spree-ending
Omnes Omnibus
@ppcli: But it does have the “completely unrealistic feel-good ending.”
@WereBear: I hope like hell you mean the cartoon not the Jim Carrey movie I like to pretend doesn’t exist.
Helen
@WereBear: Me too, But I like the songs
Violet
Personally I love “Bad Santa.” Now there’s a feel-good Christmas movie. I’m also a sucker for the TV specials, like Rudolph. And the one with Heat Miser and Snow Miser. Love that bit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I am not playing “I never” with this crowd.
lamh36
Well then count me as one of the sad syrupy saps. I like the movie. Never saw it as having some big religious undertones to it, but I get how it can be.
IDK, I like the whole idea of one life having a ripple effect on others.
I’m somewhere in the middle when it comes to religious and such. I don’t see religious imagery in everything. Much of the time I am told of the imagery on one side by the usual religious extremist and the opposite side by atheist.
Anyway, I do like to watch the movie. So go ahead and mock me
Helen
@Suzanne: Um, Helen +4 (but only beers)
PaulW
To be fair I find “Wonderful Life” to be a tad overrated (too preachy at times) but still an excellent (wonderfully dark) take on the Yuletide season.
When I first saw it, I only started at the halfway point, when George gets to see Pottersville, and for thirty minutes I swore I was watching a Twilight Zone episode.
jenn
I love It’s A Wonderful Life, but I think my favorite Christmas movie may be The Ref.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
All Cole needs to do to get into Wingnut Heaven is embrace Mr. Potter as the One True Savior. Much less syrupy rooting for him.
Warren Terra
So, you traded one show about an omniscient entity that knows what lurks in your heart for another?
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan:
So Wingnut Heaven equals my hell? That fits.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Don’t you think it’s the perfect Billy Bob Thornton role? Can’t imagine anybody else.
Violet
@trollhattan: He’s perfect in it. Can’t imagine anyone else in it.
gogol's wife
I like Christmas in Connecticut much better.
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: Daniel Day-Lewis can play any part.
WereBear
Laws, yes.
I took my nephew to the live-action when we was eight or so and I figured I could have just given him LSD and he might have met God instead.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Last year at my parents’ house the local PBS station was playing old Lawrence Welk Christmas specials that had been recently colorized. I wandered in while one was on, and I guess because of the color, thought it was something recent. I thought “WTF, I thought Welk had passed on to the great polka band in the sky!’ (I’ll put it that way so as not to dampen Holiday spirits).
I was disoriented and scared for a moment.
Bill E Pilgrim
Well but that’s what happened in the movie, right? I think next you end up ready to push you and the car off a cliff since it will never get out of that field anyway (okay doesn’t make sense but it’s my movie) and just before you do, an Internet angel shows up and gives you a tour of what the blogosphere would be like if you’d never blogged. You post comments saying “Don’t you know me?? Guy with the cats?” You try posting here and are run off as a Firebagger. Yes I know this blog wouldn’t exist. Again, my fantasy, so smeg off.
Actually the blogosphere would be a lot less fun had you not blogged. Certainly less furry. Merry Christmas. Or you know, whatever.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: Okay then. The cartoon Grinch and the Alistair Sim Carol and I am set.
WereBear
@jenn: It’s one of our holiday favorites!
What’s in this fruitcake?
Alum.
Chyron HR
Goddammit, what part of “Santa is white” do people not get?
Violet
@jl: One of the networks is showing a colorized version of the “I Love Lucy” show tonight. I think it’s a couple of the favorites. I can see the grape stomping episode on right now. But colorized? WTF?
Matt McIrvin
@David Koch: Guns trump everything.
WereBear
@gogol’s wife: That’s another favorite! Mr WereBear has promised to get me a copy next year. We missed it this year.
khead
@Suffern ACE:
Bad Santa and The Ref should be the official holiday movies of Balloon Juice.
lamh36
@lamh36: I also kinda understand the despair that George Bailey feels as someone who had certain plans for his young life, but through circumstances and familial issues, forgoes those things to keep the family afloat.
Some of the “sacrifices” George made just dont’ make sense to today’s “me, me, me” generation, so I can see how it doesn’t resonate with young people today.
WereBear
If Dante was born in our century that would have been immortalized as a circle of Hell, for certain.
Violet
@Chyron HR: Is the dog named Santa? And anyway, isn’t “Santa” just Spanish for “Saint”? What’s wrong with English, the way Jesus intended it to be? Mexicans are taking over our culture!
Corner Stone
@Bill E Pilgrim:
God no. Please don’t tell me an angel gets its wings every time a Cole trips over Rosie, falls off a bridge and drowns in an icy river.
JPL
Love Actually is pretty darn good. Some old farts might find that sappy too, but it is the holiday season, so get over it.
Heliopause
Oh no, not at all. That movie has often been criticized as unreconstructed communism from the Hollywood elite. You just saved your soul, John. Praise the Lord.
Corner Stone
@Suffern ACE: I’ll still be Iago, tyvm.
Svensker
@Mustang Bobby:
The movie was thought to be in the public domain for 20 years or so because of a copyright screw up so it got a lot more TV air time than other films — I think that’s why it became a “classic.” It’s awful, but then I’m not a big Capra fan.
Violet
@JPL: I think that is probably my favorite Christmas movie. I love “Love Actually.” There’s so many different kinds of love portrayed in it, and it’s not all sweetness and light. Some of it is rather heartbreaking. Love that movie. Soundtrack is good too.
scott (the other one)
Syrupy? “It’s a Wonderful Life” is one dark, dark, dark damn film. It’s got got a gorgeous, glossy sheen. But that ending that gets me choked up every time? That’s a room full of people whistling past the graveyard—whistling past their own Potter’s Field. Sure, by the entire town pulling together, they managed to checkmate Mr. Potter—checkmate, not beat. But tomorrow? He starts the game again, only with an even bigger advantage than before.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: I like the Bill Nighy and Liam Neeson storylines.
JPL
@Corner Stone: What the heck is god gonna do with all those angels? The trip on the icy sidewalk was definitely a low point on this blog, so he should have 5 angels, just for that.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: The Sim Carol is excellent, but we also have a soft spot for the 1938 one with the Lockharts as the Cratchits. They are just so darn loveable.
Corner Stone
@Bill E Pilgrim: Can you imagine alter-Cole trying to post here now?
“WTF do you mean I can’t say that?”
“Firebagger? Fuck you Hamsher! You slept with Norquist!”
Comrade Mary
I watched it by accident one very late night in summer (or very early morning, whatever) in the early 80s. I had tuned in within the few minutes (the fateful toboggan run into the lake) but had no idea what movie it was until the commercial break. Stayed for the whole thing, cried several times (including the could-have-been-lethal prescription scene) and thought it was a pretty decent little old-fashioned movie.
I’ve watched it a couple more times over the years (the phone scene is still one of the fucking hottest sex scenes I’ve ever seen, especially with both actors standing upright and fully clothed — oh, the power of repressed longing!), but I’m in no great rush to watch it again for a variety of reasons. But I don’t regret watching it all by myself for the first time when I had no idea what to expect.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: The Bill Nighy bit is hilarious. That song is such dreck. Love it. I also love Emma Thompson in it. And Alan Rickman. So good.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: The Tiny Tim in that one creeps me out.
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m a Colin Firth kinda gal.
jl
@WereBear: There were, and are still remaining, some Welk fanatics in my family. For as long as I can remember, if there ever was, or is, a way to get some Welk, reruns, boxed CD sets, old tapes of old reruns, recordings, whatever, there will be some Welk.
So, I am not objective. Guess it’s not my favorite, since I have never thought to look for any Welk links to offer up for a music thread. But, judging from my reaction last year, I must have some kind of Welk trauma. I thought I was in a time warp for a few minutes last Christmas.
I like the bubble machine (trying to think of something good to say about it, without getting banned from the blog).
Bill E Pilgrim
@JPL: A lot of people like that movie, including me. The story with Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz was my favorite.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, but I’ve seen the 1970 Albert Finney Scrooge.
Nothing scares me now.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
I don’t especially like the movie, but I was very impressed with Stewart. I think you get a better feel for an actor’s real strength in a crappy role than in a great one, and Stewart managed to turn what could easily have been a crappy, one-dimensional do-gooder into a somewhat believable human being. I think that’s a lot harder that doing a good job as Hamlet.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Corner Stone: And that’s different from now how, exactly? ;)
lamh36
@JPL: Love Actually is a great movie ANY TIME of the year.
I love it.
WereBear
You are so not alone.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: It was my grandparents on my mom’s side and a great grandmother too. It is, I think, a very common trauma.
MikeJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
I despise Will Ferrel but Elf is pretty good.
Helen
@JPL: I LOVE that movie. I avoided it forever because all those stupid “girl” movies suck And once I saw it. I LOVE IT.
linda
@SiubhanDuinne: Your decision on Elf is right on the money. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
IAWL is dark and interesting and gets more so as I plunge deeper into middle age. I went through a period where I didn’t care for it but once you’ve made a life of shitty decisions, it strikes home.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@MikeJ:
You would. There’s something wrong with you.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Koch:
It’s suitably reverent to Mammon, so they really have no problem with it.
lamh36
@JPL: Amen to that. I love Colin Firth, so much so, I literally bought the last Bridget Jones book, but let’s just say she killed the best part of the story and I can’t bring myself to even read it. It’s been in my nightstand door since I got it in the mail.
lol. love Colin Firth
fuckwit
I can’t stand the movie either. Though, when I was young, I used to work for a slightly older but still single guy who used it as a “date movie”. Said it worked great for him, got him laid every time. Told us this too. We were all, WTF?
cokane
It’s a Wonderful Life is a great film, and it’s dark and close to tear jerking for 90 percent of it. Of course there’s a Hollywood type save at the end, but that’s how most mainstream films have to be. Look at High Noon for another dark movie rendered syrupy with a happy ending. I don’t even mind the uplifting ending because it shows the good side of the existential problem the movie explores, and I’m a strident atheist too.
But can’t expect a Steelers fan to have good taste I guess.
Suffern ACE
@Corner Stone: he walks into the blog and starts talking about pets. “Cats. Help the strays? At this blog? Look pal, I don’t know who you think you are, but at this blog the proceeds of our calendar goes to the defense fund to overturn anti crush por n laws.”
Corner Stone
Elf?
Fucking classic genius.
Fuck the haters.
jl
@WereBear: I shouldn’t have brought it up. Right now I’m hearing the Welk band do a cover of Lady Madonna in my head. Did they ever do that? I guess I’m hallucinating.
I’ll be going to the family ancestral stomping grounds soon…. Welk….
eemom
Any fellow oldsters remember the Cheers episode where all the regulars were dissing It’s A Wonderful Life…..and then the teevee over the bar shows the final scene…..and they all suddenly discover they’ve got something in their eye?
Dunno, but I kind of suspect that old mush-hearted Cole and some of the other haters around here might fall into that category….
grishaxxx
@IowaOldLady: Yup!!
MikeJ
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: I will admit that he’s funnier than Adam Sandler.
Corner Stone
@Suffern ACE: I liked it better when it was anti crush poem laws.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@MikeJ: Only because Adam Sandler isn’t funny. Everyone is funnier than Adam Sandler. Even Norm McDonald.
James E. Powell
If I have to pick just one Christmas film, it’s A Christmas Story – there’s a little Ralphie in all of us.
Suffern ACE
@fuckwit: I’m not buying it. However the kiss between George and Mary while Sam Wainwright is telling them to invest in sugar plastics is very real. He’d have been rich if they hadn’t fallen in love.
Suffern ACE
@Corner Stone: I usually let my typos stand, but I didn’t want you running out to find samples of crush poems to post in the alternate universe.
grishaxxx
I also like “The Ref” (really a holiday movie), in which IAWL plays a small but crucial role.
glaukopis
What no mention of Die Hard? Alan Rickman is great in that too.
max
As an atheist, I don’t believe in all the heaven and hell stuff, but if the believers are right, I think I just pinpointed the exact moment I condemned my eternal soul to hell.
Feh. Cole, you’re a redneck West Virginia ex-tanker and you can’t get a fucking running car out of a fucking field, and I already know you can’t find your mustard or your pants. So I’m going to figure you couldn’t find your way to hell (or anywhere else for that matter).
No, it’s going to be ‘The Reruns of Dorian Gray’ until the sun explodes.
max
[‘The three trillion hour tour.’]
eemom
@Comrade Mary:
Nailed it.
Srsly, there is SO much more to that movie besides the obvious, as has been alluded to in some other comments above.
lamh36
@cokane: agreed, certain scenes individually can really bet striking especially today when all the issue people have with wall street and bankers like potter.
The scene where there was a run on the saving in loans and Potter was essentially using it to buy out people homes from underneath them at a bargain price for him, and George Bailey actually took the money he had saved for his honeymoon and loaned out money to keep the customers of the B&L from being shafted by Potter, becomes very interesting, IMHO
GregB
@WereBear:
Seriously that show used to send me into a depressive funk as a child. I remember my parents were away and watching that damn show and bawling my eyes out.
Eff Lawrence Welk and his baton.
JPL
@eemom: Do you have to be that old to remember that episode? gee
Corner Stone
@Suffern ACE:
Cold night, dark heart
Did the leash hold, or free his soul
Black ice
Black water
Pulling him down, relentless
Damn dog
Elmo
No love for Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol? I know all those songs by heart.
I’m allll aloooone in the woooorld…
El Caganer
I dunno. I’m pretty partial to Married With Children‘s “It’s A Bundyful Life.” With the late Sam Kinison as the angel.
jl
@eemom:
@lamh36:
I agree. It’s a Wonderful Life is not my favorite Christmas movie, but I like it, and it has some great scenes. And I think the best most moving scenes are not the famous ones.
I sure would like watching the movie, better than Welk reruns.
I think my favorite Christmas movie is the Alistair Sims Christmas Carol.
jl
@lamh36: So, you mean poor Cole has been in hell for quite a while now, but just doesn’t know it? Don’t let him watch any Zone reruns, he might catch on.
lamh36
@jl: agreed. one of the less talked about scenes is the one where George Bailey’s younger brother comes home from college. At which point, the younger brother is supposed to take over the reigns at the B&L so that George can see the world and maybe just once get out of Bedford Falls.
Instead Harry comes home not just with a new wife, but a job offer that is very good and could be way better for Harry than running the old B&L. The look Steward has when he talks to the young bride and the “dawning” on his face that once again he gonna choose to put someone else’s happiness over his own dreams of the moment, is IDK, heartbreaking for me.
Granted it ultimately leads to him marrying Mary and of course having an “Wonderful Life”, but still, that’s a scene not many talk about. But it certainly hits me and my soft heart…lol
Suffern ACE
@lamh36: and if George hasn’t stepped up and provided clear disclosure on how the B&L worked, those scared townsfolk would have wrecked the town. They could not see that if the bank went under, their neighbors would lose their houses. An honest banker he was until the unfortunate uncle billy scandal.
Ivan X
It’s no Bad Santa (which is this cynical Jewish couple’s own It’s a Wonderful Life every year since it came out), but the Ice Harvest is also good holiday cheer for those who have none.
eemom
@JPL:
Well, it depends on your definition of “old.” I’ll admit I’ve been a little defensive since joining the Over 50 demographic. : (
ruemara
Shut your whore mouth. I love IAWL. Then again, I love nearly all holiday movies. Life is hard enough, why deny yourself some feel good sap? Except I refuse to touch “Elf”, or “Bad Santa” or “Olive, the Other Reindeer”. Well, most modern movies for Christmas. Love “Love, Actually”. And “Rise of the Guardians” was really good, way better than “Polar Express” which was boring and like being stuck with Romney Clones.
lamh36
Oh and the scene where George Bailey, tired of seeing his school chums all leaving Bedford Falls and leading exciting lives almost decides to sell his soul to Dick Cheney, sorry, to Potter, (and Potter goes on his rant about “garlic eaters”) and that of the customers of the B&L, but ultimately, George says no and rather than sell his soul to the devil and send those people up shit creek, he says no…I’ll stick with the B&L and help those “garlic eaters”
Another scene not alot of people talk about.
Helen
@max: THIS
WaterGIrl
@ruemara: I have been looking for you all day – are you still here?
David Koch
Greatest Christmas special was a 1976 episode of All in the Family, titled “The Draft Dodger”.
Archie and a gold star father and a fugitive draft resister get together for Christmas dinner. At the time draft dodgers were still wanted as felons by the FBI and reactionaries were in full dolchstosslegende over Vietnam. Jimmy Carter would grant resisters a general amnesty 27 days after this episode aired.
Suffern ACE
@lamh36: actually I take that back. I’m not certain those people understood that George was giving them a loan instead of cashing out their shares. I mean, he says its a loan, but what were the terms? Bad banker. I bet they were shocked that there FICA scores went down due to the unpaid loans. And how long did those stay as assets on the balance sheet, keeping the B&L solvent? Extend and pretend. I’m reassessing him now. He was shrewd.
revrick
Here’s my favorite Christmas movie: it’s less then 4 minutes long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWq60oyrHVQ
lamh36
@Suffern ACE: I guess he was a terrible businessman for sure. How anyone would continue to employ that forgetful uncle Billy or at the very least why the heck would you give him the responsibility of depositing large sums of money, when he could barely remember to pick up a paper…
Seriously question though, was the FICA score around back then?
Helen
@eemom: Why? Over 50 is COOL, right?
James E. Powell
Watching A Christmas Carol – Patrick Stewart version. McNulty is the nephew.
ruemara
@WaterGIrl: Still about. Email me at ruemara at gmail.com
JPL
Since I’m a sap, Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas wasn’t bad.
gogol's wife
@JPL:
I could watch that every night of the week. Colin Firth! And Hugh Grant as the prime minister! And Martin Lawrence is hilarious.
I mean Martin Freeman!
revrick
Oh, and, John, here’s a live shot of heaven: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/arena/. It’s kind of a work in progress, but if you like hockey, you might want to get in after all.
metricpenny
Hey, don’t be hatin’ on the best movie ever!
Growing up as a child in the geetoe, watching it taught me that it isn’t the material things that you possess that give you worth.
Gotta go. Uncle Billy just told George he lost the deposit money …
MaryRC
@linda: IAWL is indeed a very dark and depressing movie and at the end, these people’s problems are far from over. I find it hard to watch myself. Elf is just too twee, you know a movie’s in trouble when Zooey Deschanel is less of a pixie than her leading man. Love Actually has its fans and detractors and I have to say that I’m on the side of those who find it creepy, even without Hugh Grant as the film world’s least likely Prime Minister.
My favorite Christmas movie: Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyk. She is enchanting.
WaterGIrl
@ruemara: Yay, will send email now.
gogol's wife
@MaryRC:
She’s also in another of my favorite Christmas movies, Remember the Night with Fred MacMurray. She’s a shoplifter he takes home with him to Indiana so she doesn’t have to spend Christmas in jail. It’s really a beautiful film, and you can see them warming up for Double Indemnity. They are great together, also in There’s Always Tomorrow.
JPL
@metricpenny: I am so glad that John posted his hate. I forgot it was on and now I’m glued to the TV.
jenn
@gogol’s wife: I’ve never heard of that movie! I’ll have to keep my eye out for it!
debbie
@metricpenny:
‘Bout time someone said something sensible.
aimai
@geg6: I love that film. And I don’ tcare who hears me say so.
Dave
The best part of It’s a Wonderful Life is the unintentional comedy. Like how casually young George calls young Mary “brainless” for not liking coconuts. Or how excited Clarence is that someone is in dire need of help, because presumably he’s already failed repeatedly to help others in similar situations. Honestly, the movie’s full of these.
aimai
@lamh36: Absolutely! And when the Jimmy Stewart character isn’t there the “ethnic” families are driven right into the poorhouse, Violet becomes the town whore, the pharmacist becomes a drunken, homeless man. The S and L is the way ordinary and recent immigrants–and the black cook–come together and save money and buy their first houses.
agorabum
@PaulW: Pottersville rules. I don’t know what Cole’s problem is. He just doesn’t like a place that “serves hard drinks for those who want to get drunk fast. And we don’t need any characters around giving the place atmosphere.” Haters gonna hate…
Citizen Alan
I loathe IAWL. To me, it’s the story of a guy who’s been raise with such a martyr complex that at ever moment in his life when he has a chance to try and live out his dreams, he sacrifices it for the benefit of others. And then, at the end, when he tries to seek agency for the first moment of his life by killing himself in order to save his family and defeat his rival, God Almighty personally intervenes to show him an emotionally manipulative alternate reality that “proves” how awesome it is for George to continually sacrifice himself for others because literally no one else in his town was capable of stepping up in his absence to do anything positive. My journey to agnosticism started with that movie.
StringOnAStick
How the Grinch Stole Christmas: loved it for being somewhat subversive; I recognized that aspect while a proto-Marxist child in a John Bircher household, plus those bass vocals are simply fabulous.
MaryRC
@gogol’s wife: Remember the Night is a wonderful movie and I love the scenes of the homestead, especially Sterling Holloway singing “When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day”. But that scene when Barbara’s character meets her mother is heartbreaking.
Joseph Nobles
Some people get their kicks stomping on a dream.
PurpleGirl
My Christmas movie is Donovan’s Reef. Only John Wayne movie I can stand to watch, and not for him but for the other characters (Jack Warden, Cesar Romero, Lee Marvin, Dorothy Lamour, Elizabeth Allen). I like the Australian troops, the Polynesian/French Nativity play and singing.
lamh36
@Citizen Alan: serious questions, how old is the suicide clause in life insurance policies? Is that fairly new phenomenon or has it been that way for a long time?
If so, wouldn’t jumping off that bridge constitute a violation of the no suicide policy?
eemom
deleted duplicate
eemom
@lamh36:
Zactly. And furthermore, the brilliance of Stewart’s acting in that scene….the gradually dawning realization of how he ALMOST sold his soul.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
A film that starts with the main character attempting suicide, shows every failure in his life, and ends with a temporary, empty “miracle” is syrupy bullshit? Frankly, I can only watch it every other year (if that) because it’s just too wrenching.
“Elf” is probably my modern favorite — it’s really sweet without being syrupy, and it’s hard to hate a movie that begins and ends with Bob Newhart narrating.
As far as unsung classics go, I’ll add in “We’re No Angels” (the good one with Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov, not the disastrous remake with Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn). I don’t want to give too much away, but the people I’ve shown it to spent a lot of time saying, “Wait, what!? OMG!”
WaterGIrl
@ruemara: Message sent at 10:11. I had some email issues earlier this week, with my messages sent but not arriving, so please post here to let me know whether you received the email message.
Suffern ACE
@lamh36: it has been there since the beginning. And it was current at the time according to the insurance authority (Johnny Dollar, Americas favorite private insurance investigator).
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, no love for “Miracle on 34th Street”? Edmund Gwynn kills it in that one, especially in the scene with the Dutch orphan.
Which is another thing people tend to forget about IAWL. It was made right after Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart got back from WWII. Capra helped film the liberation of the concentration camps. They fucking NEEDED to believe life had some kind of meaning that maybe they couldn’t quite perceive, because otherwise they would have each put a bullet in their heads.
IAWL was made a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. Put it into that context.
linda
@MaryRC: I share your love for Christmas in Connecticut. Stanwyck is a treasure, and the movie has loads to say about the phoney consumerist culture of women’s magazines and the people who create it.
Suffern ACE
Perhaps Spike Lee would have had more success with the Oldboy remake if he had changed the setting to the holiday season. That might make it the dark tale of Christmas revenge the sugarphobic are looking for.
lamh36
@Suffern ACE: Ah, so even in death, he wasn’t gonna leave much for Mary and the kids?
@eemom: Also too, people remembers the bit about the angel getting his wings, but there is that moment right after Ernie reads the telegram from Sam Wainwright after all the other townsfolk came forward with their contribution and Stewart looks up at Mary and then softly places his face against his daughter’s blouse to compose hisself, that another piece a scene that sticks with me, but is usually over-shadowed by the more memorable stuff.
lamh36
Ok, movie is over so I’ll stop harping on it…lol.
Time to move on…lol
FlipYrWhig
The whole movie is all about the spirit of community — one that specifically includes Italians and black people and women with scandalous reputations — can win out over predation and rapacity and especially materialism… for a while. It’s also about how being selfless and stoic ain’t easy — in fact, it fucking hurts. OK, it’s also about small town WASP virtues, but they keep being juxtaposed to small town WASP despair and frustration, as the whole world seems to be modernizing and making progress but Bedford Falls keeps getting left behind. The whole thing boils down to a good banker who builds friendships vs. a bad banker who only cares about profits. That may be preachy, but it’s preachy in a distinctly communitarian way.
P.S. I think the Violet character is amazing.
P.P.S. I think the George-Clarence scene in the bar in Pottersville is supposed to play as though they’re being taken for gay, then gay-bashed. I think it’s awesome that the movie keeps using intolerance of various kinds as a mark of amorality and materialism and profit-seeking. In Pottersville, Others get trashed and bashed. In Bedford Falls, as long as George Bailey is on the job, Others can be treated inclusively. Well played, Mr. Capra.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Fun fact about IAWL: the guy who plays Nick the Bartender is Sheldon Leonard, who was probably THE most legendary sitcom producer of all time.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Leonard
ruemara
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I knew they had just returned. I think people ignore the darkness in the movie and concentrate only on the near miraculous bright spots towards the end. It might be just human nature, but to me it’s always quite suspenseful and sad because the lack of a linchpin in the community affected so many lives.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
The one part that always annoys me in that segment is that Mary’s horrible fate is that she’s — gasp! — THE OLD MAID LIBRARIAN!!1! Even the first time I saw it as a kid, I was like WTF is this bullshit?
Comrade Mary
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Yeah, I didn’t care much for that. Almost killed all my delight at my namesake /professionsake having the HAWT SEX PHONE CALL with Mr. Stewart.
jl
@Citizen Alan:
If that is your opinion of the flick, I’m surprised it only moved you to agnosticism. But, then it is a very good movie, with some great scenes and great acting. Maybe it it had been better it would have shoved you all the way over.
@lamh36:
” If so, wouldn’t jumping off that bridge constitute a violation of the no suicide policy? ”
I don’t think there is anything at all in the movie about George being particularly bright. Mary is surely smarter, for just one. And Potter too, unfortunately.
But thanks for sticking up for the movie, and mentioning some nice scenes.
jl
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
” I was like WTF is this bullshit? ”
1946 bullshit, when everyone was worried that Rosie the Riveter would not go back home, and we would be back in late Great Depression era secular stagnation. A la 1939, which I think in the War of the Worlds, Orson Welles referred to the spirit of the times as the great dissillusion, or something like that.
Anyway, it’s 1946 BS, that is true.
WaterGIrl
I really loved It’s a Wonderful Life when it was hard to find on TV, which made it really special. In fact, it was the first VCR movie I ever had. Then it started to be “all It’s a Wonderful Life, all the time” on every channel during the holidays. Between that and having the ability to watch it any time I wanted on my VCR, well, somehow that took the wind out of my sails for that movie.
And I have no idea what this phone call scene was that people keep referring to.
Roxy
I saw IAWL last year at the local theater. Great movie to see on the big screen. What was happening to families and the banks in the moive is what is happening today.
Linda
@Comrade Mary: As an old maid librarian (but not with a bun) I LOL’d
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Suffern ACE:
IIRC, the “no suicide” clause only applies for the first few years of the policy, so I guess it would depend on how long George had had the policy. I think that, with many policies, if you buy it and commit suicide 10 years later, the insurance company is SOL.
But remember the amount of the policy — $15,000. His plan is for the insurance money to be used to fix the deficit at the savings and loan, not for it to go to his family.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Touché. But another under-interpreted scene is the one where Mary and George are coming home after the graduation party and her robe slips off. When she’s the old maid librarian, it means that in the alternative future no one is getting to have sex with her, and she’s not getting to have sex with anyone, and as far as Capra is concerned that’s a terrible squandering of hotness.
Roxy
My favorite Christmas movie-show is A Charlie Brown Christmas. I will give you five good reasons…
lamh36
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): exactly, besides which, wasn’t Sam Wainwright supposed to be another suitor for Mary? Wouldn’t she have married Wainwright or ole dude she was dancing with at that dance.
And OLD MAID, and George and Mary were only supposed to be like 35 or something. Shoot I’m 37, not married and no prospects at this time, so damn if mary’s and old maid, then I’m a freankin’ nun
FlipYrWhig
@WaterGIrl: George reluctantly goes to visit Mary at her house, where she’s awaiting a call from Sam Wainwright, who her mother favors over George. When Sam calls, Mary and George share the phone, and eventually he snaps, and then they start kissing, and the mother is dreadfully upset.
YellowJournalism
@El Caganer: That’s the first thing I think of whenever someone brings up IAWL. Best version ever: Al and the angel find out everyone would have been better off, but Al decides to live because he’s pissed they all would have it better than him.
pseudonymous in nc
@Matt McIrvin:
It is also the most left-wing film in regular rotation in America. No, really.
I was in Keene, NH near Christmas one year a long time ago. Interesting place.
jimmiraybob
I think it was sealed when you named little Willie McGee, Steve.
Sorry, been holding that in for a while.
Tom Hamill
@Matt McIrvin:I love every grim moment of this movie.
eemom
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Aha — funny you should mention that, because I was watching some of my beloved old I Love Lucy episodes again recently, and I recognized him playing the handy-dandy vacuum cleaner salesman.
FlipYrWhig
@lamh36: i think they’re supposed to be even younger than that. Mary is younger than George. George is the older brother and his younger brother has been through college and then in the service… It’s just that they don’t seem young, even when they’re supposed to be.
FlipYrWhig
@pseudonymous in nc: Keene is the closest Big City to where my in-laws all live. Yeah, you heard me right.
A Humble Lurker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Goes double for me.
Is it weird that the first Christmas Carol movie I saw was the Muppet one with Michael Caine? Now whenever they make a new one or one comes on tv all I can think of is the Muppets.
kc
@gogol’s wife:
Just saw that for the first time on TCM the other night. Loved it.
sparrow
@Ivan X: Bonus points for Ice Harvest being set in my hometown, miserable fing place that it is.
eemom
Another classic that hasn’t been mentioned: A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott playing Scrooge, circa mid-1980s.
Corner Stone
@jimmiraybob:
Dude was a straight badass.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: No. Scott was a fantastic actor (full disclosure: I went to college with his sons), but he wasn’t Scrooge.
Crouchback
Mr. Cole, it must be lingering conservatism in you that makes you hate IAWL:
Consider Michael Graham, John Feehery and the Weekly Standard. It’s astonishing how many conservatives hate it, especially since Capra was a Republican.
Comrade Mary
@WaterGIrl: The scene in Mary’s house where she and George are talking to Sam on the phone and CHEMISTRY and LUST explode all over and he declares his love for her. Also: kissing. You know, the “He’s making violent love to me!” scene. (It’s on YouTube, but I don’t think it will be as effective out of context).
And yeah, if I had first seen the movie during the holidays with the “people praying for George Bailey” opening, I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much.
Omnes Omnibus
I still don’t like the movie. I do love Christmas – the whole Christmas season. Now, please don’t ask why; no one quite knows the reason.
MaryRC
@lamh36: I’ve always thought that in a material sense, Mary would have been better off if George never existed because she’d have married Sam Wainwright who became a rich man. Of course, she’d have to spend her life with a guy who said “Hee-haw!”all the time, which could wear you down I suppose. But even if she never married, I can’t see why that would make her afraid of men as she was of George, or near-sighted either.
Halcyon
What the hell, an entire discussion about It’s A Wonderful Life without anyone pointing out that not only was John Rogers right about 27%, he was right about that movie too? I expect better.
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/incident-at-bedfore-falls-bridge.html
MaryRC
@linda: Yes, I love the opening scenes where she’s typing her fake Martha-Stewart-perfect-country-homemaker column in her Manhattan apartment where she doesn’t even know how to boil water. She’d never be able to get away with this today — imagine the scandal!
LAC
@Keith G: you are right. Next up: John cole reviews “a Charlie Brown Christmas. Verdict ? ” Poorly drawn piece of fuckface shit. Assholes….” Merry Christmas !!!
WaterGIrl
@FlipYrWhig: @Comrade Mary: Hmm. I remember everything being very G-rated between them. Lots of hot, sexy stuff can happen with clothes on, though, so I will have to watch that scene.
Tehanu
@jenn:
Hate, hate, hate It’s a Wonderful Life, but The Ref is a great Christmas movie. I agree with whoever said above, it’s just whatever reminds you of good memories and that’s different for everyone. Example, I love White Christmas but I can’t watch it if my husband is in the room because he hates it and complains so much that I start realizing what a dumb movie it really is. Ditto Christmas in Connecticut which has both Sydney Greenstreet and Cuddles Sakall as well as Barbara Stanwyk, for chrissake, but he opts out as soon as the hokey stuff starts. I’m also a sucker for almost any Christmas Carol version, including Mickey Mouse’s and Mr. Magoo’s. One of the best I ever saw was on the unfairly forgotten sitcom The Famous Teddy Z, with Jon Cryer and Alex Rocco, called “Season’s Greetings from Al Floss.”
fuckwit
@lamh36: In those days, people married right out of High School. 18, married. Especially 1st and 2nd generation immigrants from The Old Country. This was still the case as late as the 1980s in the East Coast when I was last there. And apparently it was the norm in the 1990s in Texas as well (where they added the extra twist of being divorced with 2 kids by age 24). I guess in California and other more enlightened places, people have tended to marry later for quite some time, maybe since the 1970s?
The idea of not getting married until late 20s and not having kids until early 30s is an innovation, thanks probably to feminism and to amnioscentesis and other modern medical technology (having kids late in life isn’t a guarantee of terrible medical problem for you or the baby anymore). The more a society advances, the more opportunities for education and for career that women have, the later they marry and have kids, and the fewer kids they have. This is the single best means of lowering the birthrate on the planet: educate the girls. I think this is a swell thing.
Suffern ACE
@MaryRC: ok. If we read Pottersville as nothing but a figment George’s imagination, a dream so to speak, of course he’s not going to let Mary find another. That would be too uncomfortable for him. Sam Wainwright? She never loved him. She could only love George. Rather than the woman who saves the bank twice in film, who therefore has her wits about her-without him, she’d be a spinster. It’s wish fulfillment.
James E. Powell
@A Humble Lurker:
Is it weird that the first Christmas Carol movie I saw was the Muppet one with Michael Caine?
The first one I saw was Mr. Magoo
handsmile
A most revealing thread (and so sorry to have arrived so late).
A favorite Christmas movie of mine has not yet been mentioned (or perhaps I missed it): Ernst Lubitsch’s A Shop Around the Corner.
A film with all the virtues of this “most wonderful time of the year”: greed, fear, betrayal, cowardice, arrogance, deception, emotional manipulation, and an assisted suicide.
For all its holiday wrapping, a film of almost unremitting bleakness. I deeply admire Lubitsch’s courage in making it.
It’s a Wonderful Life has been fully anatomized above. I am surprised to read the intensity of the loathing it evidently provokes in many. I like it a good deal more than many here: here too is a dark and disturbing fable which its Christmastime setting cannot disguise or dispel. Also, the emotional palette demanded of the character George Bailey inspires James Stewart to one of his very best performances.
My one longstanding and adamant complaint is that Potter escapes justice for his theft. Even in the fairy tales of Frank Capra, apparently, banksters remain unpunished.
And finally, there a few movies I find more utterly nauseating than Love, Actually. So much, in fact, I’ve never been able to watch the entire movie.
God bless us, everyone!
fuckwit
Aaaand, as for christmas movies, nothing yet has beat this one, for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CnmGv_EpY
Also, ties in with Olympics and Brian Boitano.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E. Powell: My dad made sure that the Alistair Sim version was the first for me. The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in that is the single most terrifying thing I have ever seen. Age and timing are meaningful.
handsmile
Oops – that should be “attempted suicide” above.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@fuckwit:
Actually, no, you have it backwards — the early marriages of the 1950s were the innovation. Up until that time, the age at first marriage had been steadily increasing for years for both men and women, probably for economic reasons.
@handsmile:
Uh, I think you’re either misremembering the scene or autocorrect has screwed you. Interrupted suicide is more like it, especially since the character is alive and well at the end of the film and contemplating a hearty serving of apple strudel.
Back to IAWL, there’s a scene that a lot of people haven’t seen or forget about because it was censored from the TV prints. After George gets back from the meeting with Mr. Potter where he almost accepts a job, he goes back to the house where Mary tells him she’s expecting their first child. But it got censored from TV prints because they have — gasp! — a double bed rather than two single beds placed head-to-head as you see in 1950s movies. So, yes, parts of IAWL were too racy for TV.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@handsmile:
Ah, I see you fixed that before my post finished loading. G and I watch “Shop Around the Corner” on Christmas Eve every year — saving the best for last. Lubitsch’s repertory company has some of my all-time favorite character actors in it, particularly Felix Bressart.
“If someone is really your friend, he comes AFTER dinner.”
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
But have you seen the version I’m referring to? I thought it was an awesome performance.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Yes, I have seen it and it did not work for me.
kuvasz
The one film I have watch for several years over Christmas is Joyeux Noël, the French film depicting the Christmas truce of 1914 on the Western Front during WW I. The film describes in detail the truce and its effects on French, Scotch, and German soldiers, who the day before had been trying to kill each other. It seems a far greater miracle than the Virgin Birth that soldiers in time of war laid down their weapons in honor of such a birth. As horrible as war is, that truce was a miracle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyeux_No%C3%ABl
John McCutcheon’s song “Christmas in the Trenches” describes the event from a British perspective.
eemom
@handsmile:
Well, from the perspective of the many — and basically ignorant — gripes about the movie we’ve seen on this thread, at least Potter doesn’t, in the final scene, repent and show up at the Baileys’ to throw the $8,000 on the table and sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing like everybody else. Now THAT would’ve been some truly sickening Hollywood shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Would bank regulators been okay with the ending? Or would Stewart’s character faced a serious prison sentence? I don’t like Capra’s type of sentimentality. I may be a sucker for other types, but not Capra.
FlipYrWhig
I taught IAWL at the end of a class on literature and economics recently. I thought I had a decent zinger about the moment when Zuzu says “teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings.” I said, “yeah, the teacher really shouldn’t be saying that.” One of the students did me one better, adding, “especially not in biology class.” Well-played.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: Eh, the sentimentality is just the flip side of the postwar New Deal liberalism. It’s a package deal. I’ll take it.
FlipYrWhig
@Suffern ACE: Sam Wainwright doesn’t seem to have loved Mary either. Isn’t he snuggling a floozy all through that phone call scene?
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: I had an IB Bio teacher who told Jesus jokes going into Easter week. “Jesus walks into a hotel, puts down three nails, and says, ‘Can you put me up for the night.?'” Or “Why can’t Jesus eat M&Ms?” “They fall through the holes in his hands.”
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
hmm. A valid, if technical point….I’ve always assumed that all was cool as long as the money was paid back and the D.A. ripped up the arrest warrant.
However, I guess my fallback argument would be that even though it may be a flawed movie, it does not deserve the rap of mindless sentimentality that it’s gotten from others on this thread. It does plumb the depths of darkness and was in many ways ahead of its time, for reasons that have been noted.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: Teach the controversy!
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah. Kind of a Bill Clinton of his time.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: oh, Lord, doesn’t he have a cigar too?
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I am a rank sentimentalist. In the Casablanca sense. I love A Christmas Carol. I just don’t fall for this movies with the exception of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” BTW Capra was a conservative Republican. That has no bearing on the the artistic quality of his work, but it sure as hell comes into play in interpreting his intentions.
different-church-lady
Hell, even God is sick of that film.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh heck, remember at Obama’s first inaug, Cheney had just gone through one of his heart procedures and he was in a wheelchair? My first thought was, “My God, it’s Mr. Potter!”
http://shenews.projo.com/09/bush-cheney377.jpg
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
hmm, again. Without opening yet another can of worms, I’ve never gotten why people love Casablanca.
Anyway, as for Capra being a “conservative republican”, surely we can at least agree that such affiliation in 1948 was an entirely different kettle of fish from what it is today?
Fish, worms…..I need to go to sleep.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom:
::landed fish gasps::
gogol's wife
@MaryRC:
Probably too late for you to see this, but I LOVE that scene with Sterling Holloway. I just ordered the sheet music for that song from Amazon!
brendancalling
@WereBear: my favorite christmas movies are “Das Boot” and “Debbie Does Dallas, the Musical”.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Actually, Capra was a New Deal Democrat. The problem is that a LOT of those guys turned conservative and Republican in response to civil rights and the Vietnam War (see also Jimmy Cagney).
Citizen_X
@FlipYrWhig:
Hell, yes. “Alright, twinkle toes…we don’t need any ‘characters’ in this place to give it ‘atmosphere!'”
Dearolddad
As a ‘born again atheist’ myself I have to admit I like the movie. George Bailey standing up for the little guy. Also, I just like Jimmy Stewart.
linda
@Suffern ACE: Mary’s spinsterhood. It’s clear throughout the movie that it’s not George’s wish fulfillment. She told him (I’m his bad ear) as a little girl that she would love him forever. And when he asked why she married him, she tells him it was so that shewouldn’t be an old maid.