Goodness knows, we could use it.
For all of you who celebrate the Christmas holiday, may you have a merry and safe Christmas.
For those of you who do not, I hope you enjoy your movie, and suggest the General Gao’s Chicken.
Please share widely!
Reality-based commentary on politics.
God Bless Us, Every One!
crab is on the menu for a lot of the folks not celebrating Christmas…
I wonder if they actually put any real crab in there? I betting pollack.
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p>jim
…but I still remember what Phillip Roth wrote in ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ – that the dietary laws for the Children of Isreal don’t apply in Chinese restaurants!
I think I was beeing a wee bit snarky at 3 or whatever the timestamp was – Happy holidays!
As somebody who has celebrated neither Christmas or Chanukah for many years, I’m an “eat-pretty-much-anything” person, who loves seafood, including shrimp, crab, and most other types of fish.
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p>Those dietary laws regarding the consumption of shellfish were made long, long ago, in the days before refrigeration. Some people still follow those laws, but many, if not most people, fail to follow them any longer.
I am looking forward to a blogrageous 2008 and a shift in national priorities and state-level political rhetoric. I am looking forward to words transformed to action. We can, we shall, we will do better for humankind.
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p>-William James
A movie suggestion: A Christmas Story, the one with Derren McGavin. It actually ends in a Chinese restaurant.
We watch almost every year, and least since we finally got sick of Jimmy Stewart.
Sorry that I misspelled the name of the Nightstalker–one of the stars of this movie. It was Darren McGaven, not Derren.
A great character actor. And excellent in this movie, especially when cussing at the furnace or the neighbor’s hounds.
…but others here might not have.
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p>I would have cited to the page on the Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com but they didn’t even get the spelling of the author’s name properly.
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p>There were two great comedic movies in the early 1980s. This one, and Airplane. We saw them both at the late, lamented, Wellesley Playhouse movie theater. Filled with kids, and all of them were laughing.
Today is the first day of Winter–and the Winter Solstice. It’s the shortest day of the year, sure, but it’ll start shifting around again, with the days beginning to lengthen. Even though X-mas isn’t my holiday, I’ve always loved the Christmas lights, and I even find much of the Christmas music quite beautiful to listen to, although I really don’t like the schmaltzy versions of carols that blare out in the stores, nor do I like the fact that, for some strange reason, people felt compelled to start the Christmas season in October rather than the day after Thanksgiving, when it’s really supposed to start.
There was a remake version of It’s A Wonderful life…but the character that was the lead was Mary Bailey, not George. George goes off to war, becomes a hero and marries a great catch who does not want to come back to her husband’s hometown to settle…that leaves his sister, Mary Bailey back home…giving up her own dreams to attend college in order to stay and work with her father’s Savings and Loan….you know the rest…
marlo Thomas played Mary Bailey and was actually terrific…I liked this version better because Jimmy Stewart was so whiney…she was a stronger character.
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p>I have tried to find this mmovie to buy, but have not succeeded.
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…was a remake of (well, inspired by) a “Christmas Carol”.
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p>I think one reason you can’t find It Happened One Christmas, the Marlo Thomas flick, is because it was a made for TV movie. I remember my mom used to watch this every year along with the umpteen million viewings of the Capra original. Remember when it used to be on every night on every channel?
…It’s A Wonderful Life it does get to be a bit boring.
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p>As I understand it, the movie was played incessantly on every channel for a long time because it was considered out of copyright. I’m not sure what its copyright status is now.
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p>Jimmy Stewart was actually a pretty good actor. I cannot claim to have seen all of his films, but of those that I have seen, my favorite is Flight of the Phoenix
is Shenandoah which I recently watched for the first time. It’s also one of my favorite songs of all time.
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p>10 minutes are better than nothing right?
…for those daring enough to infringe upon copyrights.
I meant the Stewart one.
…as I wrote, Stewart was a pretty good actor.
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p>What was interesting about Phoenix was that it was done basically on one set. Something like Hitchcock did with Lifeboat but that was done in a bathtub–essentially.
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p>It actually is amazing what they did in the pre-CGI days. In Gone With The Wind the door to Tara was a door on the studio lot, and they painted in Tara using masks after the filming. Nowadays, it would all be filmed in front of a blue screen and the computers would paint it in.
Well, that was a treat and a half!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for posting that! Where can I get the whole movie??????
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p>It is better than the Stewart version by far to me!
How I wish that West Side Story would come back for Christmas! My idea of a film to watch on any holiday, including X-Mas.
for a number of reasons, I don’t have a DVD player, and, also, I don’t watch a lot of television, as a general rule. However, TCM (Turner Classic Films) airs it on TV once in awhile, and I watch it then, but, then again, nothing beats seeing the great, golden-oldie-but-goody movie musical classic film West Side Story on the great big, wide screen, in a real movie theatre, with the lights down low! Christmas and Valentine’s Day are two holidays that it should be played on, more than others, though it’s great at any time of year.
…plus a suscription to Netflix or Blockbuster for their disks is that you can stop the movie, go to the bathroom, get a snack, return and restart to movie and miss nothing.
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p>We’re in the process of cancelling all cable because it is (i) inconvenient and (ii) too expensive. To pay US$50 or more per month to have ads pumped into the house is preposterous. We don’t even watch broadcast TV (over rabbit ears) much any more.
n/m
What cable system do you ahve.
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p>My cable bill, which includes internet access is $170.00 and I only get one movie channel, and a DVR.
It appears to transpose bytes.
The h is silent anyways.
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p>;)
What cable system do you ahve.
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p>…Comcast.
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p>BTW, the mother in law in the Munich area gets far more channels for Euro15/month. She isn’t interested in a movie channel, but you get the idea. Cable in the US is ridiculously expensive.
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p>We do have to pay a tax in Germany for TV and radio based on the number of receivers, but the tax is low and most channels are commercial-free.
I don’t pay nearly as much for my service as lots of other people do.
…A recommendation. It’s only audio, but if you can find a copy of Robert Shaw Chorale’s The Many Moods of Christman snatch it up. The Telarc version is better than the regular version, but both are excellent. And I’m not even religious.