Christmas Movies

Christmas movies are just an extraordinary extension of the great storytelling tradition of Christmas. In lands far and wide one of the key entertainment elements of the season has always been storytelling and nothing tells the stories of Christmas better than a mash-up of film, music and script that make up great Christmas movies. Did you know that one of the first movies ever made way back in 1898 was in fact a Christmas movie? We have on record well over a century of Christmas on film. We explore them all — from It’s a Wonderful Life to Elf — both old and new and Christmas movies yet to come. We feel that if Dickens were to have lived to the age of film in the 20th century he would have left us more great Christmas stories to enjoy on film today.

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Alison Krauss and Robert Plant Light of Christmas Day

Part new Christmas music and part movie preview this song by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant comes from the soundtrack of the soon-to-be released movie Love the Coopers.
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Bad Santa 2 Coming Next Year

As we posted last May Bad Santa will get a sequel and Billy Bob Thornton is in. The project got the go ahead this week and it was announced that filming will begin in January with hopes of a holiday 2016 release. Thornton will reprise his…
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Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Miracle on 34th Street

Three films made in quick succession post World War II have endured in the minds of Christmas fans as among the best of films ever made: It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bishop’s Wife and Miracle on 34th Street. But of those three films only Miracle…
White Christmas
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The Legendary Bing Crosby

He was born the middle of seven children in the great American northwest. His father was an English-American bookkeeper and his mother a second-generation Irish American, making young Harry about as American as apple pie. The rest of his story…
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Home Alone Goes Back to Theaters

Home Alone celebrates 25 years this Christmas and producers are celebrating in a variety of ways -- the latest by announcing that it will make a very limited to return to theaters on November 8th. Over two dates in early November -- the…
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Ice Cube: Not the Scrooge We’re Looking For

We asked for a modern re-do of A Christmas Carol in the latest episode of the Merry Podcast and at least one of four competing movie studios wants to deliver. Universal Pictures has purchased the rights to a modern re-telling of the Dickens…
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Shatner Slashes Christmas

The Christmas ghost story has come a long way since Dickens. Back then it was scary enough just to have Scrooge visited by three ghosts. But how about a Christmas tale where the ghosts have a bit more of an edge to them? That's the Christmas…
Christmas Opinion
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Home Alone Celebrates 25th Anniversary

It has been 25 years since the Christmas classic Home Alone hit the big screen. That, of course, means that an all new 25th anniversary edition of the movie is coming available. Arriving on Blu-ray and DVD October 6, a must have gift set…
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15th Anniversary of Live Action Grinch Coming to Blu Ray

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas comes to Blu-ray™ and Digital HD in a newly remastered Grinchmas Edition from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on October 13, 2015. The film marks its 15th Anniversary with improved HD picture…
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Jimmy Stewart Talks About It’s a Wonderful Life

It's A Wonderful Life has reached such a point of saturation in American Christmas culture we can practically quote it line by line. But even still we cannot get enough of it. Even though Jimmy Stewart has been gone now for many years…
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A New Christmas Movie We Have Seen Before

The drought in new, original Christmas movies continues despite trailers for new release titles like Love the Coopers, which dropped today: The movie opens in theaters November 13th. The film follows the Cooper clan as four generations…
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Ten Things You Did Not Know About The Bishop’s Wife

The Bishop’s Wife (1947) is a Christmas classic that demonstrates not only the enduring backdrop that Christmas can be to a story but it is also a peek back in time to an America that probably never will exist again. The film landed smack…
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The World’s First Christmas Movie

The world’s first Christmas movie dates back to 1898, an age well before even popular silent films shown in movie houses. Directed by George Albert Smith, a British pioneer of film making, this wonderful bit of film was considered a technological…
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Who is the best Jacob Marley?

Whether you read the book or simply watch A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens every Christmas there is no getting around the point that likely the juiciest role in the whole story is that of Jacob Marley. Think about it -- he's a mournful,…
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Young Scrooge George Cole Has Died

Actor George Cole, a British mainstay for years on UK television and in British film, has died at the age of 90, the New York Times reports. He is most well known outside of England for playing the part of young Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas…