Every musician I know thinks that "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a perfect song--and so do I.
The tune is as good as anything that Schubert or Brahms ever wrote.
I agree with those opinions. Nothing makes me feel like Christmas more than hearing Frank Sinatra singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." It conjures up memories from my childhood like no other Christmas music, not even Johnny Mathis' original Christmas album, which my father played constantly during the Christmas season.
I should have recorded Meet Me in St. Louis but I'm running short on DVR space and I wanted to record some others coming up today, including my favorite Christmas movie, The Shop Around The Corner. You want a great Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie, there's your ticket. It's A Wonderful Life is okay, I suppose, but it never really did much for me. On the other hand, The Shop Around The Corner is a perfect little gem, a beautifully told story with not a line out of place or a moment that's missed. It has humor and drama and romance, and it has one of Jimmy Stewart's finest performances. Of course, it was directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch and if you've heard about the famous "Lubitsch Touch," that combination of grace, elegance, wit, and charm, you won't find it in more abundance than here. It's on TCM this morning at 10:15 but if you miss this run it plays often on TCM during the Christmas season so there will be other opportunities. Just to give you a taste, here is a clip of the first few minutes. See how brilliantly all the characters are in introduced. Within minutes, we've already formed opinions about them:
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I also recorded Roman Holiday and The Lady Eve, neither one Christmas movies but movies I'll happily watch again during this Christmas season. I've got a lot of time off between now and the new year and I traditionally watch a lot of movies during this period. This year will be no different.
As for last night's The Red Shoes, it is very well done. I didn't think a backstage drama about ballet could keep my interest for over two hours but it did. Powell and Pressburger film the ballet scenes with great skill, making it a movie rather than just a film of a stage performance. The acting are fine, especially Anton Walbrook as the dictatorial director, and Moira Shearer is lovely and an awfully talented dancer. My reservation with the movie is the end and what leads to the end. SPOILER ALERT!! The character Ms. Shearer plays is so down to earth, has such a level head, it seems implausible that she'd fling herself out a window in a suicidal act. It comes out of nowhere, even though we know it's coming. Perhaps they should have made her less lovely, shown how much dancing meant to her, rather than have her mouth the words. She doesn't have the glint in her eye when she talks about her dancing, that monomaniacal passion that the great ones have. We don't get that without dancing her life is meaningless. She has to choose between her lover and her dancing but we never get the feeling that dancing is everything to her. So she jumps to her death. The irony, of course, is that Moira Sheater was one of the greatest ballet dancers of her time - she undoubtedly had what it took to convey those feelings. Still, it's not a reason not to watch the movie. It's terrific in all ways except that slight misstep of characterization.
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