Miles David Moore

We've lost so many admirable people in the last month that it's been difficult even to keep track. There was Richard Griffiths, an inimitable mixture of the acidulous and the avuncular, who was a highlight of films ranging from "Withnail & I" and "History Boys" to "Hugo" and the Harry Potter movies. There was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, novelist and screenwriter, who with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory proved beyond doubt that E.M. Forster's novels were a natural for the movies. There was the marvelously beetle-browed Milo O'Shea, prolific character actor who was the silver screen's first--and perhaps its only--Leopold Bloom.

For those of us of a certain age, however, the passing that hit us the hardest was Annette Funicello's. She was the most famous of Walt Disney's Mouseketeers, a regular guest in every American home that had both children and a television. Annette Funicello was a beloved imaginary playmate for millions of children, and for many their first crush as well. Beset for much of her life with multiple sclerosis, she bore her affliction with grace, courage, and compassion for her fellow sufferers. Thanks for all the happy memories, Annette; when the Mickey Mouse Club reconvenes in the beyond, we all hope to be there with you.

Roger Ebert wasn't the first celebrity film critic. Pauline Kael, Rex Reed, Judith Crist and Andrew Sarris all had high public profiles before him. But in the sheer force of his personality and his influence, Ebert was unique. He was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, and the first to have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Unfortunately, earlier this week, Ebert received an honor all of us wish could have been postponed for many years: he became the first film critic to be eulogized by a President of the United States. "For a generation of Americans--and especially Chicagoans--Roger WAS the movies," President Obama said April 4, upon hearing of Ebert's death.

Ebert's speaking voice was stilled years before his death, by cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands that disfigured his face and left him unable to either speak or take nourishment by mouth. But through his blog and his continuing columns in the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert spoke louder and more clearly than ever before in the last years of his life. Ebert's blog ranged well beyond the movies, touching on whatever topics interested him. He wrote a lot about the conflict between religion and evolution, and about politics: one of his most memorable columns was an animadversion against the egregious Rush Limbaugh, dismissing him in terms that should have sent Limbaugh into hiding forever. Ebert also wrote about his illness, which he described calmly, logically, and with an utter absence of self-pity. But his best blog pieces were reminiscences--the things he had seen, the places he had been, the people he had met. My favorite piece was Ebert's eulogy for his favorite London hotel--a delightfully, eccentrically cozy place, in his description--which was torn down to accommodate new buildings for the London Olympics.

It was always a treat to encounter Roger Ebert, in print or on "Sneak Previews," the TV show he shared with his late co-host, Gene Siskel. "Sneak Previews" was just as interesting for the sometimes rocky relationship between the hosts as it was for their reviews. (Ebert put it succinctly: "Gene and I are friends--except when we're not.") Siskel was an intelligent, agreeable host, but Ebert was something else again. Ebert's earnest yet witty personality and plain, clear Midwestern voice made it obvious from the beginning that he was the real star of the show. The way he had of explaining his reactions to a movie was so direct and compelling that you had to listen, even if you disagreed with him totally. In a sense, he turned every viewer of "Sneak Previews" into Gene Siskel; we were all engaged in a dialogue with him, sometimes a passionate one.

Ebert was a reporter AND an esthete, and that made him unique as a film reviewer. To read his columns is to realize he cared at least as much about the art of the cinema as Kael and Sarris ever did. But he was also in the great tradition of Chicago reporters--people such as Mike Royko and Studs Terkel, who were his friends and mentors. Ebert had a desire to communicate that bordered on moral fervor, combined with a combative, cut-the-crap attitude he used against anyone he suspected of being a liar or a scoundrel. He was savage toward any movie that set off his bullshit detector. I still remember his outrage toward the 1986 Rutger Hauer thriller, "The Hitcher." Ebert rightly pegged the film as "diseased and corrupt," a sadistic, mean-spirited tale that pretended to be profound. On the other hand, when Ebert praised the life-affirming qualities of Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," and placed it on his very last "10 Greatest Films of All Time" list for "Sight and Sound" Magazine, I had to bow to his choice, even though I found the film a qualified success at best.

Ebert could be just as combative in person as he was in print, always when his sense of moral outrage was aroused. Years ago I rented a DVD of a movie about a teenage gang, consisting of bored Chinese-American youths in an affluent suburb. The names of the movie, the director and the actors have been wiped clean from my memory, and a search of Netflix and the Internet failed to restore them. But I have never forgotten the bonus "Making Of" documentary on the disc. In that documentary, the director describes presenting his film at a festival, and being dumbfounded at a press conference when a reporter asked him whether he cared that his film set a bad example for Asian youth. He fumbled for an answer, but fortunately Roger Ebert had one for him. The documentary shows Ebert standing up in a fury and saying, "I cannot imagine a more insulting question than the one you just asked. If this had been a movie about a white gang, you NEVER would have asked it!" Game, set, and match.

Roger Ebert was a force not just for good movies, but for good. I close with a quote from Ebert himself, a quote I hope all of us can endorse at the end: "We must try to contribute joy to the world. That's true, no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always feel this and am happy I lived long enough to find this out."

Only three films in Academy Award history have won the Best Picture Oscar without their directors being nominated: Wings in 1928, Grand Hotel in 1932, and Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.

Will Argo make it #4?

That's the obvious question after the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards last night, where Argo continued its sweep of the pre-Oscar honors. The film took the Best Picture BAFTA, and Ben Affleck won Best Director despite not being nominated for a Best Director Oscar.

"Ben Was Robbed" sentiment is growing in Hollywood, and that could upset the conventional logic that Lincoln and Steven Spielberg will take home Oscars on Feb. 24. The whole Argo situation could throw the Best Director race wide open, and the most likely beneficiary would be Michael Haneke, whose film Amour will almost certainly win Best Foreign Film and is also a Best Picture nominee. But even if Spielberg wins, Argo could still take its place fourth in line behind Wings, Grand Hotel, and Driving Miss Daisy.

Otherwise, the BAFTAs bolstered the Oscar hopes of Emmanuelle Riva and Christoph Waltz, and virtually cinched those of Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway. The BAFTAs aren't always a totally accurate prognosticator of Oscar results, but as an augury they beat hands down the entrails of a goat.

So far I have reviewed three of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees in Scene4--Lincoln, Argo, and Les Miserables. My combined review of Amour and Silver Linings Playbook will come out in March. That leaves four nominees I haven't reviewed, and it's probably not a coincidence that I find them the most difficult to review.

The nominee I find most difficult to review on its own merits is Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. Django Unchained, as everyone knows by now, is an over-the-top bloody revenge fantasy for slavery, following closely the blueprint for Tarantino's previous movie, Inglourious Basterds, which was an over-the-top revenge fantasy for the Holocaust. I found Django Unchained the queasier viewing experience of the two; I wonder how much of that was because I am a white American, rather than a German Gentile. In any case, Django Unchained has some hilarious set pieces, particularly the proto-Ku Klux Klan posse headed by Don Johnson and Jonah Hill. It also has three outstanding performances, by Christoph Waltz as the liberator-sidekick to Jamie Foxx's Django; Leonardo Di Caprio as a degenerate plantation owner; and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays part-Quisling, part-Bormann to Di Caprio's Hitler.

The nominee I find most difficult to write about, vis-a-vis what has already been written about it in Scene4, is Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. My colleague Michael Bettencourt has savaged the film, to the point of comparing Bigelow with Leni Riefenstahl. Bettencourt said the film both glorifies and misrepresents the role that torture played in finding and killing Osama bin Laden, though he adds it had the unintended benefit of pointing up the sheer ineptitude of the U.S. war on terror. I am not certain I totally agree with Bettencourt, but his position is defensible, and he defends it eloquently. Bettencourt also said the film is badly written, badly directed, and--with the single exception of Mark Strong's performance--badly acted. I could not disagree with him more strongly on this point; I found the film thrilling from beginning to end, in every way.

Ang Lee's Life of Pi was for me the least inspiring, not only of the four films considered here, but of all the nominees.Visually and esthetically, Life of Pi is magnificent. It is the only film I can think of, other than Martin Scorsese's Hugo, in which 3D effects actually enhance the impact of the film. Lee also deals cogently and sensitively with the philosophical and spiritual ideas advanced in Yann Martel's novel. Yet the film's problems are built in to the story: there are simply too many scenes of Pi and the tiger alone in the lifeboat. This was fine for a novel, not so fine for a movie.

I missed Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild in its summer 2012 release, and caught it only last week on DVD. It resembles few other films, certainly no American films except possibly Terrence Malick's. But Beasts of the Southern Wild, unlike Malick's films, is richly specific as to its location--an isolated spot in the Louisiana bayous known as "The Bathtub" to its residents--and its main characters: Hushpuppy, a six-year-old girl growing up in The Bathtub, and Wink, her alcoholic, hot-tempered single father. Like no other film I've ever seen, Beasts of the Southern Wild has what Keats called "negative capability:" It presents the reality of its place and people, without trying to fit them into any preconceptions the audience might have. Soon enough, the film becomes clear. Beasts of the Southern Wild is several different films at once: a coming-of-age story, a plea for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, an elegy for their way of life, and a paean to everyone everywhere who endures in the face of catastrophe. The intense, heartbreaking performance by Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy has been universally and justly praised. This was her first film role, as it was for Dwight Henry, the New Orleans baker who plays Wink. The chorus of praise has been less loud for Henry, but he too is magnificent.

As for my Oscar prognostications, despite the recent surge of support for Argo, I still think the major awards will go as follows: Lincoln for Best Picture, Steven Spielberg for Best Director, Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln) for Best Actor, and Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables) for Best Supporting Actress.

The Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor races are much harder to read. Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) and Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) all seem to have a strong chance for the award at this point. I predict that Riva will win, because the Academy has both strong Francophile leanings (Marion Cotillard, Jean Dujardin) and a predilection for honoring distinguished senior thespians (George Burns, Jessica Tandy, John Gielgud, Christopher Plummer). But with Chastain and Lawrence in the running, Riva cannot be considered a shoo-in. For nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis, the honor of being the youngest Best Actress nominee ever is her award. Naomi Watts, in The Impossible, has the disadvantage of being in a movie that has no other nominations and no significant buzz beyond her performance.

The Best Supporting Actor prize, in my opinion, is totally up for grabs. All five nominees--Alan Arkin for Argo, Robert De Niro for Silver Linings Playbook, Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln and Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained--have won previous Oscars. They are all eminently deserving this year, and all popular with Academy voters. If Lincoln makes a sweep of the awards, Jones will almost certainly benefit from that--though personally the sheer power of Hoffman's performance would win my vote. Perhaps there will be a five-way tie, and they'll go on tour together as The 5 Neat Guys? Pardon my SCTV trivia here, and stay tuned.

My friend Steve Rogers tagged me to participate in the ongoing blog interview for authors, "The Next Big Thing." The interview asks ten questions about the writer's current project; Steve posted his answers on his blog (http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com) January 28, about the historical novel he is now writing. He asked me to post my own answers one week later, which is today. Here they are:

WHAT IS THE WORKING TITLE OF YOUR BOOK (OR STORY)? The original title was, "Of All the Words of Tongue or Pen," after the line in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Maud Muller." But after the readers of the first draft of the story objected to the title, I changed it to, "A Fraction of a Second."

WHERE DID THE IDEA FOR YOUR BOOK (OR STORY) COME FROM? All my life--and particularly recently--I have been haunted by the idea that even an insignificant decision or action, made in haste, can change irrevocably both your life and the lives of others. It's a bit like the "butterfly effect," except that I see it as more personal and visceral. What if you lose your temper in front of someone whom you have just met, and whom you were supposed to marry? (As for who "supposes" this, whether God or fate or what have you, I leave that to the reader.)

WHAT GENRE DOES YOUR STORY FALL UNDER? I guess it would be fantasy, though there is nothing sci-fi or supernatural in it. Again, I leave the interpretation to the reader.

WHICH ACTORS WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO PLAY YOUR CHARACTERS IN A MOVIE RENDITION? Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jennifer Lawrence would be perfect as the leads, and I am a huge fan of both.

WHAT IS THE ONE-SENTENCE SYNOPSIS OF YOUR STORY? Boy meets girl, boy and girl miss their chance together, boy and girl lose everything as a consequence.

WILL YOUR BOOK BE SELF-PUBLISHED OR REPRESENTED BY AN AGENCY? Because, in this case, it is a single short story, I will send it out to journals and magazines as soon as it's ready.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT OF YOUR MANUSCRIPT? About a week. (The rewrite has taken months.)

WHAT OTHER BOOKS WOULD YOU COMPARE THIS STORY TO WITHIN ITS GENRE? One of the readers of the first draft called it an O. Henry story, but I disagree. I think it is much closer to Ray Bradbury's stories, or perhaps Kurt Vonnegut's.

WHO OR WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS STORY? An itch I couldn't scratch, except to write it.

WHAT ELSE ABOUT YOUR STORY MIGHT PIQUE A READER'S INTEREST? The two opening lines: "Rick Maitland and Melissa Tate were supposed to be married for sixty-three years. Instead, they spoke only once, for about thirty seconds."

In turn, I have tagged several friends to see if they are interested in answering these questions on their blogs Feb. 11. I haven't had any affirmations yet, but I'll keep you posted.

Every Oscar season has its anomalies, but the 85th Annual Academy Award nominations have two for the record books. 2013 sees both the oldest Best Actress nominee to date (Emmanuelle Riva, 85) and the youngest (Quvenzhane Wallis, 9). 2013 is also the year with the lowest correlation between the Best Director Oscar nominees and the Directors' Guild of America nominees: a mere 40 percent, two out of five, with only Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee winning nominations from both. I'm not sure that Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Tom Hooper were more (or less) deserving of an Oscar nod than David O. Russell, Michael Haneke or Benh Zeitlin, but the discrepancy does show an unusual lack of critical unanimity. That difference of opinion has been amazingly consistent throughout this year's award season. Does that mean the quality of films in 2012 was unusually high, or that there were no masterpieces--just a lot of pretty good movies that couldn't lift their heads above the competition?

I'm sure critics will argue cogently for both positions. Personally, as someone who only sees the movies he pays to see, I'm not in a position to argue that this year's movies in general were better or worse than that in any other year. I'm not even in a position to draw up a Ten Best list. (As of today, I still haven't seen two of this year's Best Picture nominees--"Zero Dark Thirty" and "Beasts of the Southern Wild.") That being said, I saw quite a few movies this year that I loved, and many more that I liked very much. My favorite film of the year was "Lincoln," which received the most Oscar nominations of any 2012 film and, at least at the moment, seems poised to make a broad sweep of the awards. I wish there had been at least some nominations for "Looper" and "Bernie," and more than just one for "Moonrise Kingdom," all of which I found wonderful. I also wish the Academy could have found space in the Best Actor category for John Hawkes in "The Sessions," conveying astonishing depths of warmth and humanity playing a character rendered completely immobile except for his mind.

Besides the aforementioned movies, I also loved "Argo," "Amour," "Silver Linings Playbook," "Les Miserables," "Monsieur Lazhar," "The Master,"and "The Kid with a Bike." " Not quite as high in my book, but still well worth seeing, were "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," "Anna Karenina," "Django Unchained," "Life of Pi," "Bully," "Hope Springs," "The Dark Knight Rises," "Skyfall," "Seven Psychopaths," and "Coriolanus." These are listed in no particular order, but they are movies I think most audiences would find rewarding.

Besides "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Zero Dark Thirty," I also still haven't seen a number of the past year's blockbusters ("Flight," "The Avengers," "The Hobbit"). If I haven't mentioned a movie you loved (or hated), chances are I haven't seen it. I saw no films in 2012 that I disliked outright (I don't waste my hard-earned money on movies I think I'm going to hate), but I thought "Premium Rush" and "Safe House" could have offered better screenplays to their talented stars, and "To Rome with Love" caught Woody Allen napping under the cypresses of the Borghese Gardens. "The Queen of Versailles" fell in my estimation after its subjects, David and Jacqueline Siegel, did. I wonder whether David Siegel was gutsy (or nasty) enough to make good on his threat to fire most of his employees after President Obama won re-election. But then again, so many tycoons have been punishing their employees for Mitt Romney's electoral loss that it's a wonder the unemployment rate hasn't doubled.

In the wake of the horrors in Newtown, Conn., my friend Steven B. Rogers has written his thoughts at lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2012/12/time-to-stand-up.html. I agree with everything he says, and cannot improve on his column in any way. Therefore, I recommend it to you.

I had it all planned. Having caught up with my end-of-year assignments and Christmas card list, I would sit down and add to my shamefully neglected blog a eulogy of the famous people who passed away in the latter part of this year.

There was Phyllis Diller, the first and still the greatest stand-up comedienne, so ubiquitous on TV in the Sixties that she virtually qualified as one of my childhood playmates. And Neil Armstrong, the man who walked on the moon, exemplar of a grand and peculiarly American style of heroism. And Gore Vidal, the acerbic political gadfly who, as the 20th Century slid uneasily into the 21st, sounded more and more like a prophet. And Ravi Shankar, who taught George Harrison the sitar and made the wiry, sinuous sounds of Indian classical music familiar to the Western world. And Dave Brubeck, who made 5/4 time resound in every household and added immeasurably to the language of jazz.

These were all people who were in their own ways admirable, who once again validated the cliche of having made the world a little better for having lived in it.

All people who lived long, full lives.

And then came the news from Connecticut.

What potential Phyllis Dillers, Neil Armstrongs, Dave Brubecks did we lose on Dec. 14?

Whenever and wherever a child says, "Please don't let me die. All I want is Christmas," it seems inappropriate, even obscene, to write about anything else.

What else is left to say? Only John 11:35: "Jesus wept."

Dear Mr. Cathy:

I have no trouble whatever with your Christian commitment, which to all appearances is deep and sincere. I applaud your closing Chick-Fil-A stores on Sunday so your employees can have a day of rest, relaxation, and--yes--worship. And if you don't believe in gay marriage, all I can say is that I disagree. It's a free country, and we can both believe what we want, as our consciences dictate.

But when you give money to the so-called Family Research Council, a group devoted to advancing the idea that I and everyone like me is an evil, subhuman criminal, I draw the line.

I really do like your fried chicken sandwiches. They're among the few fast-food items I still enjoy. But I'm better off without fast food anyway. How do you get me to change my mind? You can start by cutting off funds to the Family Research Council.

Best always,

Miles David Moore

Last week, Turner Classic Movies rebroadcast Robert Osborne's 2009 interview with the late Ernest Borgnine, as part of an all-day tribute. If the honor roll of films TCM showed that day--Marty, From Here to Eternity, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Wild Bunch--wasn't enough to remind us what a welcome presence we lost in Borgnine, the interview certainly was. Borgnine--then 92 and just coming off an Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on "ER"--was genial and self-deprecating, full of fascinating stories about his life and career, and making no bones about the fact that he lived to be recognized by his fans. That was the reason, he told Osborne, why he accepted the lead in McHale's Navy--his paperboy knew James Arness and Richard Boone, but not him. In fact, he said, McHale's Navy was the reason his marriage to Ethel Merman lasted only five weeks. Ernie and Ethel went to Japan and Hong Kong for their honeymoon; everywhere they went, everybody knew Ernie. But Ethel who? (Borgnine got a belly laugh out of the chapter in Merman's memoirs titled, "Ernest Borgnine." Underneath the title was a blank page.)

Jeff Krulik's 1995 documentary, "Ernest Borgnine on the Bus," is more of the same, and equally welcome. This one-of-a-kind film simply shows the then-78-year-old Borgnine driving around the Midwest in his luxury RV bus, going from campground to shoe factory outlet to frozen custard stand, talking about his life and career. The documentary has been broadcast on public television, but is virtually impossible to find now; a VHS copy goes for $100 on Amazon. This is too bad, because Borgnine was as much fun hanging out with Krulik as he was with Osborne.

Borgnine was a late bloomer as an actor--he started his career at 30, after 10 years in the Navy--but once he started he rose rapidly to the top, and never came back down. Like his contemporary Karl Malden, he virtually defined the concept of "star character actor." That famous, beaming, gap-toothed grin of his could express either radiant kindness or the most bone-chilling evil; in either mode, he was always a compelling screen presence. I wish I could have been like his buddy Ange in "Marty" and settled down sometime to have a beer with him. Maybe in the next life.

One of the last bastions of refuge and safety in our world has been breached, probably forever. Certainly it is no longer a haven for the lifetimes of anyone old enough to pick up a newspaper or listen to a news program and comprehend the message: "Deadly rampage at Colorado theater."

I've always looked on a movie theater as a place of escape, where I can visit another world for two hours and come home refreshed. Certainly that is the way Alex Sullivan felt when he went to the theater in Aurora, Colo. to see a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises"to celebrate his 27th birthday. Or Jessica Ghawi, who escaped a mall shooting in Toronto earlier this year and must have thought such a thing could only happen once in a lifetime.

What else can I say? The grief and despair I feel at this news is the same being felt by millions of people across this country. I think of interviewing Gabrielle Giffords shortly after she entered Congress--a pleasant, unmomentous interview, based on the fact that she was the only former tire dealer in Congress. James Holmes hasn't yet been charged with any crime, but in the picture of him published in the Washington Post, he has the same tight, mirthless smile as in the file picture of Jared Loughner.

All sorts of thoughts are swimming incoherently in my head. I think of the neat row of hunting rifles my father kept in our walk-in closet at home. He was no longer a hunter by the time I was old enough to notice them, but I remember the gleaming wood and metal well, cold and unyielding to the touch. I remember the announcements over the P.A. system at school every year, that every student who asked for it got the first day of deer season as a holiday.

Those memories have nothing to do with what James Holmes allegedly did. And this is what we must conclude as a society, in our legislatures and in the ballot box: that taking away a madman's Glock today does not mean, and never will mean, that we will take away a deer hunter's rifle tomorrow. The second does not follow the first, but we must have the first.

\

Reading Celeste Holm's obituary, I was saddened to learn that she died in serious financial straits while her fifth husband and her sons from previous marriages battled over her estate. This is an all-too-common ending for performers who live a long time, and it was one Ms. Holm emphatically did not deserve.

All her life, Celeste Holm was what has come to be known as a class act. She specialized in playing the smartest person in any given room, and one suspects that wasn't too far from the truth in real life. Always impeccably elegant and--though some may object to the term--ladylike, Ms. Holm nevertheless projected such intelligence, wit and independence of spirit that those who crossed her did so at their peril. She achieved stardom as the original Ado Annie in "Oklahoma!", but it was Elia Kazan and Moss Hart's 1947 indictment of anti-Semitism, "Gentleman's Agreement," that won her worldwide fame and an Oscar. In that film, her putdown of a jerk who uses the dreaded phrase, "Some of my best friends are Jews," is classic: "Yes, dear, and some of your other best friends are Methodists, but you never bother to say so." Playwrights and filmmakers were delighted to entrust some of their juiciest lines to her. Some of the best lines Ms. Holm ever had were in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "All About Eve," where she played Karen Richards, the wife of playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe). At one point, in an argument over the eponymous character, Lloyd yells, "That bitter cynicism of yours is something you acquired since you left Radcliffe!" With perfect timing and diction, Karen replies, "That cynicism you refer to I acquired when I discovered little girls were different from little boys!"

I saw Celeste Holm live only once, about a dozen years ago, when she gave a speech at the National Press Club. Though in her eighties, she was still ethereally lovely, dressed in what appeared to be gossamer. (She played the Fairy Godmother in a telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," and few actresses were ever better suited to the role) The topic--arts education for children--was one dear to her heart, but she soon gave up any pretense of giving a speech and took questions from the audience. One audience member asked her about her experience starring opposite Frank Sinatra in "High Society." "Frank and I were great friends," she said. "I've always had a good rapport with children."

Another asked her about her infamously rocky relationship with Bette Davis. She told of how she and Bette met at a cocktail party just before "All About Eve" started filming, and had a perfectly friendly conversation about how delighted they were at the prospect of working together. The day filming began, Ms. Holm went over to Bette and greeted her warmly.

"Bette said, 'Oh, shit! Good manners!'" Ms. Holm said. "And things went downhill from there." (Ms. Holm has much more to say in the "Making Of" documentary on the "All About Eve" DVD.)

Celeste Holm continued to act to the end of her life, in the theater, movies and TV; the Internet Movie Database shows her with roles in two movies awaiting release. She was knighted by the King of Norway, where her parents were born; she appeared as Aunt Polly in a movie musical of "Tom Sawyer" that also featured a little girl named Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher. Throughout it all, Ms. Holm was the amused but engaged observer, conducting her life with wit, courage, and--oh, shit!--good manners. All I can say is that I am very suspicious of anyone who doesn't love Celeste Holm.

I was saddened by the recent passing of Andy Griffith. Of course I will miss his uniquely likable, reassuring presence; who couldn't feel sorrow that Sheriff Andy and Ben Matlock are with us no longer? But once upon a time--before "Matlock" or even "The Andy Griffith Show" ever aired--Griffith showed a completely different, and monumentally deeper, side of his talents.

In Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," released in 1957, Griffith played Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, one of the most hateful characters ever committed to celluloid. From the beginning, when radio producer Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) discovers Rhodes in an Arkansas jail cell, to the end, when Rhodes raves maniacally in his New York penthouse, Rhodes is the ultimate mass-media con man. He fools all of America--and, for a time, even those closest to him--into accepting his Will Rogers facade, when underneath lurks the heart and mind of Joseph Goebbels.

Griffith reveals the successive layers of Rhodes' treachery with feral intensity as he persuades America to buy first a worthless patent medicine, then a worthless presidential candidate--both of course backed by the right-wing, big-money men who pay Rhodes' princely salary. Anyone who sees a parallel between "A Face in the Crowd" and the currrent political scene is free to do so; I will merely say that "A Face in the Crowd" is even more relevant today than when it was made 55 years ago.

Griffith's performance is frightening even today, and all evidence suggests that it even frightened Griffith himself. (According to Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies, Griffith was so immersed in Rhodes that he brought the role home with him--a situation that nearly destroyed his marriage.) In any case, Griffith never played a character like Rhodes again, although he did occasionally play a villain in the odd TV-movie. Griffith's last big-screen appearance was in Adrienne Shelly's "Waitress," playing a cynical old curmudgeon who turns out to be a softy in the end. It was nice to see him blend Sheriff Andy and Lonesome Rhodes, with the skill of the old master that he was.

The world lost a great dramatic actor when Andy Griffith pinned on his sheriff's badge and headed toward the fishing hole with little Ronny Howard. However, the world undoubtedly was happier to go fishing with Sheriff Andy and leave Lonesome Rhodes to rant by himself.

Any American film buff who has ever used the French word, "auteur," has Andrew Sarris to thank for it. Though never as widely known as his friend Roger Ebert or his enemy Pauline Kael, Sarris wielded the most influence of all late-20th-century American film critics among the generation of reviewers who came after him. In his appreciation of Sarris, Ebert puts it succinctly: "Kael was my muse, but Sarris was my mapmaker."

Sarris died earlier this week at the age of 83, after more than a half-century of writing bracing and scholarly reviews for "The Village Voice," "The New York Observer," and other publications. Living in Paris in the 1950s, Sarris befriended the staff of the legendary film magazine "Cahiers du Cinema." Those staff members read like an honor roll of late-20th-century French filmmakers--Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard. Sarris returned to New York to preach the gospel of Auteurism--the theory that a great director is the true author of his films, his or her style as consistent and distinctive as that of a great novelist, composer, or painter.

I have read far less of Sarris than I have of Ebert or Kael, and so I cannot speak authoritatively of the exact disputes between Sarris and Kael, other than that Kael rejected the Auteur Theory. I also cannot speak as to why Sarris enshrined John Ford, Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock among his auteurs, but not David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, William Wyler, Otto Preminger or Billy Wilder. Or why, later on, that he changed his mind about Wilder and declared him an auteur. The Quiet Man, The General, City Lights, Citizen Kane and Vertigo are great films by anybody's definition. But so, to my mind, are Brief Encounter, Dr. Strangelove, Dodsworth, Laura, and Double Indemnity.

I can only say that, as a film fan who was still in kindergarten when Sarris began publishing his reviews, the Auteur Theory makes sense to me, even acknowledging that filmmaking, like theater, is a collaborative process. How often do important directors use the same actors, cinematographers, editors, production designers? To have a vision as a director, you also have to know who is sympathetic to your vision and can help you achieve it.

In any case, movies were the joy, the obsession, the lifeblood of Andrew Sarris, and his passion will inform future generations of filmgoers. In his appreciation of Sarris, Ebert writes, "I cannot call up in my memory a picture of him discussing a film without smiling." That says it all.

Beneath the storied dome and gilded mosaics of St. Paul's Cathedral, an inscription in gilt letters is embedded in the cathedral floor, bordering the stained-glass windows behind the altar: "To the American Dead of the Second World War From the People of Britain."

A fair distance away from that inscription, but still under the cathedral roof, is the monument to the memory of Charles, Marquis Cornwallis. The inscription on the monument is devoted entirely to Cornwallis' service as Governor-General of Bengal. There is no mention of his service, a world away from both London and Bengal, as commander of His Majesty King George III's forces against the rebels in the Colonies. Cornwallis was so contemptuous of Americans, and so humiliated at his defeat at their hands, that he refused to surrender his sword in person to George Washington. In the parlance of our day, he had his people contact Washington's people.

One imagines the shade of Cornwallis gnashing his teeth at the collaborators Churchill and George VI, whom he must have regarded as being on the same moral plane as Petain and Quisling. (But not Benedict Arnold, a loyal servant of the Crown.) When Tony Blair said, "Sorry about that," regarding the burning of the White House during the War of 1812, Cornwallis (who didn't live to see that war, but still) must have raised his spectral sword to cut the traitor down. And then threw a torch through the window of the Oval Office.

Whatever Cornwallis might have thought about a memorial to the rebels in St. Paul's, we will never know--at least not here, under the roof of Christopher Wren's cathedral, where thousands of worshipful pilgrims come every day to see the great edifice that survived the wrath of Hitler.

I have an admission to make that, for any film reviewer, must qualify as shameful: I missed Billy Crystal's opening monologue for the Oscar broadcast last Sunday.

And, by definition, I also missed the parade of stars across the red carpet. (I am truly sorry to have missed Sacha Baron Cohen dumping ashes on Ryan Seacrest. I also--BLASPHEMY!--missed the parade of million-dollar fashions, though "Entertainment Weekly" helped me catch up on the haute couture. I agree with EW--Jessica Chastain was the fashion plate of the night, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Michelle Williams and Natalie Portman not far behind.)

My reason for missing the Academy Awards' true raison d'etre is probably inexcusable, although it involved an actor who is no stranger to Oscar. A friend and I had Sunday matinee tickets to see Kevin Spacey as Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and we didn't get back from the three-and-a-half-hour production to her home in New Jersey until ten minutes to nine. Granted, Spacey gave a performance that was worth missing quite a few things to see: an old-fashioned bravura performance, both vocally sonorous and physically daring, the sort that Olivier and Burton gave back in the day. IU realize it's unforgivable ever to miss Billy Crystal in blackface, but I hope Melpomene will prevail over Thalia to grant me mercy in this instance.

What else to say? Crystal was mildly amusing, not as funny as in previous years but a vast improvement over the puerile dithering of James Franco and Anne Hathaway last year. Of course there were a few awkward moments--what would Oscar be without them? The pre-presentation badinage between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow was obviously scripted, but Paltrow's genuine annoyance with Downey was not. Ditto for the distaste Ben Stiller showed at sharing the stage with Emma Stone, during an equally flatulent scripted exchange.

And the awards themselves? All four of the acting winners, Christopher Plummer especially, gave wonderful acceptance speeches. I was happy to see the major awards for "The Artist," the screenplay award for "Midnight in Paris," and the raft of techncial awards for "Hugo," a movie I'll have more to say about later. But I was sorry to see no nominations whatever for the best film of 2011, Jeff Nichols' "Take Shelter." At least "Take Shelter" wasn't ignored by the Independent Spirit Awards, the results of which I have not yet heard.

And now on to the next movie year...

In two days, the world will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the man who, by general consensus, is the second-greatest writer in the history of the English language. The acclaim is by no means unanimous: Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf cringed at Charles Dickens' vulgarity, just as Voltaire, Goethe and Shaw decried William Shakespeare's. But the current issues of the three highly disparate publications I have in front of me now--The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and The Hudson Review--demonstrate the continuing reverence the world has for Dickens. The focus of the Smithsonian article--the dozenth-or-so film adaptation of Great Expectations, scheduled for release this fall--attests to Dickens' continuing popularity. He was an unrivaled literary superstar during his lifetime, and that star remains undimmed 142 years after his death.

It should be no surprise, however, that even as Dickens' genius is universally acknowledged, his personality continues to be a topic of heated controversy. Those who cherish the deep compassion and humanity of his novels, and who know of the multiplicitous, selfless acts of charity he made during his life, find it dispiriting to learn of his private life. Dickens was a cruel and unfaithful husband, who cast off his wife of 22 years to take up with an actress less than half his age, and an exacting, disapproving father whose nine surviving children crumbled under the weight of his iron fist. Only his son Henry, the only one to inherit anything like his father's superhuman energy and intelligence, had anything approaching his father's success, becoming a barrister, a Queen's Counsel, and a knight of the realm. The others tended to die young and deeply in debt.

Both the Smithsonian and Hudson Review articles cite "Charles Dickens: A Life," Claire Tomalin's recent biography, as a major source. Susan Balee's article in The Hudson Review is essentially a review of the Tomalin biography, which delves deeper into Dickens' private life--particularly his thirteen-year affair with Ellen Ternan--than any previous biography. Balee quotes Tomalin on Dickens' behavior during the affair. "A raging anger broke out at any opposition to his wishes. He used lies as weapons of attack and defense. His displays of self-righteousness were shocking."

A little further down in the same paragraph, Balee cites Tomalin again regarding Dickens' meeting with Dostoyevsky as the best explanation for the extremes of his behavior. "Dickens told the younger Russian writer he had two sides to his nature, one of which was evil. The good side was where his good characters came from, and the evil side created Quilp and Sikes, Squeers and Headstone."

In a footnote, Balee makes her own addition, quoting Dostoyevsky's reply: "Only two people?"

Balee bows to Dostoyevsky's powers of observation, and so do I. For it is plain that if any author in history was the sum total of his characters, it was Dickens. (We don't know enough about Shakespeare to know if that was also true of him. If so, we can only pity Anne Hathaway for having to deal with Macbeth, Iago, and Richard III.) Every last character he created came from the wellsprings of his heart and soul. Oliver Twist and David Copperfield were there; so were Bob Cratchit and Mr. Micawber, Pickwick and Sam Weller, the unrepentant and reformed Scrooge, as well as the aforementioned Quilp and Squeers. But there was one limitation: that multiplicity of personality was singularly, ragingly male. Regarding Dickens' relations with women, it is revealing to note--as Balee and Tomalin do--that Dickens had trouble creating adult women characters who weren't plaster saints. As Balee writes, "He invented not only characters, but the people around him. No wonder he often failed to understand his own closest friends and family members--when they asserted themselves as real people, he was stunned." In this fault, Dickens was different in degree from almost all of humanity, but not I think different in kind from many of us. To what extent do we project the personalities we want to see on the people we love? And to what extent does our unhappiness stem from when they don't react to us the way we expect?

In any case, to quote Dickens' detractor Wilde, "The truth is never plain and rarely simple." So it was with Dickens. From the complexity of his mind and personality came some of the most disarmingly detailed, pulsatingly living fiction ever written. Jonathan H. Grossman, in his Washington Post article on Dickens, warns against regarding Dickens as a moralistic writer. "'A Christmas Carol' aside, he is not writing fables or tracts," Grossman writes. "Don't be fooled into underestimating or trying to draw lessons from the characters' comic names or the fixed phrases they sometimes compulsively repeat. Dickens' characters are never simple or simpletons." Dickens, in the end, was like all of us, only more so. Just as we tend to be different people in different company, Dickens contained multitudes, more multitudes than even Walt Whitman might have imagined. He was greatest when he embraced those multitudes--and, like us, he got into trouble when he tried to oversimplify.

The Oscar nominations came out last Wednesday, and once again I found them less than satisfactory. (Is anyone ever really satisfied with the Oscar nominations?) By now it's become a YouTube staple that a scene from the German film "Downfall"--featuring the great Bruno Ganz as Hitler, ranting at the news that the war is lost--is retooled over and over again, with subtitles expressing the latest disappointing trend in sports, entertainment, etc. Yesterday, I saw the "Downfall" scene once again, this time with Der Fuhrer venting his rage that the Academy passed over Albert Brooks' performance in "Drive" for Best Supporting Actor, nominating Jonah Hill for "Moneyball" instead. "All Jonah Hill did," Hitler shrieks via subtitle, "was stare at Brad Pitt for two hours like a fucking sheep in heat!"

At the risk of being considered a Movie Nazi, I have to agree with the "Downfall" funsters that Brooks' performance as a movie producer-turned-mobster was infinitely more thrilling and charismatic than Hill's as a baseball statistician. (It probably doesn't matter in the long run, because Christopher Plummer has a virtual lock on this year's award with his performance in "Beginners," and deservedly so.) I will extend the grumbling to the Best Actor nominations. The race seems at this point to be between George Clooney for "The Descendants" and Jean Dujardin for "The Artist," and both actors deserve their nominations. I haven't seen "A Better Life," so I can't comment on Demian Bichir's performance. But it is a crime against all things cinematic and thespian that Leonardo DiCaprio for "J. Edgar," Brendan Gleeson for "The Guard" and Michael Shannon for "Take Shelter" were passed over in favor of Brad Pitt for "Moneyball" and Gary Oldman for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." Not that Pitt or Oldman were bad; far from it. But DiCaprio, Gleeson and Shannon were on an entirely higher plane of excellence, in notably more difficult roles. There wasn't even any serious buzz for Gleeson or Shannon, though Gleeson did at least get a Golden Globe nomination.

I have heard many other grumbles about this year's nominations, but these are the ones that bother me the most. So here's my message to Albert Brooks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brendan Gleeson, and Michael Shannon: for what it's worth, the Miles David Moore/Scene4 Acting Awards, for actors unfalrly slighted at Oscar time, go to you.

Since the January issue is a special double issue, it will be March before any regular film review from me appears again. Here are a few movies I've seen recently that are worth the price of admission with whatever money you have left over from Christmas shopping:

* Early critics' awards nominations have completely ignored Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter,which is a gross injustice. It is a masterpiece of slow-building suspense, about an Ohio road construction worker named Curis (Michael Shannon) beset by nightmares and visions of cataclysmic storms, and becomes obsessed with building a state-of-the-art tornado shelter for his family. The question of whether Curtis is insane or psychic fuels the plot. For my money, Shannon gives the performance of the year, and Jessica Chastain continues her miraculous year as Curtis' mystified but loyal wife.

* Alexander Payne specializes in tragicomic, delicately nuanced movies about decent but flawed people ("Sideways," "About Schmidt") and The Descendants is one of his best. George Clooney, in his best performance to date, is Matt King, decendant of Hawaiian royalty and the islands' first white settlers, who has the sole power of decision over whether his family will keep or sell a multi-thousand-acre seaside wilderness property in Kauai. Simultaneous with this decision, Matt faces decisions on whether to pull the plug on his comatose wife, what to do with his two rebellious daughters, and what to do about his wife's lover, among other things. The tone of "The Descendants" masterfully combines wry wit and melancholy; Payne and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael give us brilliant visuals of a Hawaii that is part beachfront magnificence, part urban Southern California. ("My mainland friends think I live in Paradise," Matt says at one point. "Are they insane?") The very fine cast combines young up-and-comers (Shailene Woodley, Nick Krause), fine character actors in mid-career (Matthew Lillard, Judy Greer), and beloved old hands (Robert Forster, Beau Bridges).

* My Week with Mariyn is Simon Curtis' film adaptation of Colin Clark's memoirs of his brief fling with Marilyn Monroe while serving as a prodiuction assistant on the film "The Prince and the Showgirl." Clark, the son of art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, apparently spent his life believing he alone understood Marilyn--one of many, many men who believed the same. The film, though meticulously made, is fairly lightweight, but the performances of Michelle Williams as Marilyn and of Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier make "My Week with Marilyn" an absolute must-see. The supporting performances of Judi Dench, Zoe Wanamaker, Philip Jackson, Toby Jones, Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond and Eddie Redmayne are the icing on an airy and elegant cake.

* I'm not particularly enamored of Fozzie Bear using the word "fart," but in every other way The Muppets is a delightful film for the whole family, as well as a worthy return to the big screen for the late Jim Henson's lovable brain-children. Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller created an enjoyable story about Gary (Segel) a regular guy; Mary (Amy Adams), his loyal girlfriend; and Walter, Gary's brother, who happens to be a Muppet. The story takes the threesome to Los Angeles, where they must reorganize The Muppets to save their movie studio from demolition at the hands of the evil Tex Richman (Chris Cooper). Segel & Co. have great fun in creating stories for Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, etc. as to what happened to them after going their separate ways, and it effectively demonstrates to a new generation of children the unique lovability of these nubbly-cloth characters--particularly Kermit, an Everyfrog for the ages. When Kermit and Miss Piggy sing "The Rainbow Connection," it's as if The Muppets were always with us. A steady stream of cameo players (Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Arkin, Neil Patrick Harris, etc.) adds to the fun.

With the advent of streaming and on-demand, I'm not even certain people give DVDs as gifts any more. But at least DVDs are still for sale, and so--technological dinosaur that I am--I still give them. Whether my friends and family just smile at me and then put my gifts in the attic with Great-Grandpa's 78s of Guy Lombardo is up to them.

This column was going to be a list of favorite and unfairly neglected films that would make great Christmas gifts or at least great Christmas viewing, but it is going to begin with a burst of outrage at the extreme variation in DVD prices, at least as listed on Amazon. (Given the closure of stores such as Borders and Circuit City, with dwindling DVD stocks at other stores, Amazon, B&N.com and other online dealers are becoming the DVD purveyors of choice.) With the average price of a DVD in the $15-20 range today, it is a travesty that many cinematic masterpieces are being priced out of the market. William Wyler's two greatest films, "Dodsworth" and "The Best Years of Our Lives," are priced in the $40 range, as is Gary Sinise's superb 1992 version of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." All three of these films belong in any good home video library--particularly "Of Mice and Men," which has never received its just due as one of the truly great screen adaptations of a literary classic. (Go on Amazon and see just how many reviewers of the Sinise film say they are teachers who show this film in their classes. This alone is emblematic of the film's high quality and fidelity to its source.) By contrast, the old 1940 version, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr., is available at a bargain price; you get what you pay for. Even with a score by Aaron Copland, the Milestone "Of Mice and Men" is comparatively crude and tarted-up, making obvious what Steinbeck and Sinise preferred to imply. If you're in a position to see both films, compare the way Milestone films the fatal meeting between Lennie and Curley's wife, with Lon Chaney Jr. and Betty Field, with Sinise's version featuring John Malkovich and Sherilyn Fenn. You'll see exactly what I mean.

If the Sinise "Of Mice and Men" were a Criterion Collection release, I wouldn't be writing this animadversion. Criterion Collection DVDs regularly run in the $30-$40 range, but for that you get lovingly restored prints of hard-to-find foreign films, indie films and major studio releases that somehow fell into obscurity, complete with fascinating documentaries, interviews and critical essays about the making of those films. The Criterion Collection offers luxury DVDs, and again you get what you pay for. Thanks to Criterion, I have "My Dinner with Andre," "Black Narcissus," "The Third Man" and "Au Hasard Balthasar" in my DVD collection.

In some cases the Criterion Collection offers DVDs of certain films in competition with other companies. If you care enough about Herk Harvey's one-of-a-kind "Carnival of Souls" to buy it, then surely it's worth forking out the $35 or so to have the pristine Criterion Collection version, rather than the gapped, scratched, execrable versions released for much less by Rhino Video and others. On the other hand, I have never seen the Criterion release of Ang Lee's much underrated Civil War drama, "Ride with the Devil," which is billed as the "Director's Cut." I would like to see it someday, but meanwhile I don't see anything wrong with the studio DVD, which is available for less than $10.

In any case, there are plenty of excellent DVDs readily availalble at reasonable prices. Some of my favorites include "Laura," "Double Indemnity," "Out of the Past," "L.A. Confidential" and most of the Hitchcock canon (ah, the siren call of the thriller). However, I want to make a pitch for a couple of flims that I think are unfairly obscure.

Billy Bob Thornton's "The Gift" was roasted by critics on its first release--they mocked its Southern Gothic milieu as cliched--and mostly ignored by the public. This is sad, because the film offered a superb cast in an absorbing, supernatural-tinged murder mystery. Cate Blanchett, playing a recently widowed psychic hired by her local Georgia police department to help solve the murder of socialite Katie Holmes, is deeply moving as a young woman who has a gift she never wanted, didn't ask for, but must use simply to make ends meet. The cast includes such stalwarts as Hilary Swank, Greg Kinnear and J.K. Simmons, but besides Blanchett the standouts are Keanu Reeves, surprisingly effective as a mean, violent redneck, and Giovanni Ribisi, who is simply astounding as a mentally and emotionally damaged young man. Ribisi ends up playing the pivotal role in "The Gift:" to say anything more would be sabotage.

I hesitate to recommend "Used Cars," Robert Zemeckis' corrosive 1981 comedy, because it is so raucous, vulgar and altogether un-Christmasy. The raunchiness of "Used Cars" has been mightily eclipsed in the last three decades, but the film still gives off an acidulous odor of raunchiness as it tells the story of two warring bands of used car salesmen who will literally stop at nothing--larceny, graft, FCC violations, even murder--to best each other and flim-flam the public. There's a love story, too--Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy and Girl Cheat Little Old Ladies. It's as if the Ben Jonson of "Volpone" collaborated with the John Waters of "Pink Flamingos." Nevertheless, "Used Cars" is replete with hilarious sight gags, and Kurt Russell, playing the plaid-polyester-clad leader of one of the salesman factions, gives unequivocally one of the greatest comedy performances of the 1980s. It's a vital corrective to those who think there is nothing in the Russell filmography except "The Barefoot Executive" and "Tango and Cash."

Finally, for a film that IS Christmasy: the 1948 English version of "A Christmas Carol," starring Alastair Sim, has the reputation of being the classic screen version, and indeed it is very fine. But for my money the best version is the 1984 TV-movie starring George C. Scott. Sim gives the best version of the traditional, crabbed-old-miser Scrooge, but Scott rethinks the role in compelling fashion, portraying Scrooge as a smug, high-powered fat cat--someone you could see in a Wall Street corner office today. Scott's transformation over the course of the spirits' visitation is genuinely moving, and the cast surrounding him is splendid. It includes David Warner and Susannah York as Bob and Mrs. Cratchit, Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Frank Finlay as the absolute, guaranteed scariest Marley's Ghost ever. With the ancient Midlands town of Shrewsbury standing in for Victorian London, this moving and colorful "Christmas Carol" should become a seasonal favorite in every home.