This week: Magdalen College Professor Anthony Esolen is not only an eminent man of literature, he is also a walking encyclopedia of cinema. That definitely included movies set against or directly about, Christmas. In this free-wheeling conversation featuring brushes with fame and interconnectivity of actors who worked with the same directors, we hit many favorites and also some lesser-known Christmas movie nuggets.
In this episode, you will learn
- Reasonable criteria for what makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie
- How everybody seems to miss the non-stop blasphemous swearing in Die Hard (1988)
- The culture degradation as manifest in the way Christmas was treated by Hollywood in years gone by
- Why many Christmas moves seem to include notes of sorrow and grief
- Reasons why the Golden Age (1934-1966) produced the great movies about or set against, Christmas
Resources mentioned in this episode
Movies
- It Happened on Fifth Avenue
- The Man Who Came to Dinner
- Penny Serenade
- The Shop Around the Corner
- Remember the Night
- Christmas in Connecticut
- An Affair to Remember
- The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
- The Bishop’s Wife
- Meet John Doe
- White Christmas
- Holiday Inn
- Miracle on 34th Street
- Die Hard
- Love, Actually
- Joyeux Noel
- The Apartment
- And course: It’s a Wonderful Life!
Books