Earlier this week, Sundance Cinemas Madison announced another round of “Classics” on their Facebook page, and it’s a mostly solid lineup worthy of the packaged series’ oft-used (and abused) moniker.
I say “mostly” because there’s still latter day Robert Zemeckis to trifle with. The series begins next Wednesday, Dec 3rd with The Polar Express, the first of the director’s three admirable failures that plumb the depths of computer animation to creepy lengths. Still, there’s some charm in adapting Chris Van Allsburg’s beloved children’s story, and Tom Hanks proves you can voice multiple roles in a movie when you’re not hamming it up like Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol.
The 1938 version of Charles Dickens’ novel is better anyway, and Turner Classic Movies is packaging a double feature of Edwin L. Marin’s A Christmas Carol and Christmas In Connecticut on Dec 10th. The former has fallen under the radar with more high profile Scrooges in George C. Scott and Michael Caine, but Peter Godfrey’s Christmas in Connecticut offers a screwball variation on yuletide cinema with Barbara Stanwyck’s food critic getting her bluff called on fictional articles about her home life.
White Christmas (Dec 17th) and It’s A Wonderful Life (Dec 24th) round out the series. Because of course they do.