Christmas eve briefs

I figured I had probably blogged about Star in the Night before; sure enough it's been four years to the day. This short, which is a modern-day take on the nativity story set at the sort of motel you'd also have seen in Heat Lightning, is going to be on again tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM.

Yesterday, TCM ran an interesting little short I'd never heard of before called Compliments of the Season. Unfortunately, this one doesn't seem to be on DVD or even on Youtube, and it's not on the schedule again since it's got a Christmas theme. A pickpocket who's just been released from prison and can't keep a job when his criminal past gets revealed saves a woman from jumping into the drink because she can't find her boyfriend; complications ensue. The interesting thing about this early Vitaphone short is that Pat O'Brien plays the cop in one of his very first roles.

My set-top box guide claims the Fox Movie Channel is going to be airing the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol several times. It's supposedly running four times tonight, in two-hour blocks starting at 7:00 PM. I'm guessing that this would be with copious amounts of commercials involved, because the guide claims it's airing twice more during the FMC part of the schedule, in 95-minute blocks at 11:50 AM and 1:25 PM. It's an 86-minute movie, so 95-minute blocks would allow for the promos FXM runs between films even during the FMC portion of the lineup. But I'd be less surprised if this is some other, more recent, version of the story, since I cna't imagine FMC getting the rights to this for the commercial-free portion of the lineup.

I also noticed in looking up the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol that I've been spelling Alastair Sim's name wrong all these years. Sure, I knew it was Sim and not Sims, but it's Alastair, not Alistair. You learn something new every day.

Merry Christmas!