A musical celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Christmas classic. Hosted by Kristen Bell.
Two great filmmakers discuss the evolution of film, 70mm and Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight".
Did you know that the quaint custom of Christmas caroling actually began with drunk and rowdy revelers threatening people door to door looking for food and liquor? Early versions of the heartwarming legend of Santa Claus described him as a horrible devil named Krampus who beat and kidnapped naughty children. In America during the 17th and 18th Centuries, celebrating Christmas was against the law! There's a lot to tell about the history of Christmas, and a lot you may not know. Along the way, meet Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey, The Grinch and Rudolph, and learn the true origins of our Christmas traditions. So grab some eggnog and a slice of fruitcake as HISTORY unwraps THE REAL STORY OF CHRISTMAS.
A Night at the Movies: Merry Christmas! is a tinsel-filled journey through the most iconic holiday films of all time, including perennial favorites It's A Wonderful Life (1946) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947). The special looks at variations within the genre, such as holiday romances, family movies, and even thrillers. A Night at the Movies: Merry Christmas! features behind the scenes stories and personal Hollywood Christmas memories from the likes of Chevy Chase, Margaret O'Brien, Chazz Palminteri, Deborah Raffin, Karolyn Grimes, Zack Ward, Brian Henson, Joe Dante, Trine Mitchum, authors Julie Salamon and Alonso Duralde, A Christmas Carol expert Michael Patrick Hearn, and many more.
A look into the origins of Christmas from its pagan beginnings, through its Christianisation, to the current incarnation as we know it today. The program discovers why holly, mistletoe, feasting and gift-giving have become synonymous with Christmas celebrations and examines various cultures' celebrations of the Christmas season.
Erik had to leave Jehovah's Witnesses after coming out as homosexual, now he is going to celebrate christmas for the first time.
In JINGLE BELL ROCKS!, director Mitchell Kezin delves into the minds of some of the world’s most legendary Christmas music fanatics and hits the road to hang with his holiday heroes – including hip hop legend Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons of RUN-D.M.C., The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne, filmmaker John Waters, bebopper Bob Dorough, L.A. DJ and musicologist Dr. Demento, and Calypso legend The Mighty Sparrow. In his search for the twelve best, underappreciated Christmas songs ever recorded, Kezin both asks and answers the question, “Why, when Christmas rolls around, are we still stuck cozying up with Bing Crosby under a blanket of snow?”
Gathering for a Christmas lunch, the film critics and writers of Discovering Film discuss the merits of 20 films from Bill Murray's star turn in Scrooged, the James Stewart classic It's a Wonderful Life, Ingmar Bergman's Fanny & Alexander, to Bruce Willis' memorable Die Hard.
Phil Hartman hosts this retrospective look back at the legacy and making of the classic 1966 holiday special 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas!'
In a seasonal special, Gordon Buchanan meets the animals who live in nature's winter wonderlands. He reveals their survival secrets, from the polar bear mother who gives her cubs the best possible start in life to the owl that finds food hidden beneath a blanket of snow, plus the plucky penguins that huddle together to keep warm. Gordon also unwraps the lives of our favourite Christmas characters - those wonderful reindeer and our very own robin redbreast!
Could there ever really be a Christmas without Norman Rockwell? For three generations, America's most beloved and popular artist treated us with his inspiring, fun-loving and wonderfully optimistic portraits of American life. To Rockwell, people were at their best during holidays and Christmas was certainly his favorite. Join Eddie Albert and Ross Malinger (TV's Good Advice) as they host this nostalgic, heartwarming look at the illustrious world of Norman Rockwell. With the help of the magnificent 170 voices of the world famous Pacific Chorale, you'll experience these Christmas scenes springing to life with all the magic and wonder Rockwell originally envisioned. Lift your spirits with this Christmas adventure you'll watch again and again!
The program on this DVD is basically a retrospective produced in the early 1990s for public television that was originally called «A Bing Crosby Christmas: Just Like the Ones You Used to Know» that was narrated by Gene Kelly and hosted by Bing's widow, Kathryn Crosby. The program itself features clips from fifteen of Bing's classic television specials, concentrating on the period from the early 1960s onwards when he included Kathryn and their three children in the programs.
This documentary tells the story of the creation and cultural impact of the world's most famous Christmas carol, composed in 1818 in Salzburg, Austria, and since then translated into about 140 languages.
1963 Christmas show of the short-lived The Judy Garland Show
The Toys That Made Christmas. Spirograph, Fuzzy Felt, Barbie, Meccano - Robert Webb tells the story of our Christmases through the toys we played with and loved.
Mario Soldati accompanies us in search of genuine food, this time to discover the culinary traditions of Christmas lunch, with Father Mariano, Cesare Zavattini, the shoemaker Angelo Gatto, the baroness Aurelia Michetti and the General Lorenzo De Grandi.
In their spare time, after their studies or their work, children and adolescents between the ages of eight and sixteen meet at the School of Bullfighting in Madrid to learn the Art of Cúchares: Torear. In their stomachs there is no hunger as in the past, their dreams do not lie in having a farmhouse and being famous. Their only dreams are to be in front of a bull, animal with which death goes, fact of which they are fully aware, as their teachers continually remind them. These, retired bullfighters, some by age, others by force and all with their bodies full of scars produced by the horns of a bull. The nude bullfighting scene is fascinating without being exploitive, and it serves as an analogy for the vulnerability these young bullfighters have when in the ring with the bulls.
On Dec. 5, 1944, American soldiers, led by Harry Stuts, put their guns down for one day and organized a party celebrating the town's centuries-old Saint Nick tradition. Soldiers made hot chocolate from their D-rations, company cooks made donuts and cookies for the children, and 22-year-old corporal Richard Brookins from Rochester, NY played the role of Saint Nick. An emotional and heartfelt story, THE AMERICAN SAINT NICK illustrates how American soldiers and residents of the hamlet were able to bond over a moment in time, creating a tradition that continues to this day.
Surrounded by his children, his wife Ethel, and Sammy Davis, Jr., RFK visits schoolchildren around the city, and is every bit the good patriarch and dutiful public servant. But it’s the films’ fleeting, in-between, moments where Pennebaker most precisely hits the mark, offering reflection on the possibilities that Robert Kennedy’s all too brief life foreclosed. Set against the pageantry of a long ago Christmas, the film speaks to tragic contingencies of history lying far beyond the ken of politics that continue to circumscribe the tortured destiny of our country.
A look behind the scenes as the world's most profitable toy maker opens its biggest ever Lego store, in London. Designer Justin's first ever kit finally hits the shelves, and Lego pro Duncan prepares to make the largest model ever - a replica of Tower Bridge.