In his dandy 2023 book on the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Michael Keane puts the stress on serendipity. That’s why the professor and former Hollywood exec has titled his volume Charlie Brown’s Christmas Miracle. As the author puts it in his opening chapter: “This book tells the inspiring, against-all-odds story of how A
The corny pun in our headline was jokingly coined for that special brand of magical sentiment in films by writer-director Frank Capra. Those include Meet John Doe, You Can’t Take It with You, It Happened One Night and of course, It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ll be speaking on the latter at Brown Library — 5:30
There are many ways to gauge a film’s legacy: critical tributes, best-of lists, online ratings — not to mention Oscars and a host of other honors. As a lifelong reader, I like to ask how many books have been written about (or inspired by) the movie. Until this year, I thought the record-holder was Psycho
“Jingle Bells.” “Silver Bells.” “Carol of the Bells.” “I Heard the Bells….” Hmm — are you noticing a pattern here? Yes, along with angels, shepherds, stars and kings, bells seems to be a favored motif in holiday music. And if you want to hear what Edgar Allan Poe so fetchingly called “the tintinnabulation that so
In 1989 Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and George Carlin starred in a low-rent time-travel comedy called Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Making a virtual institution out of slacker-dude subculture — and providing an indelible lesson in how not to pronounce “Socrates” — the surprise hit generated two B&T sequels: Bogus Journey (1991) and Face the
