It’s Christmas, and the airwaves are a-buzz with holiday movies. We can watch countless classics like White Christmas or quirky forgettables like Mixed Nuts. Somewhere in between is the international, cross-media riff-raff I anticipate every year…the many, many, many retellings of Charles Dickens’s tale A Christmas Carol.

Photograph by Rob. Some rights reserved.

I love Dickensonian London. I adore the atmosphere, history, and culture. I just hate Dickens. He can put me to sleep in an opening paragraph—worse than Ernest Hemingway, and anyone who’s read The Old Man and the Sea understands the potency of that statement. But the exception to my Dickens rule is A Christmas Carol. It’s fun to read and even more fun to see acted out in varied and occasionally very creative ways.

It’s serious deja vu for Dickens fans, and I’m sure many strongly object to concepts like Susan Lucci playing a female version of Scrooge, or D-List Diva Kathy Griffin laying down the law as the Ghost of Christmas Past. But I love it! Every twist in the tale, every unique angle, and every bit of traditional story tossed into the mix entertains me from start to finish.

I go out of my way to watch A Christmas Carol remakes regardless of the time of year. As a result I have a lengthy list of versions I enjoy. But in the interest of your eyesight, dear reader, I’ll pare it down to the short list of remakes well worth seeing. This list is chock-full of spoilers, so read with caution.

• Mickey’s Christmas Carol, an animated Disney picture released in 1983. I was four when it dropped and approximately six when it crossed my radar, but there was easily an entire year when I obsessed over this cartoon. Scrooge McDuck (think an older, crankier Donald), Mickey as Bob Cratchit, Goofy as Marley’s Ghost, Jiminy Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past…the list goes on and on. All of my cherished Disney characters brought the story to life. It was my first A Christmas Carol experience and will always be my favorite. Major flashback: I cried and cried during the Ghost of Christmas Future sequence when they revealed the fate of Tiny Tim, and a heartbroken Mickey weeps over his son’s grave…
• Ebbie, a made-for-tv flick from 1995, starring Susan Lucci as Elizabeth “Ebbie” Scrooge. She’s the same Scrooge, only anatomically altered; with one or two tweaks in her tale she is the character to a T. Susan Lucci takes it all a bit too seriously–as only she can–but her performance still sparkles. It’s a heartwarming take on the story and the first time I saw a female Scrooge. I liked the feminine twist; somehow when she comes to her senses on Christmas morning she seems to shift from a masculine to maternal persona, and the transformation fascinates me. Massive plus: the divine Molly Parker (Deadwood, Pure, Six Feet Under) plays two roles: Ebbie’s sister and niece, respectively. Double the delight! And for a nice performance, watch for Wendy Crewson (24, To Gillian on Her 37^th Birthday) as “Roberta” Cratchit.
• Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, a UK holiday offering from Rowan Atkinson and the Blackadder gang, released in 1988. (Suddenly I feel very old!) It’s A Christmas Carol as only Blackadder could approach it: Atkinson reprises his famous character as “Ebenezer Blackadder”, and the entire cast of guffaw-worthy characters like Baldrick (otherwise known as “Sod-off Baldrick”, Tony Robinson), Queen Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson), Prince George (Hugh Laurie), and Lord Melchett (Stephen Fry) round out the oddball black comedy. Clever addition to the tale: Blackadder’s plagued with visions of his ancestors and descendants–which turn him from a good-natured, gentle man into the conniving, misanthropic Blackadder we all know and love.
• A Diva’s Christmas Carol, made-for-tv & aired in 2000. Diva extraordinaire Williams is “Ebony” Scrooge, one member of a successful R&B trio, whom she wantonly casts aside for a solo career. (Even at seven years old it’s a cautionary tale for Beyoncé Knowles!) It’s a completely harmless film that’s fun for its kitsch. And Kathy Griffin positively shines as the Ghost of Christmas Past. This one still gets a fair bit of Lifetime TV airplay so check your TV guides! Word of warning: Although she plays her character perfectly, when Vanessa sings in a concert sequence at the end of the film it is absolutely painful. I’m not sure what happened to her—once upon a time she had a decent voice. As of 2000 that claim is well and truly dead.
• Scrooged, last to be mentioned here but certainly not least. This is also from 1988, a great year for witty Dickens remakes! Bill Murray could not be funnier in the role of Frank Cross, who is essentially Scrooge. The application of the story to the cutthroat television industry is genius–I imagine that if Dickens was alive and writing his tale today, he’d set it in showbiz. There are so many standout performances that make this film a total treat–Bobcat Goldthwait as a disgruntled ex-employee gone postal, Carole Kane as the horribly abusive Ghost of Christmas Past, Alfre Woodard (Desperate Housewives, Radio, Miss Evers’ Boys) as the Cratchit-esque Grace Cooley, and Jamie Farr as a disgusting but hilarious Jacob Marley. Unforgettable moments: the executive lunch when Murray suffers a long string of gruesome hallucinations. His comical shouts, gesticulations, and slapstick act floor me every time. Moment #2 comes after one ghostly visit, when Murray finds homeless Herman frozen–another tearjerker!

Photograph by Kevin Dooley. Some rights reserved.

A Christmas Carol simply is Christmas to me. It certainly doesn’t feel like the holidays until one or more remakes grace my television screen. I doubt anyone could watch the aforementioned titles and come away untouched—be it a laugh, a cry, or a lift in Christmas spirit. So next time you’re looking for an entertaining Christmas story with a dose of emotion and a holiday high, look no further than the many treatments of Dickens’s only tolerable masterpiece!

Dina Ely is a freelance writer, poet, and author of short fiction. Readers can contact her at dely723@yahoo.com  

by Jenni Robison

There is a God. How do I know? I simply do. Otherwise how can you explain life, consciousness, conscientiousness, or love? Of course, Darwinians and those who pretend they don’t believe in God can do as they wish. We have a choice of beliefs because God gave us free will!

Photo by Camille King. Some rights reserved.

In the “moment of now” (a very popular phrase today), we are all united by one thing: life. Yes, everything is part of one cosmic whole. Even our cells have consciousness! Therefore I am unable to comprehend how some people don’t believe there is a God. Something guides everything–creation, evolution, miracles… it must! And there is too much hope in this world for God not to exist to acknowledge it.

After considering if God exists let me ask you something that might make your brain explode: Who or what made God?

As everyone probably knows by now, the Screen Writer’s Guild of America went on strike this week. The main issues are DVD residuals and, probably most importantly, “new media” sales. In a nutshell: the entertainment business is a different animal now than it was in 1988 (when the WGA had their last strike). We didn’t have YouTube, IPTV, TV programming on phones, TV shows sold over iTunes, and so on. The WGA is fighting for a reasonable piece of a suddenly changed–and much bigger–pie. It’s easy to imagine record industry execs smiling in their beards, thinking “We knew you had it coming too…”

I expect that with such comedic talent walking the picket lines we will get the funniest picket line placards ever. Letterman’s writers should have a field day with this one: “Top 10 reasons our demands should be met”. With any luck, they’ll be able to use some of it on the show when the strike is over. “Stupid Industry Exec Tricks” perhaps?

It’s understandable that sitcoms would go off air as soon as already recorded episodes run out. After all, we can’t expect actors to be funny too (except Wonder Woman Tina Fey!). But how about evening talk shows? Letterman, Leno, Conan and co. have all gone to re-runs immediately. Why couldn’t the shows be rearranged temporarily to have less focus on topical humor and more on interviews? Couldn’t a program director extend the celebrity interviews by 5 minutes each and get the musical guest to play 2 songs (which works perfectly fine on Saturday Night Live) to make up a 1 hour show? After all, Letterman didn’t sign a contract with us stating he has to provide a Top 10 every night, right?

Photograph (c) 2007 by “Paul”. Some rights reserved.

I’ll probably display a shocking level of ignorance about the entertainment industry here… but seriously, can’t an accomplished comedian and professional such as Letterman come up with a handful of Top 10s and other segments? Leno’s said he considers himself a working comedian who still performs 300+ nights per year to keep his skills sharp. Can’t he come up with some original material to pull off a 5 minute monologue? The kids on Last Comic Standing (if you haven’t seen it, think American Idol for stand-up comedians) are sometimes forced to come up with entire sets in a matter of hours, and they’re newbies! Ellen DeGeneres will not be going off the air because she writes the majority of her material herself. What a novel (or old-fashioned?) concept: a talk show host/comedian who actually writes jokes! What’s next? Will we be stuck with reruns again when the guy who types the jokes into the teleprompter goes on strike?

It’s my hope that the main reason these late night shows are going off the air is the fact that the on-air talent are standing by their writers. After all, many of them were writers once, too. It’s wonderful to see that some actors are standing side by side with their staff writers. (Ladies, your McDreamy fix right here.) My favorite story so far is on the United Hollywood blog: (The Office’s) Steve Carell informed NBC that he is unable to report to work because he is suffering from “enlarged balls.”

On the other hand there are some reports that the industry, in an effort to keep the daytime dramas going, is already employing scab writers: typically experienced soap writers who aren’t currently working on a show. They can write undercover to keep the show going and get paid when the strike is over. From the networks’ financial perspective it makes sense to do this, and I’m sure an unemployed writer can stand to earn a few bucks. But you can imagine these folks won’t be too popular with their peers…

One comment posted on the WGA video team page on YouTube reads “Boiled down, it’s the ‘writers are highly paid cry babies’ against the ’studios are greedy pigs’” and is signed “the many TV watchers who make your jobs possible”. Maybe a bit extreme, but the end result for many of us who aren’t involved in the entertainment industry is simply no new TV shows for a while. Some people I know are already reactivating their Netflix accounts. It’s sad that in this on-demand entertainment age TV has become such a solitary experience, with people Tivo’ing their favorite shows and watching them whenever they want. It’s been a while since I heard people talk enthusiastically about yesterday’s episode. More often now you hear “Wait, don’t tell me, I recorded it.”

Final note, going back to Steve Carell’s cojones: according to some sources NBC is considering airing the original British version of The Office in place of the American one. While I fully support Carell and love the American show, it would be nice to have the brilliant original show aired here on network TV.

Submitted by Stefan Raets. Stefan is a refugee from the corporate world. When he isn’t reading or writing, he’s probably feeding or diapering his newborn son.

by Michael Talbert

There’s no doubt about it: in Africa, horrific things are happening. But what’s going on? What can we do about it? Well, that depends on who you are, and what you mean by “we”. Read on to discover the terrible history of genocide in Africa and current efforts to alleviate the intolerable situations there.

The practice of genocide in modern day Africa began in 1966, perpetrated by clerics, emirs, and politicians of northern Nigeria on the Igbo nation of Biafra. Over 100,000 Igbo were killed or maimed. Over the next forty years and counting, Africa experienced mass genocide, ethnic cleansing, killing fields–whatever term you use it was cold-blooded murder on a massive, national scale. And it’s continuing.

During his reign Idi Amin alone reputedly massacred anywhere from 80,000 to 500,000 Ugandans. His targets were varied: ethnic groups, journalists, judges and lawyers, and students and intellectuals, among others. Today in Uganda children are forced to watch their families being slaughtered, and are abducted to fight as rebel soldiers in the “Lord’s Resistance Army”.

Ethnic Tutsis suffer in Rwanda at the hands of the Hutus in a civil war that now overflows to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most of the world sits idly by while journalists document the ethnic and tribal cleansing in the Dafur region of Sudan.

In the Western world, some are taking notice. But constant obstacles block the way to peace and often governments’ hands are tied. For others with the greatest potential to enact change, efforts are halfhearted at best.

The United States can do little militarily since it’s armed forces are mired in the country’s own ethnic cleansing war elsewhere. The United States also claims not to engage in nation building, and intervention in Africa would be construed as just that.

We, as the United Nations, can condemn the atrocities, sanction the governments, and send in a UN peacekeeping force–but such actions have little practical effect.

Wealthy individuals consider it ill-advised to mediate directly between warring factions, so philanthropists direct their money at what they perceive to be the root of the problem: education, health, and hunger.

Oprah built a school for girls in South Africa to forward the cause of equal opportunity. Although off to a shaky start, the world knows where her heart is. Warren Buffet gives his money to Bill Gates to invest in positive change through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill just doesn’t give money away; he fosters achievement by investing in better ways to handle heath and hunger in Africa.

Celebrities can and do use their notoriety to promote awareness, and the more affluent among them put their money where their mouths are by starting their own foundations.

U2’s lead singer Bono seems to have become better known as a philanthropist than a rock star. Bono has put his talents to use as a spokesperson, rallying people to establish organizations like DATA, an initiative to alleviate HIV and hunger in Africa through debt relief and trade practices. His most recent initiative, Product Red, recruits companies to display a logo on their products. A percentage of the profits earned go to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

We, as the average Joe, have limited means and influence. We have the option of donating a portion of our paycheck to international relief organizations such as the Red Cross or UNICEF, but we really don’t know where or to whom our money goes. It could be directed to other areas in need, like New Orleans–which isn’t a bad thing, but isn’t beneficial to Africa, either.

Alternatively, for the price of admission we can watch a movie and save a child in the war-torn region of northern Uganda.

The award winning documentary WAR/DANCE is opening this week at select theatres around the country. It’s the story of three children who live in a refugee camp in northern Uganda and have witnessed atrocities few of us can even imagine.

Join them as they share their stories while pursuing their dreams of dance and music. Follow on their journey as they prepare to enter the finals of the Kampala Music Festival as representatives of their school in the Patongo refugee camp.

You can view the seven minute theatrical trailer at WARDANCE.org, a joint project between Yovia, Shine Global and THINKFilm. 100% of Shine Global profits (the film’s producers) goes back to charity.

Watch the film–save a life. It’s a way to do your part to combat the horror in Africa. Get involved and know you’re making a difference.

Photo courtesy of THINKFilm Company

WAR/DANCE
In times of war, they dance

Coming soon to a theater near you.

Sources:
The New Times
Prevent Genocide: Africa