For unto us
A Child is born
Unto us a Son is given,
And his name shall be called
Wonderful
Counsellor,
the Mighty God,
the Everlasting
Father,
the Prince of Peace.

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Tagging today
Monday, December 24, 2018
My 256th consecutive posting
(committed to 5,000.)
Time is 12.01am.

On Monday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of * with less wind than , resulting in a feels-like temperature

Dinner is

Tick Tock.
A day at a time.

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Question of the Day:
I will do nothing but watch television on Christmas Day.
Help! 

Hints:
So easy.
Four period piece movies: three with David Lean as director, and one starring Alistair Sim.
Can you name them?

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Short Take:

My oh my!
Even in wintertime, and it is wintertime, nature puts on a show.
Willows and crabapples.
Cost of view and walk through?
Free to body politic.

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Answer to Question:
I will do nothing but watch television on Christmas Day.
Help!

So easy.
Four period piece movies: three with David Lean as director, and one starring Alistair Sim.
Can you name them?

Start with the oldest, from 1946, Lean’s “Great Expectations.”
Great Expectations is a 1946 British film directed by David Lean, based on the novel by Charles Dickens and starring John Mills, Bernard Miles, Finlay Currie, Jean Simmons, Martita Hunt, Alec Guinness and Valerie Hobson.

It won two Academy Awards (Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography) and was nominated for three others (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay).

The script, a slimmed-down version of Dickens' novel – inspired after David Lean witnessed an abridged 1939 stage version of the novel, in which Guinness (responsible for the adaptation) had played Herbert Pocket, and Martita Hunt was Miss Havisham – was written by David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame and Kay Walsh.
Guinness and Hunt reprised their roles in the film, but the film was not a strict adaptation of the stage version.

The film was produced by Ronald Neame and photographed by Guy Green.
It was the first of two films Lean directed based on Dickens' novels, the other being his 1948 adaptation of Oliver Twist.

The film is now regarded as one of Lean's best; in 1999, on the British Film Institute's Top 100 British films list, Great Expectations was named the 5th greatest British film of all time.

And a second, 1948, Lean, again, “Oliver Twist.”
Oliver Twist is a 1948 British film and the second of David Lean's two film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels.

Following the success of his 1946 version of Great Expectations, Lean re-assembled much of the same team for his adaptation of Dickens' 1838 novel, including producers Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, cinematographer Guy Green, designer John Bryan and editor Jack Harris.
Lean's then-wife, Kay Walsh, who had collaborated on the screenplay for Great Expectations, played the role of Nancy.
John Howard Davies was cast as Oliver, while Alec Guinness portrayed Fagin and Robert Newton played Bill Sikes.

In 1999, the British Film Institute placed it at 46th in its list of the top 100 British films.
In 2005 it was named in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

We’ll identify the third by the actor, Alistair Sim. 1951.
Got it yet?

Scrooge is a 1951 British fantasy drama film and an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843).
It stars Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, and was produced and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, with a screenplay by Noel Langley. It was released as “A Christmas Carol” in the United States.

The film also features Kathleen Harrison as Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge's charwoman.
George Cole stars as the younger version of Scrooge, Hermione Baddeley as Mrs. Cratchit, Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit, Clifford Mollison as Samuel Wilkins, a debtor; Jack Warner as Mr. Jorkin, a role created for the film; Ernest Thesiger as Marley's undertaker; and Patrick Macnee as young Jacob Marley.
Michael Hordern plays Marley's ghost, as well as adult Marley.
Peter Bull serves as narrator, by reading portions of Dickens' words at the beginning and end of the film; he also appears on-screen as one of the businessmen discussing Scrooge's funeral.

And the next, the fourth, from 1954 and David Lean.

Hobson's Choice is a 1954 British romantic comedy film directed by David Lean.[2][3] It is based on the play of the same name by Harold Brighouse.
It stars Charles Laughton in the role of Victorian bootmaker Henry Hobson, Brenda De Banzie as his eldest daughter and John Mills as a timid employee.
The film also features Prunella Scales in one of her first cinema roles as Vicky.

PLOT

Willie Mossop (John Mills) is a gifted but unappreciated bootmaker employed by the tyrannical Henry Horatio Hobson (Charles Laughton) in his moderately upmarket shop in 1880s Salford in Lancashire.
Hard-drinking widower Hobson has three daughters. Maggie (Brenda De Banzie) and her younger sisters Alice (Daphne Anderson) and Vicky (Prunella Scales) have worked in their father's establishment without wages and are eager to be married and free of the shop.
Alice has been seeing Albert Prosser (Richard Wattis), a young up-and-coming solicitor, while Vicky prefers Freddy Beenstock (Derek Blomfield), the son of a respectable corn merchant. Hobson does not object to losing Alice and Vicky, but Maggie is far too useful to part with.
To his friends, he mocks the plain, severe Maggie as a spinster "a bit on the ripe side" at 30 years of age.

Her pride injured, Maggie bullies the browbeaten, unambitious Willie into an engagement.
When Hobson objects to her choice of his own lowly employee as husband and refuses to start paying her, Maggie announces that she and Willie will set up in a shop of their own.
For capital, they turn to a satisfied customer for a loan.

With money in hand, they are married, and between Maggie's business sense and Willie's shoemaking genius, the enterprise is successful.
Within a year, they have not only paid off their business loan, but have also taken away nearly all of Hobson's clientele.
Under Maggie's tutelage, the formerly meek and illiterate Willie has become an educated, self-confident man of business, and he and Maggie have fallen deeply in love.

When Hobson's drinking finally catches up with him, Dr. MacFarlane (John Laurie) sends for Maggie.
At her urging, Mossop offers to go into partnership with Hobson, on condition that Hobson be only a silent partner.
After a tussle over the new name of the business, Hobson agrees.

Hobson's Choice won the British Academy Film Award for Best British Film 1954.

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Good morning
On this Monday, December 24.
Christmas tomorrow.
Santa in the air.
Literally in the air.
First stop: the space station.
If you look up as it passes overhead you’ll catch him, Rudolph, and Albert.

Today we remembered a segment from Handel’s Messiah and were treated to a gallery of photos taken with cold fingers.
Should we thank the photographer for his grit?

And we discussed four winning movies that set a tone and comprise a great binge.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom