Generic Holiday Special Download Movies
Osoulo Lejeune
When you're ready for some quality family time amid the chaos of the season, there's nothing better than curling up with one of our holiday favorites. From all-time classic holiday movies for kids such as The Muppet Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street to sweet holiday-themed romances for older tweens and teens like While You Were Sleeping and Love Actually, you're sure to find a festive flick that's just right for your family. For even more holiday-themed ideas, check out these books and apps.
Without ever having seen one, I felt like I somehow knew the conventions of the Hallmark Christmas Movie anyway. Your standard HCM centers on a generically attractive hetero couple, usually played by a former soap opera star and a '90s sitcom actor, and they either A) fall in love despite their initial reservations, B) mend their relationship because the spirit of Christmas demands it, and/or C) team up to rescue their rural hamlet from a Scrooge-like land developer. These films (if you can call them "films") are G-rated excuses to show off luxurious sweaters, cozy living rooms and glistening piles of artificial snow.
The Hallmark movie machine is a beast. The channel starts airing Christmas content the week before Halloween, with a new feature-length movie each week (true to their machine-made form, they all clock in at a brisk 83 minutes without commercials). And Hallmark isn't the only network taking on this subgenre: Lifetime cranks 'em out at a rate that'd make Santa blush, as does Netflix, and there's a Hallmark spinoff channel called Movies & Mysteries that, I guess, is the edgier of the two networks.
Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to dip my (mistle)toe in these uncharted waters. I wanted to get to the core of why people seek comfort in these movies, but I also wanted to look at them as movies. I wasn't about to watch all of the 40-some titles punched out of the Hallmark cookie cutters this year, so I picked a select few based on some ranked fan lists and some highly scientific personal criteria (basically, the ones with the punniest titles).
They're uniform in ways I find just a bit unsettling. They're all set in picturesque American towns populated by actors trying to conceal their Canadian accents. They're all photographed in tight, shallow-focus shots and on generic sets with minimal background extras. There's always a scene set at a Christmas tree lot. There's always a character reliving some kind of trauma tied to the holidays, as well as an advice-dispensing friend or sibling who works in a cute little bakery/coffee shop. Without fail, the movies end with a closed-mouth kiss and/or a job promotion.
These movies are so algorithmic and conventional that the scripts must look like Ikea furniture manuals, and although they appear to be credited to actual people with actual names, I wouldn't be surprised if they're all aliases for some kind of filmmaking A.I. that follows recipes with predetermined ingredients.
And yet I totally get how these could have become comfort blankets, something you can put on in the background while you do literally anything else and still be able to follow the plots. They exist in a bizarro world where no one is politically divided, where everyone lives in a catalog-ready home, and where everyone's personal problems are eventually tied up in a neat little bow in the final minutes.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is a 1965 animated television special. It is the first TV special based on the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz, and features the voices of Peter Robbins, Christopher Shea, Kathy Steinberg, Tracy Stratford, and Bill Melendez. Produced by Lee Mendelson and directed by Melendez, the program made its debut on the CBS television network on December 9, 1965.[nb 1] In the special, Charlie Brown (Robbins) finds himself depressed despite the onset of the cheerful holiday season. After Lucy van Pelt (Stratford) suggests he direct a neighborhood Christmas play, his best efforts are ignored and mocked by his peers when he chooses a puny Christmas tree as a centerpiece.
After the comic strip's debut in 1950, Peanuts had become a worldwide phenomenon by the mid-1960s. The special was commissioned and sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company, and was written over a period of several weeks, and produced on a small budget in six months. In casting the characters, the producers took an unconventional route, hiring child actors. The program's soundtrack was similarly unorthodox, featuring a jazz score by pianist Vince Guaraldi. Its lack of a laugh track (a staple in US television animation in this period), in addition to its tone, pacing, music, and animation, led both the producers and the network to predict the project would be a disaster. However, contrary to their collective apprehension, A Charlie Brown Christmas received high ratings and acclaim from critics. It received an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and became an annual presentation in the United States, airing on broadcast television during the Christmas season for 56 years before becoming exclusively available on Apple TV+ streaming service. Its success paved the way for a series of Peanuts television specials and films. Its jazz soundtrack achieved commercial success, selling five million copies in the US.[3] Live theatrical versions of A Charlie Brown Christmas have been staged.
On their way to join their friends ice skating on a frozen pond, Charlie Brown confesses to Linus van Pelt that, despite all the things he likes about the Christmas season, he is still depressed. After Linus' reproach, and a put-down from Violet Gray, he visits Lucy van Pelt's psychiatric booth and tells her his problem. She suggests that he direct the group's annual Christmas play to get him involved, and he accepts.
Charlie Brown becomes even more discouraged by his observations of Christmas' commercialization as he heads for the rehearsal: Lucy laments over not receiving real estate for Christmas; Snoopy decorates his doghouse for a neighborhood lights and display contest; and Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally asks him to write a greedy letter to Santa Claus. At the rehearsal, Charlie Brown finds a play fit for the 1960s with dancing, lively music, an uncooperative cast and a "Christmas Queen" (Lucy). Unable to control the cast, Charlie Brown decides the play needs a more "proper mood", and recommends a Christmas tree; Lucy suggests a big, pink aluminum tree, then sends him and Linus to get one.
At the tree lot, Charlie Brown picks the only real tree there, a small sapling. Linus questions his choice, but Charlie Brown believes that once decorated, it will be perfect. When they return, however, Lucy, Violet, Patty and Frieda scorn him and the tree and walk away laughing. Crestfallen, Charlie Brown loudly asks if anyone knows what Christmas is all about; Linus says he does, walks to center stage, asks for a spotlight, drops his security blanket, recites the annunciation to the shepherds, picks up his blanket, returns and says, "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."
Realizing that he does not have to let commercialism ruin his own Christmas, Charlie Brown takes the tree home to decorate it and show the others that it will work in the play. The others realize that they were too hard on Charlie Brown and quietly follow him after listening to Linus' speech. He stops at Snoopy's doghouse, which had won the lights and display contest, and hangs a large red Christmas ball on his tree. The ornament's weight causes the tiny tree to bend to the ground. Believing he has killed the tree, Charlie Brown, dejected, walks away.
The others arrive at Snoopy's doghouse and as they all start to see its potential, Linus gently uprights the drooping tree and wraps his blanket around its base to give it some support. After the others give the tree a makeover using more decorations from the doghouse, even Lucy concedes to Charlie Brown's choice. The kids then start humming "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Hearing them, Charlie Brown returns to see that the sapling is now a magnificent Christmas tree. All the kids shout, "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!", and then sing "Hark" with Charlie Brown joining in as snow begins to fall.
By the early 1960s, Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts had gained enormous popularity.[8] Television producer Lee Mendelson acknowledged the strip's cultural impression and had an idea for a documentary on its success, phoning Schulz to propose the idea. Schulz, an avid baseball fan, recognized Mendelson from his documentary on ballplayer Willie Mays, A Man Named Mays, and invited him to his home in Sebastopol, California, to discuss the project.[9] Their meeting was cordial, with the plan to produce a half-hour documentary set. Mendelson wanted to feature roughly "one or two" minutes of animation, and Schulz suggested animator Bill Melendez, with whom he collaborated some years before on a spot for the Ford Motor Company.[10] Mendelson later stated that he was drawn to doing an animated Charlie Brown after working on A Man Named Mays, noting that Mays was arguably the best baseball player of all time, while Charlie Brown, in a running gag in the strips, was one of the worst, making him a natural follow-up subject to his previous work.[11]
Despite the popularity of the strip and acclaim from advertisers, networks were not interested in the special.[12] By April 1965, Time featured the Peanuts gang on its magazine cover, perhaps prompting a call from John Allen of the New York-based McCann Erickson Agency.[8] Mendelson imagined he would sell his documentary, and blindly agreed to Allen's proposal: an animated half-hour Peanuts Christmas special.[12] The Coca-Cola Company was looking for a special to sponsor during the holiday season. "The bad news is that today is Wednesday and they'll need an outline in Atlanta by Monday," Allen remarked to Mendelson.[13] He quickly contacted Schulz, and the two got to work with plans for a Peanuts Christmas special.[8] The duo prepared an outline for the Coca-Cola executives in less than one day, and Mendelson would later recall that the bulk of ideas came from Schulz, whose "ideas flowed nonstop."[14] According to Mendelson, their pitch to Coca-Cola consisted of "winter scenes, a school play, a scene to be read from the Bible, and a sound track combining jazz and traditional music."[15] The outline did not change over the course of its production.[16]
7fc3f7cf58