Balladeer’s Blog continues its TENTH Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon!
JON MALIN’S CHRISTMAS CAROL (2019) – We can all have A Very Malin Christmas with this audio play version of A Christmas Carol. Unfortunately, Cecil stars as Scrooge so with his Buddy Hackett voice he gives this Carol an annoying nails on chalkboard feel.
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog will remember Jon Malin from Graveyard Shift Volume Two, covered earlier this year. Rest assured this Yuletide production is very holiday-ish, lest Malin’s association with the monsters from Graveyard Shift cause raised eyebrows (except by Malin himself, of course, who is often ribbed for supposedly not having any).
Productions of A Christmas Carol are all about who plays Scrooge, naturally, and Cecil, duck-voice and all, ruins this version. But on the bright side this Carol is being done for charity, raising money for some wonderful people. No, not the Malin Militia, but the good people at Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
Moving on to the Carol itself: Continue reading
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2015) – This 59 minute rendition of the Dickens Yuletide classic is often referred to as “the Colin Baker version.” Too bad Baker can’t sue somebody over that, since he had nothing to do with this laughable production beyond portraying Charles Dickens and narrating the story. 
Soon the image improves to conventional standards (well, sort of) and the sound improves to 1950s television levels. Unfortunately, this is a 2015 production, not a 1950s presentation, and the weak, amateurish sound work will plague this Carol the rest of the way. 
TAKUGINAI (December 1988) – As always I enjoy reviewing some of the most obscure and/ or neglected versions of the Carol that I can find. 
Time for another post in Balladeer’s Blog’s TENTH annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years. 
THE GUTHRIE THEATER PRESENTS A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1982) – Stage performances of any story getting filmed for video are pretty hit and miss, but this production is much more of a hit than a miss. The Guthrie Theater Presents A Christmas Carol was filmed at the famed Minnesota theater of the title and aired on The Entertainment Channel in 1982 before being released on VHS. 
BARBIE IN A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2008) – Mattel provides us with a plastic version of the Carol in a plastic cartoon about its plastic creation Barbie. Just as Mr Magoo was an actor portraying Scrooge in Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, Barbie is the story-teller relating the tale to her younger sister Kelly. 
THE MERCURY THEATER PRESENTS A CHRISTMAS CAROL – In 1938, the same year as the Mercury Theater’s legendary War of the Worlds radio broadcast, came this presentation of the Dickens classic. 
Balladeer’s Blog continues its annual orgy of versions of the Dickens classic as Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2019 resumes!
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2012) – This adaptation of A Christmas Carol was a noble effort to try something different that was not just a gimmick. Ignore the negative IMDb reviews which accuse this adaptation of using “Elizabethan language.” They’re off by a few hundred years, since in reality the dialogue follows that in the Dickens novel of 1843. 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2019) – Directed and co-written by Steven Salgado, this adaptation of the 1843 novel sets the story in present-day Miami. Though some may try to pigeon-hole this indy film as “a Hispanic-American Christmas Carol” that would not be quite accurate. 
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