Denny and I skipped two parties this weekend to just sloth around the houses. Actually, we were busy with stuff during the day on both Saturday and Sunday, and by the time evening rolled around, we didn’t feel like going anywhere.

We did, however, watch my two favorite Christmas movies: Love, Actually and It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s a Wonderful Life is the quintessential Christmas movie for a good reason. It’s funny, sad, touching, and adorable. There are, however, some things that make it kind of weird viewing in 2005. For example:

• The hokey sci-fi intro. It’s kind of charmingly low-tech, though, and I like it. I also like the depiction of angels as galaxies rather than guys in white robes with wings. In fact, despite the frequent wing references, no angel is every actually seen on screen in stereotypical angel garb. If the movie were made today, the director would probably take the opportunity to do all kinds of fancy CGI wings and flight sequences. It’s cuter without it.
• Corruption of civilization evidenced by a plethora of bars in downtown Bedford Falls (aka Pottersville). That’s just silly.
• The idea that librarians are old maids who have dorky glasses and don’t wear lipstick. There are some very foxy librarians out there.
• Sexual harassment of African American domestic employees (I’m referring to the part where Harry smacks their housekeeper on the butt as if it’s perfectly normal). On the other hand, I did notice the fact that in the end (and this is a spoiler, people), there was a black person among the people who give money to help George. That was a nice touch, and rather forward-thinking for the time, because it implies that George sees black people as his peers and people from whom he can receive aide.

I think my favorite aspect of the movie is Jimmy Stewart’s naturalistic acting style. So many of those old-timey movies have such stilted dialogue (yes, even Greta Garbo is guilty of this), but Jimmy Stewart seems like he didn’t even know he was being filmed. His dialect dates him, of course, and the fact that even in his bitterest rages the most vulgar name he has for a person is fool, but I still find him a very disarming actor to watch.