Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Movies Celebrate Dickens' birthday by watching instantly
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 2:27 PM
I think I can say without controversy that if you really want to celebrate Charles Dickens' 200th birthday, the best way is to read one of his actual books. Recognizing that might require more time than most people can commit to in one evening, you could alternatively watch a movie adaptation. While Jane Austen has been Hollywood's favorite British novelist for the past few decades, there are plenty of excellent screen versions of Dickens out there, not even counting A Christmas Carol. Netflix offers numerous strong Dickens films on Watch Instantly, including David Lean's classic 1946 version of Great Expectations with Alec Guinness; the 1968 Oscar-winning musical Oliver! and its abundance of songs to get stuck in your head, like "Food, Glorious Food"; the 1988 two-part version of Little Dorrit, also with Alec Guinness; ">the funny, thoroughly entertaining Nicholas Nickleby from 2008; and an eight-episode version of Bleak House that I haven't seen, but stars Gillian Anderson. Your local library system probably has some of the many "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries of Dickens' work as well.
Any discussion of Charles Dickens inevitably makes me think of the Monty Python "Bookshop" sketch (shown here with Marty Feldman) and its mention of such timeless novels as David Coperfield with one P, Grate Expectations and Knicholas Knickleby. This particular sketch fails to mention A Sale of Two Titties, however:
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