Contrary to Alexandra’s opinion, I think this year was a great one for television. Sure, if you weren’t watching Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, it might not have seemed that way. This seemed to be the year that the traditional sitcom format finally crashed and burned, but arose like the mighty phoenix once more in the form of 2 Broke Girls.

Once again, we’ve narrowed the traditional “Top 10″ films down to a scant three. Trust me, it wasn’t easy. Deciding on just three films that define your cinematic taste is all the more difficult when you find yourself running the kind of movie blog that doesn’t garner press screenings of films or DVD screeners.

Natalie Wood was by all rights a child raised in the Hollywood system. Though she made her break out appearance in Miracle on 34th Street at the tender age of nine, she’d already been taking steady work in Hollywood from the age of four. By sixteen she was already the subject of salacious rumors involving her Rebel Without A Cause director, Nicholas Ray.

The connection between Airport and Miracle on 34th Street may be tenuous at best, though both films are the career highights from the oeuvre of director George Seaton. The film has become relatively obscure with age, though it may be best recognized by the popular spoof from directors Jim Abrahams and David Zucker spawned nearly a decade later, Airplane!

Where would Macy’s be without artist and puppeteer Tony Sarg? Indeed, would we even have Miracle on 34th Street? Sarg appears to be nearly single-handedly responsible for the enduring Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas traditions Americans all know and love.

Miracle on 34th Street simply described: a film about a charming Santa Claus who brings happiness and a renewal of belief to the city of New York. A more complex description involves themes of developing a secular value system, faith without evidence, and commercialism.

Yeah, we’re not doing the traditional “best out of three” round-up of games, or even a top 10. Who has time to play that many video games? Reviewers, that’s who, and their jobs are to play video games that they got for free and then review them.

Opinion on current topics of interest isn’t exactly our bag here at TFL. If you’ve found your way to this site, it’s likely that you’re an obsessive film fanatic (like we are) or Google Images sent you here for a picture of The Warriors or Natalie Portman. Whatevs. We’re cool with it. However you found your way here, we’re happy to have you. Now bear with us as we recount our favorite and not so favorite things of 2011. We’ll be back to discussing and dissecting classic cinema in a hot minute.

I’ll be honest with you, we haven’t seen the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street. It has less to do with the involvement of John Hughes or Encino Man director Les Mayfield then it has to do with the freakishly wall-eyed sight of young Mara Wilson paired with Richard Attenborough’s Kris Kringle.

20th Century Fox’s fabled studio boss, Darryl F. Zanuck, allegedly balked at the idea of a film like Miracle on 34th Street being released during the cold holiday months during which the film takes place. Though the rigors of test marketing would prove him right in the ensuing decades, Zanuck claimed simply that more people saw “pictures” in fair weather.

Sifting through the myriad of holiday films to settle on Miracle on 34th Street, was no easy decision. In the end, we were drawn to the films optimism, in a plot that essentially pits fantasy against bureaucracy, imaginative thought against the status quo. It’s a film that shakes us. The film subverts our sense of belief, loyalty and faith, and asks us to trust the instincts of our youth. To be wild, thoughtful and just naive enough to allow adventure into our lives.