Christmas 2017

[z Revis]

Re: Christmas 2017

I can’t believe Christmas is in a week. It has really snuck up on me.


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Yeah it’s kind of crazy it’s been almost 4 weeks since Thanksgiving. There’s always so much build up to the holidays and then they come and go so fast. I’m gonna try and enjoy these next couple of weeks though. New Years is the last paid day off from work for me(aside from vacation and sick days) until Memorial Day in May lol.


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[mike24forever]

Re: Christmas 2017

I was just having this conversation the other day...people actually watch these movies? I mean, they must, because Hallmark keeps making them. A lot of them. I mean, it seems like they churn these things out like a factory; a never-ending, Candace Cameron-starring factory.

You can almost do Mad-Libs with the plots. A single woman [professional occupation] breaks up with her significant other, then moves back to [small town] where she runs into an old [high school/college/other] friend and despite their initial protestations, sparks fly!

My wife and I watch them and joke about how they are all the same. They are cheesy goodness.

[Majingir]

Re: Christmas 2017

I saw Miracle on 34th street(the original) for first time yesterday. I've seen the one from the 90s so many times.

I actually prefer the one from the 90s much more. Though the original one the verdict in court makes more sense than how the 90s one went.

[pietasterp]

Re: Christmas 2017

I never did until this year and even then it's more on in the background than actually setting out to watch. I do see a decent amount of them though. I said the same thing to my brother in a text about the plots. My version was:

Happy people: Hey, it's Christmas!
Female star: ...meh.
Happy people: You need to go to (small town with holiday traditions) for (unrelated reason).
Female star: Alright, I guess...

**go to town, meet random man (75% chance of being a widower), fall in love**

Female star: Hey, it's Christmas!

::credits::

I actually watched one on the Hallmark drama channel the other day because I flipped through and the scene it landed on had the FBI at the airport looking for the female lead because she was on the no fly list. That was enough of a change to get me to watch more, haha.

Spoiler: It ended the same way as all these movies do.

Woman (to mom): He lied to me!
Man (to self) : I really messed things up...
*dramatic gesture*
*love*

There was actually an article - in the Wall Street Journal, no less - that I read about how Hallmark became a holiday movie machine. I was reading it on a plane and just laughing my *** off; the passengers around me must've been like "what the hell is wrong with that guy?".

They of course mentioned the predictable plots and checklist of must-haves like quaint small snowy towns and diabetic-coma-inducing sweetness of all the endings, but one of the things that I found the most funny (and I'm paraphrasing here) was one of the producers was talking about how they actually get sent a ton of scripts for these movies (they make like a million of them every summer in time for the holidays) and they frequently get scripts that start with something to the effect of "It was the first time in (however many years) that the (snowiest town in the world) didn't get snow in the winter". And the producer said they immediately throw those scripts out, with her response to the 'no snow' angle being "Not on Hallmark it isn't!".

I saw Miracle on 34th street(the original) for first time yesterday. I've seen the one from the 90s so many times.

I actually prefer the one from the 90s much more. Though the original one the verdict in court makes more sense than how the 90s one went.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one. I think the original just seems like so much more of a movie of its time and place than the remake. It's too innocent to exist in any other subsequent time in our country. Also, vintage Maureen O'Hara at/near her peak. Classic beauty. And a future beauty (albeit destined for a tragic ending) in a young Natalie Wood as the little girl.

I suppose you always have a preference for whichever version you saw first, though. It's like music - whoever's version of a song you heard first, even if it's a cover, always seems to be the one you like best.

[Blzer]

Re: Christmas 2017

I'm going cheap this year.


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[SmashMan]

Re: Christmas 2017

and they frequently get scripts that start with something to the effect of "It was the first time in (however many years) that the (snowiest town in the world) didn't get snow in the winter". And the producer said they immediately throw those scripts out, with her response to the 'no snow' angle being "Not on Hallmark it isn't!".

They know their brand, I'll give them that.

[Majingir]

Re: Christmas 2017

Not surprising, but sad how desperate people get this time of the year to buy stuff(food specifically in this case) for holidays. Looking at some stores, they raised prices on stuff big time. Some things which were $5 recently are now triple in price. So people might be like "I got you a $20 box of chocolates", which might sound good, but in reality, that box is worth less than $10.

I'm going cheap this year.


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Yeah, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one. I think the original just seems like so much more of a movie of its time and place than the remake. It's too innocent to exist in any other subsequent time in our country. Also, vintage Maureen O'Hara at/near her peak. Classic beauty. And a future beauty (albeit destined for a tragic ending) in a young Natalie Wood as the little girl.

I suppose you always have a preference for whichever version you saw first, though. It's like music - whoever's version of a song you heard first, even if it's a cover, always seems to be the one you like best.

Probably just has to do with time period and the fact that almost all movies I've seen came out within past 30-40 years. I couldn't get into "It's a wonderful life" either.

[slickdtc]

Re: Christmas 2017

Surge pricing on Amazon is the most real.

[pietasterp]

Re: Christmas 2017

Probably just has to do with time period and the fact that almost all movies I've seen came out within past 30-40 years. I couldn't get into "It's a wonderful life" either.

I get that. But I want to put in a good word for "It's a Wonderful Life", because I've always found it odd that it became such a holiday classic. I would argue that it's a good movie on its own merits (sans the holiday theme), but that the interpretation of it is open to personal discretion. When I first saw it as a kid, I thought it was a nice holiday movie. A classic. I'm a sucker for older movies, though, so there's that aspect.

As I got older, though, I came to view the movie as significantly more depressing and sad. I don't know if I was projecting or what, but you can view the movie in many lights. The standard (canonical?) way is that it's an ode to small-town life and an homage to middle American values. The more sinister way to look at it is that it's a tale of a man with big dreams (he wanted to travel the world and literally had his bags packed when the Bailey S&L had a run), who by way of circumstance and his own rigid sense of duty and familial loyalty ended up tethered to his small town against his will, and who in the end never got to pursue or accomplish anything he wanted from his youth. All the while, he kept the fires burning back home (begrudgingly) while having to watch his younger brother become a war hero and travel the world and his best friend move to New York and get rich. I mean, the climax of the movie is George being driven to suicide because he missed a deposit payment on a nickel-and-dime hayseed podunk bank. Talk about small-time. That's some depressing sh*t right there, if you think about it.

Viewed in that light, the title of the film "It's a Wonderful Life", can be viewed as not celebratory but rather scathingly sarcastic.

[Majingir]

Re: Christmas 2017

The best thing about the movie though are the amount of shows that copied that idea. The whole "what would everyone's life be like without me" story is actually an interesting one.

[SmashMan]

Re: Christmas 2017

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[Majingir]

Re: Christmas 2017

I've been looking for a retractable mouse for awhile now, and while this isn't one, it's still a real nice mouse. Don't need it for gaming, but just happened to come across it(Somebody probably forgot it, so I hung onto it for abit to see if anyone would come back, nobody ever did, so I kept it). Guess Santa does read posts on OS(helps my claim that Mike is Santa).

Not my pic, but it's the same thing. Pic doesn't make it look as good as it does. The lights on it are so much brighter/crisper than the pic makes it look. It lights up and you can change colours on it too. Something like that I'd say it should be like $50 or so. Probably the best mouse I've had, it's basically brand new too, no scratch or dirt or anything on it.

[steelerfan]

Re: Christmas 2017

Looks alot like my mouse.

[pietasterp]

Re: Christmas 2017

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Ha, that's so funny. It's becoming a well-known enough phenomenon that it's garnering SNL parody.

What's even funnier is how most people probably never even knew they had "Hallmark Channel" in their cable package until they started blitzing the living dog poo out of the holiday season.

[Majingir]

Re: Christmas 2017

Looks alot like my mouse.

Yours is probably diff model but it's basically same thing. I've been using regular mice my whole life, but once I started with this one, it's so much nicer. Gotta get use to the 3 extra buttons though(forward and back buttons along with some other button I don't know what it is, but seems to sometimes highlight a paragraph when I click it)