Awwwwww! Gwen and Blake are so cute together.
There’s a lot of reasons why this video works but really, it all comes down to charisma and chemistry. Gwen and Blake look like they should be celebrating Christmas together and, when you watch, you want to celebrate with them. This video was directed by Sophie Muller, who has directed over 230 videos since the late 80s!
Enjoy and Merry Christmas!
Watching the 1964 holiday sci-fi epic, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, is a Christmas Eve tradition here at the Shattered Lens! So, sit back, turn on Kid TV, and get ready to sing!
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HOORAY FOR SANTY CLAUS!
There’s a very clever scene at the beginning of The Christmas Contract.
Jack Friedman (Robert Buckley) is a writer who can’t get any of the big publishing houses to even take a look at his new book. However, Jack’s agent informs him that they might change his mind if he does some ghostwriting. One can see from Jack’s reaction that this is not the first time that he’s been asked to be a ghostwriter and it’s not something that he particularly enjoys. Still, because one does have to eat, Jack agrees.
His agent tells him that he’ll be ghostwriting the latest installment in a very popular but critically dismissed series of romance novels. He’s told to go read the previous book in the series and then to basically rewrite it, just changing a few details so that it can be advertised as a totally new book. He’s given a list of plot points that the publishers want to be included in the book. Again, it’s not particularly important how the plot points are integrated into the story. Instead, they just have to be there.
Moonlight dance? Yep.
Kisses under the stars? Yep.
Oh, and the book needs to take place in Louisiana.
Now, you don’t have to be a part of the industry to realize that, in this scene, Jack is serving as a stand-in for every writer who has ever been assigned to write a Hallmark (or, let’s just be honest here, Lifetime) Christmas movie. Don’t try to reinvent the season, just make sure that the basics are there. Pick a new location and you’re ready to go!
With that scene, the makers of The Christmas Contract are acknowledging that, “yes, this is another Lifetime holiday movie.” And yes, it’s going to remind you of a lot of other Lifetime holiday movies. But, that still doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy it. After all, the appeal of a movie like this is to be found in its familiarity. In an often chaotic world, there’s something to be said for the comfort of a good, if predictable, romance novel. The same can be said of a Lifetime Christmas movie.
Anyway, it’s a good thing that the publishers want the book to be set in Louisiana because that’s where Jack spends his holiday. He’s actually accompanying a recently single woman named Jodie (Hilarie Burton) back to her home for Christmas. Because Jodie’s ex-boyfriend is going to be visiting with his new girlfriend, Jodie doesn’t want her family to know that she’s single. So, Jack pretends to be her boyfriend. They even sign a contract ahead of time. And, yes, you can guess exactly what ends up happening but, again, that’s kind of the point with a movie like this.
The cast, which includes several veterans of One Tree Hill, does a good job with the material but the true star of this film is the state of Louisiana. This film makes full use of the beautiful Louisiana landscape and the celebratory nature of the state’s culture. It may have been predictable but it was still enjoyable. Spending the holidays with Jodie, Jack, and the family looked like a lot of fun.
It’s become a bit of a cliché that all Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies take place in a small town and feature someone returning to visit relatives for the holidays. Christmas Lost and Found, however, breaks with tradition. While it is true that film begins with Whitney Kennison (Tiya Sircar) returning to her former hometown so she can spend the Christmas with her grandmother (Diane Ladd), the hometown in this case is Chicago.
(Of course, in all fairness, I guess we should keep in mind that Whitney left Chicago for New York City, where she found employment as an event planner. And, from what I’ve seen, it does appear that a lot of people in New York consider almost every other city in America to be a small town by comparison. That being said, I live in Dallas and I spend my holidays in Fort Worth so, to me, both New York and Chicago are huge metropolises.
Anyway, where was I?)
Whitney is an extremely successful in event planner in New York City but her success has come at a cost Whitney is so driven to succeed and such a workaholic that she’s running the risk of forgetting about the things that make life worthwhile, things like love and family.
Fortunately, Grandma’s here with her box of ornaments!
The ornaments are several years old, each one representing a different Christmas that Whitney spent with her grandmother. (For instance, a snow flake ornament represents that Christmas when they got snowed in.) Grandma gives Whitney the box of ornaments and tells her to keep them safe until it’s time to decorate the tree. However, the very next morning, Whitney is cleaning the house and the ornaments accidentally get thrown out!
Terrified that she’s lost the ornaments and ruined Christmas foever, Whitney puts off telling Grandma what happened. However, then the notes start to show up, rhyming riddles that inform Whitney that she’s going to have to go on a scavenger hunt across Chicago to get the ornaments back. Now, this may sound like the set up for a holiday-themed horror movie but have no fear! The first riddle says that it might sound like a stunt but promises that it will be fun.
Working with the neighbor, Brian (Edward Ruttle), Whitney goes searching for both the ornaments and, in a larger sense, Christmas itself. With each ornament that she finds, she’s reminded of yet another Christmas. The unseen letter writer continues to give Whitney tasks, making her write a letter to Santa Claus at one point. While Whitney searches for the ornaments, she also tries to figure out the identity of the letter writer. And, of course, she also has to finish designing a department store display window because …. well, why not?
How you react to this movie will probably depend on how much tolerance you have for Lifetime holiday movies in general. This is an unabashedly sentimental film and it takes place in a world that’s almost devoid of cynicism. You have to be willing to accept that someone was somehow able to put together an extremely elaborate scavenger hunt and have it play out without a hitch. Is the film implausible? Kinda. And if that matters to you, you’re probably not into Lifetime Christmas movies.
As for me, I always get sentimental around this time of year so I enjoyed Christmas Lost and Found. Edward Ruttle was likable as the neighbor and he and Tiya Sircar had enough chemistry to make them pleasant to watch on screen. And, of course, you’ve got the great Diane Ladd playing Whitney’s grandmother. It’s hard to think of anyone who could have done a better job with the role.
If you’re not naturally inclined to like these type of movies, Christmas Lost and Found probably won’t convert you. But if you enjoy sentimental holiday entertainment, Christmas Lost and Found delivers exactly what it promises.
If there’s any lesson to be learned from Lifetime (and, for that matter, Hallmark) Christmas movies, it’s that no one should leave their hometown.
Seriously, everything’s always better in your hometown. You might find success in the big city. You might own a nice car. You might find a huge apartment. You might even have a well-paying job. But you’ll never have what you had when you’re living in a small town with good, honest people, some of whom were related to you.
Admittedly, it’s easy for snarky critics like me to poke fun at this idea and the way that it shows up in every single Lifetime Christmas film. But you know what? These films have a point. Every Christmas, my sisters and I get together and we pretty much stay together until the new year. That’s our Christmas tradition and it’s one that I look forward to every year. I always know that no matter what’s going on in our own individual lives, we’re all going to be together with the holidays and everything is going to be right with the world.
That’s certainly what I was thinking about as I watched Hometown Christmas, a Lifetime film in which Noelle (Beverly Mitchell) returns to her hometown in Louisiana for the holidays. There’s not a lot of conflict to be found in Hometown Christmas, but that’s okay. This is a film in which the nicest people in the world gather in the nicest town in the world and proceed to have the nicest holiday in the world and that’s why the film works. Save the horror for Halloween. Save the conflict for …. well, whenever the next election is. This is a Christmas movie and Christmas movies should make you feel good and happy.
When your name is Noelle, it’s perhaps to be expected that your life is going to revolve around Christmas. That certainly seems to be the case with the character that Beverly Mitchell plays in this film. One of the nice things about Hometown Christmas is that it never suggests that Noelle had to return to her hometown because she was miserable outside of it. Instead, Noelle returns because she wants to return. To be specific, Noelle has returned to stage the live Nativity, a town tradition that was started by her late mother. Of course, as soon as Noelle returns home, she runs into her old high school boyfriend, Nick (Stephen Colletti). Nick was going to be a star baseball player but injuries put an end to that. Things are a little bit awkward between Nick and Noelle at first but it’s not long before they’re working on the Nativity and Nick is proving that he’s grown up a lot since he and Noelle last saw each other. It’s a sweet relationship.
(Actually, there’s more than just one love story that unfolds over the course of Hometown Christmas. While Nick and Noelle are getting reacquainted, Noelle’s father (Brian McNamara) is falling for Nick’s mother (Melissa Gilbert). Meanwhile, Noelle’s brother is newly engaged.)
It was a pleasant Christmas love story and I enjoyed it. Hometown Christmas is full of the holiday spirit, as any hometown Christmas should be.
Claire (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a venture capitalist who lives in the big city but dreams of visiting the same small Vermont town that her mother once loved.
Andrew (Jamie Spilchuk) is the latest in a long line of blacksmiths and he also owns an independent bookstore in the same small Vermont town where all of his ancestors have lived.
Together….
THEY SOLVE CRIMES!
Okay, not really. Christmas Around The Corner is a Lifetime Christmas movie, which means that there’s not a single crime to be committed. For that matter, there’s none of the other things that we typically expect from a Lifetime movie. There’s no seductive nannies. There’s no duplicitous best friends. No adultery. No scheming. No runaways. Nope, that doesn’t happen on Lifetime around Christmas time.
Instead, the movie opens with Claire having some sort of major career setback. I’m not really sure what the exact details were but it had something to do with the stock market and a downward pointing arrow and a party that none of her investors came to. It was financial stuff, which I’ve never really been able to follow. What’s important is that Claire decided to get out of New York and spend the holidays in that small town in Vermont.
(Yes, yes, I know. Vermont. I hate Vermont but I won’t go into that right now.)
Anyway, Andrew runs a bookstore that also rents out rooms or something like that. Apparently, when you’re staying at the bookstore, you’re also expected to work in the bookstore. I have such mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I would love to live over a bookstore. And I probably wouldn’t mind working in a bookstore, as long as I was the owner and could basically spend all day bossing people around and having them rearrange the books. I mean, that seems like it would be a lot of fun. However, I just can’t imagine going on a vacation so I could work.
When Claire arrives in the town, she’s really looking forward to the annual Christmas festival but …. uh oh! The festival has been cancelled! In fact, due to tough times and bad weather, it would appear that no one in town has the Christmas spirit! No one but Claire!
So, can Claire get the town to rediscover its love of Christmas?
Even more importantly, can she use her marketing background to show Andrew a better way to run his bookstore? Of course, she can! Unfortunately, it may all be for naught because Andrew is thinking about selling the bookstore!
Along the way, Andrew and Claire fall in love. Can you blame them? I mean, Andrews’s a blacksmith! Soot is sexy.
As you might expect from a Lifetime Christmas film, Christmas Around The Corner is more than a little predictable but, at the same time, it’s a sweet movie. The town looks beautiful and Alexandra Breckenridge and Jamie Spilchuk have a likable chemistry as the two leads. As anyone who has ever watched a Lifetime Christmas movie knows, these films always have an older voice of wisdom who helps to bring everyone together. This time, that voice of wisdom was provided by the veteran actress Jane Alexander and she did a good job with her role. It’s a likable movie, which is really the main thing that can ever be asked of a movie like this. It’ll make you feel happy and Christmas-y.
Because, after all, Christmas is right around the corner!
Deanna Durbin was the best Christmas present Universal Studios ever received. The 15-year-old singing sensation made her feature debut in 1936’s THREE SMART GIRLS, released five days before Christmas. The smash hit helped save cash-strapped Universal from bankruptcy, and Miss Durbin signed a long-term contract, appearing in a string of musical successes: ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL, THAT CERTAIN AGE, SPRING PARADE, NICE GIRL?, IT STARTED WITH EVE. One of her best is the Christmas themed comedy/murder mystery LADY ON A TRAIN, one of only two films directed by Charles David, who married the star in 1950, the couple then retiring to his native France.
Our story begins with young Nikki Collins travelling by train from San Francisco to New York City to visit her Aunt Martha, reading a murder mystery to pass the time. Nikki witnesses a real-life murder committed through a window, and after ditching her wealthy…
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Let’s start this holiday weekend off with another music video from Lindsey Stirling!
In Celtic Carol, Lindsey is an elf who has been locked into Santa’s workshop. Apparently, Santa is a really demanding boss, which I always kind of suspected. I mean, if you’ve ever seen Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, you now what I’m talking about.
Anyway, Elf Lindsey manages to get in the Christmas spirit despite having to work.
Enjoy!
Like last week’s “Christmas Wrapping”, the song “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home” made it’s debut on a compilation album, 1963’s “A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Spector”:
The label’s head honcho, ‘Wall of Sound’ producer Phil Spector (we won’t get into his later sordid life – it’s Christmas!), originally wanted his then-wife Ronnie to sing the Elle Greenwich/Jeff Barry (the duo responsible for rock classics like “Be My Baby”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Leader of the Pack”, “Hanky Panky”, and “River Deep – Mountain High”) penned tune. But Ronnie couldn’t give Phil quite what he wanted, so backup singer Darlene Love of The Blossoms was called in – and nailed it!
Darlene Love in the studio with Phil Spector, 1963
Darlene Love sang background vocals on many of the era’s hits (Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s “The Monster Mash”, The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”, Johnny Rivers’ “Poor Side…
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For me, it’s all about the tree.
A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired 53 years ago, on December 9th, 1965. It’s aired every year since then, often twice a year. For me, watching A Charlie Brown Christmas is as much of a holiday tradition as wrapping presents, decorating the house, and checking the weather forecast for snow. I’ve watched every year since I was eight years old and I bet I’m not the only one.
A Charlie Brown Christmas begins with Charlie Brown telling Linus that he just doesn’t understand Christmas. Even though he enjoys the presents and the tree and all the traditions, he still always ends up feeling depressed. Charlie says that he just doesn’t feel the way that he’s supposed to. (Was this the first Christmas special to acknowledge that the holidays can be a difficult time for some people?) Linus says that Charlie Brown is the only person who can turn a wonderful holiday like Christmas into a problem. From someone who spends every Halloween in a pumpkin patch, that’s a bold statement.
No one seems to have the Christmas spirit. Lucy is upset because she never gets real estate. Sally asks Santa Claus for tens and twenties. Snoopy is so busy decorating his doghouse that he doesn’t even go after the Red Baron. Even when Charlie agrees to direct the Christmas pageant, everyone’s more interested in dancing than getting into the holiday spirit.
Look at Pigpen go! Snoopy and Schroeder get all the attention but Pigpen’s keeping up with them on the double bass.
Charlie Brown and Linus leave rehearsals to go find a Christmas tree. Charlie’s supposed to pick the best tree they have, a big, pink, aluminum one. Instead, Charlie picks the only authentic, real tree on the lot. It’s a tiny sapling that looks half-dead and which leaves needles on the ground. When Linus says that everyone’s expecting something bigger, Charlie says that the tree just needs some decorations.
That’s why I love A Charlie Brown Christmas. It’s all about the tree. It’s all about faith.
It’s not just the faith that Linus talks about when he later explains the true meaning of Christmas, though that’s certainly a huge part of it. (Charles Schulz had to fight to be allowed to include Linus’s famous telling of the Christmas story, as there were fears that the religious content would turn off viewers. Cleverly, Schulz made the story a key part of the special’s climax, so there was no way that the network could cut it.) It’s also Charlie Brown’s faith that, even if he doesn’t full understand Christmas, he can still make that tree into something special.
At first, when Charlie Brown attempts to put on decoration on the tree, it tips over and he says that he’s killed it.
But then Linus comes along and he sees what Charlie Brown saw in that tree and, with a little help from his friends and his blanket, they bring the tree back to life.
Life may never be easy but with “a little love,” even the least impressive of things can become something glorious. A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t just about Schulz’s religious faith. It’s also about the faith that the world can be made a better place, for trees, beagles, and round-headed kids. Lucy might even finally get her real estate.
For the second time this year, A Charlie Brown Christmas will be airing on ABC tonight. I’ll be watching.
Through the Shattered Lens 