Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

Good catch!  Quite right!

[Yoink]

Huh. After finding an old record of his, I just looked up and read about Al Jolson for the first time whilst listening to it.

My first thought was, "huh, well, he's no Cole Porter", but his story is actually rather fascinating. As one of the more popular vaudeville performers from back in the day, he is much maligned for being a focal point for the whole issue of blackface, but it seems he in fact used his music career to fight for racial equality in various ways.

Not only did he (at least) help introduce jazz and blues to white audiences, he also on at least a few occasions (I'm just going off his Wikipedia page) demanded fair treatment for the black musicians he worked with, or even took it upon himself to make things right.
It may have helped that he himself was Jewish, in a time when even that was considered grounds for discrimination? He's an interesting and often misunderstood figure, that much seems certain.

[King Zultan]

1) An attractive girl working in a C-level or near C-level position at a wealthy firm discovers "The true meaning of christmas" when she vacations in a podunk town to get a christmas tree. Meets a handsome boy there, and discovers love.

You forgot the other version of this where she's there to buy and destroy the place the Christmas tradition happens, then the finding love and meaning of Christmas stuff happens.

Good catch!  Quite right!

I just remembered that they've done a few that times but with men in the place of the women.



The only reason I know about this crap is my aunt watched these things.

[Rolan7]

(quoting the whole thing since linking's still broken and all)

1) An attractive girl working in a C-level or near C-level position at a wealthy firm discovers "The true meaning of christmas" when she vacations in a podunk town to get a christmas tree. Meets a handsome boy there, and discovers love.

2) A rich tycoon discovers christmas after vacationing in a small town for business reasons, falls in love with a vacuous but pretty girl, who reforms his corporati behaviors.

3) Supernatural agents working for santaclaus give an already wealthy person even more favor this christmas (such as by granting a wish) so that they can better understand the holiday. (those poor kids who just want to not be homeless dont matter, we wont deal with them. Santa's helpers only deal with rich people.)

4) A family has been the caretakers of the "village christmas tradition" for generations, kids dont want to do it anymore, and the spirit of christmas convinces them to keep doing it. (Of course, the kids are also rich.)


Somebody needs to investigate this properly.

Well, Vulture seems to have noticed some of it... but catches "White christmas", and misses "Only the wealthy need apply."

Here's another piece by Vox--which claims to interview an anonymous writer of that dreck, to get an inside scoop about the formulaic nature of the "movies."  there is a decided lack of critical evaluation on how such contrivances are not at all realistic of real christmas experiences in the modern world, or how they are clearly engineered to tap into the emotional memories of an older generation...

How can this shit be popular?

Saw a lousy example of 1 & 3 last night.  Attractive woman working at a C-level position in a New York firm gets drunk and starts missing her fiancee (who refused to leave their podunk town, so she left alone).  A magic black man (and vagrant! bonus!) tells her to wish on a Christmas star, she does because drunk.  Magically she wakes up back in her old town with the opportunity to abandon her career and dedicate her life to her husband!

And that's exactly what happens!  There are very few twists in this movie, save for one: Using her future-knowledge, she saves her husband's failing bookstore by "inventing" Not-Amazon.  So after Christmas she wakes up back in her New York penthouse - but this time with her husband, having done things "right".  And having sacrificed nothing, in fact even richer than before.

(she doesn't actually *remember* the 6 years of retconned marriage, which is played for a laugh, but is pretty meta-hilarious if one overthinks it)
And all it took was a guardian angel to give this wealthy woman a second chance to be a good little wife!  blech.

[wierd]

There's a reason why I call it "The Saccharine channel".

Devoid of any food value, artificially sweet, and induces cancer in lab animals.

[Iduno]

Huh. After finding an old record of his, I just looked up and read about Al Jolson for the first time whilst listening to it.

My first thought was, "huh, well, he's no Cole Porter", but his story is actually rather fascinating. As one of the more popular vaudeville performers from back in the day, he is much maligned for being a focal point for the whole issue of blackface, but it seems he in fact used his music career to fight for racial equality in various ways.

Not only did he (at least) help introduce jazz and blues to white audiences, he also on at least a few occasions (I'm just going off his Wikipedia page) demanded fair treatment for the black musicians he worked with, or even took it upon himself to make things right.
It may have helped that he himself was Jewish, in a time when even that was considered grounds for discrimination? He's an interesting and often misunderstood figure, that much seems certain.

Yeah, he seems like a really alright guy.

How can this shit be popular?

It seems like there are 2 groups who watch it: people who think Family Circus is good, and people who are watching because the movies are terrible.

[King Zultan]

One of the other thing's I've noticed about the Hallmark Christmas movies, is that the quality seems to go down with every one they make, and the writing gets lamer and lamer. Like one I saw recently it had the some of the crappiest green screen I've ever seen, I've seen some low budget crap that did it better.

[Enemy post]

Aren't most Christmas movies considered sucky? I've personally never watched a Christmas-themed movie, mostly because Russia is largely Orthodox Christian, and our Christmas is after the New Year (January 7th), not before. Hell, New Year here is more celebrated than Christmas, overall.

They're generally considered "light", but certainly not bad. Watching a certain selection of them is a very common family tradition. I could recommend some, if you're ever curious about what they're like.

Important caveat:Hallmark Christmas movies do not count, as they are churned out constantly and are indeed generally considered bad.

[scourge728]

From my understanding, people who watch said films watch them because it is expected to watch them as a standard Christmas activity, regardless of the actual value of said films
My family personally just has home alone playing

[LordBaal]

In Venezuela isn't Christmas until Home Alone is on the air and dully watched.

[Kagus]

In Norway, it's not really Christmas until Dinner for One has been aired (in black and white, from the one angle) at two minutes past nine on the 21st. Any attempt to change this showing will be (and has been) met with fervent uproar.

After that, there are various schismatic traditions... Some need to see Swedish cartoons, others require old school Norwegian Christmas movies where Santa's elves are played by children wearing bushy mustaches; but in my circles the necessary viewing pleasure is the Czech Cinderella movie horribly dubbed in Norwegian by one man doing all the voices. Until such rituals have come to pass, the Christmas spirit has not truly been realized.


We also practice Whamageddon, but that's more of a modern-day tradition mostly held up by the youngsters.

[scriver]

The only important movie tradition to me since I no longer care for Disney, never cared for "Can you whistle, Johanna" (creepy old men are creepy) and never actually seen the majority of "the Story of Karl-Bertil Jonsson's Christmas" (can't stand the animation) is watching Ivanhoe on New Year's Day

HONOUR TO THE BRAVE
GLORY TO THE BRAVE

[Lord Shonus]

My mother gets addicted to crappy Hallmark movies this time of year (to the point where I called the cable company to see if I could have the channel blocked), and some approach stage quality - as in "high school play" stage quality. I've seen a few decent performances, and one or two that were actually fairly decent movies with interesting bits, but those are rare.

[Kagus]

Sometimes the dog is nice to look at. You can pretend that you're in a different reality; one where the dog is getting cuddles.

[Mephisto]

I generally have things fairly well put together but this Vintage Story video game fucks me up somehow.

I ran a server for some dwarves last year and continually fucked up the backup process, causing two server wipes in as many days. I walk away for a year because that shit's so draining. Come back this year to give away six copies on various fora and I somehow fuck up sending every single one of them. It all worked out in the end but I spent so much time trying to figure this out today.

WTF, brain?