Ava Weiss

Falling Like Snowflakes

/ Rebekahrox / 6 Comments

Flakey

It’s Christmas in July time at Hallmark only in June. It was nice to get back to a Christmas story in the summertime. All that cold weather and snow when it’ so hot outside! And in this one, the snow, or at least the flakes, were (was?) the starring attraction, not just white background.

Teagan is a photographer who specializes in taking pictures of snowflakes. She also  works closely with the community center as a photography teacher. Her best friend runs an Art Gallery and Teagan’s snowflakes are center stage. There are 35 main types of snowflakes and she has  photos of 34 of them. She has been on the hunt for the last one to complete her collection for 3 years, since her Mom died. If she finds it by Christmas Eve, a collector will not only buy all 35 of the pictures, but donate enough to the community center to fix everything that ails it. Finding the rare and elusive 12 sided stellar dendrite will be like finding a needle in a haystack but if the needle kept melting!

Anyway, and you won’t believe this, One of Teagan’s star students, Julie, is the daughter of Teagan’s former high school honey, Noah,  and he is a not-too-sad widower. Now that his wife is dead, he has returned to his old hometown after giving up his former career as a climate scientist (weatherman) to become the world’s worst professional snow plow driver. Not sure why he did that since since the usual loving grandparents or other hometown family who could mother his little girl were noticeably absent. The two prospective love interests meet, sparks fly, etc. Being a snow plow driver,  Noah volunteers to take Teagan to a gathering severe snow storm on a mountain to hunt for the snowflake that will complete her collection and save the community center. Driving around, looking at the scenery, and staying at an Inn, they get to know each other. Excitement occurs when Noah runs into some black ice and crashes his snow plow into a snowbank. Now you would think that wouldn’t be a problem for a snow plow, but, like I said, he is the world’s worst. He failed to stock the humongous cargo box with the usual snow fighting tools such as salt, sand, and shovels to get him out of trouble.

Empty

Also no chains on the tires. But adorned with bows and wreaths aplenty! Meanwhile, back in Willow Creek a rival photographer is also on the hunt for the rare crystal. She looks like Sarah Silverman. Sarah starts cosying up to Julie trying to learn Teagan’s secrets for photographing snowflakes which are easily found on Google. She is so hopeless and incompetent that she ends up being comic relief rather than a source of tension and suspense. Nevertheless, she is taken dead seriously as a legitimate threat throughout the movie.

Back on the mountain, Teagan and Noah are somehow rescued. They continue chasing the elusive snow storm, but when they find it Teagan has barely gotten her camera out of the bag before she almost gets lost and is almost flattened by a falling tree branch. Thoroughly cowed, they give up on the snowflake and return to safety but without Teagan’s camera which she forgot and left on the mountain in the snow (IKR?). Just to set your mind at rest, the next day, Noah goes back to get it and somehow the camera snuck back into it’s insulated camera case which saved all of the pictures. It turns out she captured a shot of the rare flake (perfectly centered!) without even knowing it,  the community center is saved, and Julie looks like she is going to get a new mom.

I just touched on some of the stuff in this movie that didn’t make sense. Good ole reliable Marcus Rosner is OK, but for some reason I am not a fan of Rebecca Dalton who played Teagan. I’ve disliked most of the movies she has starred in and my dislike has mostly been  due to the obnoxious characters she has played. This one did not win me over.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

/ Rebekahrox / 9 Comments

Great Googly!

I loved this! When I saw the previews, it was evident that this was definitely off the beaten track for Hallmark. The teaser featured what appeared to be a court case deciding the true authorship of the famous Christmas poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas staged as a play. A play within a play? And it was evident that there was a romance going on between two of the actors and maybe some ghosts? I didn’t know quite what to make of it, but it turned out to be a delight from beginning to end.

Torrey DeVitto plays Madison Rush, a successful actress who started off as a child star in a tv series whose catchphrase was “Great Googly!”. She is beloved for that role (people are always yelling “Great Googly!” at her). She is also loved for a romantic movie that she starred in with fellow actor,  Connor Avery. People still talk of their epic kiss in “Christmastime Cupid.”

Madison who is anxious to move forward from acting and into directing is in Troy New York for her first directing job. Her play is based on the mock trial described above. The trial was a real thing. It was held at the county courthouse in Troy in 2013 to determine the long-debated authorship of the 1823 poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas: Clement C. Moore or Henry Livingston, a local gentleman farmer. the first trial resulted in a hung jury so it was re-staged the next year and the verdict was that Henry Livingston was the true author of the poem. I didn’t know any of this stuff! Troy’s history with the poem, The Victorian Stroll, the disputed authorship were all news to me, and I loved it! The Hallmark version of the trial, which uses the city’s annual Victorian Stroll (kind of a Victorian Renaissance Festival) as a backdrop for the movie, may or may not have a different verdict.  

In the movie, the play is funded by a rich guy in order to give his girlfriend Lena the starring role to jumpstart her ambition to be an actress. She is a rank amateur and hopeless as an actress. In fact, she can hardly read, let alone act! Also starring, is Madison’s leading man from their movie, Connor Avery, he of the famous kiss.

Madison tackles every challenge thrown at her during preparations for the play and there are plenty. She awakens the talent in Lena by giving her confidence in her abilities, deals with last-minute interferences from the producer, her agent needling her to go back to acting which is where the money is, and many more. The most challenging of the challenges though is the appearance of two mysterious actors who first show up at the Victorian Stroll in costume and then appear during rehearsals to play the two combatants Moore and Livingston. They take over the script but they are wonderful and take the play in a new and exciting direction. Madison bravely just goes with the surprise turn her production has taken. Unfortunately, they come and go as they please during rehearsals, don’t stick to any script at all, and leave poor Madison wondering when, or even if, they will show up for the actual performance.

The romance is drama-free and really nice. Madison and Connor like and respect each other and are half in love already (that kiss!) The relationship develops as Madison gets to know Connor’s young daughter who comes for Christmas. Connor respects and likes Madison for going after her dream of directing and is very impressed with the job she is doing despite the many challenges. Madison learns that Connor actually has a law degree and in turn is also very impressed. There is no doubt (is there ever?) that they are made for each other.

All of the actors in this gave superlative performances. The new-to-Hallmark actor who played Connor had charm and appeal to spare, the actors who played the two (spoiler alert!) ghosts of the two rival poets were wonderful, and the actress who played the terrible actress who comes into her own was also excellently terrible, and then not terrible. Her struggles had me on the edge of my seat. Though I must interject that the preview gave away an important plot point. Dumb. There was plenty of humor, intrigue, and suspense. The romance was not center stage in this one but added a sweet touch and a happy hopeful ending. I was happy to see a veteran Hallmark regular making an uncredited appearance as Connor’s mother. It’s getting to be a tradition, and I have started to expect these little welcome treats. In a rarity for Hallmark, one viewing will not be enough for me. I want to watch it again, knowing what I know now.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

The Most Colorful Time of the Year

/ Rebekahrox / 4 Comments

Red, Green, and All the Rest

Last year, and especially this year, Hallmark started to push the envelope as far as venturing out beyond its safe and standard bone-tired plots, and this one is no exception. A secretly color-blind teacher meets an ophthalmologist, the single mother of one of his students, who sees through his lifelong tricks and strategies to disguise his disability. She enters him into a clinical trial without his consent after he tells her he is not interested once his subterfuges have been discovered. Although most definitely unethical and an invasion of privacy I can almost give her a pass on this because he doesn’t fully understand what he is missing in life. See, he is not only color-confused (red and green or blue and yellow being indistinguishable from each other,) but totally unable to see any color whatsoever. Also, it’s stupid he is not interested. Why wouldn’t he be interested? He’s a science teacher. Just because nothing has worked before, trying on a pair of glasses is hardly a surgical procedure or taking an untested drug. But it was wrong of her, it must be said. The way the whole color-blindness thing is handled is lazy and irresponsible. His condition is very rare, while the other is a fairly common condition that indeed can be mitigated by special glasses of the sort that are provided by this clinical trial. Monochromia would be impossible scientifically to correct with glasses due to the cause of the condition.  Maybe this could be partially excused by deeming this cure part of a “clinical trial” but it is as far-fetched and as far from being science-based as a pill to cure alcoholism would be. In other words, the idea was interesting but the execution and details lacked authenticity to put it kindly. It is another example of Hallmark seeming like they have contempt for their viewers by glossing over unrealistic plot points that actually could potentially be harmful, hurtful, and deceitful if taken seriously.

 To make matters worse this movie is sponsored by a company that makes the aforementioned glasses that mitigate color confusion in some people with lots of emotional videos of people acting like they once were blind and now can see. So they’re using the emotions that might be generated by this movie to burnish and exaggerate the benefits of their product that has nothing to do with the disability portrayed. Or maybe they were not aware of the nature of the color blindness depicted in this movie and got manipulated to buy ad space. Whatever, someone did wrong.

Once he finally tries on the glasses and his world is changed, there really isn’t anywhere else to go with it, other than going around looking at colorful scenes. Featuring mostly red and green. So it falls back on the usual tropes once the color-blindness thing is out of the way leading to the inevitable big misunderstanding. In this case, an over-eager wanna-be girlfriend and a more psycho and controlling stalker ex-boyfriend with whom both leads are too nice and patient. The good doctor even lets him invite himself to her child’s Christmas pageant. The ex-boyfriend bit could have actually been a lot more entertaining if he had gotten punched in the nose by our hero when he crudely twitted him about his pay as a middle-school teacher.  However, instead, our hero chose to deliver a lecture that seemed to suggest that teachers did not need fair pay, cuz it’s “a calling” and they don’t care about the money. Very noble, but I know a few teachers that would disagree with that.  

It’s not a secret that I have a soft spot for Christopher Russell. But I have to say, in some ways he was the wrong choice for this one. Of course, he fit the profile of the super nice super handsome school teacher who has all of his fellow teachers and single mothers falling all over themselves. I think I can safely theorize this aspect was added to the script when CR was cast. Because his handsomeness cannot be ignored and left unaddressed. Anyway, he should stick with the Cary Grant or Clark Gable-type roles where charm and good looks are more important than range of emotion. When he put on those glasses and saw color for the first time a lot more was required as far as an emotional reaction. On the positive side, Katrina Bowden was very good as the caring but over-stepping doctor, and her daughter was also very good. CR was believable and endearing as a committed teacher who was definitely overqualified for his job. Best of all though was Joanna Douglas as Heidi, the lead’s supportive sister. Hey Hallmark! Lock this girl in and promote her from supportive sister/friend to head girl. STAT!

Rating: 5 out of 10.