December 23, 2025 • 56 mins
Are you aware of just how many holiday movies play on "The 12 Days of Christmas" title? To be clear, this episode covers 2004's The Twelve (written out) Days of Christmas Eve, directed by Valley Girl's Martha Coolidge and starring Steven Weber and Molly Shannon. The Cultural Gutter's Carol Borden joins Emily to dive into this surprisingly Final Destination-y story. Have a listen and be sure to follow Carol's outstanding work at https://culturalgutter.com/
And don't forget to check out Emily Intravia's video stream production of her original Hallmark parody before December 26th: https://caveat.stellartickets.com/events/the-lost-hallmark-christmas-movie-live/occurrences/e11259f6-84cd-437a-b4d7-6c56bbd565b1
And don't forget to check out Emily Intravia's video stream production of her original Hallmark parody before December 26th: https://caveat.stellartickets.com/events/the-lost-hallmark-christmas-movie-live/occurrences/e11259f6-84cd-437a-b4d7-6c56bbd565b1
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's Christmas Eve. I can't. But there's something about Calvin Carter.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Today, Latin America, tomorrow Elmondon.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
That leaves others feeling less than jolly. You promised you
weren't going to work today.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Excuse me for trying and close the biggest deal of
my life.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But this modern day scrooge in America is about to
get the wake up call of his life. You have
twelve days until what wake up and it'll be Christmas?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And if I don't wake.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Up this season a ghost of Christmas past or something?
Oh where are your chains? Wow? That was fast. I'm impressed.
Make choices Christmas presents for me from me? Wow? That
was really generous of you. Take chances you are coming
(00:57):
off for Christmas. Archest Eric expects to see. I'll try
and discover the twelve Days of Christmas Eve. Steven Webber.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Having lived my best Christmas Eve you've ever, you send
me back to live.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It over and over.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
And over again.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I've at sweet dreams you welcome back. Molly Shannon is
best Christmas Eve everything. It's not a destination, it's a journey.
Twelve Days of Christmas Eve? Am I gonna make it?
At this point? We just don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Enough.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Welcome to yet another stocking stuffer. This is going to
be an infamous stocking stuffer because it is the first
time in my eleven year history that the whole idea
of these movies having very generic titles that are repeated constantly,
occasionally with words fell differently or with different articles in
front of them, actually yielded my guest watching the wrong movie.
(02:07):
But my guest is so wonderful that she said, well,
I'll watch the other movie too, and we'll figure out
which one we should cover. And what a wonder what
a joy, what a guest. Welcome Carol Porton.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Hello, thank you, Thank you so much, Emily.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It is my pleasure. I hope it was your pleasure
to watch two movies about the twelve Christmas eves.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
It was certainly very interesting. It was interesting how much
alike they were and how much more fun was one
was than the other?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Oh okay, so the one that was more fun? Wait
was it this one?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Okay, yeah, wow, okay, So for those at home we
are talking about and I guess we have to be
really specific. The okay, the word the twelve written out
t W E l V E. Okay, Days of Christmas Eve,
not to be confused with the number two, although the
poster for this one I'm looking at it and has
(03:03):
it of the number twelve. There's also the twelve Days
of Christmas Eve with it two with a one two.
There are I think there's there's a million variations on
twelve days of like there's the twelve Dates of Christmas,
twelve Dates of Christmas, and they're two different movies as well,
so there could be even more of these. But this,
the one we're watching, is from two thousand and four, right,
(03:28):
that was the year.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Oh yes, Oh, there's two thousand and four. And then
there's the one it watched, which was twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes, so both of them being star studded affairs with
popular television actors. Correct, yes, yes, yeah, right, so we
got the one we're talking about. Our star is Stephen Webber.
Now you also got the bonus of seeing Kelsey Grammar.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, I got to see Kelsey Grammar in a plaid
flannel suit. That was I'll say, okay, patchwork versions of
different plaids sewn together to make a suit.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I feel like I saw that in a dream once,
you know, or.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Perhaps in another thing that was shot in Canada.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And mm, so I'm gonna ask because we won't go
too much into the Kelsey Grammar one because I didn't
watch it, but I am curious about something with Kelsey
Grammar because Kelsey Grammer is one of those frustrating people
who you can't deny it. He's a really good actor,
and he's a really good TV actor, and he understands assignments,
and he's got a presence and a voice like no
one else. And I mean, he has a career, but
(04:38):
he's kind of become a bad human being. And maybe
he always was a bad human being, but now we
know he's a bad human being. Yeah, so I'm curious
on the Kelsey Grammar one, did it feel like it
had kind of a conservative message behind it? Or was
it just another one of these movies?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
No more than any of these movies, do you, Okay?
And in a weird way undermines a lot of like
it is not Christian, but it does have you should
have goodwill towards other people.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You should.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So yeah, yeah, well you said conservative, And I'm willing
to give a little bit of slight difference between the
flavors because yeah, that's fair Uh, because if where the
Republican Party has wandered off.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
To somewhere nowhere, if they're ever coming back somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, But anyway, getting back to this, so, so Kelsey
Grammar is essentially a scrooge who has given twelve different
Christmas Eves to become a better person and figure it
out on his own, because of course you couldn't possibly
tell someone how to become a better human or that's
like cheating. So like nobody gets any help, and.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So d now is it's the same day. It's just
him living a different like about his choice on Groundhog Day.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Okay, if you mixed scrooged in Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So now the question I have because there's a bit
of IMDb trivia for the Stephen Weber one that says
this movie was remade in twenty twenty two as the
Twelve Days of Dates of Christmas Days of Christmas Eve,
starring Kelsey Grammar. Uh, they do not have the same writers,
they do not share any actual do you in any
(06:29):
way do you think that was a remake or somebody
just happened to go up with the exact same plot,
which is not unusual for these movies.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I would not be surprised as if it started out
as a remake. But it has like a fairly fundamental
difference in that in one one has Santa, which is
the one with Kelsey Grammar, and when Kelsey Grammar dies,
(06:59):
I think slightly meaner ways than a two thousand and
four to one, he appears in a room with Santa,
and Santa is actually possibly the angel of death. Oh,
and that is why I say that it has Perhaps
(07:20):
it depends on how you see it, if you're like,
it's it's more conservative to have a punitive Santa, or
it is in fact less because it is less traditional
to have a punitive Santa who is also possibly the
angel of death.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Judging you, I mean, as long as he's white, right,
isn't the rule?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
He is white, and he has a remarkably short beard
for a Santa, Like he still has a Santa beard,
but he's trimming it and it doesn't look good, and
his his Santa hat needs a fluffy or trim. He's
just he's not He's got a cheap Santa suit. And
I don't know if that's because again, he might be
the angel of death, and he's just like because he
tells Kelsey Grammer, everyone meets me differently, or everyone sees
(08:03):
me differently. Yeah, it is pretty fucking dark.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Wow, I mean, excuse me, it's means it's I guess
the you know, to compare the one from two thousand
and four that we'll start talking about, uh, is kind
of gets to a point where it becomes Final Destination.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, yeah, and it's a little more and like the
Final Destination movies, so like the cheery or I guess
cherry's a strong word for it, but you know, like
the ones that are like we're doing a little gallows
humor here, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
What's it gonna be? What's gonna kill him? Is it
gonna be this? Is it gonna be that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah? And uh, And it does it with Kelsey Grammar,
and he really brings like, oh no, I've fallen off
a building or I can't remember all the ways he died,
but it just always felt a little like there's a
little more glee I think in his death, where with
with Stephen Webbers, it's more like, what's gonna happen to
(08:58):
him this time?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Like yeah, because it feels like there's no pain for
him in these ways.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And they do and they do like a narrative thing
where he's he's learning his lessons, and as he learns
his lessons, he learns to avoid the various deaths yep,
because they're always in the same positions. And so he's like,
I'm not going to get hit by this falling icon
or I'm not going to get hit by this car.
And if I avoid the car, then I get hit
by the rolling trash band like bin, like public trash bin.
(09:26):
That's it hit and then that runs him over. And
then he ultimately realizes all the things he needs to
learn and he gets squashed by the same thing from
the beginning and decides to do it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah. It takes a little time, but we get there.
So let's let's dive into the Stephen Webber. Yeah, twelve
Days of Christmas Eve, Yeah, two thousand and four, which
I had stumbled on. I was kind of browsing different
streamers to figure out what's what's out there? What happened?
I covered, and there was a bunch on canopy from
early two thousands, late nineties. I'm like, whoa, this is
(09:59):
always fun because it's it's all the hallmarks are there,
pun intended but not quite developed, and you see some
some things that will would change dramatically in like ten
years later. But at the heart of it, it's like, well,
this is the same, Like the fact that I don't
think that one, the Kelsey Grammar one was Hallmark, but
it was one of those networks. It might've even been
in like Great American Family that in twenty twenty two,
(10:21):
you would basically make the same exact movie or the
same exact story, but just with a very different style.
I think it's very telling, and I don't know what
this was made for. It was definitely TV because there's
commercial beats right when you watch it, like you can
tell where the commercials played. It's not Hallmark, it's not Lifetime.
I'm not sure where. Maybe it was USA or something.
(10:43):
And also, unlike a lot of these other movies, does
have a real person directing it. Yeah, did you recognize
who directed it? And no, it didn't work. That's okay.
You watched two movies, you guys. Cool it's directed by
Martha Coolidge. Oh wow, who did Genius? Valley Girl Angie Somehow.
(11:04):
I have actually never seen any of those three movies,
but I have seen the Walter Mathow, Jack Lemmon Out
to Sea. Yes, from the Midnight.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yes, yes, it does feel more like like the whole
Hallmark Lifetime Christmas romance movies feel like their own thing,
and this one feels more like older fashioned holiday movies
in general, like we you know, it feels more like
regular movie adjacent or regular little.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Movie of the week, right, like a or something on
a Sunday night. Yeah, So, can you walk us through
the plot of this version of the Twelve Days of
Christmas Eve? Okay, give us a quick summer I think
we kind of got an idea of it, but tell
us about what we got here.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Stephen Weber plays a man named Calvin, who is, if
not a billionaire, a multimillionaire who's made all his money
for running either some kind of dollar store or in
a Canadian context like value village where but he's controlling
the market in most of North America for that, and
(12:13):
he's trying to move into Brazil.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Latin America I think in general, right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yes, yes, And it's it's hard to say why he
has any partners, because he's he's quite a douche as
a start, and he has like a lovely partner named
Rihanna who really puts up with him more than she
should and and it's and it's very groundhog Day. He's
(12:38):
living the same day over and over until he becomes
a better person. And he's supposed to meet his partner
for lunch, but he also has an important business meetings yes,
with a woman named Isabelle from Brazil, and his assistants
(13:01):
have set everything up for him, but he still makes
them do all like he's very Ebenezer Scrooge and he
makes everybody work on Christy.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
There's a Bob Prote character here.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's also a bad son, right
and yeah yeah yeah, And he's like a bad co
parent of his son, and he's a and he's and
he's skipping his son's uh like terrible concert, terrible concert,
but he has to be there because he's a dad,
so he has to watch all the children where disturbingly
(13:33):
reminiscent of It's a Small World.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Oh yeah, I took a picture of that, of that
little tableau of the children donning their gay apparel and
realizing how ethnically weird the decisions are.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And it's hard to notice it first because it's also
so cheap, like they literally just put a hat on them.
And so if you're just like looking at the kids
as they pan on by the kids, you might not
notice like, oh, they're wearing a pail of the World hat.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
And that that seemed to fit. Like that, there's a
little Asian girl wearing a typical like you know, kind
of Rice Farmer hat. That seems like an odd choice.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, a very not good choice. And then strangely, his
son is wearing a Christmas tree for a hat. So
he's not even pretty easy just representing the I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
The Republic Christmas.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I was going to say the Republic of Christmas and
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
So he's dying each day and when he awakes, he
awakens in a hospital where his nurse.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Is Molly Shannon, which automatically improves things and is far
better than Angel of Death Santa sounds like it, and
he he she won't help him out, but she's supposedly
on his side, and they have comic moments that aren't bad,
and he's not supposed to leave the room until he
(15:02):
falls asleep, but one time he runs out into the void.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, it's kind of like that scene in Cube where
they're they finally get to the end of the Cube
and They're like, what's out there and it's just darkness. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, also filmed in Canada, so yes, so
we know about about Canadian War Texas. They're very dark.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, And so he every time he wakes up, he
gets another chance to live his day, and he keeps
trying out different things until finally I would say he,
like Kelsey Grammer, completely figures out his biz. But I
think Kelsey Grammer is like, he's Kelsey Grammer in twenty
twenty two, so he's an eighty year old man. But
(15:43):
I think they sort of give Calvin a pass on
how he's treating his current girlfriend. They're like, you know
what you've got as much as we're going to get
out of you, So Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
It's an odd relationship. So let's let's dive into the
list because so we'll let us walk through it a bit.
So the first thing is our lead need of a lesson,
and obviously Calvin needs absolutely needs to learn a few
things about how to not be an asshole.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yes, right, yeah, on every level. I don't know how
Like with him with Kelsey Grammer, he's doing Scrooge, and
I think that's actually smart because you start out not
and he becomes more human and so you can move
from you're very unlikable to okay, I can you've had
personal growth in it's admirable. But with I think we're
(16:31):
supposed to like Stephen Webber from the start, and Stephen
Weber seems likable, like they position him every morning as
like he's interested in Christmas, he wakes up to Christmas music,
he flirts with his partner, and then you find out
he's bad at all human relationships.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, it's interesting because I think Stephen Webber is a
really charming actions. Yes, yes, right, like you do, even
though very quickly you realize this guy's an asshole. This guy,
this is a bad human being, but he is a
very likable. I mean that's why I think. You know
a lot of times you can see that. I think
with TV actors, with actors who like make it good TV,
(17:09):
because the whole purpose of that is, like you have
to be like I want you want to draw somebody
in every week where they want to sit down with you.
Oh absolutely yeah, And he definitely has that. Even when
he is being like the worst, you do like as
soon as there's the chance for him to get better,
and it was weird, but I actually kind of liked
the way because I couldn't decide it first because at
(17:30):
first I was like this, I'm like, I don't want
to watch this, like just jerk. But I realize something
watching it is that, like it's kind of interesting to
watch how bad he is at figuring it out, because
it's kind of telling to like every now and then
you meet somebody who's like a bad person for different reasons, right, yes,
and sometimes you're like, oh, you just you don't know,
(17:52):
you're like awful. You don't know that what you're saying
is really cruel, or or that doing this thing is
mean that like that tipping ten percent is not generous,
Like you realize there's a difference between somebody who's just
actively like wants to hurt somebody, yeah, and somebody like
this character, who I think is just like I had
to work really hard to save my dad's store and
(18:13):
grow it the way I did, and that took a
lot out of me. And so now this is the
way I've had to live my life, and I live
it this way. Wait, what do you mean that's wrong? Wait?
What do you mean I can't just buy a party
for my brother and he's not going to be happy,
and why isn't he thanking me for it? Like, well,
because you didn't take the time to learn the nuance
of why your brother has this party. So yeah, I
don't know, like it was kind of more and I
(18:35):
guess this is part of like the non hallmark or
like the pre hallmark thing where it's like they had
to work to tell the story before. It's just an
automatic you understand it by shorthand, yes, yeah. And you
also know that he's not likable in the beginning because
the first thing he does, right, the very first like
action he takes in the movie, do you catch what
(18:57):
it was? It's such a yuppie thing, so one of
those ways you would define a rich person in the
early two thousands, late nineties.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, then he checks his fax machine and activates his
coffee machine.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That's like a coffee machine, well, because it's like an
it's like a built in espresso machine.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
That slides out of the wall.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, and he presses against like his own remote for it,
and it's very like, oh, oh really, I don't know.
It was something there and like it's not coffee, it's expressive. Yes, yeah,
all right, so let's talk about his love interests, because
this is an unusual movie and that it's not about
love in the end. Right. Yeah. Yeah, So Rihanna, which
(19:38):
I didn't know anybody else was named Rihanna.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I did not either, like, and I had forgotten because
she disappears for so much of the movie until they
decide they need to deal with her. I had forgotten
her name was Rihanna. So when someone was talking about her,
I thought they meant Rihanna. Rihanna, right, And then I'm like, wait, no,
her name his love interest is named.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Rihanna, which is very confusing. Yeah, she's very white, she's
very owned. Yes, it's just a very like it's one
of those things. The only person any of us know
in the world named Rihanna is Rihanna. So it's just
very very like you have to like orientate yourself a
bit in the present to get through it. Yeah. So
(20:22):
they're together, but don't see, I mean, they don't live together,
they're not engaged. He tries to propose to her at
one point because he's like, I don't know, maybe this
is what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, And that was remarkably like, I think that's another
sign of how it's like pre Hallmarks standard, because that's
like a normal relationship, Like he's a divorced man with
a kid and they're you know, seeing each other and
seeing if it works out and where it goes, or
enjoying what they're doing at the time, like so many
(20:53):
millions of people do. And I know we first see
them in bit of It.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, it's weird. It's so weird. She's got the l
she they've got the l sheep sheets where it covers him,
but it covers her up in the boobs.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Because she's sneaking in bed. Yes, because they just had sex.
Because they's all older, they're all grown up.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
We're not supposed to have grown ups in these movies.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And I like how they treat her for the most part,
because like I was ready for it to go full
of Hallmark where because she had sex and because they're
not married, and because she's not because he has an
ex wife with a kid.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right, that like always got to get back to her
somehow she.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Has to be a hussy. Yeah, and she's not. She's
she's like and we don't even know, Like he doesn't
like one of the reasons I say, we don't know,
or that they don't entirely deal with. All his problems
with people is because in one of his groundhog days, yes,
he realizes he loves her in talking with Molly Shannon,
(21:58):
and then he goes back and his response to realizing
he loves her is to propose to her off like
out of nowhere, without ever having discussed anything with her
and without having a ring, and she uses, you don't
even have a ring as a shorthand for You're just like,
where the hell is this coming from? And I don't
(22:18):
know that she wouldn't decide eventually she wanted to. But
then he decides after this conversation when he talks to
her about it again where it's new for her, but
his groundhog repeat for him like, oh, we need to
break up because you know, you don't really want to
start a family in life with me, And I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, and well, you know, it's one of those things
that like, on one hand, I disagree with this sentiment
that people have said of like, oh, you're at your
most honest when you're drunk, right when somebody's like, oh,
don't listen to me, like I've been drinking whatever I
said last time, I'm so sorry. And there's an argument
to be made that like, oh no, that was you
without filters. Yeah, and I don't really buy that. And
(22:58):
I think in this movie there is something to when
he first proposes, and it does catch her at where
like she is able to in that moment say will
I have I have never thought about marrying you because
you wouldn't be a good father. You're not a good
father now and I do want to have kids and
this wouldn't make sense. Yeah, And yet, like if he
had said to her on another Groundhog Day, like, hey,
(23:21):
by the way, what do you where? What do you
think our future is going to be? Yeah, Like she
might have had a totally different answer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's it's his continuing I can fix everything, that it's
all on me to fix it. And so it's less
that I like who knows, because this is also a
story of someone who can change, right, And so in
real life you would be like that's probably not going
to change. That will be you know, Like, but she
she never gets the chance.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, she never gets to edate like the nice version
of him.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And she never gets agency and deciding it. He just
decides for her, like this is over yeah, and she
and you can see her thinking like, well, yeah, maybe
it is if you're doing this like me.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, she kind of takes it pretty well all things considered,
it being like Christmas Eve and stuff. But yeah, she
does kind of get shafted in this movie a bit.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, but I also can see them being like, you know,
we we fixed so much, We've worked so much with you,
like okay, yes, and Rihanna is a lovely person who
can just go.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Find he can find. Yeah, she'll go find like Thomas
Hayden Church or something, it's.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
All good, who only maybe takes one Christmas Eve to
figure it out, like.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yes, yeah, unlike him maxing out at twelve.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
All right, so now let's go to our setting, which
you know, in this case, I guess we're in a big,
bad city of some probably Canadian sort right.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Ed mentioned I looked it up.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Oh that makes so much sense. Yeah yeah, uh Now
I was very confused in the opening because it when
we meet Bob, Cro'm gonna call him that Bob Cratchett,
like the assistant. He's sitting down in what looks like
to me like the dining court of a mall with
his family. Yeah, they're having like like as if they
just had like we're eating, like sharing French fries, and
then he's like, okay, I gotta go, and he walks
(25:04):
up the escalator and it's the same corporate office that
he works in. That was confusing, was it?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Not? Yes?
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yes, would you break your family and plant them down
in the waiting area of a like Knakatammie Plaza in
order to have breakfast while before you go to work?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Well, I don't work for my sibling who is a
dollar store billionaire, so I don't know. I file it
under like the number of these that I've seen where
people are working in a public library.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Or an empty office or yeah, and always on Christmas
for Christmas Day.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, yeah, I like it, And the same one that
you've like. There's one office that Beth Watkins from both
The Cultural Gutter and Beth Loves Bollywood talks about in
these that if you watch The Mystery once, there's always
a police office that they clearly rented for like a weekend.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
And shot eighteen films there. Yes, shuffle them in, shuffle
them ount should we change the reef? There's no time?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, But I do think there's some tension between the
big bad City and the cozy Christmas suburbs.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yes, and this movie does the thing, which it's not
the first one this year to do, where it opens
on a bunch of stock shots of a city and
we keep cutting to the skyscraper building of this building,
and it was giving me flashbacks to like the last
three movies I watched that we're doing that, but it's
weird because it's like City, City, City, and then it's
clearly oh, but his family are all in the suburbs. Yeah, yeah,
(26:40):
they want the best in both worlds, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh, and then we also have like Christmas wartex so
we have kind of a magical winter wonderland in that way.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, the snow is all real.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, exactly. All right, So number four everybody's favorite. The
dead parents are dead wife his mom dad, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And he feels guilty about yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Because he paid for oliver treatment, but he wasn't there
at the end. So we d have a dead m
who's also a dead wife because her husband's alive and
has much to say. And we'll come back later. It's
number five, sassy sidekick. I feel like there's a couple
of different possibilities here.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I mean he he doesn't seem to have friends, no,
but he does have sassy underlings and a crabby brother
who is right in his crabbiness.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean again, it's where like the shame
of these movies in when they're a little more real,
they're a little less pleasant.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
He has every reason to be crabby, so I'm not
like he should be full of Christmas cheer. It's like
he's understandably crabby and the movie doesn't judge him for it.
But that's where that's the SaaS we're getting is from
crabbiness and harried under it slightly resentful underlinks.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And it means every time we're gonna cut to the brother,
it's like, oh, the brother is gonna be disappointed again Yeah,
and like I don't want that. And again, like it's
this weird thing where you see where like how Hamer
kind of improved the formula and that they understood what
people want. Like fundamentally, it's the same story that we've
had in dozens of other movies, but it's like, oh
(28:24):
but wait, wait, what do people want? Well, they don't
want to break up and they don't want an unhappy family.
They don't want this, Like they find a way to
make it pretty and fuzzy, and it's yes, all right,
let's see our villain. I guess in this case it's
one of these that our hero is the villain, right, yes, yes, nice? Yep?
(28:47):
Where the where? Where is the montage? Are there no
montages in this movie?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think the closest we get is they hurry through
some of the deaths.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
But we don't really gets to see them either.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
No, no, which I mean, I guess like I'm not
asking for the you know, unrated cut where we actually
see him get decapitated. But it does feel like a
missed opportunity.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
At the same time, they do understand, like it all
the twelve Days of Christmas have cool gifts, but boy,
that having to sing that song takes a long time.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yes, and thankfully this this movie does not abuse that,
which they really could have, because it is the most
annoying of all the Christmas.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Wait, we didn't talk about one sassy sidekick?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yes, Molly Shannon. Molly Shannon, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
She had great chemistry with Stephen, she did.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah. I think that is something that I think is
kind of underrated about her. I feel like she actually
works well with others, which is a dumb thing to
say in a way. But when I think to like
other movies she shows up in, whether it's like comedy
or drama, like y is it is she promising young woman.
She's the mom of the friend, right, I think. So
she shows up in the scene and like she's so
(29:59):
lovely with Harry Again.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
She has like a remarkable range that I think really
is underrated because she you know, she's in that really
strange Emily Dickinson movie Wild Nights with Emily where she
plays Emily Dickinson. I think you should definitely see it
because I will see it out.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah. Yeah, it was weird, as I was never the
biggest fan of hers on SNL. I always just liked
all the other women more. I gos Stier was underrated
and so on. But I do think post SNL, I
have come to really appreciate her as an actress.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, I think on SNL she got I think
the sketches that they would let her do I think
are far more limited than and they're.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
A little more Yeah. Yeah, all right, so let's talk
about the slapstick, of which there's a fair amount what
with this being a final destination Christmas movie.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yes, yeah, he did a really good job running away
from the thing very slowly rolling after him those Yes,
that was fun.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah, and it was a clever like him figuring out
the rules and thinking can outsmart it? And again pure
final destination chaos.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And it was even funny when he was finally like okay,
squish me, yeah, like it was the last one when
he yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
The flambee and the restaurant killing him again funny. Also,
is it a callback to Scrooged? I don't know what
it felt like.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It might be also kind of looney tunes, which I
always appreciate.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yes, we had an electrocution in a bathtub. Again, anytime
a character takes about how do you feel about baths?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I like baths, but I keep things far away from them.
I do not have electronics or electrical things around the bath.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I've just seen too many, too many, I mean to me,
it must be like similar to falling down the stairs.
Probably a leading cause of death, just because so many
movies killed people that way.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah, if I may go on a tangent, which you
should feel free to eliminate. So when I was a kid,
I was very afraid of sharks somehow getting me in
the bath.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
I understand that.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, And as I grew up, despite like people could
tell me anything about like, no, sharks cannot possibly get
you in the bath, and I'm like, oh, there's gonna
be a shark.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
That's what the sharks want you to think, exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
So, But as I grew up, I became like, you know,
I'm not concerned about sharks in the bath and until
I finally believed it, and then I saw on sun
Shark aka Hot Spring Shark, where sharks do in fact
kill people in the bathtub, and young me was entirely
vindicated because scientists explained how that was possible.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if you saw, but my cat,
who was sitting behind me, yes, just stared straight at
the camera when you told that story, as if she
understood and knew and was nodding along with you, like yeah,
that shit's real. Yeah, No, never doubt your fear.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
And now you know, I can't scream at you when
you close the door.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
And it's actually all this time I thought it was
because she was like math, I wasn't patting her. No,
it's because she's afraid the shark is gonna kill me, yeah,
because that would be a bad way to go. I mean,
shark is a bad way to go anyway, but a
shark kill in your own home just seems like, how
do you how do you write that obituary and the indignity? Yeah?
All right, So number nine is our sage old person.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yes, that is his bereaved father. A Scottish Canadian character actor.
His name escapes me right now.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
He's a lovely old man.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
He's been in a billion things.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Let's see Carter Carter, Carter, Anthony Holland, Yes, that's it. Yeah,
a lovely man. And I mean he's like, it's kind
of immediately sad because he's, you know, not not to
like he's dementia dad in this movie where he really
is you know he and he's aware of it. And
so it's very like you suddenly feel very protective of
(33:54):
this character that you don't know well.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
But he comes running into the room saying, I'm losing
my mom wear.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I just want to give him candy canes damn it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
but he's he's lovely as an actor, and and does
I think give the movie some gravitas that way?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I think there's and I'll say that for the secret
Canadian part.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Oh, there's quite a quick quite not so secrets here, ye.
And also he has a dead spouse, so that's yeah,
Motus points there, which makes up for the fact that
we don't have a real Santa Claus. Although like I
was really hoping Molly Shannon would do some kind of
wink of like, well, you know who ordered this or something,
but no.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
It Oh, we need to tell them where Molly Shannon is.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I think, oh, because because at the end of the movie,
you mean the end of the movie, because.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
He keeps waking up in a hospital after these accidents,
and she's the nurse in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah. And so then the last time on the twelfth Day,
where everything's going great and things seem to finally he's
he's apologized and he's made good with people and so on,
and then he just has egg dog and he just
suddenly starts like having heart pain and he collapses and
he wakes up in a hospital on Christmas Day because
(35:08):
somehow heartburn can knock you out for twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, and he does it in front of his poor
father who's already had to enjoyable that's.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
The worst thing in this movie is that he's alone
with his dad and he passes out, and his dad
is the one who has to find someone and his
dad who has dementia, And in another movie he could
have just like gone into the woods and not come back. Yeah, yes, yep, yep,
but somehow so in the hospital the very end, he
wakes and he figures out like, oh I made it
(35:37):
like I figured it out. I made it to Christmas Day.
And then he sees Molly Shannon is in the hospital
still as a real nurser doctor, professional medical. Yeah we'll
say it that way, yes.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, medical, like a surgeon assistant. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
I mean, she's much more skilled than we are, we
know that much.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
She's mostly she's a specialist in soul damage or something
like that.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yes, and we don't really know who are I guess
her boss is God, right kind of has. She doesn't
say God at the end, which is like surprisingly something
unless you're you're dealing with an absolute faith based Christmas film,
which you didn't have on Hallmark her lifetime at all.
It is weird to hear the word God in one
of these movies.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have much clearer lines now that
I was, I hadn't really thought about between now and
two that you.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Know in Hallmark, Santa Claus is God. And yes, we
know that these are probably like what one would call
Christian values. But the important thing is that like no, no, no,
the power of Christmas not the power of Christianity. So
it's weird for that to come out. All right, So
we didn't get Santa, we got most everything else. So
let's move on to the bonus round. So these movies
would get smarter about utilizing more public domain holiday music
(36:52):
and understanding that they can save on a lot of budget.
That way, we do still get some songs, and then
we get some other interesting music choices. So I'm curious
how you thought about out the music in general in
this movie.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
It was really interesting to me that his alarm woke
him up with its the most wonderful time of the year,
and is his alarm. It's not Rihanna's alarm, no.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
It, which is a strange choice. Also strange. It is
like mind blowing to hear that song in one of
these movies, because today no movie would ever pay for
the rights to that song.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
No No, And you know, we could probably track down
where this air just by knowing who owns the rights
to that, that's a good point.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, we get again. The kids are singing Deck
the Halls in their ethnically suspect outfits. At least they
didn't do like sing it in different languages. That no,
across the line, there's sort of the closing credit song
was sort of word salad Christmas and it was like
a Beach Boys type vibe.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, yep, everything's fine now, Yeah, how did you feel?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
We haven't talked about her because she's not really like,
she's not a villain, like, she's just kind of there.
But we didn't talk about Isabelle much. But isabel who
is Brazilian in the movie, played by Patricia Velasquez, who
you would know from the Mummy movies. She was the
Mummy's girlfriend, Lady Mummy. Yes, and when we first are
introduced to her, did you how did you feel about
(38:20):
the music they used to suggest she's from Brazil?
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I had that Deck the Hall's feeling that yeah, and
then he was It was interesting to me that he
was totally ignorant about Brazil, regardless of what his assistance
told him. And I really appreciated that the movie knew
that we would get that and would understand that Portuguese
and Spanish are different languages and that Brazil is a
(38:47):
Portuguese speaking country.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, I appreciated that about the movie quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah. It kind of makes you think of, I still
know what you did last summer when yeah, they call
with the they win a radio contest by guessing the
capital of Brazil to be, you know, and if you're
in the audience watching it, you're like, that's not the capital. Yeah. Yeah,
So you think the movie's dumb until you realize, oh no,
the movie knew that too.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah yeah, nice nice link up there.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah. Hey, the more parallels we can find to late nineties,
early two thousands or to a movie like this, I
think we're winning Final Destination totally. So number two is
the secret family recipe or complicated holiday cocktails or using
hot chocolate to represent something sexual. There's some food at
a Christmas party. Yes, I turned my subtitles on too
(39:39):
late when watching this movie because I was really annoyed,
and I don't know if I just misheard it, but
early on everybody is excited because I think it's the
It was probably like Calvin's mother's lemons lemons snowballs.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, I thought they were you know, I might be
correcting it in my brain that it was her lemon bar.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
They are lemon bars. That's what was so upsetting to me.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
That's probably what it was is I looked at it
and I'm like, those are lemon bars, and then my
brain remembers it's lemon bars.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
But yeah, they were. And then at the end of
the movie it comes back and she calls them bars.
But in the first scene when she sees them, she's like, ooh,
Mom's famous lemon snowballs. And I'm like, but they're square.
They can't, like, they can't be a snowball if they're square.
But then later on she calls them bars. So I'm like, no, no, no, no,
(40:28):
that was a mistake. I should go on the IMDb
an ad that is a goof because if you should,
please do they look good? It was like lemon bars
and the coconut I think, yeah, it's perfectly good. Small
business in danger.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Mm hmm, only in the sense that his what was
his dad Carter sure anyway like his anyway in the
sense that his dad's vision of his business was in danger.
By his corporate ambition.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Yeah. Well, and it sounds like the business had previously
been in danger, yes, right, that Calvin had to like
save it from the brinks of bankruptcy.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yes, like Kelsey Grammar before him or after him? Are
you I'm sorry?
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Like after him? Yes. I wonder if Martha Coolidge or
the writers of this movie thought about suing Kelsey Grammer. Good,
and I feel like you would sue. Just sue Kelsey Grammer.
Don't even bother the network. Kelsey Grammer probably has more
money than the network. He made that movie before. All right,
So number five is the cloying child. So we do
(41:43):
have children in this movie, a fair amount of them.
What were your thoughts on Calvin's kid, Eric, played by
Kat Phillips, who had like a decent little young career,
although his IMDb photo is the screenshot from this movie.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, he was, I mean, he was fine. He wasn't
particularly cloing. He they forgot I mean, they didn't really
forget about him. But he doesn't appear a lot in
it because Calvi's sky diving, right, Yeah, yeah, Calvin's gotta
goes skydiving. Calvin, he has to have a day spending
having sex with his girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, like or fantasizing about the hot Brazilian business woman.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, so it's it really is reflecting his priorities.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
So we just we don't get at he acts like a.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Kid perfect agreed, Uh, finding the perfect tree. I don't
think we have any kind of real Christmas treeis in
this movie. Nope, no empty coffee cup acting.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yes, yes, it wasn't very notable. I was in comparison
to the other stalking stuffers. The mug was just like
a plain blue ceramic, normal office smug. So but yeah,
Steven Webber does some decent and he's.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Better at it than most. I would say. We also
have some eggnog not drinking. Yes, right, there's a lot
of here. Hand me the agnog, and as they're about
to drink it, they get called out.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah yeah, yep, because they're like, we don't want the
actors to have a mouthful of eggnogs.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Exactly, and also like I'm sure it wasn't really eggnog,
but whatever it was, like it's been sitting outside this
entire time. We the scene a lot, We got the
lights on, like, don't drink dairy on set. I feel
like that's probably especially one of these movies. Let's see
number eight actors trying hard not to eat on camera.
So we get like one big meal that keeps getting
(43:47):
referenced in the movie. Right, Rihanna really wants to go
to this fancy restaurant for lunch song, and we finally
get to see them go there, and but we get
to see them go there at the very end of
whatever their meal is, where it's like them like, wow,
that was delicious, and there's nothing on the table but wine.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah. Well, and and the other time we go there
with her with Rihanna is anyway, we're breaking up because
of the out of nowhere and I know what you think.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, so I'm not gonna eat my salmon after.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
All, Yes, but yeah, I'm gonna whisper near and put
my hand.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
He also he does go.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
There with Isabelle as well, but yeah, like I think
it was also, Oh, that was very delicious anyway, that's good.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
That was great, was so great.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Wow, And and there's pointing out the lemon snowballs at
the big table full of food.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
But and Stephen Weber does go to eat one, and
I don't think eats it, but you do see a
crumb fall off of it and hit him in the
inter I watched these movies, we had too.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Closely eagle eyed, yes, yes, all.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Right, so number nine, you don't have to be eagle
eyed to catch the amount of canadianisms in this movie,
because I think everybody but Stephen Weber and probably the
actress playing Isabelle, they were all probably Canadian.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm okay. So after having said the
thing that I think is in fact kind of a
secret potential Torontoniism. I think it's possible that his dad,
his dad owns this place that's very garish, that's selling
(45:24):
secondhand stuff. But it reminds me of what used to
be honest Ads in Toronto, which had garish lights, and
the very famous then Ed Mirvish, who was a character
that was in the community and every holiday season, even
though he himself was Jewish, he would give out keys
(45:44):
and Christmas stuff. Okay, and this feels very much like
a reference to that. If it's like a fantasy, if
this had become very successful, and if his son, like
as I remember, and god knows, it's been a long
time so the thought about this, but his son, I
think I didn't want to go into that business and
in fact went into the arts and stuff like that
(46:06):
and became famous as a patron of the theater and
painting and stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
If I remember right, the business got sold to or something.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah, there's there's Torontonians who are upset right now. But
I think this is a reference to honest Ads and
then a character like him, And then I think that
there is a little bit of Scottish Presbyterian Santa going
on with his dad giving out those candy canes, even
though it's one candy cane per customer, and it's one
(46:38):
of the little candy canes were they Yeah, they were
full sized, but they're not you'd expect they're not oversized, Yeah,
like I would expect, so that it looks good on camera,
and so that it shows how important it is to
him that because they make this point that every year
at Christmas, Grandpa comes in and gives out candy canes
(46:59):
to every when he can. Yeah, and it shows like
a little bit of foreshadowing of later Hallmark budget for
set dressing and stuff. And they're like, look, we got
six boxes of the regular sized.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Candy cakes and that's what we're using.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah. But yeah, I think that was his Santa moment.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
That was his like, yeah, I like it. I like it.
Good to have all of that Canadian knowledge.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I didn't live in Toronto for a while for nothing.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Well I'm so sorry about that. As his wife would say,
clocked that like five minutes. Anim like, yeah, we got Canada.
I love it all right, warm weather watch. So we
don't know where we are, right, I mean, because the
movie isn't set in Canada. They never say city, they
never really say it's posifical, they don't. But I mean,
(47:53):
I guess everybody's wearing coats, but like a lot of
them are open and up buttoned.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, and I don't I didn't notice sunny breath, which
or they had tension that people really have, like but
you know there's real snow in it.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
I mean, this wasn't like a two week shoot. This
was probably I don't know, a three and a half
week maybe, yeah, but or so than usual. Okay, old
people aggressively matchmaking, we don't really have that because there's
not really a match to be made. That brings us
to the favorite fashion moment.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
I liked Isabelle's winter coat. I liked her.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Yeah, it's it's interesting because it is an orange color,
which is obviously very unusual for Christmas, but also is
it like Brazil, Like, ye, that's what they were going for.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
I think that's exactly what they were going through.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yes, I think so too. Yeah, And that was the
only fashion I really noted because the rest, like, I mean,
it's it's I guess it takes you back to two
thousand and four and remembering like little things of like
that haircut being popular on both both of the women
and this kind of the same short haircut that like.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
I like Trianna's hair. I like Trianna's hair. Her her
hair was a little more chic than his.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Uh his x ys was was kind of mom Yeah,
and I liked I wish I remembered her name.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
But the female assistant, she had really great hair. Inc
I think she was very like normal fashionable. You know,
if you knew her personally, she'd be like, Wow, my
my friend so and so is just so put together.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Yeah, But for TV it's like, oh, that's a good outfit.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I should greet business professionals that way.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
I want to ask you, like, this isn't again as
remarkable as most of the stocking stuffers about how you
felt about Calvin's light blue Christmas sweater.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Oh, the one he wears towards the end, right.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
When when it's supposed to be like he's become softer
and more Christmas. But we're not going to make him
where it's sort of before ugly sports. Yeah, absolutely, so
it's just a sweater.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Yeah, it's kind of like the equivalent of, and this
is came up earlier of you know when movies represent
a hardened business woman as having her hair back, and
you know she has calmed down and let loose when
she takes her hair down. Yeah, it's a little bit
of that. And the reason I make that direct comparison
is because, in truth, I don't know how if you
(50:18):
feel about this having when you have long hair, having
it back is actually way more freeing because it's not
in your way. You're not worrying about it. You tie
it back so you can do whatever you want and
you don't care what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah. Well, when I had longer hair, I would put
it back. I would refer to it as I'm putting
my hair away.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
I love that exactly that And it's similar in a
way to like how Calvin is dressed in the movie
like he's a business guy, but he's not wearing like
stiff suits. He's kind of dressed like business, kind of
not business casual, but like casual business, I guess. And
when he's wearing Yeah, that sweater doesn't look comfortable.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
No it doesn't right, No, No, it looks and it's
way high up on his neck.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Yeah, I can't remember. Just give a shirt under like
a sweater like that, you have to wear like a
cotton T shirt underneath, or cotton long sleeve because it's
gonna be scratchy on you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
It looked mo hairish, like not fully mohaired, but like it's.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Never supposed to really touch your skin directly. No, No,
So it ends up being this thing to represent how
soft and relaxed you are, when in reality it's like
you are so uncomfortable in that. Yes, now the irony.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Yeah, and it's an underscoring of how like blue used
to be and it still is sometimes it's certainly a
mule color, but it was like one of the Christmas colors. True,
and now in Hallmark they're aggressively red and green.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yes, yeah, you're not getting blue in there. Weirdly, what
is turned up in Hallmark the last few years is
more pink, which makes no sense because pink is not
a Christmas color.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
But yeah, but it makes emulation.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
It's feminine. It's a lot of times like the sassy
sidekick or kind of wacky character will have pink. And
it's weird because it doesn't look good with reading, like
it doesn't go in a color palette that way. But
you see it. But you're right about the blue, And
I think blue also because even like a lot of
the pea coats are rarely blue, usually they are also
they might even be burgundy, but they're not gonna be blue.
(52:13):
And I wonder too, And again are we overthinking it? Maybe?
But this is what we do because blue is often
considered like a Hanuka color.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yes exactly.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
And so is it like, oh, we should avoid blue
because then they're gonna think this is a Jewish movie. Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Can I just point out something I noticed right now?
You are wearing a green hoodie. I am wearing a
red hoodie.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Oh yes we are see see not a stack of
blue in sight in these parts? The true Christian way.
Oh excellent. So overall, how do you feel about this movie?
Would you recommend it. Do you where do you think
it Sits kind of like who is this for today
(52:55):
versus it was four in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
I think if you're looking for an interesting variation on screwed,
like one of the Scrooge movies, or you want to
watch all of them, I think it's a good one
of those. If you're I think you will be disappointed
if you're looking for like a Hallmark Christmas movie, because
there is no romance.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
No, yep, yeah, I'm not quite as pretty to look
at as movies are now or the way they're made now,
so it kind of loses a little bit if that's
something that like a reason why you watch them. But yeah,
I think Stephen Webber is good. Molly Sound's fun to
have on here.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, it's like a weirdly kind of like this was
a lot better than I was expecting it to be.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, it's it's a perfectly fine movie. Which is which is,
you know, a harder thing than.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
You know, none of us thought that was hard to do,
and then you watch eleven years of these movies and
you realize it's exceedingly hard.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
That's wacos Well what are you working on and what
can you share this holiday season? You're always busy doing
great things and promoting great things, so what can you
tell us?
Speaker 2 (54:10):
Well, I just finished my annual list of things I
liked in twenty twenty five that I haven't written about yet,
the Cultural Gutter.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
It's not I like it.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Ten things I liked in twenty twenty five. And we
are currently running the Gutter Thon to fund the Cultural
Gutter for twenty twenty six. So we are as of
this recording, we're at fifty percent and hopefully we'll make
one hundred percent and then we can pay all our
writers and pay our web hosting fees and keep on
(54:43):
writing thoughtfully about disreputable.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Art, which is a wonderful thing to do. And I
admire and appreciate all the work you do, and I
hope everybody checks you out because you're awesome and the
work you do is awesome, and I love that you
really celebrate others doing that work too. Well.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
I think you were really awesome and all the work
you Christine, you say that, yeah, well, with all that,
it's true too, that's the most all right.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
Just for that, I am not going to drop a
giant sign on your head when you exit and force
you to live out Christmas Eve twelve times. Thank you,
yes anytime, and Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Oh do you like twins? The best saying about saying
Christmas is the Krollen.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
Get a sign.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
Said to serve rageous goods of drink and summer. The sucking,
lacking up a tree, sport a TV. I want to
(56:06):
be free, had to feel the way I feel.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
Mad. I feel like some Christmass weird weird feeling
It's Christmas Eve. I can't. But there's something about Calvin Carter.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Today, Latin America, tomorrow Elmondon.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
That leaves others feeling less than jolly. You promised you
weren't going to work today.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Excuse me for trying and close the biggest deal of
my life.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But this modern day scrooge in America is about to
get the wake up call of his life. You have
twelve days until what wake up and it'll be Christmas?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And if I don't wake.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Up this season a ghost of Christmas past or something?
Oh where are your chains? Wow? That was fast. I'm impressed.
Make choices Christmas presents for me from me? Wow? That
was really generous of you. Take chances you are coming
(00:57):
off for Christmas. Archest Eric expects to see. I'll try
and discover the twelve Days of Christmas Eve. Steven Webber.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Having lived my best Christmas Eve you've ever, you send
me back to live.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It over and over.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
And over again.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I've at sweet dreams you welcome back. Molly Shannon is
best Christmas Eve everything. It's not a destination, it's a journey.
Twelve Days of Christmas Eve? Am I gonna make it?
At this point? We just don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Enough.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Welcome to yet another stocking stuffer. This is going to
be an infamous stocking stuffer because it is the first
time in my eleven year history that the whole idea
of these movies having very generic titles that are repeated constantly,
occasionally with words fell differently or with different articles in
front of them, actually yielded my guest watching the wrong movie.
(02:07):
But my guest is so wonderful that she said, well,
I'll watch the other movie too, and we'll figure out
which one we should cover. And what a wonder what
a joy, what a guest. Welcome Carol Porton.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Hello, thank you, Thank you so much, Emily.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It is my pleasure. I hope it was your pleasure
to watch two movies about the twelve Christmas eves.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
It was certainly very interesting. It was interesting how much
alike they were and how much more fun was one
was than the other?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Oh okay, so the one that was more fun? Wait
was it this one?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Okay, yeah, wow, okay, So for those at home we
are talking about and I guess we have to be
really specific. The okay, the word the twelve written out
t W E l V E. Okay, Days of Christmas Eve,
not to be confused with the number two, although the
poster for this one I'm looking at it and has
(03:03):
it of the number twelve. There's also the twelve Days
of Christmas Eve with it two with a one two.
There are I think there's there's a million variations on
twelve days of like there's the twelve Dates of Christmas,
twelve Dates of Christmas, and they're two different movies as well,
so there could be even more of these. But this,
the one we're watching, is from two thousand and four, right,
(03:28):
that was the year.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Oh yes, Oh, there's two thousand and four. And then
there's the one it watched, which was twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes, so both of them being star studded affairs with
popular television actors. Correct, yes, yes, yeah, right, so we
got the one we're talking about. Our star is Stephen Webber.
Now you also got the bonus of seeing Kelsey Grammar.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, I got to see Kelsey Grammar in a plaid
flannel suit. That was I'll say, okay, patchwork versions of
different plaids sewn together to make a suit.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I feel like I saw that in a dream once,
you know, or.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Perhaps in another thing that was shot in Canada.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And mm, so I'm gonna ask because we won't go
too much into the Kelsey Grammar one because I didn't
watch it, but I am curious about something with Kelsey
Grammar because Kelsey Grammer is one of those frustrating people
who you can't deny it. He's a really good actor,
and he's a really good TV actor, and he understands assignments,
and he's got a presence and a voice like no
one else. And I mean, he has a career, but
(04:38):
he's kind of become a bad human being. And maybe
he always was a bad human being, but now we
know he's a bad human being. Yeah, so I'm curious
on the Kelsey Grammar one, did it feel like it
had kind of a conservative message behind it? Or was
it just another one of these movies?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
No more than any of these movies, do you, Okay?
And in a weird way undermines a lot of like
it is not Christian, but it does have you should
have goodwill towards other people.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You should.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So yeah, yeah, well you said conservative, And I'm willing
to give a little bit of slight difference between the
flavors because yeah, that's fair Uh, because if where the
Republican Party has wandered off.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
To somewhere nowhere, if they're ever coming back somewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, But anyway, getting back to this, so, so Kelsey
Grammar is essentially a scrooge who has given twelve different
Christmas Eves to become a better person and figure it
out on his own, because of course you couldn't possibly
tell someone how to become a better human or that's
like cheating. So like nobody gets any help, and.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So d now is it's the same day. It's just
him living a different like about his choice on Groundhog Day.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Okay, if you mixed scrooged in Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So now the question I have because there's a bit
of IMDb trivia for the Stephen Weber one that says
this movie was remade in twenty twenty two as the
Twelve Days of Dates of Christmas Days of Christmas Eve,
starring Kelsey Grammar. Uh, they do not have the same writers,
they do not share any actual do you in any
(06:29):
way do you think that was a remake or somebody
just happened to go up with the exact same plot,
which is not unusual for these movies.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I would not be surprised as if it started out
as a remake. But it has like a fairly fundamental
difference in that in one one has Santa, which is
the one with Kelsey Grammar, and when Kelsey Grammar dies,
(06:59):
I think slightly meaner ways than a two thousand and
four to one, he appears in a room with Santa,
and Santa is actually possibly the angel of death. Oh,
and that is why I say that it has Perhaps
(07:20):
it depends on how you see it, if you're like,
it's it's more conservative to have a punitive Santa, or
it is in fact less because it is less traditional
to have a punitive Santa who is also possibly the
angel of death.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Judging you, I mean, as long as he's white, right,
isn't the rule?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
He is white, and he has a remarkably short beard
for a Santa, Like he still has a Santa beard,
but he's trimming it and it doesn't look good, and
his his Santa hat needs a fluffy or trim. He's
just he's not He's got a cheap Santa suit. And
I don't know if that's because again, he might be
the angel of death, and he's just like because he
tells Kelsey Grammer, everyone meets me differently, or everyone sees
(08:03):
me differently. Yeah, it is pretty fucking dark.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Wow, I mean, excuse me, it's means it's I guess
the you know, to compare the one from two thousand
and four that we'll start talking about, uh, is kind
of gets to a point where it becomes Final Destination.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, yeah, and it's a little more and like the
Final Destination movies, so like the cheery or I guess
cherry's a strong word for it, but you know, like
the ones that are like we're doing a little gallows
humor here, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
What's it gonna be? What's gonna kill him? Is it
gonna be this? Is it gonna be that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah? And uh, And it does it with Kelsey Grammar,
and he really brings like, oh no, I've fallen off
a building or I can't remember all the ways he died,
but it just always felt a little like there's a
little more glee I think in his death, where with
with Stephen Webbers, it's more like, what's gonna happen to
(08:58):
him this time?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Like yeah, because it feels like there's no pain for
him in these ways.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And they do and they do like a narrative thing
where he's he's learning his lessons, and as he learns
his lessons, he learns to avoid the various deaths yep,
because they're always in the same positions. And so he's like,
I'm not going to get hit by this falling icon
or I'm not going to get hit by this car.
And if I avoid the car, then I get hit
by the rolling trash band like bin, like public trash bin.
(09:26):
That's it hit and then that runs him over. And
then he ultimately realizes all the things he needs to
learn and he gets squashed by the same thing from
the beginning and decides to do it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah. It takes a little time, but we get there.
So let's let's dive into the Stephen Webber. Yeah, twelve
Days of Christmas Eve, Yeah, two thousand and four, which
I had stumbled on. I was kind of browsing different
streamers to figure out what's what's out there? What happened?
I covered, and there was a bunch on canopy from
early two thousands, late nineties. I'm like, whoa, this is
(09:59):
always fun because it's it's all the hallmarks are there,
pun intended but not quite developed, and you see some
some things that will would change dramatically in like ten
years later. But at the heart of it, it's like, well,
this is the same, Like the fact that I don't
think that one, the Kelsey Grammar one was Hallmark, but
it was one of those networks. It might've even been
in like Great American Family that in twenty twenty two,
(10:21):
you would basically make the same exact movie or the
same exact story, but just with a very different style.
I think it's very telling, and I don't know what
this was made for. It was definitely TV because there's
commercial beats right when you watch it, like you can
tell where the commercials played. It's not Hallmark, it's not Lifetime.
I'm not sure where. Maybe it was USA or something.
(10:43):
And also, unlike a lot of these other movies, does
have a real person directing it. Yeah, did you recognize
who directed it? And no, it didn't work. That's okay.
You watched two movies, you guys. Cool it's directed by
Martha Coolidge. Oh wow, who did Genius? Valley Girl Angie Somehow.
(11:04):
I have actually never seen any of those three movies,
but I have seen the Walter Mathow, Jack Lemmon Out
to Sea. Yes, from the Midnight.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yes, yes, it does feel more like like the whole
Hallmark Lifetime Christmas romance movies feel like their own thing,
and this one feels more like older fashioned holiday movies
in general, like we you know, it feels more like
regular movie adjacent or regular little.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Movie of the week, right, like a or something on
a Sunday night. Yeah, So, can you walk us through
the plot of this version of the Twelve Days of
Christmas Eve? Okay, give us a quick summer I think
we kind of got an idea of it, but tell
us about what we got here.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Stephen Weber plays a man named Calvin, who is, if
not a billionaire, a multimillionaire who's made all his money
for running either some kind of dollar store or in
a Canadian context like value village where but he's controlling
the market in most of North America for that, and
(12:13):
he's trying to move into Brazil.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Latin America I think in general, right.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yes, yes, And it's it's hard to say why he
has any partners, because he's he's quite a douche as
a start, and he has like a lovely partner named
Rihanna who really puts up with him more than she
should and and it's and it's very groundhog Day. He's
(12:38):
living the same day over and over until he becomes
a better person. And he's supposed to meet his partner
for lunch, but he also has an important business meetings yes,
with a woman named Isabelle from Brazil, and his assistants
(13:01):
have set everything up for him, but he still makes
them do all like he's very Ebenezer Scrooge and he
makes everybody work on Christy.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
There's a Bob Prote character here.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's also a bad son, right
and yeah yeah yeah, And he's like a bad co
parent of his son, and he's a and he's and
he's skipping his son's uh like terrible concert, terrible concert,
but he has to be there because he's a dad,
so he has to watch all the children where disturbingly
(13:33):
reminiscent of It's a Small World.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Oh yeah, I took a picture of that, of that
little tableau of the children donning their gay apparel and
realizing how ethnically weird the decisions are.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And it's hard to notice it first because it's also
so cheap, like they literally just put a hat on them.
And so if you're just like looking at the kids
as they pan on by the kids, you might not
notice like, oh, they're wearing a pail of the World hat.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
And that that seemed to fit. Like that, there's a
little Asian girl wearing a typical like you know, kind
of Rice Farmer hat. That seems like an odd choice.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, a very not good choice. And then strangely, his
son is wearing a Christmas tree for a hat. So
he's not even pretty easy just representing the I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
The Republic Christmas.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I was going to say the Republic of Christmas and
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
So he's dying each day and when he awakes, he
awakens in a hospital where his nurse.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Is Molly Shannon, which automatically improves things and is far
better than Angel of Death Santa sounds like it, and
he he she won't help him out, but she's supposedly
on his side, and they have comic moments that aren't bad,
and he's not supposed to leave the room until he
(15:02):
falls asleep, but one time he runs out into the void.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, it's kind of like that scene in Cube where
they're they finally get to the end of the Cube
and They're like, what's out there and it's just darkness. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, also filmed in Canada, so yes, so
we know about about Canadian War Texas. They're very dark.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, And so he every time he wakes up, he
gets another chance to live his day, and he keeps
trying out different things until finally I would say he,
like Kelsey Grammer, completely figures out his biz. But I
think Kelsey Grammer is like, he's Kelsey Grammer in twenty
twenty two, so he's an eighty year old man. But
(15:43):
I think they sort of give Calvin a pass on
how he's treating his current girlfriend. They're like, you know
what you've got as much as we're going to get
out of you, So Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
It's an odd relationship. So let's let's dive into the
list because so we'll let us walk through it a bit.
So the first thing is our lead need of a lesson,
and obviously Calvin needs absolutely needs to learn a few
things about how to not be an asshole.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yes, right, yeah, on every level. I don't know how
Like with him with Kelsey Grammer, he's doing Scrooge, and
I think that's actually smart because you start out not
and he becomes more human and so you can move
from you're very unlikable to okay, I can you've had
personal growth in it's admirable. But with I think we're
(16:31):
supposed to like Stephen Webber from the start, and Stephen
Weber seems likable, like they position him every morning as
like he's interested in Christmas, he wakes up to Christmas music,
he flirts with his partner, and then you find out
he's bad at all human relationships.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, it's interesting because I think Stephen Webber is a
really charming actions. Yes, yes, right, like you do, even
though very quickly you realize this guy's an asshole. This guy,
this is a bad human being, but he is a
very likable. I mean that's why I think. You know
a lot of times you can see that. I think
with TV actors, with actors who like make it good TV,
(17:09):
because the whole purpose of that is, like you have
to be like I want you want to draw somebody
in every week where they want to sit down with you.
Oh absolutely yeah, And he definitely has that. Even when
he is being like the worst, you do like as
soon as there's the chance for him to get better,
and it was weird, but I actually kind of liked
the way because I couldn't decide it first because at
(17:30):
first I was like this, I'm like, I don't want
to watch this, like just jerk. But I realize something
watching it is that, like it's kind of interesting to
watch how bad he is at figuring it out, because
it's kind of telling to like every now and then
you meet somebody who's like a bad person for different reasons, right, yes,
and sometimes you're like, oh, you just you don't know,
(17:52):
you're like awful. You don't know that what you're saying
is really cruel, or or that doing this thing is
mean that like that tipping ten percent is not generous,
Like you realize there's a difference between somebody who's just
actively like wants to hurt somebody, yeah, and somebody like
this character, who I think is just like I had
to work really hard to save my dad's store and
(18:13):
grow it the way I did, and that took a
lot out of me. And so now this is the
way I've had to live my life, and I live
it this way. Wait, what do you mean that's wrong? Wait?
What do you mean I can't just buy a party
for my brother and he's not going to be happy,
and why isn't he thanking me for it? Like, well,
because you didn't take the time to learn the nuance
of why your brother has this party. So yeah, I
don't know, like it was kind of more and I
(18:35):
guess this is part of like the non hallmark or
like the pre hallmark thing where it's like they had
to work to tell the story before. It's just an
automatic you understand it by shorthand, yes, yeah. And you
also know that he's not likable in the beginning because
the first thing he does, right, the very first like
action he takes in the movie, do you catch what
(18:57):
it was? It's such a yuppie thing, so one of
those ways you would define a rich person in the
early two thousands, late nineties.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, then he checks his fax machine and activates his
coffee machine.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That's like a coffee machine, well, because it's like an
it's like a built in espresso machine.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
That slides out of the wall.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, and he presses against like his own remote for it,
and it's very like, oh, oh really, I don't know.
It was something there and like it's not coffee, it's expressive. Yes, yeah,
all right, so let's talk about his love interests, because
this is an unusual movie and that it's not about
love in the end. Right. Yeah. Yeah, So Rihanna, which
(19:38):
I didn't know anybody else was named Rihanna.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I did not either, like, and I had forgotten because
she disappears for so much of the movie until they
decide they need to deal with her. I had forgotten
her name was Rihanna. So when someone was talking about her,
I thought they meant Rihanna. Rihanna, right, And then I'm like, wait, no,
her name his love interest is named.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Rihanna, which is very confusing. Yeah, she's very white, she's
very owned. Yes, it's just a very like it's one
of those things. The only person any of us know
in the world named Rihanna is Rihanna. So it's just
very very like you have to like orientate yourself a
bit in the present to get through it. Yeah. So
(20:22):
they're together, but don't see, I mean, they don't live together,
they're not engaged. He tries to propose to her at
one point because he's like, I don't know, maybe this
is what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, And that was remarkably like, I think that's another
sign of how it's like pre Hallmarks standard, because that's
like a normal relationship, Like he's a divorced man with
a kid and they're you know, seeing each other and
seeing if it works out and where it goes, or
enjoying what they're doing at the time, like so many
(20:53):
millions of people do. And I know we first see
them in bit of It.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, it's weird. It's so weird. She's got the l
she they've got the l sheep sheets where it covers him,
but it covers her up in the boobs.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Because she's sneaking in bed. Yes, because they just had sex.
Because they's all older, they're all grown up.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
We're not supposed to have grown ups in these movies.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And I like how they treat her for the most part,
because like I was ready for it to go full
of Hallmark where because she had sex and because they're
not married, and because she's not because he has an
ex wife with a kid.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right, that like always got to get back to her
somehow she.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Has to be a hussy. Yeah, and she's not. She's
she's like and we don't even know, Like he doesn't
like one of the reasons I say, we don't know,
or that they don't entirely deal with. All his problems
with people is because in one of his groundhog days, yes,
he realizes he loves her in talking with Molly Shannon,
(21:58):
and then he goes back and his response to realizing
he loves her is to propose to her off like
out of nowhere, without ever having discussed anything with her
and without having a ring, and she uses, you don't
even have a ring as a shorthand for You're just like,
where the hell is this coming from? And I don't
(22:18):
know that she wouldn't decide eventually she wanted to. But
then he decides after this conversation when he talks to
her about it again where it's new for her, but
his groundhog repeat for him like, oh, we need to
break up because you know, you don't really want to
start a family in life with me, And I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Right, and well, you know, it's one of those things
that like, on one hand, I disagree with this sentiment
that people have said of like, oh, you're at your
most honest when you're drunk, right when somebody's like, oh,
don't listen to me, like I've been drinking whatever I
said last time, I'm so sorry. And there's an argument
to be made that like, oh no, that was you
without filters. Yeah, and I don't really buy that. And
(22:58):
I think in this movie there is something to when
he first proposes, and it does catch her at where
like she is able to in that moment say will
I have I have never thought about marrying you because
you wouldn't be a good father. You're not a good
father now and I do want to have kids and
this wouldn't make sense. Yeah, And yet, like if he
had said to her on another Groundhog Day, like, hey,
(23:21):
by the way, what do you where? What do you
think our future is going to be? Yeah, Like she
might have had a totally different answer. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's it's his continuing I can fix everything, that it's
all on me to fix it. And so it's less
that I like who knows, because this is also a
story of someone who can change, right, And so in
real life you would be like that's probably not going
to change. That will be you know, Like, but she
she never gets the chance.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, she never gets to edate like the nice version
of him.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And she never gets agency and deciding it. He just
decides for her, like this is over yeah, and she
and you can see her thinking like, well, yeah, maybe
it is if you're doing this like me.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, she kind of takes it pretty well all things considered,
it being like Christmas Eve and stuff. But yeah, she
does kind of get shafted in this movie a bit.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, but I also can see them being like, you know,
we we fixed so much, We've worked so much with you,
like okay, yes, and Rihanna is a lovely person who
can just go.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Find he can find. Yeah, she'll go find like Thomas
Hayden Church or something, it's.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
All good, who only maybe takes one Christmas Eve to
figure it out, like.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yes, yeah, unlike him maxing out at twelve.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
All right, so now let's go to our setting, which
you know, in this case, I guess we're in a big,
bad city of some probably Canadian sort right.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Ed mentioned I looked it up.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Oh that makes so much sense. Yeah yeah, uh Now
I was very confused in the opening because it when
we meet Bob, Cro'm gonna call him that Bob Cratchett,
like the assistant. He's sitting down in what looks like
to me like the dining court of a mall with
his family. Yeah, they're having like like as if they
just had like we're eating, like sharing French fries, and
then he's like, okay, I gotta go, and he walks
(25:04):
up the escalator and it's the same corporate office that
he works in. That was confusing, was it?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Not? Yes?
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yes, would you break your family and plant them down
in the waiting area of a like Knakatammie Plaza in
order to have breakfast while before you go to work?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Well, I don't work for my sibling who is a
dollar store billionaire, so I don't know. I file it
under like the number of these that I've seen where
people are working in a public library.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Or an empty office or yeah, and always on Christmas
for Christmas Day.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, yeah, I like it, And the same one that
you've like. There's one office that Beth Watkins from both
The Cultural Gutter and Beth Loves Bollywood talks about in
these that if you watch The Mystery once, there's always
a police office that they clearly rented for like a weekend.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
And shot eighteen films there. Yes, shuffle them in, shuffle
them ount should we change the reef? There's no time?
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, But I do think there's some tension between the
big bad City and the cozy Christmas suburbs.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yes, and this movie does the thing, which it's not
the first one this year to do, where it opens
on a bunch of stock shots of a city and
we keep cutting to the skyscraper building of this building,
and it was giving me flashbacks to like the last
three movies I watched that we're doing that, but it's
weird because it's like City, City, City, and then it's
clearly oh, but his family are all in the suburbs. Yeah, yeah,
(26:40):
they want the best in both worlds, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Oh, and then we also have like Christmas wartex so
we have kind of a magical winter wonderland in that way.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, the snow is all real.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, exactly. All right, So number four everybody's favorite. The
dead parents are dead wife his mom dad, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And he feels guilty about yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Because he paid for oliver treatment, but he wasn't there
at the end. So we d have a dead m
who's also a dead wife because her husband's alive and
has much to say. And we'll come back later. It's
number five, sassy sidekick. I feel like there's a couple
of different possibilities here.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I mean he he doesn't seem to have friends, no,
but he does have sassy underlings and a crabby brother
who is right in his crabbiness.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean again, it's where like the shame
of these movies in when they're a little more real,
they're a little less pleasant.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
He has every reason to be crabby, so I'm not
like he should be full of Christmas cheer. It's like
he's understandably crabby and the movie doesn't judge him for it.
But that's where that's the SaaS we're getting is from
crabbiness and harried under it slightly resentful underlinks.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And it means every time we're gonna cut to the brother,
it's like, oh, the brother is gonna be disappointed again Yeah,
and like I don't want that. And again, like it's
this weird thing where you see where like how Hamer
kind of improved the formula and that they understood what
people want. Like fundamentally, it's the same story that we've
had in dozens of other movies, but it's like, oh
(28:24):
but wait, wait, what do people want? Well, they don't
want to break up and they don't want an unhappy family.
They don't want this, Like they find a way to
make it pretty and fuzzy, and it's yes, all right,
let's see our villain. I guess in this case it's
one of these that our hero is the villain, right, yes, yes, nice? Yep?
(28:47):
Where the where? Where is the montage? Are there no
montages in this movie?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think the closest we get is they hurry through
some of the deaths.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
But we don't really gets to see them either.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
No, no, which I mean, I guess like I'm not
asking for the you know, unrated cut where we actually
see him get decapitated. But it does feel like a
missed opportunity.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
At the same time, they do understand, like it all
the twelve Days of Christmas have cool gifts, but boy,
that having to sing that song takes a long time.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yes, and thankfully this this movie does not abuse that,
which they really could have, because it is the most
annoying of all the Christmas.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Wait, we didn't talk about one sassy sidekick?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yes, Molly Shannon. Molly Shannon, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
She had great chemistry with Stephen, she did.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah. I think that is something that I think is
kind of underrated about her. I feel like she actually
works well with others, which is a dumb thing to
say in a way. But when I think to like
other movies she shows up in, whether it's like comedy
or drama, like y is it is she promising young woman.
She's the mom of the friend, right, I think. So
she shows up in the scene and like she's so
(29:59):
lovely with Harry Again.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
She has like a remarkable range that I think really
is underrated because she you know, she's in that really
strange Emily Dickinson movie Wild Nights with Emily where she
plays Emily Dickinson. I think you should definitely see it
because I will see it out.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah. Yeah, it was weird, as I was never the
biggest fan of hers on SNL. I always just liked
all the other women more. I gos Stier was underrated
and so on. But I do think post SNL, I
have come to really appreciate her as an actress.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, I think on SNL she got I think
the sketches that they would let her do I think
are far more limited than and they're.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
A little more Yeah. Yeah, all right, so let's talk
about the slapstick, of which there's a fair amount what
with this being a final destination Christmas movie.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yes, yeah, he did a really good job running away
from the thing very slowly rolling after him those Yes,
that was fun.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah, and it was a clever like him figuring out
the rules and thinking can outsmart it? And again pure
final destination chaos.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And it was even funny when he was finally like okay,
squish me, yeah, like it was the last one when
he yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
The flambee and the restaurant killing him again funny. Also,
is it a callback to Scrooged? I don't know what
it felt like.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It might be also kind of looney tunes, which I
always appreciate.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yes, we had an electrocution in a bathtub. Again, anytime
a character takes about how do you feel about baths?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I like baths, but I keep things far away from them.
I do not have electronics or electrical things around the bath.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I've just seen too many, too many, I mean to me,
it must be like similar to falling down the stairs.
Probably a leading cause of death, just because so many
movies killed people that way.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah, if I may go on a tangent, which you
should feel free to eliminate. So when I was a kid,
I was very afraid of sharks somehow getting me in
the bath.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
I understand that.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, And as I grew up, despite like people could
tell me anything about like, no, sharks cannot possibly get
you in the bath, and I'm like, oh, there's gonna
be a shark.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
That's what the sharks want you to think, exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
So, But as I grew up, I became like, you know,
I'm not concerned about sharks in the bath and until
I finally believed it, and then I saw on sun
Shark aka Hot Spring Shark, where sharks do in fact
kill people in the bathtub, and young me was entirely
vindicated because scientists explained how that was possible.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if you saw, but my cat,
who was sitting behind me, yes, just stared straight at
the camera when you told that story, as if she
understood and knew and was nodding along with you, like yeah,
that shit's real. Yeah, No, never doubt your fear.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
And now you know, I can't scream at you when
you close the door.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
And it's actually all this time I thought it was
because she was like math, I wasn't patting her. No,
it's because she's afraid the shark is gonna kill me, yeah,
because that would be a bad way to go. I mean,
shark is a bad way to go anyway, but a
shark kill in your own home just seems like, how
do you how do you write that obituary and the indignity? Yeah?
All right, So number nine is our sage old person.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yes, that is his bereaved father. A Scottish Canadian character actor.
His name escapes me right now.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
He's a lovely old man.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
He's been in a billion things.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Let's see Carter Carter, Carter, Anthony Holland, Yes, that's it. Yeah,
a lovely man. And I mean he's like, it's kind
of immediately sad because he's, you know, not not to
like he's dementia dad in this movie where he really
is you know he and he's aware of it. And
so it's very like you suddenly feel very protective of
(33:54):
this character that you don't know well.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
But he comes running into the room saying, I'm losing
my mom wear.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I just want to give him candy canes damn it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
but he's he's lovely as an actor, and and does
I think give the movie some gravitas that way?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I think there's and I'll say that for the secret
Canadian part.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Oh, there's quite a quick quite not so secrets here, ye.
And also he has a dead spouse, so that's yeah,
Motus points there, which makes up for the fact that
we don't have a real Santa Claus. Although like I
was really hoping Molly Shannon would do some kind of
wink of like, well, you know who ordered this or something,
but no.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
It Oh, we need to tell them where Molly Shannon is.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
I think, oh, because because at the end of the movie,
you mean the end of the movie, because.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
He keeps waking up in a hospital after these accidents,
and she's the nurse in the hospital.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah. And so then the last time on the twelfth Day,
where everything's going great and things seem to finally he's
he's apologized and he's made good with people and so on,
and then he just has egg dog and he just
suddenly starts like having heart pain and he collapses and
he wakes up in a hospital on Christmas Day because
(35:08):
somehow heartburn can knock you out for twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, and he does it in front of his poor
father who's already had to enjoyable that's.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
The worst thing in this movie is that he's alone
with his dad and he passes out, and his dad
is the one who has to find someone and his
dad who has dementia, And in another movie he could
have just like gone into the woods and not come back. Yeah, yes, yep, yep,
but somehow so in the hospital the very end, he
wakes and he figures out like, oh I made it
(35:37):
like I figured it out. I made it to Christmas Day.
And then he sees Molly Shannon is in the hospital
still as a real nurser doctor, professional medical. Yeah we'll
say it that way, yes.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, medical, like a surgeon assistant. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
I mean, she's much more skilled than we are, we
know that much.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
She's mostly she's a specialist in soul damage or something
like that.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yes, and we don't really know who are I guess
her boss is God, right kind of has. She doesn't
say God at the end, which is like surprisingly something
unless you're you're dealing with an absolute faith based Christmas film,
which you didn't have on Hallmark her lifetime at all.
It is weird to hear the word God in one
of these movies.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have much clearer lines now that
I was, I hadn't really thought about between now and
two that you.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Know in Hallmark, Santa Claus is God. And yes, we
know that these are probably like what one would call
Christian values. But the important thing is that like no, no, no,
the power of Christmas not the power of Christianity. So
it's weird for that to come out. All right, So
we didn't get Santa, we got most everything else. So
let's move on to the bonus round. So these movies
would get smarter about utilizing more public domain holiday music
(36:52):
and understanding that they can save on a lot of budget.
That way, we do still get some songs, and then
we get some other interesting music choices. So I'm curious
how you thought about out the music in general in
this movie.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
It was really interesting to me that his alarm woke
him up with its the most wonderful time of the year,
and is his alarm. It's not Rihanna's alarm, no.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
It, which is a strange choice. Also strange. It is
like mind blowing to hear that song in one of
these movies, because today no movie would ever pay for
the rights to that song.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
No No, And you know, we could probably track down
where this air just by knowing who owns the rights
to that, that's a good point.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, we get again. The kids are singing Deck
the Halls in their ethnically suspect outfits. At least they
didn't do like sing it in different languages. That no,
across the line, there's sort of the closing credit song
was sort of word salad Christmas and it was like
a Beach Boys type vibe.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, yep, everything's fine now, Yeah, how did you feel?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
We haven't talked about her because she's not really like,
she's not a villain, like, she's just kind of there.
But we didn't talk about Isabelle much. But isabel who
is Brazilian in the movie, played by Patricia Velasquez, who
you would know from the Mummy movies. She was the
Mummy's girlfriend, Lady Mummy. Yes, and when we first are
introduced to her, did you how did you feel about
(38:20):
the music they used to suggest she's from Brazil?
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I had that Deck the Hall's feeling that yeah, and
then he was It was interesting to me that he
was totally ignorant about Brazil, regardless of what his assistance
told him. And I really appreciated that the movie knew
that we would get that and would understand that Portuguese
and Spanish are different languages and that Brazil is a
(38:47):
Portuguese speaking country.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, I appreciated that about the movie quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah. It kind of makes you think of, I still
know what you did last summer when yeah, they call
with the they win a radio contest by guessing the
capital of Brazil to be, you know, and if you're
in the audience watching it, you're like, that's not the capital. Yeah. Yeah,
So you think the movie's dumb until you realize, oh no,
the movie knew that too.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah yeah, nice nice link up there.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah. Hey, the more parallels we can find to late nineties,
early two thousands or to a movie like this, I
think we're winning Final Destination totally. So number two is
the secret family recipe or complicated holiday cocktails or using
hot chocolate to represent something sexual. There's some food at
a Christmas party. Yes, I turned my subtitles on too
(39:39):
late when watching this movie because I was really annoyed,
and I don't know if I just misheard it, but
early on everybody is excited because I think it's the
It was probably like Calvin's mother's lemons lemons snowballs.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, I thought they were you know, I might be
correcting it in my brain that it was her lemon bar.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
They are lemon bars. That's what was so upsetting to me.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
That's probably what it was is I looked at it
and I'm like, those are lemon bars, and then my
brain remembers it's lemon bars.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
But yeah, they were. And then at the end of
the movie it comes back and she calls them bars.
But in the first scene when she sees them, she's like, ooh,
Mom's famous lemon snowballs. And I'm like, but they're square.
They can't, like, they can't be a snowball if they're square.
But then later on she calls them bars. So I'm like, no, no, no, no,
(40:28):
that was a mistake. I should go on the IMDb
an ad that is a goof because if you should,
please do they look good? It was like lemon bars
and the coconut I think, yeah, it's perfectly good. Small
business in danger.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Mm hmm, only in the sense that his what was
his dad Carter sure anyway like his anyway in the
sense that his dad's vision of his business was in danger.
By his corporate ambition.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Yeah. Well, and it sounds like the business had previously
been in danger, yes, right, that Calvin had to like
save it from the brinks of bankruptcy.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yes, like Kelsey Grammar before him or after him? Are
you I'm sorry?
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Like after him? Yes. I wonder if Martha Coolidge or
the writers of this movie thought about suing Kelsey Grammer. Good,
and I feel like you would sue. Just sue Kelsey Grammer.
Don't even bother the network. Kelsey Grammer probably has more
money than the network. He made that movie before. All right,
So number five is the cloying child. So we do
(41:43):
have children in this movie, a fair amount of them.
What were your thoughts on Calvin's kid, Eric, played by
Kat Phillips, who had like a decent little young career,
although his IMDb photo is the screenshot from this movie.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, he was, I mean, he was fine. He wasn't
particularly cloing. He they forgot I mean, they didn't really
forget about him. But he doesn't appear a lot in
it because Calvi's sky diving, right, Yeah, yeah, Calvin's gotta
goes skydiving. Calvin, he has to have a day spending
having sex with his girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, like or fantasizing about the hot Brazilian business woman.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, so it's it really is reflecting his priorities.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
M hm.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
So we just we don't get at he acts like a.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Kid perfect agreed, Uh, finding the perfect tree. I don't
think we have any kind of real Christmas treeis in
this movie. Nope, no empty coffee cup acting.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yes, yes, it wasn't very notable. I was in comparison
to the other stalking stuffers. The mug was just like
a plain blue ceramic, normal office smug. So but yeah,
Steven Webber does some decent and he's.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Better at it than most. I would say. We also
have some eggnog not drinking. Yes, right, there's a lot
of here. Hand me the agnog, and as they're about
to drink it, they get called out.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah yeah, yep, because they're like, we don't want the
actors to have a mouthful of eggnogs.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Exactly, and also like I'm sure it wasn't really eggnog,
but whatever it was, like it's been sitting outside this
entire time. We the scene a lot, We got the
lights on, like, don't drink dairy on set. I feel
like that's probably especially one of these movies. Let's see
number eight actors trying hard not to eat on camera.
So we get like one big meal that keeps getting
(43:47):
referenced in the movie. Right, Rihanna really wants to go
to this fancy restaurant for lunch song, and we finally
get to see them go there, and but we get
to see them go there at the very end of
whatever their meal is, where it's like them like, wow,
that was delicious, and there's nothing on the table but wine.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah. Well, and and the other time we go there
with her with Rihanna is anyway, we're breaking up because
of the out of nowhere and I know what you think.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, so I'm not gonna eat my salmon after.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
All, Yes, but yeah, I'm gonna whisper near and put
my hand.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
He also he does go.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
There with Isabelle as well, but yeah, like I think
it was also, Oh, that was very delicious anyway, that's good.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
That was great, was so great.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Wow, And and there's pointing out the lemon snowballs at
the big table full of food.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
But and Stephen Weber does go to eat one, and
I don't think eats it, but you do see a
crumb fall off of it and hit him in the
inter I watched these movies, we had too.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Closely eagle eyed, yes, yes, all.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Right, so number nine, you don't have to be eagle
eyed to catch the amount of canadianisms in this movie,
because I think everybody but Stephen Weber and probably the
actress playing Isabelle, they were all probably Canadian.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm okay. So after having said the
thing that I think is in fact kind of a
secret potential Torontoniism. I think it's possible that his dad,
his dad owns this place that's very garish, that's selling
(45:24):
secondhand stuff. But it reminds me of what used to
be honest Ads in Toronto, which had garish lights, and
the very famous then Ed Mirvish, who was a character
that was in the community and every holiday season, even
though he himself was Jewish, he would give out keys
(45:44):
and Christmas stuff. Okay, and this feels very much like
a reference to that. If it's like a fantasy, if
this had become very successful, and if his son, like
as I remember, and god knows, it's been a long
time so the thought about this, but his son, I
think I didn't want to go into that business and
in fact went into the arts and stuff like that
(46:06):
and became famous as a patron of the theater and
painting and stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
If I remember right, the business got sold to or something.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Yeah, there's there's Torontonians who are upset right now. But
I think this is a reference to honest Ads and
then a character like him, And then I think that
there is a little bit of Scottish Presbyterian Santa going
on with his dad giving out those candy canes, even
though it's one candy cane per customer, and it's one
(46:38):
of the little candy canes were they Yeah, they were
full sized, but they're not you'd expect they're not oversized, Yeah,
like I would expect, so that it looks good on camera,
and so that it shows how important it is to
him that because they make this point that every year
at Christmas, Grandpa comes in and gives out candy canes
(46:59):
to every when he can. Yeah, and it shows like
a little bit of foreshadowing of later Hallmark budget for
set dressing and stuff. And they're like, look, we got
six boxes of the regular sized.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Candy cakes and that's what we're using.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah. But yeah, I think that was his Santa moment.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
That was his like, yeah, I like it. I like it.
Good to have all of that Canadian knowledge.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I didn't live in Toronto for a while for nothing.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Well I'm so sorry about that. As his wife would say,
clocked that like five minutes. Anim like, yeah, we got Canada.
I love it all right, warm weather watch. So we
don't know where we are, right, I mean, because the
movie isn't set in Canada. They never say city, they
never really say it's posifical, they don't. But I mean,
(47:53):
I guess everybody's wearing coats, but like a lot of
them are open and up buttoned.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, and I don't I didn't notice sunny breath, which
or they had tension that people really have, like but
you know there's real snow in it.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
I mean, this wasn't like a two week shoot. This
was probably I don't know, a three and a half
week maybe, yeah, but or so than usual. Okay, old
people aggressively matchmaking, we don't really have that because there's
not really a match to be made. That brings us
to the favorite fashion moment.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
I liked Isabelle's winter coat. I liked her.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Yeah, it's it's interesting because it is an orange color,
which is obviously very unusual for Christmas, but also is
it like Brazil, Like, ye, that's what they were going for.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
I think that's exactly what they were going through.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yes, I think so too. Yeah, And that was the
only fashion I really noted because the rest, like, I mean,
it's it's I guess it takes you back to two
thousand and four and remembering like little things of like
that haircut being popular on both both of the women
and this kind of the same short haircut that like.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
I like Trianna's hair. I like Trianna's hair. Her her
hair was a little more chic than his.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Uh his x ys was was kind of mom Yeah,
and I liked I wish I remembered her name.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
But the female assistant, she had really great hair. Inc
I think she was very like normal fashionable. You know,
if you knew her personally, she'd be like, Wow, my
my friend so and so is just so put together.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Yeah, But for TV it's like, oh, that's a good outfit.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I should greet business professionals that way.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
I want to ask you, like, this isn't again as
remarkable as most of the stocking stuffers about how you
felt about Calvin's light blue Christmas sweater.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Oh, the one he wears towards the end, right.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
When when it's supposed to be like he's become softer
and more Christmas. But we're not going to make him
where it's sort of before ugly sports. Yeah, absolutely, so
it's just a sweater.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Yeah, it's kind of like the equivalent of, and this
is came up earlier of you know when movies represent
a hardened business woman as having her hair back, and
you know she has calmed down and let loose when
she takes her hair down. Yeah, it's a little bit
of that. And the reason I make that direct comparison
is because, in truth, I don't know how if you
(50:18):
feel about this having when you have long hair, having
it back is actually way more freeing because it's not
in your way. You're not worrying about it. You tie
it back so you can do whatever you want and
you don't care what it looks like.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah. Well, when I had longer hair, I would put
it back. I would refer to it as I'm putting
my hair away.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
I love that exactly that And it's similar in a
way to like how Calvin is dressed in the movie
like he's a business guy, but he's not wearing like
stiff suits. He's kind of dressed like business, kind of
not business casual, but like casual business, I guess. And
when he's wearing Yeah, that sweater doesn't look comfortable.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
No it doesn't right, No, No, it looks and it's
way high up on his neck.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Yeah, I can't remember. Just give a shirt under like
a sweater like that, you have to wear like a
cotton T shirt underneath, or cotton long sleeve because it's
gonna be scratchy on you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
It looked mo hairish, like not fully mohaired, but like it's.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Never supposed to really touch your skin directly. No, No,
So it ends up being this thing to represent how
soft and relaxed you are, when in reality it's like
you are so uncomfortable in that. Yes, now the irony.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Yeah, and it's an underscoring of how like blue used
to be and it still is sometimes it's certainly a
mule color, but it was like one of the Christmas colors. True,
and now in Hallmark they're aggressively red and green.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yes, yeah, you're not getting blue in there. Weirdly, what
is turned up in Hallmark the last few years is
more pink, which makes no sense because pink is not
a Christmas color.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
But yeah, but it makes emulation.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
It's feminine. It's a lot of times like the sassy
sidekick or kind of wacky character will have pink. And
it's weird because it doesn't look good with reading, like
it doesn't go in a color palette that way. But
you see it. But you're right about the blue, And
I think blue also because even like a lot of
the pea coats are rarely blue, usually they are also
they might even be burgundy, but they're not gonna be blue.
(52:13):
And I wonder too, And again are we overthinking it? Maybe?
But this is what we do because blue is often
considered like a Hanuka color.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yes exactly.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
And so is it like, oh, we should avoid blue
because then they're gonna think this is a Jewish movie. Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Can I just point out something I noticed right now?
You are wearing a green hoodie. I am wearing a
red hoodie.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
Oh yes we are see see not a stack of
blue in sight in these parts? The true Christian way.
Oh excellent. So overall, how do you feel about this movie?
Would you recommend it. Do you where do you think
it Sits kind of like who is this for today
(52:55):
versus it was four in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
I think if you're looking for an interesting variation on screwed,
like one of the Scrooge movies, or you want to
watch all of them, I think it's a good one
of those. If you're I think you will be disappointed
if you're looking for like a Hallmark Christmas movie, because
there is no romance.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
No, yep, yeah, I'm not quite as pretty to look
at as movies are now or the way they're made now,
so it kind of loses a little bit if that's
something that like a reason why you watch them. But yeah,
I think Stephen Webber is good. Molly Sound's fun to
have on here.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah, it's like a weirdly kind of like this was
a lot better than I was expecting it to be.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, it's it's a perfectly fine movie. Which is which is,
you know, a harder thing than.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
You know, none of us thought that was hard to do,
and then you watch eleven years of these movies and
you realize it's exceedingly hard.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
That's wacos Well what are you working on and what
can you share this holiday season? You're always busy doing
great things and promoting great things, so what can you
tell us?
Speaker 2 (54:10):
Well, I just finished my annual list of things I
liked in twenty twenty five that I haven't written about yet,
the Cultural Gutter.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
It's not I like it.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Ten things I liked in twenty twenty five. And we
are currently running the Gutter Thon to fund the Cultural
Gutter for twenty twenty six. So we are as of
this recording, we're at fifty percent and hopefully we'll make
one hundred percent and then we can pay all our
writers and pay our web hosting fees and keep on
(54:43):
writing thoughtfully about disreputable.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Art, which is a wonderful thing to do. And I
admire and appreciate all the work you do, and I
hope everybody checks you out because you're awesome and the
work you do is awesome, and I love that you
really celebrate others doing that work too. Well.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
I think you were really awesome and all the work
you Christine, you say that, yeah, well, with all that,
it's true too, that's the most all right.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
Just for that, I am not going to drop a
giant sign on your head when you exit and force
you to live out Christmas Eve twelve times. Thank you,
yes anytime, and Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Oh do you like twins? The best saying about saying
Christmas is the Krollen.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
Get a sign.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
Said to serve rageous goods of drink and summer. The sucking,
lacking up a tree, sport a TV. I want to
(56:06):
be free, had to feel the way I feel.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
Mad. I feel like some Christmass weird weird feeling
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