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Play Along, Gentlemen…
… And ladies, too!
It’s not even Halloween and Hallmark has started their yearly Christmas movie orgy. (As if it really ends!) So to keep your sanity and interest going, print out the following Bingo cards and play along. Send along your suggestions and we could have a set of 30 or so before you know it!
Published in General
Ha
“Mom is up for parole next year.”
Hey, you didn’t specify whose family.
“Why do we keep running into each other?”
“Oh, it’s you!”
“I’m too busy! I don’t have time for a relationship.”
Maybe a more realistic set:
“They haven’t spoken since _________.”
“How long do we have to stay?”
“Who does she think she’s fooling?”
“Just don’t bring it up.”
“What is she, half his age?”
“I really hate that song.”
etc.
No one has ever used the words “more realistic” and Hallmark Christmas Movies in the same sentence…
Hence my suggestion.
Didn’t Hallmark run a bonus season during the early days of the Wuhan virus pandemic?
If you’re a podcast type, you should know that here on the Ricochet Audio Network, Mary Katherine Ham has a series of podcasts (“A Christmas Ham”) reviewing particular movies. The reviews are quite entertaining even if you haven’t seen the particular movie being reviewed. Many of the reviews try to account for the recurring features that make a Hallmark Christmas Movie a Hallmark Christmas Movie.
And she’s published at The Federalist a party game with a list of the most significant recurring features.
Actually, The Federalist has quite the archive.
My favorite theme item is the number of ways the writers contrive that something important has to happen on Christmas Eve.
That’s OK. My local Lowe’s home improvement store already has several hundred square feet of retail space devoted to Christmas decorations. Though my neighbors are still competing for the neighborhood Halloween decoration contest.
Haha.
I just finished reading Detroit’s Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in the Eighteenth Century by Karen L. Marrero (2020). It was worth reading and I got some valuable new information from it, but in lieu of a review maybe I’ll make up a card like those in the OP and apply it to the next book by her peers that I will read.
Some of the squares will be:
“gendered,” adj. (Used alone, this one goes on the free space)
“textured”
“gendered behavior”
“multi-layered”
“gendered identify”
“control women’s bodies”
“gendered worlds”
“traversed”
“gendered peril”
“John and Bill were married last year.”
Can’t play; don’t have cable. But I get the idea, which makes me glad to be cable-free. Well, that and not having the hefty monthly bills I’ve seen.
Speaking of Christmas Eve events in movies, though, last evening my husband and I watched “Meet John Doe” (on videotape). I’d never seen it before. Despite being done in 1941, I found it rather timely. Anyone else know it and either agree or disagree?
I’m surprised these haven’t spilled over to some of the over-the-air movie channels that have cropped up, if they haven’t already.
They are a perverse pleasure.
I’m still waiting for the John Wick Christmas movie. <sigh>
This is my family’s
Christmas tree farm
Candy store
Apple orchard
Ski lodge
Christmas shoppe
…..and the bank is going to foreclose if we can’t save it!
You beat me to it. I was going to say that the best part for me is the “A Christmas Ham” podcast. I don’t watch the movies but enjoy listening to Mary Katherine Ham reviewing them.
I think you’re letting some country music lyrics slip in.
I can think of one, as a matter of fact, but that was a release, not a parole.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Hallmark Christmas movie. When did they start making them?
Its been an evolving thing but it has really taken off in the last couple of years. Their “Countdown to Christmas” accounts for about one-third of the channel’s revenues.
Netflix also jumped into the field a couple of years ago.
Santa’s Cuties ?
I have a bingo card generator written for Excel.
Just need the list of phrases to populate it.
What would be left of the tree??
You’ve missed my favorites sayings:
“This is the best Christmas ever!”
“Let’s have a cup of hot chocolate.”
“It’s a Christmas miracle!”
When a Hallmark movie is on, I always ask my wife if this is the one where the young woman has to choose between the high powered job in the big city or returning to live in her small home town and reuniting with her old boyfriend. (Spoiler–that is the plot of most Hallmark movies.) My wife, to no one’s surprise, ignores me.
Grocery store has eggnog as of last week.
You sound like a strong man to read something like that. I get so tired of everything being through a feminist/racial/cultural lens.
His dog isn’t dead after all? Then it starts snowing. Then he fights a dozen assassins at that famous ice skating rink in NYC with the giant Christmas tree in the background. Ice skate blades and laces will play heavy. Let’s figure out how he can kill with a cup of hot chocolate too.
Merry Christmas
I hate all people. The pushers and the addicts alike.
Let’s keep it special people!