grudlian.

I'm sorry for your loss, gigi

Oh jeez. I thought you meant themed Musical Mondays. I was thinking you're really limiting our choices for musicals if they are themed.

Don't worry. Driving Miss Daisy won best picture that year. Do The Right Thing wasn't even nominated. There isn't a better example of the Academy being out of touch than this.

The are people now who don't make the cops in this movie look cartoonishly racist. I also think the idea that there are people of color who feel they have to be damn near perfect at all times isn't far fetched (I'm white. So, I can't speak from experience on this but I can go with what I've heard from friends). While Green Book isn't going to win best picture, I won't be surprised at all if it's nominated for best picture. We aren't that far removed from Driving Miss Daisy winning or The Help being nominated. And let's be honest, Zootopia won best animated feature, in part, because of its "important message" despite being a poorly handled metaphor at best (plus, is Disney and they win animated feature).

It's a better police procedural that's ostensibly about racism than Zootopia. I get your criticism and agree to an extent. But I loved this movie when I saw it. I wouldn't necessarily say it's just a product of its time since it's themes are still pretty relevant today (and aged significantly better than Poitier's other movie this year about racism Guess Who's Coming To Dinner). I don't have any more to add since I haven't seen this in well over a decade and specifics are pretty much lost.

Best I can come up with is Rod Steiger was a guest star in one episode.

I just skimmed the interview. So, maybe they cover it but veterans coming home from WWII were also segregated into different jobs. White people were significantly more likely to get money for college. Black people, and presumably all people of color but I've never seen proof of it, were more likely to pushed to trade schools if they got education money at all.

Did you put "watch Gigli with cousin"? Because he may really appreciate it if he likes...well, there's not much to appreciate in Gigli. But you never know!

A phone free Christmas just like Holiday In Handcuffs. You must have really loved the movie!

For sure. I just think it's an easier sell to Hallmark with those two actresses. There's no reason it can't be June or Nicole Byer, Jessica St. Clair, Lauren Lapkus or whoever. I think the bad dates montage is just a list improvisers going off of "worst possible first date lines" and doing their thing. At the very least, I was picturing Jason Mantzoukas in there.

So, you're saying I need to pitch my idea to Hallmark Channel? My basic idea is you still have MJH be a scatterbrained artist who doesn't quite fit in with her family. She doesn't get dumped on Christmas Eve (have a heart dude, jeez). It's a week or so before. I'd say maybe MJH finds him cheating (unless that's too risque for Hallmark) but you need a better reason to end the relationship right before Christmas than "we had sex and now I don't want you anymore." Anyway, her mom calls to confirm Christmas right after it happens and she's too broken up to mention she just got dumped. So, she says she and her boyfriend are coming. She enlists her coworker to help her find a guy who'll go to Christmas with her family. Obviously, this doesn't work because you can get 10 minutes of comedy out of her going on date after date after date for a week. I'm picturing a Coming To America scenario where Eddie Murphy and Arsenio are meeting women in the club. It's now Christmas Eve and MJH is desperate. She tries reaching best of the guys she went on dates with but it's too late notice now and she has to leave for her parent's place in an hour. Here's where you can really get a few different ideas out of it. MJH picks a complete rando, her coworker (who I guess is male in this scenario), maybe someone who comes into the restaurant a lot, homeless guy she sees on the way to her car. It doesn't really matter. She makes the offer of "I'll give you XXXX amount of money to spend Christmas with me and pretend to be my boyfriend!" He agrees. If we picked some random dude, they start making up his history and getting to know each other and they fall in love over the holiday like every Christmas romance movie. If we pick her coworker, there's two ways to do it. 1. He's secretly been in love with her this whole time but she had no idea. or 2. They hated each other this whole time but they realize they aren't so different from each other. Either way, they fall in love. I don't feel like I need to go into detail for the second half of the movie because they're all pretty much the same. Give it some awful Christmas pun name like "On the first date of Christmas..." Cast Danica McKellar or Lacey Chabert and you've got a movie. Call me, Hallmark! ©2018 grudlian

One thing I'm very curious about is what was MJH's plan? At the start of the movie, she's "weird" but not crazy. I get that she took Mario Lopez hostage without thinking it through but how did she think that would work out? Did she think he would just go with it? Fall in love? It's frustrating because I feel that legit could write a better movie with a similar(ish) premise. I couldn't write a good movie but better than this. MJH is still having a shitty day. Her boyfriend still breaks up with her. Instead of kidnapping a guy, she just pays some rando to pretend to be her boyfriend. Maybe she kidnaps him but she gives him a financial reason to stick around. They start to fall in love from learning about each other the same way they do in the movie. I'm sure there is a holiday movie with this premise (as the holiday romance experts, can the Cams or tomspanks confirm this?). It's not even that far off from that Andie McDowell Gerard Depardieu movie Green Card. It makes way more sense but a generic holiday romance probably doesn't get 6 million viewers like Holiday In Handcuffs did.

Wasn't this his plan? He told MJH he was going to be the perfect boyfriend so that when the cops came, it made her look even worse.

This is the best possible thing about this movie.

I agree with you but I think on some level she deserved this. She's clearly unstable and Mario Lopez doing this could have been a great fuck you to her. Imagine her thinking she's made it then Mario comes in and says "Nope! You're getting my money for this picture but you've gained no fans. No exposure. You're still unsuccessful and that's what you get for taking me hostage!" And why is June Lockhart so angry about how long it takes him to change pants. She's banging on the door after maybe a minute. Let this guy change pants! We know he's on the phone but June Lockhart doesn't.

Oh my god, the part where Melissa Joan Hart tries heating her food with a hair dryer! YOU ARE 28 YEARS OLD! YOU KNOW THIS WON'T WORK! If she were 10, I'd be okay with it. If she is that stupid, I can understand her family thinking she's a mess even if she has a job loving on her own.

This is what I'm saying! If someone told me at a Christmas party that they were kidnapped, I'd think they were making a weird joke. If they kept saying it over and over, I'd think they were really fucking strange or they were serious. At the very least, I'd ask my friend what's up with the weirdo they brought. I'd definitely ask my other friends or family "Why is that guy still doing this kidnapping bit? Do we need to contact the police? A mental hospital?"

I loved that Jessica St. Clair was on an in studio episode. I knew this would be a great episode just on her being the guest and it did not disappoint. What angered me most about this movie was Mario Lopez makes no real effort to explain his situation to anyone. I know it's the premise of the movie but why did he only tell people one time that he was kidnapped? He is in a horror movie scenario. I would never stop telling people until someone took me seriously. Imagine being in this scenario and all you do is tell someone one time. It drove me crazy. Did anyone else think, when June Lockhart said, "I WAS ON BROADWAY!" the first time that it was out of character? I didn't know her character was an actress until much later and I thought that they left in a genuine moment of frustration.

I don't know that I agree with it being the things George Bailey imagines or dreams. Too many things George can't control or wouldn't think of change during the sequence. His lip stops bleeding and starts again. The petals disappear and reappear. It stops snowing and starts again. George wouldn't have considered any of that in a vision of his own life. I think the movie's intent is that George is really seeing the world without him. It's awfully convenient that the world is worse only in things that relate directly to him but that's storytelling sometimes.

So, I basically love this movie. It's easily in my top 5 of all time. It's pretty much flawless (except for that comically large bottle of POISON that the pharmacist has just out on his table) in every way. I don't have a huge list of Christmas movies I watch because I am a literal scrooge. Some movies come and go or start to feel like chores after so many years. It's A Wonderful Life never gets old and I still look forward to it every year. I still ugly cry for almost the entire movie (I usually start crying within the first 10 minutes). I worked at a movie theatre for 18 years. I opened 15 consecutive Christmases. We would put movie quotes or important information on the day's schedule for the staff and, without fail, I put the "Merry Christmas, movie house! Merry Christmas, emporium! Merry Christmas, you wonderful old building and loan" quote on the Christmas schedule. I think one of the amazing things is how its able to get right to the line of being too much without ever crossing it. Whenever it starts teetering toward being too saccharine, there's a joke or a dark moment. Or the performance is too good that it doesn't feel syrupy in spite of everything. The movie just hovers there in a way I don't think any movie has. I'm kind of surprised Paul never saw this before. He definitely grew up in the era where this movie was on all. the. time. in December. People talk about A Christmas Story being on 24 hours straight but It's A Wonderful Life would run on multiple stations at the same time occasionally. I saw the last half hour of this movie so many times growing up.

I agree with this. I know some people subscribe to the butterfly effect of alternative timelines (and this movie does it a little bit). That's fine but this movie really doesn't seem to set that up. The things that change only relate to George Bailey. If you're going to ask why Mary didn't marry?, then would Harry Bailey have died because why would he be on the ice playing hockey with George's friends? And so on and so forth. Some things changed and some didn't.

I'm super busy tomorrow when this episode drops. So, I probably won't have time to post anything substantial and I don't want to want to go in depth before I've listened to the show. So, just a warning: anyone who doesn't love this movie with their whole heart is permanently on my list of "Cynical Jerks"

My favorite contestants are the ones who don't even read the recipes. It's one thing to miss a step but it's something else to go "nah, I, think I got this. What's a professional have that I, a total amateur don't?"

The bigger issue with face blindness, I just realized, is how do the step sisters not recognize her? Ok. You don't think it's her because Cinderella is scrubbing floors at home and doesn't own a fancy ball gown. But certainly you'd notice they look the same? As a kid, I always thought it was ridiculous that the glass slipper didn't fit anyone else's foot. In the whole kingdom, no one had the same size foot? But this face blindness is really over the top.

Unless It's A Wonderful Life qualifies as holiday romance, I won't even consider it because it's the only one I can stomach.