Advent Day #3: Love For Christmas

Now that I have watched a Netflix movie, a Hallmark movie, and a Lifetime movie, I’m pretty sure that all the terrible movies will be on the Lifetime channel. Before I jump into the review, there are a few things you need to know about this movie. It’s not actually titled Love For Christmas. This is actually a 2012 movie titled A Golden Christmas 3 that has been repackaged as Love For Christmas. (Apparently, it’s also known as Home For Christmas. I’m not sure why one movie needs three names….) You should also know that this movie is quite terrible.

How do you know that a movie is going to be terrible? If the movie starts out with an awful song over the credits that goes on for too long, drowning out the first lines of the movie, you have walked straight into a terrible movie. Though, to be honest, we don’t really need those beginning lines because they are just a woman yelling for her dog.

Before we get to the dogs (even though the movie is kinda marketed as a dog movie), let’s talk about the actual people. Our heroine is Heather Hartly (Shantel VanSanten) is a community theater director who runs into an old friend from school, Bobby Alden (Rob Mayes). Bobby has just returned home from a stint in the Navy. However, Heather is currently dating her terrible boyfriend, Roger (Mark Famiglietti). Blah, blah, blah. Heather and Roger end up married.

Sadly, the actual plot of the movie is absolutely meaningless. Heather is supposed to be a theater director but she frequently lets the star of her play walk all over her. Mr. Cole (Orson Bean) straight up insults Heather every moment he gets. (Until the end of the movie, of course, when he turns out to have a heart of gold.) She also doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time in the actual theater. (I was a stage manager in college and my early 20s. You spend quite a bit of time in the theater. Especially right before the show opens.)

Heather also lets her drip of a boyfriend walk all over her. Supposedly, Roger and Heather have been dating for six years. SIX! Yet he doesn’t listen to a word she says. Every time she tries to have a conversation with her, he talks on his cell phone. He actually admits that he thought the theater was doing “Brigadoon” instead of “A Christmas Carol,” despite Heather talking about the play AND all of the signage on the theater building. (We see the signage frequently.) When Heather breaks up with him, he just brings her a second golden retriever puppy. Then he crashes her play rehearsal with terrible carolers (singing “We Wish You A Merry Roger”) in order to propose to her. Thankfully, he just disappears from the movie about halfway through.

Now. The dogs. There are three dogs in this movie: Heather’s puppy (maybe named Bandit? She stops using his name after the first 15 minutes.), Bobby’s sister’s dog, and the puppy Roger gives Heather. At no point are any of the humans in control of the dogs. The movie actually starts out with a montage of maybe-Bandit running away while Heather yells for him. Bobby’s niece, Myra (Alexandra Peters), tries to walk their dog but ends up getting pulled so badly that she needs Bobby to save her. Once Heather gets the second puppy (which stays unnamed until the end of the movie), both puppies run rampant in the theater. Does anyone really think this is cute? It’s not cute. It’s irresponsible dog ownership.

Usually, I can find one or two decent things about a movie. Something, typically the plucky best friend, that keeps me from thinking I wasted my time. But I don’t think there is anything redeemable in this movie. There is, legit, a 12-year old girl that says “I have had a lot of experiences with love.” That’s right! Not even the KID can save this movie! When Heather moves to New York on Christmas Day, people are walking around behind her in light jackets. Guess what, it’s really cold in New York in December. Not even NEW YORK can save this movie!

With a heavy heart, I cannot recommend this movie. I’d even recommend covering your dog’s eyes so they don’t see it either.

Advent Day #2: Mingle All The Way

I admit that I don’t usually watch Hallmark Channel movies. Most of the time, I find them unbearably cheesy. Mingle All The Way had a few moments that made me roll my eyes but I, generally, enjoyed the movie.

Molly Hoffman (Jen Lilley) is the founder of an app called “Mingle All The Way.” It’s a networking app where busy singles can find someone to be their ‘plus one’ at all of their company/social events. When Molly has to prove the app’s worth to a potential investor, she signs up and matches with Jeff (Brant Daugherty), a marketing professional. Despite a rocky start, the pair end up falling in love.

There were a few low points in the movie. The awkwardly blatant product placement for Jergens lotion was one. (Seriously, it was a random close up of the bottle as Molly squirted some on her hand.) Sadly, another low point was Molly’s mother, played by Lindsay Wagner. A lot of movies have at least one parent who puts too much pressure on the main character. However, Molly’s mother goes way too far. She is pretty much verbally abusive to her daughter. And she doesn’t change her stance until a man tells her how awful she’s being. (Thanks, Jeff! Molly’s dad should have stepped up years ago.)

With that said, I did enjoy the on-screen chemistry between Jen Lilley and Brant Daugherty. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy each other’s company and I think that is really what saved the movie. I don’t think I would watch the movie a second time but I would recommend checking it out at least once.

Advent Day #1: The Christmas Chronicles

On Thanksgiving this year, Netflix released a new Christmas “classic,” The Christmas Chronicles. I’m always wary of movies that call themselves “new classics.” That usually means they are going to be terrible. Man, was I in for a surprise!

The movie has all of the trappings of a typical cheesy Christmas movie - kids, Christmas spirit, reindeer, elves, Santa…blah, blah, blah. This time around Santa is played by Kurt Russell, which is a scary thought, and the kids are older brother Teddy (Judah Lewis) and younger sister Kate (Darby Camp). As usual, Teddy is a troubled teen who is often saddled with babysitting Kate. Blah, blah, blah…they catch up with Santa on Christmas Eve and accidentally crash his sleigh. The rest of the movie is the adventure of getting all his stuff back so he can finish delivering presents.

While the beginning of the movie was pretty slow (seriously, who uses cameras that use cassettes any more?), it really starts to pick up after the big sleigh crash. The best moments mostly involve Santa and his magic, though there are some awesome Kate scenes too. Especially when she has to capture Santa’s reindeer on her own and freaks out when she sees Comet. (“You’re kind of a big deal where I’m from.”) At one point, Santa gets tossed into jail and, to raise the Christmas spirit level, he creates an entire musical production with the other jailbirds. If it wasn’t for the adorable elves (more on them in a sec), it would be my favorite scene.

So. Elves. We’re all used to kids or little people playing them. For this movie, they are CGI creatures that speak a completely different language. (It sounds a little Nordic…) Despite the cute factor, you shouldn’t underestimate them. They take down some bad guys, break Santa out of jail, fix the sleigh, and help deliver gifts. These may be the most capable elves ever seen in a Christmas movie. And I kinda want one.

In the end, I would definitely recommend giving Chronicles a try. Kurt Russell is perfect as Santa, since he’s not supposed to be the fat jolly man we know as “Santa.” The kids are decent actors as well. (You might know Darby from HBO’s Big Little Lies and Judah from Netflix’s 2017 comedy-horror movie, The Babysitter.) But, hands down, the best part is the visuals for how Santa gets down chimneys (or lack of) to deliver presents and how the sleigh travels around the world so quickly. Oh, and the elves. Gotta love those little guys.

Anyway, I might actually agree that this is a “new classic.” If Netflix continues to have it on their streaming service every Christmas, watching this may be our new tradition.

Coming Soon - My Own Advent Calendar

It is that time of year again. Time for the schlocky holiday romance movies to come out. To really kick off the rebirth of my blog, I will be doing my own sort of advent calendar. Every day from December 1 through December 25, I will post a review of a new holiday movie. Here are the rules:

1. The movie must be new for 2018. No previously released movies.

2. The movies will all be from one of three sources: Hallmark Channel, one of the Lifetime network channels (they will mostly be on Lifetime but some may be on the Lifetime Movie Network), or Netflix.

Yes, there are some holiday movies that have already aired. Apparently the holiday season begins in October, according to Hallmark Channel. Unless those movies are re-aired, they will not be reviewed. The cable channel movies will all be movies aired after December 1st. I’m giving Netflix a little more leeway since they have a weird release schedule.

If you have any movie suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. And make sure you call me out if I break any of my rules. (I mean, I made them…I should be able to follow them, right?) Let’s celebrate the holidays the right way!

Review: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

On November 13, Dreamworks Animation released the new She-Ra and the Princesses of Power series on Netflix. As a child of the 80s that grew up with the original She-Ra, I knew I had to check it out. It took me a few days to get through the 13 episode series but I did it.

First, let’s discuss the differences between the original version of the show and this one. Back in the 80s, She-Ra: Princess of Power was a spin-off of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Therefore, Adora/She-Ra was the twin sister of Prince Adam/He-Man. Adora was kidnapped, as a baby, by Hordak, the main villain of the series. Hordak’s sorceress, ShadowWeaver, puts Adora under a spell to keep her from remembering her past. (I don’t know why an infant would remember her parents or twin brother….) And she doesn’t receive the Sword of Protection, which allows her to transform into She-Ra, until He-Man is sent to Etheria to find her.

In the new version, Adora is significantly younger. While we never get a definitive age for the 80s-era Adora, she looks to be in her early-to-mid 20s. Today’s Adora is 16 years old. She is an orphan that was raised by Hordak and ShadowWeaver, so there are no spells required to keep her in line. Her big sword reveal moment happens when she goes into the Whispering Woods with Catra, her best friend. They just happen upon the sword and Adora hears Light Hope calling her. Adora doesn’t turn against the Horde until she gets captured by Glimmer and Bow, who show her the evil ways of the Horde. Also, Adora isn’t the only She-Ra. She-Ra is apparently a power handed down over generations. Adora is just the first She-Ra in a thousand years.

Photo: http://www.dreamworkstv.com/shows/she-ra-and-the-princesses-of-power/

Which leads me to, in my opinion, the biggest change in the series - the characters. In the original, Catra was a Force Captain in the Horde. She was one of the main foes that She-Ra had to fight. In this version, Catra and Adora were raised together. They are best friends. As a result, a majority of the series focuses on their relationship. Catra spends a lot of time complaining about ShadowWeaver favoring Adora or Adora abandoning her. (I’m not sure what Catra wants. She is jealous that Adora is ShadowWeaver’s favorite but, at the same time, she doesn’t want her best friend to leave? It’s a weird dynamic.) In addition, the original Catra had powers of her own. She had the ability to turn into a panther by lowering her cat mask onto her face. Today’s Catra is already a catgirl and, from what I can tell, she isn’t likely to turn full panther at all. This is my least favorite part of the series. Catra was one of my favorite characters of the original show and this version of her pales in comparison.

Catra isn’t the only change. Besides making all of the female Rebels a lot younger (I think they say Frosta is 11?), poor Sea Hawk gets a complete personality change. He goes from being a roguish pirate to an insane pyromaniac stalker.

I could probably go on forever about the personality differences between the characters but I won’t. I’ll just say there are significant differences.

Photo: http://www.dreamworkstv.com/shows/she-ra-and-the-princesses-of-power/

Overall, I didn’t hate the show. I understand why they made some of the changes they did. The writers were able to include people of color and LGBTQ+ people. I loved that there were gay characters in the show. My main problem is that they took perfectly fine characters and ruined them. For example, Mermista was always on the side of the Rebels in the original series but, in this series, she has this “I don’t really care” attitude that people like to attribute to millennials. (Mermista is voiced by Vella Lovell from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Mermista is EXACTLY like her character from that show.) I don’t understand why they couldn’t have taken the original characters with their original personalities and just updated the character designs and storylines. Even if the He-Man element was removed, they could have easily kept all of the characters similar to the originals. I don’t believe that kids nowadays wouldn’t enjoy a series with strong female leads that don’t have a ton of emotional baggage to carry.

Oh, and, for the record, I don’t hate the character redesigns. I don’t like She-Ra’s boots very much but the rest isn’t terrible.

While there haven’t been any announcements of additional seasons of the show, supposedly the writers have three more seasons finished. So, who knows. Maybe we will see more She-Ra in the future and maybe the show will grow into something better. For now, it just gets a ‘meh’ from me.

It has been way too long

I have been away from this blog for way too long. Even though I have many, I’m not going to give excuses. I’m just going to promise to do better..

I will tell you that, as of this moment, most of the new posts will be reviews. I don’t have a lot of DIY or life lessons to give right now. That might change in the future. I might decide that I have a great tutorial or that people seem to have incorrect ideas on how the world works. If something like that happens, I will absolutely post about it. However, for now, I’m going back to my roots - reviewing.

In case you haven’t been following me around the internet like a stalker, I began blogging way back in 2002. Like most people, I started blogging about my life. But I quickly found that I also liked reviewing things. Before heading out on my own, I wrote video game reviews for a friend's website. (Maybe my Samba de Amigo review is still kicking around somewhere…) But then I started reviewing things on my own sites. Well, sites like LiveJournal and Vox, anyway. (Does anyone else remember when Vox was a blog platform?)

I’m not sure exactly when I started writing reviews. I’ve changed blog platforms multiple times and, to the best of my ability, the earliest dates I can find are from mid-2007. I do know I wrote a music review column for Anime News Network back in 2008. I wrote articles and reviews for Protoculture Addicts from 2006 through 2008, when they shut down production. And I reviewed cartoons for Bubble Blabber from 2014 through 2016.

So, yeah, I’ve been reviewing things for something like 10+ years. I think maybe that is why I wasn’t motivated to write any more. I thought I was “too good” for reviews. Like I should be writing something better. Something more important. But reviews are what I am good at. So back to reviews I go. I hope you will enjoy what I have to say, even if we don’t agree on the subject.

And thank you for sticking with me. It has been a long journey but I think I have finally found my ‘spot.’

How To: Glitter Lips

I'm sure many of you have seen the infamous glitter lipstick pictures floating around. Those gorgeous lipsticks generally cost about $20 a tube. YIKES! Well, I'm here to tell you that there is a cheaper way to do it!

As I have noted before, my daughter is a dancer. Her tap class competes in a local dance competition. This year, the instructors decided that the girls would have glitter lips. I showed them how to accomplish this without having to spend a ton of money.

First, get your base lipstick. Whatever color you want. The tap class wanted red glitter lips so their base was a bright red lipstick. Any brand will do. 

Second, get some body/face glitter and primer. We used red face & body glitter from NYX Cosmetics along with the NYX glitter primer. Using either your finger or a brush (I prefer a angled eye shadow brush, personally), spread a little bit of the primer on top of the lipstick. Be careful. This is basically a type of glue. And you only need a little! 

Once the primer has been applied, use your finger or a brush (again, I prefer a brush) to lightly tap the chosen glitter onto the lips. You can apply a lot of glitter or just a little, it's up to you! 

Let the primer dry fully and voilà! Glitter lips! Make sure that you don't lick your lips while the glitter is applied. It will come off and it will taste awful. (And then you will have glitter poop...) 

You can mix and match your base lipstick color with a glitter color. Try some purple lipstick with a little pink glitter in the center of your lips for a shiny ombre look. Or try some blue lipstick with silver glitter for a more metallic type of look. It's all up to your imagination! 

Now that you have the tools, go forth and glitter the world! 

The end of a long era but the beginning of a new one

It has been about six months since I last wrote anything here. A lot has gone on in that time. However, the one occurrence that most affects this site is my stepping down from my writing position at BubbleBlabber. 

In case you are not aware, for the past three years, I have been writing reviews of various cartoons on the BubbleBlabber website. As of Wednesday, April 12, I am no longer writing for them. 

This doesn't mean a whole lot to most of you. But it does mean that I will have more time and energy to dedicate to both my blog and my YouTube channel. I have yet to decide what I actually want to write here. Most of my experience lies in writing reviews but I also like doling out information, like why the minimum wages needs to be raised or ways to pay for college. Maybe I can figure out some way to balance both. 

My goal is to get back to a regular blogging schedule by May 1. I hope you will stop back then to see the cool new content. 

When Life Is Overwhelming

It has been quite awhile since my last blog post. Almost seven months. I haven't kept up with my YouTube channel either. What have I been up to? Everything and nothing.

See, I totally burned myself out with an unreasonable schedule. I thought it was reasonable at the time but I didn't really think it through. If you didn't know, my schedule was three YouTube videos each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and two blog posts each week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That doesn't sound difficult, right? What I didn't take into account was that this meant I had to come up with something creative every single day of the week. And, to be honest, I wasn't all that happy with the content on the YouTube channel. I was able to come up with some lovely blog articles that I am very proud of but the YouTube channel was filled with unboxings and makeup challenges that I just wasn't into. And I was having issues coming up with good topics to blog about. My mind started unraveling. 

So I decided to take the summer off. 

Unfortunately, I didn't get the relaxing downtime I needed to refresh myself. But I did get to chaperone my daughter on another trip to the Technology Student Association National Conference in Nashville, TN. And I got to watch her play some awesome tennis. And listen to her play in the summer band. It was some good family time.

When I was getting ready to "come back," there was a suicide in the family that knocked everyone for a loop. It's been a little over a month and things are still somewhat difficult. Things will definitely never be the same. It will just take a lot of time for this to be the new normal.

Then school started. This is my daughter's first year of high school. There was quite a bit of transition to go through. But I think, on this end, things are good. My daughter has gotten into the groove of high school and the difficulty of honors classes. She's good at this stuff.

This brings us to today. I'm still not sure what I want to write about or put on my YouTube channel. As a result, you might see some wacky things showing up over the next few weeks as I try out new things and see what I like the best. Please feel free to leave a comment with any ideas you may have. I'm always open to new ideas.

In the meantime, thank you for sticking with me through all of this. I hope to have some awesomeness coming in the future. 

I have become one of those people

During the last quarter of 2015, I caught a nasty bug. When I finally went to the doctor, I found that I weighed much more than I thought I did. While I didn't weigh enough to be on My 600-lb Life, it was definitely more than I was comfortable with. So I decided to do something about it. I signed up with a personal trainer in February.

My trainer, Tammy, is pretty awesome. At the first appointment, we took some body measurements and tried a few exercises to see where I was starting. The next week ramped it up a little bit but not enough that I was ready to quit. But by the third week, Tammy kicked it up. A lot. But never to the point where I couldn't do anything. If something hurt or I had too much trouble with a specific exercise (damn you, push ups), we would modify it a little bit. I have yet to not finish a set.

But the part I like the most about Tammy? She makes me feel like I'm not working out. When I come in, she'll write the night's "assignments" (OK, they're sets) on the board and show me how to do each move properly. Once I get started, we spend the rest of the time chatting while I work out. I may not be able to respond with words (mostly because I'm trying to count in my head) but it's enough to distract me from what I'm doing. Before I know it, the night's workout is over and I'm heading home extremely sweaty.

On March 23, we took my measurements again. This was after only four weeks of training with her. (I had to take two weeks off due to a migraine and some school commitments for my daughter.) I lost an inch off my waist, three inches off my hips (which is my worst part), and an inch and a half off my thigh. In addition, I gained three-quarters of an inch on my bicep due to muscle.

For the record, this was almost entirely exercise based. My diet barely changed. I drank a little less soda, I added some more protein, and I tried to eat less fast food. I still don't measure or weigh my portions. The only real change is that I drink smoothies for breakfast instead of a bagel slathered with cream cheese. But I can still have a bagel once in awhile if I want!

I never thought I would be one of those people that enjoyed working out. Dancing has always been my "workout" but I don't do it nearly enough to make a difference in my body. Thanks to Tammy, I look forward to my trainer appointments. I've even purchased a kettlebell and a dumbbell to use at home in between our weekly appointments. A good trainer really does make a world of difference.