When Calls the Heart sale on Vudu, with $4.99 seasons or slightly cheaper if you buy them in bundles. The new shows Ride and The Way Home are $6.99.

Rachel Boston takes a turn for the dramatic in the generically titled The More Love Grows, in which she copes with separation. Still has her comedic moments, but not a bad job by one of my faves stepping out of her zone.

Napa Ever After I think I might’ve dozed through.

Great Smoky Mountains was the latest in the national parks series, and some historical info was the best part of it. I’m not one to pick on the acting in these, but it seemed unusually bad here.

Fourth Down and Love with Ryan Paevy and Pascale Hutton (who?) was actually pretty good, with some funny lines. It uses the trope of “pro coaches the kids,” but girls’ football gave it a bit of a different angle.

Countdown to Christmas starts on October 20th.

https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/chri...023-preview/**

Hallmark M&M's Miracles of Christmas starts on October 26th.

https://www.hallmarkmoviesandmysteri...christmas-2023

I'm really enjoying Hallmark movies being on Peacock. Not only do they have select movies and TV shows on demand you can also stream all three channels.

I keep forgetting about Peacock airing films basically a day after they aired on the Hallmark Channels, if my DVR starts to fill up to the brim with recorded Holiday films from Hallmark, GAC, Lifetime, UP, etc. (there are so many folks now airing Holiday originals) I can delete a film and just watch on Peacock. I might actually print out the schedules so I can keep it near my TV watching chair and make a mark near films that I need to watch on Peacock because I deleted from my DVR.

I think you still only get a long commercial in the beginning, or just a small number of commercials with the Peacock airing, which I bet is still less commercial minutes than watching on the Hallmark Channels.

Also, davidh777, good call on Fourth Down and Love, which was one of the better originals from the past several weeks, a film that I would continue to watch again if it started playing while I was futzing around on my tablet and just had the tv on in the background. If time permits, I would actually make the time to focus on a re-watch between now and the end of the year.

New fall sale on Vudu, with the Good Witch, When Calls the Heart, mysteries, and an assortment of fall and non-holiday movies. Some of the prices are high, though, so maybe give them time to adjust if there’s something of interest. Like some two-packs are $5 and some are $12.99, and Aurora Teagarden bundle is $35.

There's some good deals among those movies and those individuals ones are showing up as rentals for$.99. I'm eying a few movies for this weekend.

Well one more week until the Christmas Movies start on Hallmark. I think I'll keep my Peacock subscription through the end of the year for the Christmas movies.

Great American's Christmas kick-off begins tonight with a new original movie. I think they are advertising 18 new movies for the season in total. Christmas movies before Halloween feels early to me but I realize it's become a very competitive field.

It was a Fall themed film, but Field Day was a fun film to kick-off the run-up to Christmas films. I know that technically Hallmark says the Countdown to Christmas starts this weekend, but I have always considered any Fall themed film that leads directly into the long run of Christmas/Holiday themed movies to be part of the Countdown to Christmas (I consider a fave of mine from years past, Pumpkin Pie Wars, to be part of Hallmark's Countdown block of films).

The film has a great cast, plenty of girl power, and I liked that the issues to be resolved were fairly low-key. The director of this film (who has directed other HM films) feels that the chemistry amongst the main cast is such that he could see fans wanting another film in the series, yes please.

The next film could even use the tried and true method of pitting teams against each other, such as the "mean girls" group of Moms going up against our team girl power moms.

I took a look at TV Lines link to most of the Holiday films coming our way from folks like Hallmark and the streamers such as Netflix, and holy cow, the struggle to watch them all 2024 rolls around will be real.

I had no clue that BET has a block of films being aired this year (I think they have only had a small # of films in the past, but this year it feels like they went all-in), and as luck would have it I get the channel, so another cluster of films to try and squeeze into my weekend viewings. A fun problem to work on, managing my time to be able see most films as they are airing, or shortly after they aired.

Vudu did fix their sale prices, so Aurora Teagarden dropped from $35 to $6.99, which seemed like a good price to me for stuff I've never seen. Also got the Fixer Upper Mysteries. Mystery 101 is also cheap, but I've seen them all, and the mysteries don't have that much replay value for me.

Speaking of mysteries, the new Alison Sweeney baking one was fine. Kinda interesting if you've been following the characters all the way through, but nothing earthshaking either. I was less impressed by Haunted Harmony Mysteries: Murder in G Major, with Tamara Mowry as an American choir teacher who moves to Ireland and discovers a ghost. Is this going to be a series with music and ghosts in every installment? Movie was ok, fake conducting was bad.

I did like Come Fly with Me, with Heather Hemmens as a single-parent pilot and Nial Matter as a single-parent regular guy. Scheming matchmaking kids but in a pari this time, and one has a bonus medical condition! Anyway, it worked for me.

I also saw Merritt Patterson on GAC in One Perfect Match, in which she runs a dating service and falls for one of her clients. One of those where you wish people would just say how they feel and get things over with, but then there wouldn't be a movie. It wasn't a waste of time.

Attempting to cut some of the fall backlog before Xmas starts.

I liked Notes of Autumn, with Ashley Williams and Luke MacFarlane as best friends who swap houses and find romance amid lots of snappy banter. Big cast includes Marcus Rosner and, in small but notable roles, Kavan Smith and Pascale Sutton. After Bros, I guess Macfarlane is playing gay characters even in Hallmark movies, which I know he appreciates.

Retreat to You had one of my favorites, Emilie Ullerup, going on a nature retreat and discovering an old flame. Sparks fly relatively early so things go in a bit of a different direction from there.

I didn’t expect much from A Very Venice Romance other than pretty scenery. The standard plot had the corporate executive trying to convince a chef to abandon his principles to help create a soulless convenience product, but the surprise was new-to-me Stephanie Leonidas, who was very appealing in the corporate role.

I deleted them all but liked them.

Tomorrow it becomes official, Hallmark's first Countdown To Christmas airs. Merry early Christmas everyone, even though it is not even Halloween yet, lol!!!

Jokes aside, I will be watching live and I found at least one blog (probably well known to many posters on this thread, Deck The Hallmark) that will be blogging up a storm after the Christmas films they are able to catch up on (they watch the films in a batch I believe starting on Mondays, then blog about them).

I remember that in years past it was pretty much the last Fall Harvest film that flowed right into the countdown films, and this Fall film usually aired the weekend of or the weekend right before Halloween (this year, the Countdown is starting very early, as Halloween is still a week and a half out from today). I also miss the Good Witch films that were always the sign to me the Thanksgiving and Christmas were right around the corner. For a while there it was tradition to watch a Good Witch film around Halloween time. At least the last Fall film this year, Field Day, was a winner.

I have the movies on Peacock on my tv right now while I'm working. The new movie tonight centers on hockey so that might be kind of cool. I'll still be watching mostly horror and Halloween movies and tv shows for the rest of October. After that I'll rev up my Christmas movie watching.

I liked Field Day. I’m a Rachel Boston fan anyway, but she meshed well with the other moms, and I would watch a sequel easily. They could pick any school event really, though it would make sense to still tie the title to the original somehow. “Field Day 2: Junior Prom” would be weird.

The Julie Gonzalo ghost movie was fine, though she’s mostly the straight man to the (well-cast) ghost flapper.

I watched the first GAC movie, Destined 2. I don’t remember the characters so I must’ve missed the original last year, but that’s probably a good thing. This one was bad, with clumsy dialogue and wooden actors. People make fun of Hallmark movies, but they look like Scorsese compared to the worst GACs. There was one I watched last year that was similarly terrible, but the ones with Hallmark alums are generally fine.

Feels like Hallmark's Countdown to Christmas programming premieres earlier each year.
Will likely start tuning in once MLB postseason is over or the first week of November.

Drastically scaling back their Xmas programming, here's Lifetime's It's A Wonderful Lifetime schedule:

"Checkin it Twice" was the first new movie that aired last night not bad but typical romance story you get from these Hallmark movies. I like that it centered around Ice Hockey.

My first two films of the season weren't good at all. Both are to be avoided if I'm being honest.

Campfire Christmas 0 out of 5 (Hallmark) - A bad miss, maybe one of the worst acted Hallmark movies I've ever seen. An ensemble effort from 2022 starring former CW star Tori Anderson, I had a very difficult time even making it to the second half. A woman's parents run a Christmas in July-themed summer camp for kids as flashbacks from her teen years keep popping up. A shame since I was hoping Anderson becomes a permanent Hallmark fixture.

Destined 2: Christmas Once More 1 out of 5 (Great American) - Another huge disappointment. I actually really liked the original Destined last year, which saw two people meeting on a Black Friday shopping spree and then falling in love. They bring the entire cast back but they hang the entire plot this time on the guy's inept marriage proposals. We get far more of the annoying daughter character this time around and very little of the actual couple on screen together. It's not a Christmas movie but a half-baked Romcom.

Campfire Christmas was one of those films that I was hoping would be so much better than it was when I saw it last year. More of a disappointment to me than Hallmark films that are just straight up bad because I usually like films that involve adults at a camp.

I can completely understand why many folks consider Destined 2 a bad film, but for me it was an easy to watch bad film in the background of whatever I was doing when watching the movie. The film was not slow, but I agree that throughout it seemed like they were trying way too hard to make it difficult for the dude to put a ring on her finger. At least the first delay in officially proposing to her was legit, she received fantastic news and he did not want to steal her thunder, I can buy that. Everything else was mostly kind-of a lame reason to not step up and ask this woman to marry him (when it was obvious they love each other).

The daughter was not as annoying to me as you found her to be, but I understand that you wanted to see less of a focus on the daughter and more on the two of them doing stuff together during the Holidays and strengthening their bond towards each other.

Now let us talk about the ring ending up in a pan of sticky buns, and how it got into the sticky bun batter, so gross and unhygienic. The girls seemed to be grabbing and touching everything in the kitchen and then sticking their hands in the batter, it bears repeating again, so gross!! Maybe I am wrong, and they washed their hands prior to starting the baking project, and the ring box/ring is the only thing they touched, but I would be wary eating baked goods that were put together by young kids with minimal supervision in the kitchen. My barely a teen niece is a solid baker but she still has her mom keeping a close eye on things as she goes about baking a cake, cookies, etc.. Her mom is a great baker of sweet treats, and prevents mishaps that would ruin the baked goods.

Putting aside all the missed opportunities they throw at the guy in the film stopping him from proposing, one of the biggest frustrations for me is when he does finally propose it feels so rushed and out of the blue, there was no time see them be all giddy with each other now that they were formally engaged. There were definitely some missed opportunities to add some charm and romance to the film.

I have been listening to blogs that review old and new Hallmark Holiday films, and as I suspected a lot of times the films get torn apart but the reviews are still fun to listen to. However, these are critiques of the films that I listen to after I have watched (the podcasts obviously spoil the films, so it is imperative that you watch the film first if you are interested in hearing folks chat more about the film).

I have a full tolerance to watch any type of Hallmark film, good, bad, or in-between, so for example, the tear down of Under the Christmas Sky did not bother me at all as I found the film to be okay and not a hardship to watch.

On the other hand, lots of folks praised Where Are You Christmas? because it was a bold attempt at changing things up, and between the black and white parts and rock solid cast for this film, you have a film that was a notch or two above what you usually get from most films aired by Hallmark and Lifetime during the Holiday season. This film starred Lyndsy Fonseca, and I really enjoy seeing her in Christmas films.

The actual proposal was so underwhelming in Destined 2 that it makes everything that happened before it seem even worse.

Agreed Phantom, and the reason I am spending an unexpectedly large amount of time talking about Destined 2 is that news of the sequel 2-3 months back caught me by surprise, but I quickly said heck yes I will be watching and just got real excited about this film rather quickly.

Instead, we got a movie that focused way too much on a kid, and what should have been the show-stopper moment of his proposing to her was hyper rushed and almost squeezed into the film at the last minute (which is such an odd choice for the director and writers of this film to go in).

In theory, we should get a third film to close things out with a wedding, and after everything I have said about this film, I would watch, lol. What can I say, I am weak when it comes to these films and try to watch as many as I can shortly after they air.

ETA: One more thing, and I will try to keep my promise to you all to stop talking about Destined 2. Right after I hit Post, I immediately thought to myself that what this movie should have done is have the proposal knocked out in maybe the first 5 minutes of the film, get that out of the way, and then the rest of the film could have been about all of those bumps in the road (hopefully, presented to us in a humorous way) that happen as they were getting closer and closer to the wedding day, and then the last 10 minutes would be of the wedding, and maybe some time allowing for a one year later type add-on that shows the couple and the guys daughter scrambling (again in a funny way) to get to the hospital because his wife is about to give birth, or the add-on scene could involve a brief but sweet scene where she is already holding a newborn child and we can see that this happy couple is well on their way to growing the size of their family. Almost anything would have been better than the rushed proposal that actually ended the film.

It’s hilarious and awesome that we’re spending so much time on Destined 2. As I said, I thought the acting and script were horrendous, but I did stick it out to see what would happen.

I haven’t started the Hallmark holiday yet but I picked off a couple more mysteries. Curious Caterer has Nikki DeLoach and Andrew Walker in its favor, and the mystery wasn’t bad. I liked Emily Henstridge and the classic feel of Mystery Island, but it didn’t quite hold my attention. That may not have been entirely the fault of the movie.

The latest Curious Caterer film received some praise from both Podcasters I now listen too, and I agree that it was a good film. Good to hear you also liked the film. The pairing of Nikki DeLoach and Andrew Walker just works so well (of course, most of us agree that he also pairs well with Bethany Joy Lenz). Mystery Island was okay, but I do appreciate when Hallmark and H-M Movies and Mysteries tries to give us a film that is not the same old formula as most films that are produced year in and year out.

Ms. Christmas Comes To Town was not as much of a downer as I thought it would be, and is actually a pretty good Hallmark film, of course it has a great cast of fan favorite Hallmark actors and actresses.
Mystic Christmas on Hallmark was a fun watch, just a pretty light and breezy film to watch, not great, but a charming and/or fun to watch movie. I am biased, because I really like films with Jessy Schram as a main cast member.

So far it has been pretty much Hallmark and some GAC films, but now that November is here the floodgates are about to open (Lifetime, UP, Netflix Holiday film(s)), lol!! I doubled my xfinity dvr cloud storage earlier this year, so it will finally be put to the test in regards to how many of these films I can record in a weekend before I need to start watching to free up space (ideally, I should be able to go at least a full weekend in a position where I do not have the means to watch the films shortly after they air, and not worry about space that I need to free up, but we shall see).

New Vudu holiday sale, but it’s kind of a dud. Only 25 titles, nothing from 2022, and none of the supercheap multi-packs. I hope they add to this or do a better one later.