Happy Howlidays (Hallmark) - Solid 2024 movie starring Jessica Lowndes. She's dropped the baby weight and attacks this mismatched dog story with vigor. The plot is aided by the central premise surrounding two inseparable dogs who became a viral sensation around Seattle, forcing their owners to grow closer. Not really much of a Christmas theme other than the romance occurring around the holidays. The male lead really isn't much of an actor but I guess he's what you would call eye candy for women.

I didn’t watch the Finding Mr Christmas series on H+, but he won it.

Now his acting level makes a lot more sense. Handsome guy out of romcom central casting, but rough as an actor. Basically amateur level. They gave him way too much responsibility for a new actor. Didn't hurt the movie that much, mostly because he matched up well with Jessica Lowndes. I've gotten the feeling Hallmark gives Jessica leftover projects their primary headliners have passed on before.

This was Jessica's return to Hallmark films after having been with GAC the past few years. Glad she is back on the Hallmark channel as I am a fan. Some folks on-line said the same thing, the acting ability of this guy was not all that impressive (but considering he is a reality show winner, his acting could have been worse), but what surprised was that you could see the chemistry between him and Jessica on the screen, so that combined with the cute dogs made for a surprisingly fun last Countdown To Christmas film viewing.

It looks like the Hallmark January Originals start up this Saturday, yay. I had a bit of withdrawal symptoms going on when I realized that I had to fill my time over the weekend watching other stuff because Hallmark originals ended a couple weeks back. However, since we are back to only 1 original per weekend I need to pick a show on a streamer I want to catch up on as I will now have the time.

What is a bummer is that on Movies and Mysteries channel they are airing films that were on Hallmark + as originals so I have already seen these films. Speaking of H+, I hope that we get an original or two on plus well before the next holiday season as that is pretty far off in the future.

Half of screen chemistry is how a couple aesthetically matches. It's pure visuals. If I saw them together on the street, they match. Hollywood's new casting directors have been fighting that gut feeling the past decade or two with increasingly poor results.

Trying to finish up all the Christmas ones but need to take some breaks and still have some big ones left. After I kept Carol for Two and Five-Year Christmas Party, I've been fine deleting everything.

Trading Up Christmas involves a seemingly unlikely scenario of trading items for things of greater value until the lead (Italia Ricci) can get a house for her sister. I assume this is kind of a thing in some fashion. Michael Xavier co-stars.

The Santa Class is pretty funny, with Kimberly Sustad and Benjamin Ayres involved in a school for department-store Santas. Paul Campbell might be the best part of the movie in a small part playing himself.

I liked A '90s Christmas more than I expected. It's a Back to the Future/A Christmas Carol scenario with Eva Bourne, who I don't know.

Believe in Christmas was pretty much filler. I guess Meghan Ory is from Chesapeake Shores, and she's fine, but the most noteworthy thing is probably playing opposite her husband, John Reardon. She is of course a Christmas curmudgeon who goes to a place called Christmasland.

Debbie Macomber's Joyful Mrs Miracle brings back the angelic character who helps people through tough patches of their lives, in this case a trio of siblings trying to settle an estate dispute. Rachel Boston is younger than most who play the title role, but I like her so it was fine.

This Time Each Year was a serious one with a couple on the rocks (Alison Sweeney and Niall Matter). It was OK, and I know there are always a few serious ones each year.

Private Princess Christmas might've been the worst non-GAF one this year. It combines the tropes of a royal among commoners and a veteran trying to reassimilate, with two inexperienced leads. Ali Skovbye's British-ish accent feels pretty tortured, and Erica Durance is now playing moms of adults. Brendan Penny has a cameo.

Confessions of a Christmas Letter is also pretty bad, though I admit I'm only halfway through it and will probably force myself to finish it. Like Holiday Mismatch, it uses an older actor (Angela Kinsey) as the linchpin while having a younger couple handle the romance. Lillian Doucet-Roche has been a second banana before, including the villain in The Professional Bridesmaid with Hunter King.

I watched Happy Howlidays, and yeah, Mr Christmas is not good Now I wonder what kind of competitions they did in the reality series. But honestly some of the other guys who've been leads this season are pretty oatmeal themselves so this guy could get better. "Seattle" absolutely didn't look like Seattle, but they did correctly name-drop a couple parks. I did like Jessica Lowndes' line "There's only room for one hot mess, and I was here first."

Christmas with the Singhs was fine. Hallmark has expanded their diversity to include Indians, but the leads always seem to be American-born to make them less foreign.

I thought Following Yonder Star was one of the better ones, maybe because I'm a sucker for the ones that have lonely kids. As a Dayspring title, it did have a mild faith component, and I liked Amanda Austin, who played the second banana/sibling. She's been a supporting character in a couple others.

A Little Women’s Christmas was one of GAF's tentpoles, and it was pretty weak. There was little relation to the original story other than Jo being a writer and the character names. Jillian Murray was OK as the lead, but Jen Lilley and Laura Osnes were just window dressing. Dialogue was bad, and some of the camerawork/editing was really amateurish. I think I limited myself to five GAFs this year, and the Merritt Patterson one was the only one that registered as fine. I think one was ok and the rest were bad. I might have to skip GAF next year to save time.

I missed like at least half the GAC ones and have no urge to catch them on re-runs. I caught a few from UP, but if I missed any it was no big deal. Sometimes I can catch UP re-re-runs but they have their own streaming app that I have no desire to use so again, no biggie if I missed a few of those.

Following Yonder Star was actually one of the better Hallmark Countdown To Christmas films, as it had a religious bent to it but was not overly preachy or anything like that, it really was a pleasant surprise how easy it was to watch this film.

^I watched a few of the GACs this year, and the Merritt Patterson one was the only one that was anything close to above average.

I watched eight episodes of The Way Home in the last week and am now caught up. That included the last few of the previous season so I've been a little lost, but I generally like the series. The way-back setting is my least favorite of the time-travel scenarios and comes across as a PG-rated Outlander.

Happy to report that I accomplished my goal of finishing all the new Christmas movies on my DVR before the end of January. I know I missed a Christopher Russell/Ashley Newborough one, either because it was H+-only or because my DVR was out one weekend and I tried to record all the reruns of stuff I had missed and maybe I didn't get that one. That's ok.

Three Wiser Men and a Boy is the sequel to last year's smash hit, and the trio is still funny. I can't say the series is my favorite, but it's good.

The Christmas Quest has the smash combo of Lacey Chabert and Kristoffer Polaha in a National Treasure kind of hunt set in Iceland. Worth watching for those stars, of course.

A Reason for the Season had another killer pairing of Taylor Cole and Kevin McGarry. It's definitely feel-good-trope-y, but I liked it.

The Date Before Christmas was a little disappointing honestly, maybe because it kicked off the season and got a lot of praise. It was fine but not that special.

My Sweet Austrian Holiday had Brittany Bristow trying to keep her family chocolate business alive while Will Kemp was the evil corporate raider trying to destroy it. Inside joke toward the end where Kemp "tries" to dance. Pretty good overall but I was expecting more chocolate.

All I Need for Christmas had Mallory Jansen as a struggling musician and Dan Jeannotte as the entrepreneur trying to save her career by dragging her into the 21st century. It was fine, but the big song at the end was just ok. Usually Hallmark has a good ear for music.

All these were easy deletes. The only one still lingering on my DVR is the Katie Findlay, but I'll probably delete that one as soon as I need the space. I don't expect to watch it again before holiday season.

Here's a couple Hallmark movie bundles on sale at Fandango at Home:
12 movie collection for $5: https://athome.fandango.com/content/...undle-/2923505
6 movie bundle for $5: https://athome.fandango.com/content/.../title/2410470

Those bundles are a great price, of course. I already had the six-pack so I bought the 12-pack, and they were all from 2023-24. However I only recognized a couple even though I'm sure I saw them all, so they might not be the greatest movies. But there's really no point in buying sale singles for $5 anymore in case they might appear in a cheap bundle, unless it's a title I really want. In fact I have three large bundles on my wishlist, and at regular price they come to $5 each, but I might as well hold out for cheaper. The only bundles I've bought for full price ($20 four-packs) were Signed Sealed Delivered.

Speaking of which, the 2024 movie hasn't appeared on Vudu yet.

I was sick recently so I cleared off most of the old 2024 movies and some of the new ones.

The Magic of Lemon Drops with Lindsay Fonseca was probably my favorite of the bunch. It's yet another alternate-timeline plot, but I find those fun and enjoyed it. The Real West (Kimberly Sustad) and Autumn at Apple Hill (Erin Cahill and Wes Brown) were both fine, with female leads I like.

The January 2025 movies had a travel theme: Love of the Irish with Shenae Grimes-Beach (Time for Her to Come Home for Christmas), Polar Opposites with Rhiannon Fish as an arctic stowaway, and My Argentine Heart with Julie Gonzalo. Fish's was probably the best, but none were very memorable.

I also did a rewatch of Karen Kingsbury's The Bridge with long-haired Katie Findlay. This was made into two movies, and this time around it definitely felt like it could've been trimmed. Obviously it couldn't have been for time-slot reasons, but the material felt stretched for two movies but was probably too long to fit into one. I still liked it, though.

Mistletoe Murders on Hallmark+ was renewed for a second season.

So thrilled at this news as the show is actually very good.

It ended leaving you wanting to see more but it just as easily could have been cancelled.

The Wish Swap basically used a fantasy device (characters received each other's birthday wishes) as an excuse to have a dancing competition, but I bought it because it had Emily Tennant (no relation to David that I can find), who was really charming in the Butterball movie a couple years ago. The guy (Jake Foy) has a late heel turn that in most cases is just a misunderstanding with 15 minutes to go, but in this case was an actual violation of trust that was harder to forgive.

The Perfect Setting was set in Belgium and starred Laci Malley, who was in Betty's Bad Luck in Love and I guess Chesapeake Shores. It was fine, i guess.

Return to Office was the latest spin on You've Got Mail, but with the modern twist of workers returning to the office, but only halftime, so the leads share a desk and start a conversation that migrates to messaging apps, and of course they hate each other in real life. They riff off this plotline nearly once a year, but it's still watchable with Janel Parrish and Scott Michael Foster.

I am actually a bit surprised to say this but I actually enjoyed the last two Royal themed films, maybe it is because of the cast in the films.

Mallory Jansen in The Royal We
Andrew Walker and Emilie De Ravin in The Reluctant Royal

Top notch casting for each film.

They were in many ways simply throwbacks to "old" Hallmark but had enough charm to work.

Here's some 10 movie bundles on sale for $5:
https://athome.fandango.com/content/...undle-/1694483
https://athome.fandango.com/content/...undle-/1972169

This is really sad news. Brennan Elliott, who is basically a regular in these Hallmark and Hallmark Christmas movies, wife passed away from Gastric cancer.

X - Formerly Twitter

The People article details the account of her illness.

I think Elliott may have starred in more Hallmark movies the past decade than any of their female stars. He's done a lot of them.

Interest bit of news as the Buffalo Bills are next in line to collaborate with Hallmark on a new Christmas movie also called Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story.
https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-hallm...lls-love-story

I liked the Chiefs movie from last year but my only complaints were minor things from being a KC resident.

I finished season 3 of The Way Home. I like the show but get a little confused keeping track of all the characters across all the timelines lol. I might keep watching but wouldn't mind if they streamlined things a bit.

Hallmark will no longer be streaming on Peacock starting on May 1st. They only had limited on demand movies but they did offer streaming on all three Hallmark channels. That just means they want you to sign up for Hallmark Plus now.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/lif...treaming-news/

Well, that kinda sucks. I didn’t watch new movies there because I have the ad-based service, and it was frankly easier to DVR and FF lol, but I thought if I ever got around to watching When Calls the Heart, I’d watch it on Peacock.

I have not posted in a while because the last few weeks Hallmark's Saturday film has been a re-airing of films that first aired on Hallmark+, so not much new Hallmark content to watch. However, today I learned from a TV Line press release story that we are going to get a film called Haul Out The Halloween which will be the third film in the fun Haul Out The Holly film series, I am so happy about this news, especially that the film will air this Fall.

Lacey Chabert, and all the rest of the primary cast of the Haul Out films will star along with the real life Halloweentown couple Kimberly Brown and Daniel Kountz. Apparently, Lacey is very close friends with them.

This really is great news and it is nice to see Hallmark continues to represent the Halloween season. As many others have noted on this thread, I still miss The Good Witch films, but a Halloween film with Lacey Chabert is nothing to scoff at.

That's really cool the third Haul out Holly movie will be a Halloween movie. There's plenty of story potential around Halloween and that neighborhood setting. Hallmark has done really well with their fall movie output in recent years.

I watched the Deck The Hallmark podcast on the recently announced Movie schedule and as they pointed out we are only getting a bit over half the amount of Countdown films as compared to last year.

It will be weird having so much more time on the weekends to watch other stuff or do other things.

My hope is that while we get less films the majority are fun to watch.

To be fair, when we had what, around 60 films to watch, at least 10 of them were utterly forgettable or just background viewing at best.

Anyway, interesting how different this year is from last year.

Countdown to Christmas starts on October 17th. Maybe they are cutting back on movies to improve the quality of the productions? They haven't announced the movies for Hallmark Mystery plus I'm guessing Hallmark Plus might have some exclusive Christmas movies as well.