Chippings

Just a note - this evening Hallmark ran 'Snow Bride' again and I was reminded how much I liked it. (In case the title doesn't ring a bell, the tabloid reporter smuggles herself into the snowbound retreat of political family, hits it off with older son. Et cetera.) Unusual story, none of the usual tropes (return to hometown, run into each other and spill coffee &c); new, attractive people whom we haven't seen fall in love with ten other people in other Hallmark movies, good and interesting small side-stories. Haven't seen it in many months. Such a pleasure!

Just to say that this evening I saw more sensible people (two) than I've seen in any hour of these things before. That'd be Ludwing (of the grilled cheese sandwiches) and Karine's brother. I sure would like to know more about Ludwing - he's been her "adopted brother" for 20 years, but he has an accent of some kind; seems to have a nice enough house, and looks as if he plays the piano. And if Karine's brother grew up in the same environment as Karine did, how'd he get so sensible? Nice to meet you, sensible people. Let's get together again some time soon, please.

Not specifically related to Project Runway, but on this point -- I found my way to TWoP originally because I saw an article in Time (or Newsweek) about television at that time, and it said that people involved with TV shows do look on line to see what people are thinking, and the main site they looked to was 'Television Without Pity.' If that's still the case, they have possibly followed us here.

I had two Von Furstenbergs, one a red/white print and one blue/white. They fit like nobody's business and looked absolutely great on. Have to say that I tried to get my sister-in-law to get one, and it didn't fit her at all, just wrong. That thing defined a classic. I still have my red one, but wouldn't have the nerve to put it on today. DvF never designed a single thing later that could match it, but she earned her place in history. (Sorry to cut into the cheers about the winner - I agree!)

So many things to smirk over in this show, but in regard to Jenny at the airport -- I think we are getting pretty tired of this trope: American gets to airport / train station, and loved one is not there, so they panic (See: Pole in Brazil the first time, Whats-er-name with the darling baby Lucy in England). "Oh no, I am all alone, what will I ever do??" when obviously there is the camera crew, producers &c right there, who all have phones and the producers were obviously in touch and knew where Sumit was. Seriously? It doesn't make for a really good cliff-hanger. In passing by one "extended" episode (and how do they "extend" a one-hour episode and still have it be a one-hour episode?) (never mind), I enjoyed seeing Pole's boss in Kentucky say he wasn't a good worker and if he hadn't quit, would have been fired very soon. If you can't make a good showing picking up cow patties and carrying hay bales, it doesn't bode really well for much else.

Malta -- Something sort of galled me at the beginning of the episode which we see every single time, but it got me to thinking. We know the whole deal is staged, and the people already have chosen a place. But it struck me as unnecessarily phony at the initial "meeting" when the realtor, of Malta, asks the clients, from the UK, "How much do you want to spend?" and they reply "One thousand dollars." No .. None of these people functions in any way in dollars, and it's just so faux to insult our intelligence by play-acting as if it meant something to them. Given that the viewers are used to dollars, we still do know that in other places they have other currencies - HGTV, Why can't you have your clients reply in the currency of the place where they are, and show a streamer across the screen showing its equivalent in dollars?? It would make the 'story' a little more realistic, and we could figure out how much the amount is in our experience. HGTV, anybody listening ?? I wonder if they ever did consider that ..

My issue with Friend to Fiance was that fully grown adults kept asking each other "Yes, but do you LIKE-like him??" as if they were fourteen. It sort of diminished the whole thing. Also I couldn't quite respect a grown man who retreats from his looming wedding by crouching in his childhood playhouse. Issues, much??? Girl was cute - perky, and at least a different face from the half dozen usual ones. But the characters' wide pre-teen streak in their personalities was not attractive.

I second that emotion. Always a pleasure also to see London. The humans were whiny indeed, but more particularly Sebastian, the dark-haired one. You'd have thought that coming from New York they'd have an idea of very high rents and small spaces, but they whined big-time about both. I wonder what palatial digs they'd had in NYC, with a 'music studio', and to accommodate two dogs, for $1700?

This fellow, like Dennis, does not seem like a stupid person, and it's interesting (terribly sad) how his loneliness overcame every kind of sense he surely had had for the last several decades. The signs were all there (starting with the requests for money, but after that the principal one to me was the pile of letters from the "German government" written in English and demanding US dollars). As with earlier episodes, I'm always thinking of the days after the taping -- when day in & day out for months they have at least had texts coming in saying "I miss you My Love", "How are you Honey" .. some indication that there's somebody out there who loves you .. and now not only is that person proven to be fictional, but there's a great gap of no loving affirmations every day. That must be awfully hard. As said above, this seems like such a nice man, and essentially a smart one. Poor guy. I hope Dennis, in addition to his family, stays in touch and gives him some support.

Me too !

We are old enough to have a pretty good idea of the chronology of Fosse and Verdon, and are big musical geeks. The madly dizzy editing, however, even has us confused. Scene in the ladies' room (??) between McCracken and Verdon, in snatches while 'Mambo' is being performed, when is it taking place? The final departure from the seashore - cutting to four or five other events as she leaves - 'way too self-indulgent on the part of the director. (And we do know who the director is and some of his (ahem) recent work. But when you can snatch the story from all the cuts, it's a wonderful story. And seeing the dance numbers recreated so well is a delight.

I pretty much enjoyed it. They said from the outset (in the promos) that it was a re-telling of the "You've Got Mail", "Little Shop Around the Corner", "She Loves Me" thing -- all of which I've seen a lotta times. But I thought they changed it up enough to be entertaining. They even were good enough to omit the scene where She is sitting in the restaurant waiting for Him, and He comes in pretending it's just a coincidence and giving her a hard time. I was just happy not to see any cupcakes, any jolly cooking-together scene, or saving her father's treasured xxx business.

I agree, Cheyenne and Garrett are getting less likable by the episode. The writers are pulling some twists that are pretty hard to wrap your head around -- including the guy who's been making $134,000 and has none left .. And even Mateo, pushing the 'I'm a floor supervisor' thing past any possible limits. People who were quirky are getting over the top here. Thinking out loud, when they set up a sit-com, they set up characters and how they will have them interact &c, and they probably have some ideas about how they will evolve. But I wonder if this one, at this point, has come beyond what they had planned for originally and are not doing really well at stretching things out?

Bali - That was one spoiled chick who obviously has never denied herself a single thing .. And in the "Daddy Fix" atmosphere at home. Must have 3 bedrooms to live alone, and then only half the year ? And the pool is too small? And what exactly do you get paid for a travel article, I wonder, and how many per year will pay for that lifestyle? Yuck.

I was looking forward to this weekend's movie because I remembered him so well from that 2011 one; in it, he was an under-employed actor whom the girl found dressed in a hotdog suit (?) dancing on a street corner to advertise a restaurant (that's close, but not exact) and she hired him to impersonate a fiance' at a family weekend. He was in over his head, sort of goofy, and very endearing. In this one he had the unenviable job of being the up-tight executive type who is loosened up by the more free-spirited girl, and I felt sorry for him going through it. I can think of two other actors whom I've seen be really adorable in one role as a lighter character and then very disappointing as the uptight one who has to be liberated by the girl (that would be Will Kemp as a Prince who was perked up by Bethany Joy Lenz, and then as the Chocolatier in Brussels, with much more personality -- and Andrew Cooper first in 'Royal Hearts', managing the sheep and cattle, and then as the "grinch king" whom the skater girl has to lighten up. In all three cases I felt sorry for them trying to bring some life to the up-tight characters, and not having much to work with. I thought the blonde designer girl friend was an extreme cartoon of the "wrong girl the male lead is with when the story starts". We've seen a lot of them, but she was written way past the usual standard. My first discomfort was the first half hour when Sarah Rue (yes? the girl?) was so incredibly perky it was scary. Finally, who knew the tomato lady and pepper man senior citizens would find love by the final curtain? Bottom line, not loving this one. Too formulaic and not much fun for such a likable actor. ymmv

Texas to Fareham, England -- We know the producers have a lot of input to what goes on, so could they kindly ask the women not to say "xxx-ish Charm" any more? I actually let out a yelp tonight when she first said it, and she kept it up throughout. She was a real whiner, generally. It was quite a turn-around in the end when she expressed great satisfaction about everything. On another subject, I'm a pretty good looker-upper, but wouldn't have any idea how to go about looking up these people to see how long they have actually lived in these overseas places. Are they giving last names and I'm just missing it, or is there another avenue ? Would love to try it myself. Thank you!

I think the scholarship was to wherever she wanted to go, including Harvard .. "Full ride, anywhere.." It didn't appear that she has actually applied anywhere. But I think he didn't ask her what she was afraid of because her answer was clearly going to be "I don't want to go to any college, I am going to thrill the world with my dancing." She purely didn't hear what the choreographer told her, but it seemed as if her "plan" is not to start out just as somebody's chorus dancer, but as the soloist doing "my own twists on the thing.."

Darn, that dance girl really bothered me. She is so out of touch with reality that it's just weird. But if we've known any high school students we know how challenging it is to be at the top of your class, to get the recommendations you would need, and actually get that incredible full-ride scholarship. It would take an unusually focused kid to get any really good scholarship, let alone that one. So what in the world happened to her brain ?? The interviews with her TV station (when her hair was still dark) were so different with the way she is speaking now. I expected Dr P. to pull out some traumatic event in the last year or two that had turned her from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde. I don't know if hip hop dancing resembles every other kind of dance I'm familiar with, but does it have specific steps that a choreographer would call out and you need to know what it is -- terminology for the moves &c, which (not having taken any lessons) she could hardly know ?? (You can only do so much on YouTube, I'd think.) This was just beyond odd. But he had to fit in two other stories, so I guess never mind. Still I'm worrying about that girl's brain.

Moving backward for a second, this evening I saw some bits of the "Love Romance & Chocolate" again -- and because I had also watched "Kate and Leopold" last week, I realized that Will Kemp is indeed Hugh Jackman 20 years younger! It's amazing .. In this movie he looked so much like, and even had similar mannerisms to, Hugh Jackman in 2001. It would be awesome of his career took off as Jackman's has -- It looks as if he was in a film with Jackman in the last couple of years, so he is getting cast in Hollywood too.

Clearly, I need a Life, but I looked him up - serious burns when he was a young person. I'm not sure why he chose to feature the damage by growing out the beard, but you are right about the burns.

It wasn't clear to me who designed and built the "Edison" box - certainly not the sophomore drop-out? There was a mention of another person whose name was on the patent application. I would like to have understood how she snookered him and what he understood was going on. Did he realize what the professor of medicine pointed out - that what she was claiming it did is physically impossible? Having watched the 20/20 coverage of the exact same story on Friday, I wondered if others thought it did really a better job on the story? The documentary certainly padded a lot with the same shots of her walking through the facility in her lab coat -- and vintage images of early Edison movies. Oops, also, I was sorry this documentary did not mention (which 20/20 did) the element of the ad agency (Chiat-Day) they hired to do ads, who refused to put her unproven claims into the ads because the FCC requires documentation of the things you claim in an ad ! I think they had to pull back what the ad said about 90% from what she was saying. The admen, really, were more sophisticated than the famous old rich guys and venture capitalists. But my main point is - about the box ?

I haven't even seen the end of Guerneville yet, but my question is, how did the house she gets fare in the recent flooding? It was the worst Guerneville has seen in decades. The first house had a creek below it, and the realtor said it rises like two feet in the winter. Yeah, right. Mm hmm - she chose one by the river. Doesn't bode well.

Clumsiest winner ever, tripping over her dress - and then she'd put her speech in her phone ?? Hope she is more organized in her professional work, which obviously she must be.

Welll, not my favorite episode but you don't know when you start a family search how interesting the results will be. There were the children in the orphanage, and the remote Russian villages, with a very nice immigrant-makes-good story. Anybody should be glad to find that in their history. Dr Gates was a little obscure about Seth Meyers' "family" who told them things about the family history, and still lived in the great-grandfather's house. Evidently they didn't have an interest in linking up with Seth Meyers or there would have been a reunion a la Andy Samberg ?? (as tljgator mentioned above..) My biggest take-away from the episode was getting *really* tired of Dr Gates saying "So how does that make you feel??" It's a good interview question, calculated to get more than a one-word answer, but Wow, he over-uses it.

PRE-cisely !! Levis, Gap, sorry I mixed 'em up, but glad you recognized it. That's the one I was thinking of. Thank you for posting it ! It really makes you wonder why somebody cast him to meander through the Matchmaker movie when he has so much good energy .. Thanks again for the video !