Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

Regular readers know of my fascination with Christmas movies. That even extended at one time to planning a course on the films -- a demonstration that even some of the cheesiest of holiday films merit academic consideration. The course hasn't happened but you might be interested in the argument I made for it. So here ... Christmas Movies: Ideas and Issues, Text and Subtext Description Where holiday films are often discussed in terms of familiar themes such as faith and family, a closer consideration of them finds meditations Race in America is underscored in Tradi on power, media manipulation, depression and other issues buried under the more obvious them. ng Places, This Christmas and The Preacher’s Wife , the last of which is a story first done in 1947 with a white cast and then retooled for African-American stars. Holiday Inn, which introduced the song “White Christmas,” also had what one historian called “a breathtaking medley of Hollywood’s most infamous racial ster...

It's that time of year when people binge on Hallmark's Christmas movies, and the House of Heldenfels is not immune. (There are limits, though. This is an unlikely addition.) That said, the movies are such easy viewing that sometimes the mind wanders. And this mind has wandered toward the idea of ... a Hallmark Christmas movies book. Sometimes the idea morphs into three books: the Christmas movies, the non-Christmas Hallmark Channel/Hallmark Movies & Mysteries films, and the classic, broadcast Hallmark Hall of Fame productions. Not that I have time to do any of these. But I have been thinking about what I would want in a Christmas movies book. Including: 1. A map of America with all those fictional small towns where the movies are set. 2. A list of the Canadian houses used most often for movie locations. 3. A list of noteworthy other roles by actors in the films.  Nyssa al Ghul! The Maytag repairman! 4. The time of the near-kiss in each movie. (The near-kiss, f...