Round 65 - Not so Christmas Movies

 This week the girls take aim at Not so Christmas Movies... 

There is heated debate as to what makes a movie a Christmas movie. Some believe that Christmas must be a focal point of the film. Others believe if there is anything Christmas-y in the movie it makes it a Christmas movie. Tonight the girls discuss movies often played around the festive season but are not actually considered Christmas movies. 

But first, what were we drinking?

Sarah was drinking nothing because the fun police got her

Amy was drinking La Provincia Rosé

Available from Naked wines

Bianca was drinking Baileys

Available from just about every bottle-o

Sarah opens this holiday bonbon with the fun fact that not all movies set at Christmas are Christmas movies. We know, it came as a shock to us too. 

These movies are known as Christmas adjacent movies or not so Christmas, Christmas movies. These types of movies may be set around Christmas but really don't rely on Christmas as a part of the plot. They could be set at any time of the year. Examples of such movies are:

Die-hard

The Long Kiss good night

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

and more.

The Movie Sarah chose to talk about is one that she never really saw as a Christmas movie growing up, but now can relate to it more after having a child. 

Gremlins is a gem of a movie that came out in 1984 and has been entertaining families ever since with it's cute main character Gizmo and devilishly funny but kind of creepy gremlins. It more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas movie.

Gizmo

Gremlins aka Bianca and Sarah's movie night

Amy's Night Out

Amy is, as always, very opinionated about this topic. Given she doesn't like your typical Hallmark Christmas movies she is always in search of something else to watch during the holiday season. Basically, if it has anything to do with Christmas, it's a Christmas movie in Amy's not so humble opinion. 

Amy decided to discuss a movie that always gets a run at her house around the holidays. Lethal Weapon was released in 1987 and is set around the holiday season with many scenes of the movie featuring Christmas elements. 

In researching this topic, Amy discovered that it is no coincidence that two of her favourite Christmas action movies, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, were set during the holiday season on purpose. Was it pivotal to the plot? No. Could the movies be set at any other time of the year without changing much to the movie? Absolutely. 

However, the writer of Die Hard the movie, Steven De Souza explained in an interview that the producer of both movies, Joel Silver, liked movies set at Christmas so they would be played on TV around the holidays. 

There you have it! People want an alternative to your traditional Christmas movies so some action movies are set during the festive season to give people something else to watch. 

Christmas lights in the background make it a Christmas movie

Bianca Listen, Die Hard is a great film, but saying it’s a great Christmas film is, at this point, well-worn territory. If you’re looking for an actual holiday-movie alternative to watch in December — something that takes place during the holidays, but isn’t It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, or one of the 97 versions of A Christmas Carol  — there are many other Christmas-adjacent movies out there. 

Movies that have that hint of Christmas, without all of the usual Christmas trappings and lessons. Movies that take place during the holiday season, and may feature brightly lit trees and snow — and maybe even a Christmas carol or two — but aren’t about learning the real meaning of the holiday or taking over for Santa because he’s injured.

And here's Bianca, thank you to www.vulture.com for writing the segment for her...

L.A. Confidential (1997)

Titanic is an undeniably great movie, but there’s an argument to be made that L.A. Confidential should have won the Best Picture, Oscar, that year. This terrific drama, based on the novel by James Ellroy, delves into police corruption and cover-ups in the LAPD of the early 1950s. It actually begins on Christmas Eve, with a violent police-station brawl, as several cops, juiced up on massively spiked eggnog, beat several Hispanic and black suspects in their cells. The headline splashed across the newspaper the next morning is “Bloody Christmas” (which happens to be the title of another movie that isn’t on this list). This leads us to the main plot: Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, and Kevin Spacey work to figure out who killed several people at a diner, including Crowe’s partner, who was involved in the Christmas Eve scandal.

This all sounds dark and serious, and it is, but having the movie set at Christmas works as something of a mental balm, demonstrating that there are some good and nice things in this world, even if it is filled with dirty things and bad people. Appropriately, the soundtrack features “The Christmas Blues” by Dean Martin, one of the great “sad” Christmas songs that should be a lot more popular than it is.

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Round 64 - Where are they now? Teen heart throbs of the 90s

 This week the girls take aim at Teen heart throbs of the 90s... 

The '90s were hands-down The Best Decade for Celebrities—both in terms of fashion (so many butterfly clips, so little time) and heartthrobs. Celebs were truly doing the most between creating highly questionable music videos with way too many dance routines (it's called ART okay?), experimenting with denim-on-denim, and spiking their bleached hair. It's frankly a miracle they even had time to walk the red carpet!

So here we go with some international and Aussie heart throbs...

But first, what were we drinking?

Bianca was drinking The companions' cab sav

Available from Naked wines

Sarah was drinking nothing because the fun police got her

Amy was drinking La Provincia Rosé

Available from Naked wines

Bianca opened the topic with some gorgeous men;

• Callan Mulvey
• Scott Wolf
• Joshua Jackson
• Ryan Clark
• Simon Baker
• Mario Lopez
• Mark-Paul Gosselaar
• Dieter Brummer

Then Bianca cracked into her teen heartthrob from the 90's Andrew Keegan and it turns out he created a cult and has pretty much kept out of the limelight since the cult was shut down.

Sarah went back through all of her teen idol posters hidden in the back of her wardrobe and decided on Devon Sawa to discuss tonight. With that blond hair and those blue eyes (teenage swoon), Sarah was madly in love in the 90s. 

Sawa started his career back in the early 90s and made his movie debut in the Little Giants. We next saw him in Casper as Caspers living form and then we saw him again in the classic 90s movie Now And Then. 

Sawa has worked consistently throughout his career and not just in movies but also in television and appeared in Eminem's music video for the song Stan.

From super cute to I'll still do him

Sarah also mentions of one of her favorite teen bands from back in the day (and they still are one of her favs now, to be honest), Hanson. With their long blond hair and blue eyes, what can we say? Sarah had a type. 

As most teen girls did, Sarah thought she was destined to marry Taylor Hanson. How wrong she was! A good thing too because she would have 7 kids by now! No wonder the Hanson Brothers are still touring the world and are running a brewery!

They were so cute 

 

Damn they got better with age

Amy was in love with so many heart throbs in the 90s it was hard for her to pick who to cover. In the end, she settled on two who had her heart back in the day.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or JTT as he was known, burst onto our screens in the early 90s and was most well known as the middle son, Randy, in the TV hit Home Improvement. JTT was also the voice of young Simba in Disney's The Lion King. 

Between 1994 and 2005 JTT appeared in many movies and in TV shows as well as attending Columbia University. After that JTT seemed to disappear from our screens. He reappeared later in the 2010s as a guest on the TV show Last Man Standing. 

After learning that JTT is possibly not partnered and still a vegetarian, Amy openly invited an expression of interest from JTT as she still felt that maybe she is the one he is looking for (but doesn't know it). 

JTT then and now

Amy then went on to talk about Joseph Gordon Levitt. Amy doesn't know why she loved guys with three names but it looks like it was a thing. 

Joseph Gordon Levitt became a household name after appearing in the TV series 3rd Rock From The Sun. Joe (as he likes to be called) has not stopped since the 90s. He had a short break to attend Columbia University but quickly returned to acting in the mid-2000s. 

Joe is married with two children and currently resides in New Zealand waiting out the pandemic. 

Special shout out to Zac Hanson, however like Sarah, Amy thinks that despite the fact he's still hot, she dodged a bullet because she also would have had way too many kids by now. 

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Round 63 - English words, like how?

 This week the girls take aim at English Words Like How?... 

Ever wondered how words are created? Ever heard someone say something and wonder how on earth that's an actual word? Tune in as we discover how words are made and discuss some words that left us thinking "how is this a word?".

But first, what were we drinking?

Amy was drinking Brian Fletcher Merlot

Available from Naked wines

Bianca was drinking The Companions Shiraz Tempranillo.

Available from Naked wines

Sarah was not drinking because the fun police said she can't.

Amy introduced this week's topic and discussed the 13 ways in which new words are formed. They are:

Derivation

Back formation

Compounding

Repurposing

Conversion

Eponyms

Abbreviations

Loanwords

Onomatopeia

Reduplication

Nonce words

Error

Portmanteaus

Amy also discussed two words that she came across in her research of this topic. 

The first is Omnishambles which is a classic compound word using the root words Omni (meaning all things) and shambles (meaning a state of total disorder). Omni shambles was added to the Oxford dictionary in 2019. Amy loves this word because it eloquently describes many aspects of her life right now. 

Amy's second word was Meh. Meh is defined as an expression of indifference or boredom. This nonce word is thought to have originated from an episode of the tv show the Simpsons although Webster's dictionary claims it originated in 1992 (it did not give any details to back up this claim nor cite the Simpsons as its creator). 

Amy also gave a special shout-out to a new word she learned being Mc Job. Mc Job is defined as a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement. This word can be found in Webster's dictionary. 

Bianca talks about some things she found very interesting…

Words ending in "ard" or "art" are intensifiers meaning they mean "too" or "very" of something 

Wizard is someone who is very wise.

Drunkard is someone who drinks too much.

Braggart is someone who brags too much.

And a dullard is someone who is very dull/stupid.

So then when we look at the word mustard this means it's very musty or pungent from the Latin mustum meaning new wine from root which is wet. 

Coward is from the Latin word cauda which means tail but it's also influenced by the English words cower and cowed 

You may notice that these words have negative connotations which mean ard and art make words derogatory. 

So next we have bastard which comes from the old french fils de bast which translates to packsaddle son. Which derives from people conceiving children with someone they’re not married to while traveling.

Bianca's next fun tidbits are;

Chai tea means tea tea

But if you think that's bad you’ve probably never heard of Torpenhow hill in England… “Tor” is the old English word for hill and one day a welsh guy walks up and is like “hey, what's that called?” and they say “oh it's Torr,” He says “great it's now called Torpen because pen means hill in welsh”. Then an English guy comes later and says “what's that?” and the guys go “oh this is Torpen” and the English guy says “great it's now Torpenhow, because Hou means hill in new English” 

And so today we have Torpenhow Hill which literally translates to Hill Hill Hill Hill.

And my last tidbit for the evening is Ampersand the funny little "and"(&) symbol.

In the 1st century AD the first spelling of “and” was “et” in Latin, the Romans actually created a symbol by merging the letter E and the T together. Over time this symbol evolved 6 times until it looked like the symbol we use today.

Now, by 19th century Britain the and symbol became so popular among students it was the 27th letter of the alphabet.

When students of the time are referring to a single letter that can also be used as a word like I and A they should use the Latin per se before it. Which means on its own or by itself. The same thing happened with the letter &. So the alphabet ended XYZ and & or XYZ and per se &. Over time students shortened and per se and to Ampersand. Which is the official name for this symbol.

Sarah ended the show with some words that she likes to use and some she didn't even know existed but were fun to say.

Collywobbles - This refers to a weird feeling in your stomach or an overall bellyache. It is derived from the Latin phrase cholera morbus, meaning it came from the disease we all know as cholera. 

Lollygag - The origin of this word is unknown, but it first surfaced around 1868. The definition of “lollygag” is someone who is messing around or wasting time. It also refers to someone who is doing something that isn’t serious or useful. 

Erinaceous - This is a strange one; it refers to something or someone who resembles a hedgehog. 

Nudiustertian -  Have you ever wished that you had a word for the day before yesterday? This is that word! It might be a little bit convoluted to say, but it is an interesting-sounding word. 

Pauciloquent - If you are a person of few words, then this is the term for you. It refers to someone who doesn’t say much or who, when giving a speech, gives a very short one. This is a great way for you to tell people you are a person of few words, without having to say that whole long statement.  

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Round 62 - Secret Identities

This week the girls take aim at Secret Identities... 

But first, what were we drinking?

Sarah was drinking Pepsi Max (again)

Available from All The Shops

Amy was drinking The Butterfly Effect Cabernet Merlot

Available from Naked wines

Bianca was drinking The Companions Shiraz Tempranillo

Available from Naked wines

Sarah opens the topic with a quick google on what a secret Id is, it turns out that it's just a simple way of saying pseudonym.

Sarah then goes on to explain what a pseudonym is and where the word came from and some famous people who have shed their birth names in place of a pseudonym.

Sarah chose Margaritha Zelle as her subject for the night a divorced mother of two who gave up married life to become one of the world's first exotic dancers going by the name Mata Hari, she danced for some of the world's most influential and powerful people making new friends and lovers wherever she went. That was until the day she asked to be a spy for France, she was arrested and accused of being a double agent, she was later executed by firing squad. But what happened to her body?

Mata Hari

 

The day she was arrested 

Executed of being a German spy 

Amy decided to discuss the incredible life of Mrs. Nancy Wake. Nancy was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia at the age of two. At the age of 16, she left school to become a nurse. Finding this profession to be less than glamourous she decided to leave Australia and become a journalist in England. 

The years leading up to World War II were filled with parties, luxury, and love. Nancy married a wealthy French industrialist and settled in the French city of Marseille.   

After the war broke out Nancy vowed to do whatever she could to help the allied forces and the French resistance. Nancy was forced to leave her home, her husband and flee to England where she began training with the British Special Operations Executive (S.O.E). 

After parachuting back into France as the war raged, Nancy gained a reputation as a formidable fighter and relentless drinker. Nancy was integral to the operations of the S.O.E and the French resistance. Nancy earned the respect of her fellow soldiers by being a strong leader and was not one to shy away from the more confronting aspects of being a leader. 

Nancy was nicknamed the White Mouse by the Nazis because of her incredible ability to escape them even when there appeared to be no way out. 

After the war had ended Nancy learned of the fate of her husband who stayed in Marseille and returned to Australia. After some unsuccessful attempts at running for parliament, Nancy decided to go back to England where she worked as an intelligence officer. Nancy met and married an Australian man with whom she remained married for 40 years until his death in 1997. 

After her second husband's death, Nancy took up residence at the Stafford Hotel, England, where she could usually be found in the bar, sipping a gin and tonic telling war stories to patrons at the bar. It is rumored that despite selling her war medals to find her lifestyle, Prince Charles funded her lifestyle after hearing about this incredible woman from a Canadian diplomat. 

Nancy took up residence at an ex-service persons home in 2003 where she lived out the rest of her days. She died in 2011 at the age of 98. 

There is so much to this incredible woman's tale but you will have to listen to the episode to learn more. 

Nancy receiving her Companion to the Order of Australia Medal 

Nancy during her S.O.E days

Bianca for this episode her brain went in a different direction… as it does… so Bianca actually researched fictional secret identities across different media.

Comics

• Spyboy's partner Bombshell attended his sleeper personality's high school under the name "Marta Hari."

When Young Justice infiltrated said high school, they used even more obvious aliases, including Rob Roy (Robin) and Helena Troy (Wonder Girl). 

Film

• All of the aliases used on name tags by the main character in Fight Club are names from films such as Taxi Driver (Travis) and Planet of the Apes (Cornelius). 

• In Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale Jr. uses the alias Barry Allen, secret identity of The Flash. One of the guys on the case figures out that the person they're looking for is probably quite young based on this information. 

• In Back to The Future, Marty's name is assumed to be "Calvin Klein" because that's the name on his underwear. In the third movie, he adopts the name "Clint Eastwood" while stuck in the Old West. 

• He also dresses up as an alien named "Darth Vader" 

• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Austin and Vanessa meet Number Two in the casino. 

Austin: My name is Richie Cunningham, and this is my lovely wife, Oprah. 

• Although this may have been a name that popped into his head without knowledge of their cultural meaning, given his status as a human popsicle. 

• In Fletch, the title character goes by a number of aliases: 

• Real people: Ted Nugent, Igor Stravinsky, Gordon Liddy and Harry S. Truman. 

• Characters: Babar (the elephant), Don Corleone. 

• Just plain weird: Dr. Rosenpenis 

• In the second Fletch film, Fletch Lives, Fletch uses the alias "Elmer Fudd Gantry", combining the names of two fictional characters. 

• In The Saint with Val Kilmer, all of Simon's aliases are names of Catholic saints. 

• Real-person name example from In the Line of Fire: Would-be presidential assassin Mitch Leary uses the name Booth (as in John Wilkes -) when taunting Agent Frank Horrigan (a former JFK bodyguard) over the phone. 

Leary: Why not call me Booth? 

Horrigan: Why not Oswald? 

Leary: Because Booth had flair, panache - a leap to the stage after he shot Lincoln. 

• In The Birdcage, the flamboyantly gay housekeeper is pretending to be a stereotypical butler and introduces himself as Spartacus. 

• The made-for-TV Generation X movie had Emma Frost pass herself and Banshee off as Hootie and the Blowfish without the police officer batting an eyelash. 

 "Agents Hootie and Blowfish." Luckily, Emma has also messed with the guard's mindsight. 

• In the first Die Hard: John McClane decides that the name he'll use with Powell will be "Roy" after Roy Rogers (which McClane referred to in a previous scene—the one with his Catch Phrase). 

• In Shock Treatment, it turns out that Cosmo and Nation McKinley are not real doctors, but character actors who use an assortment of last names — all those of U.S. presidents. 

• In The Player, the blackmailer uses the alias 'Joe Gillis' (the narrator from Sunset Boulevard) but this is intentional because he knows the connotations will rattle his target. 

• The serial killers in The Devil's Rejects use the names of Groucho Marx characters. 

• In Shakespeare in Love, Lord Wessex brings a knife to Shakespeare's throat and threatens him to stay away from his future wife Viola de Lesseps. Wessex demands to know Shakespeare's name to deter any future meddling. Will uses the name "Christopher Marlowe", the name of his chief competitor. In real life, Marlowe was murdered in mysterious circumstances. 

• In Notting Hill Julia Roberts' character (a famous actress) uses fake aliases taken from cartoon characters to check into hotels.

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