Arts & Life
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- Written by: Tim Riley
CHRISTMAS MOVIES ON HALLMARK CHANNEL
With the final days of the holiday season upon us, the Hallmark Channel continues its non-stop run of Christmas-themed movies geared to family entertainment.
When “Christmas Above the Clouds” finds workaholic CEO Ella Neezer (Erin Krakow) trying to skip Christmas by flying to Australia, she’s in for the flight of her life. Haunted by her past, present and future, Ella is forced to confront the choices that led to her success yet left her flying solo.
With the help of three quirky spirits and a surprise reunion with her ex (Tyler Hynes), Ella might just rediscover the magic of Christmas and the love that she thought she’d lost.
Hunter King’s Liv and Evan Roderick’s Daniel star in “A Make or Break Holiday,” hosting their families for the first time this Christmas and stress is at an all-time high.
When unspoken irritations within their relationship finally reach a boiling point, Liv and Daniel find themselves at odds and decide they need to take a break from each other.
However, relaying this news to their families will most certainly ruin Christmas, so they decide to move forward with their original plans and will pretend to be a happy couple while the relatives are under one roof.
Navigating the complexities of their respective families, they work together to create a memorable holiday celebration. Liv and Daniel begin to rediscover what they love about each other and may not have to pretend much longer.
“A Suite Holiday Romance” is set during Christmas week when Sabrina Post (Jessy Schram) arrives at an iconic hotel in New York City, ready to accept the ghostwriting position for the memoir of a famous art dealer.
As a struggling writer, Sabrina can’t believe her luck: a paycheck and a stay in her own suite at the hotel. She feels like the heroine from her favorite series of children’s books.
A perfect week gets complicated when she meets Ian Turner (Dominic Sherwood), a handsome British visitor, at the hotel bar. When Ian assumes Sabrina is another wealthy guest, she does not correct him.
Sabrina thinks Ian is a member of the British aristocracy, but it turns out he’s the personal secretary of a British lord. Ian is in town to oversee an exhibit of royal jewels at a museum.
As the week unfolds, Sabrina shows Ian how New York celebrates the spirit of Christmas and the two start to fall for each other.
In “She’s Making a List,” the premise of a child falling on Santa’s Naughty or Nice list used to be a call made by Santa and his elves. But with the number of kids worldwide skyrocketing, Santa has outsourced the job to a consulting firm.
The Naughty or Nice Group has cornered the market on determining a child’s niceness thanks to an airtight formula. As a top inspector with the group, Lacey Chabert’s Isabel makes the tough calls, by assessing the children on her list and assigning a verdict.
When she is tasked with evaluating a mischievous 11-year-old Charlie, she expects a routine case. But things get complicated when Isabel unexpectedly falls for Charlie’s widowed father, Jason (Andrew Walker), and begins to question the rigid rules of the job.
As Christmas approaches, Isabel must choose between following the holiday algorithm or following her heart. You can probably guess how this will go.
With cameo appearances by country musicians, “A Grand Ole Opry Christmas” stars Nikki DeLoach as Gentry Wade, daughter of late country music icon Jett Wade – half of the famed fictional duo Winters & Wade.
Gentry abandoned her dream of a songwriting career and distanced herself from her father’s legacy following his tragic accident 30 years prior.
When the Grand Ole Opry invites her to represent Jett at their centennial celebration at Christmas, she’s hesitant to return to the place steeped in bittersweet memories.
Encouraged by her good friends, Gentry visits the Opry and, while seated in one of the vaunted venue’s oak church pews, is suddenly transported to 1995.
Gentry’s lifelong friend Mac (Kristoffer Polaha), a country music talent manager, finds himself notionally time traveling as well. Thanks to some Christmas magic, Gentry gets precious time with her father.
In this reunion, Gentry attains creative inspiration to finish the song she began decades earlier as a teen and learns surprising answers to questions about her father for the last three decades.
“The More the Merrier” finds Alice (Rachel Boston), an emergency room doctor at a rural hospital, always volunteering to work the Christmas Eve overnight shift and going the extra mile to make the holiday merry for patients and staff.
When the hospital gets snowed in, Alice and Brian (Brendan Penny), the newly hired cardiologist, find themselves in the middle of a bona fide baby boom when three women go into labor on the rarest birthday of the year.
Though they may have different approaches to medicine and life, there’s a spark between them and it’s clear this may be the Christmas Eve that changes them both forever.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lake County Symphony’s Christmas concert this weekend will include guest vocalist Christy Yohanan.
Yohanan will sing three songs: “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “White Christmas,” and “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.”
A relative newcomer to performing, she found her musical voice via karaoke three years ago after moving to Lake County from San Jose.
“I sang in the choir when I was a kid, but that was about it,” said Yohanan.
Her life/work for the last 40-plus years was centered around the global label printing company she still runs (and raising her three children), but she felt “drawn” to music.
“I always liked music, and when I started singing, it made my heart soar. It’s so emotionally freeing,” she said.
She started singing regularly when she ran karaoke at Riviera Hills Restaurant in Kelseyville. Later she sang karaoke at Andre’s Lounge in Lakeport and also at the Boathouse in Nice.
Yohanan credits Andre Williams, owner of Andre’s, with encouraging her to stretch her musical talents.
“He came up to me during karaoke and told me, ‘You can sing,’” she said, recalling that she was floored by his comment. “Since moving to Lake County, everything seems to have fallen into place. I love it here and have been lucky enough to meet some wonderful and very interesting people.”
She ended up working part time at Andre’s as a bartender and continuing with karaoke. “I also sang there once a week for about a year with Nicky Hind- a wonderfully talented classical pianist. We did quite a few songs together like ‘Imagine’ and ‘Knights in White Satin.’ I learned so much working with him during that time. He is an incredible artist. He’s at Andre’s on Wednesday nights.”
She says others involved in the music scene have also had an influence on her growth, including Mike Keating, “a band guy and also a very good singer” who runs karaoke at the Boathouse.
Singing with the symphony is a new challenge for Yohanan and she is looking forward to it. “I went to my first rehearsal last week and the music was just beautiful. I am so impressed by how good the symphony is.”
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- Written by: Debra Fredrickson
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The 50-plus members of the Lake County Symphony will celebrate the 2025 holiday season on Sunday, Dec. 21, at 2 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport, with a joyful presentation of traditional Christmas music.
Guest vocalist Christy Yohanan will be there too, singing three holiday favorites: “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “White Christmas,” and “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.”
The symphony will play all the favorites that audiences enjoy, like Leroy Anderson’s memorable “Sleigh Ride” filled with unusual percussion effects.
Parkinson’s arrangement of “A Cowboy Christmas” is a special treat for the audience, offering sounds of horses’ hooves from different sections of the symphony for a musical glimpse of Christmas on the open range.
Audience members also do their part as they participate in the traditional carol sing-along that has long been a special part of this concert. Included are selections like “Joy to the World,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful.” The grand finale is another group effort as everyone sings “The Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s “Messiah.”
Tickets for the regular 2 p.m. Christmas Concert are $25 for general seating or $30 for premium seating in the balcony. They will be available on the Soper Reese website for purchase or at the box office at 275 S. Main on the day of the concert.
The open dress rehearsal performance starts at 11 a.m. with discounted tickets for $10 and free admission for those 18 and under. Please arrive 30 minutes early when buying tickets at the door.
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- Written by: Tim Riley
'JINGLE BELL HEIST' ON NETFLIX
London has its share of fancy, upscale department stores that are famous for luxury goods, cultural iconic status, and architectural grandeur. Harrods comes to mind as a prime example, as well as Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges, among others.
For the Christmas backdrop of “Jingle Bell Heist,” the fictional Sterling’s department store is modeled after these opulent shopping palaces, and it serves as the setting for a contrived crime caper of a robbery during the holiday season.
Olivia Holt’s Sophia is an American expatriate living in London, where her British mother is hospitalized with cancer and needing an expensive treatment available only through costly private medical care.
A clerk at the fancy Sterling’s store, Sophia has a knack for picking pockets as well as locks, having learned sleight-of-hand from her grandfather, a magician and locksmith. She also works after hours at a local pub.
While Sophia is a petty thief, she’s more like Robin Hood in that her victims are unsympathetic characters deserving bad karma and she’s giving the stolen cash to the less fortunate.
An ex-con arrested for stealing from Sterling’s, Nick (Connor Swindells), who had been involved with installing the security system at the department store, now works at a phone repair shop where he still has access to the store’s security cameras.
While Nick enjoys watching security footage, he catches Sophia purloining some cash and valuables in Sterling’s storage. With this knowledge, he makes a move to enlist Sophia into a major heist of jewels kept in the store’s impenetrable vault.
At first, Sophia doesn’t want to be involved in an elaborate grand theft, but then there’s the case of her mother’s dire plight, and besides, store owner Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz) is a wealthy jerk and odious boss.
It appears that Nick was framed in the Sterling theft and ended up serving a five-year prison term, which is why his wife divorced him and now threatens to move away with their daughter because he’s behind on child support.
Thus, Nick and Sophia have reasons to carry out the heist and split the money, and getting revenge on Maxwell Sterling is only a part of the equation. Sophia can take care of her mom, and Nick can prove that he can be a reliable father.
Given that this pair of heist plotters are amateurish, not everything goes according to plan until another connected surprise party provides invaluable assistance to make the robbery possible.
The inevitable romantic angle, sealed with a kiss, that comes into play seems to be unnecessary, but then this is a holiday movie where it seems almost obligatory, given the heist happens on Christmas Eve.
“Jingle Bell Heist” strains credulity as a serious crime caper, because the planning that goes into it is basically ludicrous. And yet, the writers came up with every contrivance to have you rooting for Sophia and Nick, and that might be enough to make it work.
HALLMARK CHANNEL HOLIDAY MOVIES
During the holiday season, Hallmark Channel reliably turns its schedule into a 24/7 festive feast of mostly movies and some episodic series into a celebration of the happiest time of the year.
When “Christmas Above the Clouds” finds workaholic CEO Ella Neezer (Erin Krakow) trying to skip Christmas by flying to Australia, she’s in for the flight of her life. Haunted by her past, present and future, Ella is forced to confront the choices that led to her success yet left her flying solo.
With the help of three quirky spirits and a surprise reunion with her ex (Tyler Hynes), Ella might just rediscover the magic of Christmas and the love that she thought she’d lost.
“Three Wisest Men” reunites Paul Campbell, Tyler Hynes, Andrew Walker, and Margaret Colin as the Brenner family for another Christmas story, this time their lives are more chaotic than ever.
As Luke (Walker) is expecting twins, Taylor (Hynes) is debating a monumental job opportunity out-of-state, and Stephan (Campbell) attempts to plan for his upcoming nuptials.
Everyone’s stress heightens when they learn their mom (Colin) has put their childhood home up for sale, marking their final Christmas in the Brenner house.
With unexpected in-laws visiting, wild animals lurking in freshly cut Christmas trees and a hesitant mall Santa, the boys will have their work cut out for them as the holiday begins to loom.
As they navigate adulting at a level they have yet to reach, they must learn to once again lean on one another to rise to the needs of their growing family, conquer the newest challenges in their lives, and have the best Christmas ever.
In “The Snow Must Go On” Broadway actor Isaiah Heyward (Corey Cott), last on stage ten years ago, is visiting family in upstate New York when he learns the local high school may have to cancel their Christmas musical because they need a director.
Isaiah decides to save the show, and in the process stumbles on a romance with guidance counselor Lilly-Anne (Heather Hemmens) for a nice Christmas surprise.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
