Four friends who met working at the Pittsburgh Glass Center formed a team competing on Disney+’s snow-carving special “Best in Snow,” streaming Nov. 18.

It’s unlike other crafts competitions – Netflix’s “Blown Away,” “Drink Masters” – because while those series rely on competitors’ experience and skill, “Best in Snow” pairs each team with master carvers who have snow-sculpting experience. Also, there’s no prize beyond a trophy.

Sarah Cohen of Bloomfield, Margaret Spacapan of O’Hara, Ashley McFarland of Sharpsburg and Becky Smith of Highland Park traveled to Keystone ski resort in Colorado in February to film the 90-minute special over four days. Prior to that, Cohen and Smith saw an ad seeking contestants and decided to form Team Snow Voyagers and then got cast on “Best in Snow.”

“The draw for me was we love working with different materials,” Spacapan said, noting it felt better to try something new on TV with friends than it would have to complete as an individual.

The master carvers showed the team different parts of the process and the steps necessary to get the desired outcome. Cohen was the only Snow Voyager who’d carved ice sculptures previously.

“It was a little similar to carving wood,” Spacapan said of carving snow from what started as a 10-foot-by-10-foot cube. “It’s different from glass in the sense that glass starts molten and you want to keep it molten while you’re working with it, whereas snow starts as a solid and you want to keep it solid and don’t want it to melt.”

In addition to working with a new material, the team had to do it while being filmed and surrounded by production craziness that included a Greek chorus of a cappella carolers, Kermit the Frog (still not sounding like Kermit should sound) and Tituss Burgess as the host, not as himself but in character as the sputtering mayor of Snowdome where “Best in Snow” supposedly takes place.

“We would laugh all the time and we would be like, ‘I just can’t believe that we made it that far,’” Cohen said. “We kept saying, ‘the magic of Disney,’ and just laughing.”

‘A Christmas Story Christmas’

It was pretty much guaranteed that no matter how impossible it is to live up to the original, the third sequel to the 1983 holiday classic “A Christmas Story” would be better than its predecessors (1994’s “It Runs in the Family”/“My Summer Story,” 2012’s straight-to-home-video “A Christmas Story 2”). But that’s not saying much.

Still, “A Christmas Story Christmas,” now streaming on HBO Max, at least gets its tone mostly right, blending humor and heart in equal measure. But the movie leans too heavily into familiar set pieces from the original movie, sometimes with seemingly photo-copied scenes solely for nostalgia’s sake (and without much commentary on that nostalgia, as found in the original movie).

Peter Billingsley, star of the original film and co-writer of this sequel, returns as an adult Ralphie, who now goes by Ralph. It’s December 1973 and Ralph, an aspiring author, gets the call that his father, “the old man,” has died (actor Darren McGavin, who starred in the original movie, died in 2006).

Ralph and his family return to his hometown of Holman, Ind., to spend Christmas with his mom (Julie Hagerty, “Airplane!”), who puts Ralph in charge of the holiday, much to his dismay. How can his Christmas celebration compare to his father’s?

Billingsley, who works more as a producer these days (including on the 2012-14 Pittsburgh-set TBS comedy Sullivan & Son”), delivers a credible performance as a now-adult Ralph, only occasionally deploying his “Ralphie snicker” to good comedic effect.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” recycles elements of the original in ways that are occasionally clever (a few of Ralph’s imaginings) but mostly uninspired (a visit to the Higbee’s Santa is a near-carbon copy of the original scene; a Black Bart encounter also feels like a rehash).

What works best is the new plot, which proves more heartfelt than super-sad, and deploys some familiar characters in new ways.

Hagerty steps in for Melinda Dillon as Ralph’s mom (Dillon may be retired; IMDB.com suggests she’s hasn’t acted on camera in more than a decade) and Hagerty capably captures the daffy spirit of Dillon’s creation.

Flick (Scott Schwartz) and Schwartz (R.D. Robb) are back, played by the same actors, and the film gives them a welcome role reversal. But “A Christmas Story Christmas” saves its best use of a returning character/actor for Scut Farkus (Zach Ward), the details of which won’t be spoiled here.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” filmed in Bulgaria, but the production did an amazing job recreating the exterior of the home from the original film – it’s at 3159 W 11th St. in Cleveland and definitely worth a visit if you’re a fan – but some local casting misses the mark as incidental characters reveal slight British/European accents that would be out of place in 1970s Indiana.

The theme of passing traditions from one generation to the next plays well and Ralph’s ultimate career success also serves as a nice homage to the late Jean Shepherd, whose stories from “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash,” were the basis for the original, still superior “A Christmas Story.”

‘Spirited’

Streaming Nov. 18 on Apple TV+, this musical riff on “A Christmas Carol” features a few catchy musical numbers from Pask and Paul, the team behind the music of “The Greatest Showman,” but “Spirited” is an overstuffed and overlong movie.

If you’re re-telling the umpteenth version of the same story, it shouldn’t take more than two hours to do it regardless of the detours and small surprises plotted.

Ryan Reynolds plays the slickster Scrooge and Will Farrell is the Ghost of Christmas present. They’re a good team and if “Good Afternoon” enters the zeitgeist as a substitute for profanity you’ll know “Spirited” had an impact. But the movie risks boring its audience long before it reaches that showstopper.

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