If that date and location seem a bit ominous, Pitt was also Jewish and spent time in a concentration camp. She and her mother escaped.
Pitt became an actress in Europe and tried her hand in America. Her largest success was in England, especially in horror films. In the US, she's a cult horror figure, famous for appearances in The Wicker Man, The Vampire Lovers (one of my favorite films), Countess Dracula, The House That Dripped Blood and others. She also appears in British action movies, including the dynamite film Where Eagles Dare (recommended).
She also penned a few books, including an autobiography and a series of horror-related books.
Her filmography is not particularly deep, and she was never a Bond girl, so her exposure in the states in minimal. I, personally, think she's great. In the sea of Hammer's extraordinary talent, in my opinion, she's one of the absolute best to do it.
Editor's note: I was unable to find this movie during ChabertQuest2025, but saw it was now available on "UP Faith and Family", and so got a 7 day free trial.
So, new to me and not a Hallmark movie, exactly. This movie is about a Santa who will stop at literally nothing to make sure Lacey Chabert and her boyfriend break up so that he may force her into a relationship with someone else. Kris Kringle will bend the very laws of nature, create life, destroy roads...
This Santa is mad with power.
Anyway, for a long time, and maybe still, a lot of the movies on Hallmark were technically independent movies. I am unclear how it works now, but basically Hallmark would help fund movies in exchange for North American distribution. But after X amount of time, these movies were back in the hands of the producers. And so it was I now am enjoying a 7-day trial of the UP Faith and Family Network.
Part of how Hallmark had so many movies in the years where it seemed like a factory cranking out way too many movies, this was the trick. Hallmark was essentially licensing very cheap indie movies, and part of them funding those movies was that Hallmark was given script approval for kicking in some percent of the film's budget.
And, thus, the sameness of Hallmark. They managed to pull off low-risk/ high-reward for years and people learned to write for them.
Thus, Matchmaker Santa (2012) is also, technically, Chabert's first Hallmark Christmas movie. So, bit of trivia for you.
But you want to know about Santa and his unstoppable interest in getting people to hook up.
So, yeah. I kind of vaguely remember this occurring.
In 2019, someone posted a joke online that they were going to "assault Area 51" - ie, gather as many people as they could to "Naruto Run" onto the top secret military base with the idea "they can't stop us all".
Since X-Files debuted, Area 51 has been part of the zeitgeist. We all know it's there, it was a major location in the 1990's movie Independence Day, and is rumored to be where the US Air Force keeps downed alien spacecraft. More likely it is where we test experimental aircraft as that is where the U2 surveillance craft was first deployed, as well as the Stealth Bomber, etc...
The very real Area 51 is in the middle of nowhere and if you cross onto the property and don't stop for the guards, you will be shot. I guess one might solve the greatest mystery of all as you find out what's beyond this veil of tears.
Anyway, the documentary is about how all of this got wildly out of control, the power of social media to attract people with bad risk/reward understanding, and that the kids probably are all right. Stupid AF, but all right. It is also about how people who have no practical experience should try to host a million person rave in the desert. And how relying on the mob can really save your bacon.
This is a movie about a naive American doctor and her family who inherit a Scottish castle. However, the diabolical groundskeeper seduces and bamboozles the doctor into falling for him so that he may claim ownership of the lands he's worked since he was a child. That same labor presumably led to his father's early demise, and this is his revenge.
With dead eyed smiles, he earns the trust of the stressed out family, offering to take care of everything and let them live off the fat of their inheritance.
Unfortunately the movie ends just after he's successfully bedded the heiress doctor but before we can put his nefarious schemes into motion, so we never see that part.
No, but seriously, it's a minor miracle that no one died on this ship. Or contracted some awful disease.
What were the odds no one needed to be evacuated after the second day? Pretty close to zero, and it sounds like that didn't have to happen.
What's most wild, that the doc touches on but doesn't really ever explore, is how *fast* society breaks down predictably when the lights are off. From public fornication to Bible studies breaking out. It really is a testament to the crew that things felt enough under control that violence was contained.
But, no, really. I always assumed Carnival, etc... had emergency plans for this sort of thing, but they sure do not. Fun!
The "Trainwreck" series of docs is pretty fascinating. Little hour-long nuggets of "oh yeah, that disaster". We also watched "Balloon Boy", which is just as frustrating to watch as you'd imagine. If you have any radar for people who are both full of shit and people who think they can lie to you because they assume you're not as smart as they are, this is a doc about someone living neatly in that intersection.
Also, everyone needs to get a better idea of how much helium you would need to lift a whole kid and still buffett around like that. But I guess physics is not on your mind when you think a kid is whizzing through the sky.
Goes to/ Returns to: stays in same place (this is the 2nd installment)
Event: Several ongoing Christmas festivities
Food: Cookies
Editor's Note: So, y'all. Despite my stated goals and belief I'd done a phenomenal job documenting ChabertQuest 2025 (pats self on back), I messed this one up. Yes, I'd seen this movie, but had I written it up? I had not. Thought I had, but that was a lie I told myself, and discovered my error in July. I felt terrible as we agreed the the deal was I would watch and review all of the movies I could find starring one Lacey Chabert and you'd be like "why are you doing this?"
So, here we are, rewatching this one. And writing up this movie. For you, the people.
There were really only so many directions one could go with the premise of Haul Out The Holly (2022), the first film in what is now a trilogy.
The premise of the first film is that a woman breaks up with her live-in boyfriend and goes home for Christmas, only to find that her parents weren't expecting her and are actually moving to a seniors' condo in Florida. She's essentially left behind in her parents' McMansion. However, her own father was head of the HOA, and he set up a very Christmassy set of rules, which Chabert finds herself required to adhere to (despite the fact she does not own the house) and is force marched through the holiday season.
Guys, she also falls for Man nextdoor along the way.
So... we end the film with Christmas, love, and a 5000 square foot house in which she'll creep around like a Victorian ghost, I guess.
But what next? Haul out another holiday? Tragedy strikes Evergreen Lane? She casually starts putting out inverted pineapples when the neighbors come over?
Here in the sequel, Emily (Chabert) been gifted her parents house, she's all-in on Christmas madness, dating Man, and helping out with the neighborhood festivities.
However, as Christmas approaches and events are just beginning, the Jolly Johnsons, winners of a Christmas-themed reality show, move into the cul-de-sac. To the longtime Christmas-nerds of Evergreen Lane, this is like having your favorite quarterback or rock star move in and they flip out (yes, these movies operate in a cartoonish heightened reality).
Three Wisest Men (2025) is the third film in the very popular (for Hallmark) Wise Men series. We previously covered the first and second installments.
The problem with this movie is that we've established not just three characters, but their mom, spouses and partners, children, etc... and it is not a small cast. And everyone needs to get a plotline. So it's a lot of movie. I couldn't help but notice that this one was an "extended cut", which means whatever aired with commercials had less movie, and I have to assume that made this even more of a jumble.
From a business perspective, it's a fascinating peek into how Hallmark now functions like an old-school studio with their constellation of stars.
We are somewhere in the year of the 100th Anniversary of the release of Phantom of the Opera (1925), the silent film starring Lon Chaney, man of 1000 Faces.
I haven't watched it again this year, but I will! I promise.
I can't say when or where we are in relation to the original release schedule. Google is telling me the release date was November 15th, but I'm seeing much earlier in the year on Wikipedia. In the 1920's the movie would play in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major markets. Then, it might move on to other cities. This could be several months apart. Eventually, beat-up prints might leave the country or be sent to podunk towns. So who knows when or if Phantom of the Opera played most cities. But 1925 is the year in which the movie was released.
I saw Phantom of the Opera the first time circa 1990 on a lo-fi VHS tape obtained from a bin at Walmart. As the film precedes 1928, it fell out of copyright, and I found a copy produced by "Goodtime Videos" that set me back less than $10, and as an angsty teenage kid I spent an evening watching my first feature-length silent film while listening to some moody music.
Frankly, I was blown away.
I'd expected the movie to just be actors more or less pantomiming in front of shoddy sets, and all in wide shots. And, instead, a film taking place against the massive backdrop of the Paris Opera House unspooled, with wild visuals and dramatic moments. What I do not recall is if I had already read the novel of Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, but I sort of suspect that I had. I do know I had seen the film and watched the movie by the time I saw a non-Andrew Lloyd Webber stage play of the story toward the end of that same academic year.*
If silent-era films aren't your jam, I get it. I struggle with them as well and hats off to the folks who've trained themselves to watch silent films that aren't Buster Keaton or Chaplin. But I think Phantom of the Opera is practically must-see/ assigned viewing. It gives you an idea of how complex storytelling was handled during the era and the spectacle that could be created on the silver screen with visual tricks, gigantic sets, etc... It's almost hard to believe it wasn't actually filmed on location somewhere.
Lon Chaney is absolutely brilliant as Erik, which seems trite to say, but every time I watch the movie, I'm stunned by how terrifying he is. Others are good, no doubt. One does not dismiss Mary Philbin who plays Cristine and Mary Fabian's Madame Carlotta is terrific.
Whether I loved the recent Frankenstein or not, what I can say is that I love how it swung for the fences as an epic. We get one of those every few years in the horror genre, and it feels like Phantom of the Opera is the first of these in America. And, dang, you owe it to yourself to see this thing.
Happy 100th, Phantom of the Opera!
*I have no feelings on Andrew Lloyd Webber's version as I've only heard it and never seen it
One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard. With a relatively modest output compared to other popular historical writers, I would gladly put every one of her books in your hand.
A bit like Eddie Muller over at Noir Alley, Millard manages to humanize and make her subjects deeply understandable despite the gulf of time and geography. A while back, Jennifer R rec'd, Destiny of the Republic to me, which made me a true Millard fanboy and, these days, I'll happily pre-order any new Millard book when I hear it's available.
Shockingly, her first book, River of Doubt, is not the book which has received an adaptation. No post-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt mapping the Amazon for us. Instead, it's Destiny of the Republic, an account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the election of James Garfield to the US presidency, and his subsequent assassination by Charles Guiteau (spoilers on basic high school US History).
Most Americans are vaguely aware we had a president named Garfield, and some know he was killed early on in his presidency. What gets lost is the fascinating inflection point US politics were in that saw the Ohioan elected after years of prime 19th-Century corruption. And while some may know Guiteau was, as they say, crazy - until I'd read Millard's book, I sure didn't know how Guiteau scrambled along the edges of society, his story reflecting so much of what they don't teach in school about America in the 19th century and what would come to echo through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Now, Netflix has rolled out a star-studded series roughly based on the book and entitled Death By Lighting.
