Happy Hanukkah with Ben Grimm

It's been a rough week (already, and it's not even Wednesday).  After the events in Australia this weekend, we wanted to share some additional holiday joy and light.  And what more Signal Watch way to do that than with a little Ben Grimm?

I don't know how many people saw Fantastic Four: First Steps and found out that Ben Grimm is Jewish, but he sure is.  It's a rare nod to the faith shared by a whole lot of the guys who founded comics and superheroes in America.  And for those who know their Marvel and FF lore, Ben was often seen as a stand-in for one of my personal heroes Jack Kirby (aka:  Jacob Kurtzberg), who was very much a Jewish kid from Brooklyn.  

In the comics, Ben is known to throw a pretty good Hanukkah party.  

Anyway, no, I'm not Jewish by birth or practice, but we've been focusing so much on Christmas this season, felt it was time to bring up the eight crazy nights in celebration.

Holiday Noir Watch: Repeat Performance (1947)

Watched:  12/16/2025

Format:  Kanopy

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Alfred L. Werker

I'd seen Repeat Performance (1947) a few years back, I assume during one of the windows where blogging was on pause, because I have no write-up of the movie.  I'm very sure I saw it as part of Noir City Austin, but if I found out it was under different circumstances, okay then.

I didn't remember it particularly well, just a few impressions that turned out to hold.  I remembered it had a really solid ending that kind of saved the movie for me, the lead was a little aimless, and it sagged in the middle.  But it also was a curious exploration of a concept that would be pretty popular now and would withstand a remake.

The film opens on Joan Leslie murdering a "Barney" (Louis Hayward) and then fleeing to find friends at a New Years' party.  She's asking for help, and Richard Basehart takes her to see George Sanders Tom Conway.  En route, she makes a wish to have the whole year to do over - and she gets it.

After Joan Leslie has adjusted to the idea that she is living over 1946, she races home to change things.  

But no matter what she tries to do, fate keeps bending back to the inevitable conclusions of the year before.  Her husband, Barney, will play around on her with playwright Paula Costello (Virginia Field).  She's star in Costello's play.  Richard Basehart will find himself under the thrall of Mrs. Howell Mrs. Shaw (Natalie Schafer), a wealthy financer of the arts, who will do him dirty.  And it doesn't matter what Joan Leslie changes.

If marching inevitably toward one's doom is a feature of noir, then this slam dunks so hard it shatters the noir backboard.  But it is a weird fantasy movie, and for this sort of stuff that lived mostly in pulp magazines and would become more familiar with TV anthology series like Twilight Zone, it feels really early for a movie to be pulling mystical hoo-har in a movie like this.

If I'm looking for a way to strike it as noir, it's one part "oh, magic", and one part "this movie has a femme fatale, but our female lead is both dumb and spineless".  

That's no shade on Joan Leslie, who nails what she's given... but two years after WWII, it seems very, very odd that wed have a movie where a woman - who has murdered her philandering husband and is given another chance - once she sees how things are lining up - wouldn't kick his ass to the curb and avoid, you know, MURDER a second time.  He's also a terrible drunk, emotionally abusive, capable of physical abuse, and not once does he demonstrate why anyone wants to spend time with him.  He's arguably also the least handsome guy in every scene.

And still this lady is clinging onto him after he humiliates her and ruins himself.  It's kind of painful to watch. 

Virginia Field as the evil Paula Costello is actually pretty great.  Hats off.  She is one stone cold b.  

Anyway, not my favorite, but it's interesting.  

Happy Birthday, yesterday, Helen Slater

 

Happy birthday to actor, singer and all-around cool person, Helen Slater.  I missed her birthday yesterday, but what kind of world are we living in if I can't retroactively share a birthday celebration?

Slater was the original live-action Supergirl, and maintains strong ties to the fans and franchise. But she's also appeared in favorites like The Secret of My Success.  

Here's to another trip around the sun for our Girl of Steel.

Joe Ely Merges With The Infinite

Legendary Texas Musician Joe Ely has passed.  He was 78.

More here.

Ely was part of the Flatlanders and continued to perform up until very recently.  I saw him with my Cousin Sue and family a few years back at the Saxon Pub.  Ian McClagen was just sitting at the bar.  

Not too much longer after that, I was paying to park at a lot off Colorado with a bunch of people from out of town (I remember one dude was from Belgium), and there was Joe Ely at the kiosk, paying to park.  He heard me freaking out and saying "That's Joe Ely!  That's Joe Ely!" which was a fact I assume he knew.

Ely was a crucial figure in Texas music for decades, and a Texas legend.  He'll be missed.

Holiday Goofiness Watch: North Pole Nutrias (2002) and A Meowy Christmas (2017)

Watched:  NPN  12/07/2025, MC  12/14/2025

Format:  YouTube/ YouTube

Viewing:  First for both

Director:  Rick Dealup/ Steve Rudzinski

As we near Christmas, we did two quick watches with Dug and K to get ourselves in the Christmas Spirit.  The first was North Pole Nutrias (2002), a puppet-show running about 26 minutes and created by New Orleans-based pair Quintron and Miss Pussycat.  The second was a little indie movie out of Pittsburgh called A Meowy Christmas from 2018.  This one runs about 55 minutes, but feels like it's about 6 days.

While watching North Pole Nutrias, I learned not everyone knows what a Nutria is - which is a large-ish rodent that lives along rivers and near water.  They've invaded the waterways for New Orleans and cause enough problems that there's been a bounty on the animals.  But!

North Pole Nutrias is, apparently, a bit of a holiday tradition for the hep cats of New Orleans, and I get it.  It's a puppet show, shot on tape, and has some distinct vibes of music and art scenes of the late 90's.  Kind of an embracing of the media we'd grown up on - specials like Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas - but made with an intentional lo-fi feel and hand-made aesthetic.  Think Pee-Wee's Playhouse, that you know through the glossed up version and are just used to.  

Rob Reiner Merges With The Infinite

I hate this.  I hate writing this.  

No one deserves to die the way Rob Reiner and his wife Michele passed.  

Most of the time, I'm able to write a simple "they were beloved, and will be missed, here's why this site is memorializing them", but today, on this one, the cruelty of what happened is a bit overwhelming.

We all know Rob Reiner, and kind of wish we had met him.  He seemed absolutely aces, and he made so damn many good movies.  Hell, he'd be a legend just for his few scenes as an actor just in The Wolf of Wall Street, but as a director and producer, he put out some of our favorite movies.  

May the Reiner's family know what the work Rob Reiner did meant a lot to so very many people, and that Rob and Michele will be mourned.

Disney Doc Watch: The Sweatbox (2002)

Watched:  12/14/2025

Format:  Internet Archive

Viewing:  First

Director:  Trudie Styler

Hoo boy.

So, this was probably not the final form of the doc The Sweatbox (2002), but it is the one that I found online at The Internet Archive.  It's a little rough and incomplete, but was clearly heading toward a final cut.  Why is it in this state?  Apparently it's been quashed by Disney, and yet... here I am.  A man who watched it.

The Sweatbox is a doc about the making of what became The Emperor's New Groove, a film which we recently watched.  The film takes the viewer through the Disney process of making an animated film, giving viewers some insight into how the sausage is made, which may be surprising if your knowledge of film is based in live-action.  The Disney animation tradition established by Walt and the original Disney animation team was always to run story, gags, etc...  through a committee so you could be told honestly what worked and what didn't.  When Walt was around, he would ask how you could "plus" something - ie: make it better.* Or, sometimes, be honest that something may need to change, and/or you may need to dump a favored idea.

True Crime/ Noir Watch: The Phenix City Story (1955)

Watched:  12/14/2025

Format:  TCM on HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Phil Karlson

The Phenix City Story (1955) was not at all what I was expecting from brief descriptions I'd read over the years when making a choice for what to watch.

First - Phenix City is a real city in Alabama on the Georgia state line.  Second - this is a true crime movie that was made in the wake of the assassination of a recently elected new Attorney General from the State of Alabama who was voted in on his promise to clean up the vice and corruption in Phenix City.

Phenix City sits across the Chattahoochee River from the larger Columbus, Georgia and near a very large Army Base, Ft. Benning.  Apparently, for decades and decades, that was enough to make the small town (about 24,000 people) into a place where one could gamble and pick up hookers while the locals looked the other way.  While Phenix City also had more churches per capita than anywhere else in Alabama, somehow the city basically turned a blind eye to the economic engine that is allowing your town to be Pottersville.  

The movie is wildly frank about this for a Hayes Code-era movie.  They murder children, on screen.  There's other acts of terrible violence.  It mentions and shows prostitution, gambling, etc...  and even discusses and shows prostitution offered in return for votes for the corrupt politicians.  I'm kind of shocked this movie isn't a much bigger deal just as a counterpoint to what people think is both the squeaky clean media of the Eisenhower era and a counterpoint to the dumbulbs who think things were all Mayberry in ye olden thymes.  

Disney Watch: The Emperor's New Groove (2000)

Watched:  12/13/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Second (I think.  Maybe third?  Jamie will tell me.)

Director:  Mark Dindal

I remember quite liking The Emperor's New Groove (2000) when I saw it in December of 2000.  I believe Jamie, The Dug and I went to see it on Christmas Eve in Lawton during it's initial release.  But I haven't come back to it over the years.  No real reason - there are many movies and I don't rewatch everything.

The other week, I saw some memes using Gronk imagery and was thinking "man, why have I not rewatched that movie?"  Frankly, aside from David Spade's character becoming a llama, I didn't really remember much about the movie other than "it is funny".  

On a revisit, it's an odd Disney film.  It feels very... small.  And for a movie with "groove" in the title, it has I think one song and it's performed by Tom Jones?  

Christmas Horror Watch: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Watched:  12/13/2025

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lee Harry

Sometimes horror fans complain that critics will say "this is pretty good for horror" or something of the like.  And I agree - that's a bit dismissive of a whole genre.  But my suspicion about why this happens is that sometime in high school, a person who would one day become a critic was with friends who rented something like Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), and their takeaway was "this is what you guys are watching?"

On its face, yes.  This is a movie with problems.  It's three years after the first film's release, and this sequel - put out well into the age of VHS where most people probably saw the first Silent Night, Deadly Night - spends 36 minutes doing a mix of clip show of the first movie and having our new villain/ protagonist relay the story of the first film to a psychiatrist.  Then it spends ~30 minutes relaying the fate of the brother of the first Kill Krazy Kris Kringle (our hero/villain) before it unleashes our guy onto the world, where he immediately goes after his abusive former Mother Superior.  

There is, to my surprise, an added bit of pretension at the end as we learn the surviving nun was the same woman our Second Santa avenged after near SA - killing the dude with a Jeep.  I did not think this was the sort of movie to include dramatic irony, but here we are.

By the way, I did figure out immediately that at some point I'd seen the first half of Silent Night, Deadly Night, but I must not have finished the movie.  

But if your critics' only takeaway was "that wasn't very good", I am afraid they're missing the point.  This is the opposite of "elevated horror" - this is Santa Exploitation Horror.  This is a mad man walking around a suburban street firing off something like 20 shots from a six-shooter while he laughs stiffly and badly.  This is a guy murdering people for talking in the movie theater and punishing "naughty" people with an axe to the head.  It's not scary - it's basically a comedy.

So does it succeed as a film delivering on that premise?  

I mean, I think so.  This is a Rental movie to watch while drinking beer, and maybe cheer a bit when some murders happen.  

Thanks to the merging of the first film into the first act of this movie, it's also a wildly overcomplicated movie for a movie about a guy who puts on a Santa hat to kill people.  And it's part of the movie's charm.

I am only sad that I watched it by myself.

One day I need to do a post about how maybe the usefulness of critics and awards is minimal, and that what really makes a movie survive is a culture that can sustain those movies.  And horror and the horror fanbase is amazing about keeping movies alive and making lowkey celebs out of people who made a cheap movie 40 years ago.

Dick Van Dyke at 100

 

Dick Van Dyke is now 100.  What a delight to do a "at 100" post and have the person still with us and in terrific shape.

He's easily one of the earliest actors whose names I knew who wasn't a Star War.  As a kid, I remember being taken to a re-release of Mary Poppins, and it was part of how I fell in love with movies.  And, of course, reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show played well through when I was a young adult - when I feel like I finally got the appeal (no, not just Mary Tyler Moore - it's really funny and now I kind of want to watch it again).  Not bad for a show that ended 9 years before I was born.

Later, I'd see him in Bye Bye Birdie and other films.  The man is an entertainer.  

Here's to lasting a century and somehow remaining universally beloved.  You have a lot of choices of how you want people to think of you at 100, if you're remembered at all.  This may be the absolute best case of all.

Chabert Watch: Slightly Single in LA (2013)

Ah, the "look at our galaxy of stars" rom-com poster.  Always a promising sign.

Watched:  12/12/2025

Format DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

Editor's note:  we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography.  I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online (one way or another).  

Ugh.  

File this under "this movie was never aimed at me" but also "never write fiction that is a thinly veiled version of a story about yourself".

Christie Will Wolf (here listed as Christie Will) is the writer/ director/ producer of Slightly Single in LA (2013).  These days she's a prolific director and producer of Hallmark movies, and I've seen some of them in whole or part.  She also was the mastermind behind 2011's Holiday Heist, one of the hardest-to-watch movies viewed during ChabertQuest 2025.  

The movie is a rom-com/ would-be Sex in the City about the foibles of a group of women and their token gay friend (Jonathan Bennet).  The story follows around Chabert's character, Dale, who has had bad luck in love.  But what's played for comedy is merely comedy shaped but at no time made me so much as crack a smile.  The movie feels like it's about someone with terrible risk analysis and decision making skills.  But the movie is written, directed and produced by one person - who seems totally unaware that the characters are not just unrelatable, but deeply unsympathetic.  

This lead character sucks.  But she sucks the least of all of the characters, so... yay?

DC Studios: Supergirl Trailer Arrives

The movie isn't arriving until late June of 2026, but we have our first trailer for the upcoming movie, Supergirl.  

For comics readers, we're going to recognize this is a loose adaptation of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.  It's a pastiche on revisionist westerns, especially True Grit.  So she comes by the duster thematically and honestly.

Yes, this is a different Supergirl than Helen Slater or Melissa Benoist.  And I shock myself to say this - but that's okay.  I adore Silver Age Supergirl, and Bronze Age Supergirl, but Supergirl, with her story, was in need of a serious overhaul, which I think she got locked in via comics scribe Sterling Gates several years ago now.  

The basic idea is - she's not Superman.  He was an infant foundling, she was a survivor of a catastrophe she saw first hand.  She is walking trauma.  Ma and Pa taught Clark to be kind and love everyone, Kara learned the world will literally explode beneath you.  Anyone who thought Superman was a bit too sunshine-y now has their flip side of the coin.

Milly Alcock seems a solid choice for this Kara from her appearance to her spirit, and I think The Youths will like Alcock and her Kara Zor-El.  I've seen nothing that makes me anything less enthused about her as the choice.

Here's that trailer:

Chabert Holiday Rewatch: The Tree That Saved Christmas (2014)

My original rules for ChabertQuest 2025 included not re-watching and re-posting on movies I'd already seen and written up.  Somehow it bothered me that I didn't rewatch this one even though I'd previously seen The Tree That Saved Christmas (2014) and wrote it up back during lockdown.  

All I remembered was that the snow was pretty much non-existent (in Vermont on December) and maybe you could see some blankets thrown down to double as snow.  So, I decided to give it one more whirl to make sure no Chabert-stone was left unturned during ChabertQuest.  

This may have aired on Hallmark, but, is so, it's a small, indie movie that was licensed to Hallmark, which was their model for a while.  These days, I think they own a lot more of the movies that they air.  Thus, older movies like this are out there, but not officially Hallmark at this point.  

This movie arrives in Year 2 of Chabert making movies for Hallmark-type outfits.  She'd made Matchmaker Santa in 2013, and by 2014 was in A Royal Christmas, which is kind of considered a Hallmark classic by Hallmark nerds, and is arguably the real start of Chabert's rise to Hallmark supremacy.  In 2014, for good or ill, she also made this movie.

Christmas Classic Watch: White Christmas (1954)

Watched:  12/09/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Michael Curtiz

I always wonder how contemporary audiences received the Michael Curtiz movie, White Christmas (1954), when it came out.  It's not exactly The Best Years of Our Lives, but does speak to the post-war era as people moved on with their lives, from enlisted soldiers to retired Generals.  But also is aware of the camaraderie forged among pairs of men in war, as well as that of whole battalions.  And, the people who waited at home and their relation to the fighting men and women.  

People may not be nostalgic for getting shot at constantly, but they do miss the people they knew who got them through.

The movie opens on the last December of the war as Bing Crosby - playing an analog of himself - performs alongside Danny Kaye, who is not famous back home.  They' salute their outgoing General Waverly, knowing he actually cared about all of them.  

Netflix Watch: Stranger Things - Season 5 Part 1

I am sure my observations are in no way unique, but here we go.

I don't think Stranger Things is for me.

SPOILERS

Three years between seasons is way too long for serial television.  The problem is not unique to this show, and Stranger Things has already taken it on the chops a bit for trying to suggest that the first season to this season took place within 4-5 years when our kid actors are now old enough to run for Congress.

The bigger problem with the delay between seasons is that, at best, I'm a casual viewer.  I'm not a person who often rewatches serialized TV, and with multiple years between seasons I have a very hard time remembering what previously happened unless prompted very specifically.  And even then, it only kind of comes back.  

But, really, the show became something I was less interested in altogether after Season 2.

Chabert Christmas Watch: She's Making a List (2025)

Watched:  12/06/2025

Format:  Hallmark Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stacey N. Harding

Job: Spy for the Naughtylist

Location of story:  Unclear but LA?/ Snowy generic USA

new skill: Empathy

Man: Andrew Walker

Job of Man: Restaurant consultant

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to?

Event: Christmas Eve

Food: dessert pizza

Here you go, Randolph.

For a while, actor Lacey Chabert has been tapped The Queen of Hallmark Christmas.   At the start of 2025, Hallmark signed an exclusive contract with Chabert, and as far as I know, the only such contract ever signed by the media concern, locking in talent.  What numbers they had on hand to drive that decision must have been pretty interesting.

This year, Chabert would go on to star in a Halloween movie,  this movie - She's Making a List (2025) , and in January, she's starring in a movie about being stranded in paradise.  She has both her own product line in Hallmark stores, and Keepsake - a line of ornaments at Hallmark - released a Lacey Chabert ornament.  Not a "here's a Star Trek character" ornament, just a Lacey Chabert ornament.  

Just before starting on this post, NathanC sent me an article from Variety that states Chabert is filming a Hallmark movie at Disney World for Christmas 2026.  So, she's doing okay, if you're wondering.  

So, for Hallmark and Chabert both, a LOT was riding on the film.  Would all this investment pay off? 

Santa Watch: Violent Night (2022)

Watched:  12/06/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Tommy Wirkola

LOL.  Oh my.

Really enjoyed this more than I should have, but I also really liked Deadly Games/3615 code Père Noël.  And after so many Hallmark movies, it's honestly kind of nice to spice things up a bit.

I guess the plot summary is:  An insanely rich family with government ties is taken hostage by a group of well-armed thieves.  Santa Claus happens to be in the house at the moment and gets involved, remembering how he was once a viking berserker with a war hammer named "Skullcrusher".  Things get intensely violent.

It's a knowing mish-mash of holiday favorites, from Die Hard to Home Alone, of having to fight back on the quietest night of the year.  

David Harbour plays ol' Kris Kringle as a miserable drunk, who bemoans - as one does in modern movies - the lack of meaning in Christmas and lack of belief in Santa.  John Leguizamo plays "Scrooge", the Hans Gruber of this bunch of international thieves.  Beverly D'Angelo - who looks great, btw - plays the cut-throat matriarch of the family.  Edi Patterson plays her alcoholic daughter with an obnoxious influencer son and a himbo actor boyfriend.  

The focal family with the young girl with belief in Santa is played by people I've never seen before, Alexis Louder and Alex Hassell, plus Leah Brady as Trudy.  

I guess I just loved how they manhandled some aspects of how holiday movies work - like the power of belief, of Christmas magic solving problems, how Home Alone works, and Santa's usual bag of tricks.

Anyway, it was a lot of Rated-R fun, and I was cackling.  A really good palate cleanser if things got a little too sweet for you in your holiday movie watching.  

Chabert Watch: Hometown Legend (2002)

Watched:  12/05/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  James Anderson (I fully believe this is an Alan Smithee name for someone)

Editor's note:  we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography.  I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online one way or another.  This one set me back about $6.10.

First, this DVD, purchased as "used" from a Goodwill had never been opened.  Not since the movie was released in, like, 2003 on DVD.  It was wrapped in some sort of transport wrap from the seller, then the original shrink wrap, and THEN still had the vertical AND horizontal security stickers across the packaging intact.

This movie was produced by a Christian production company and some involved are still in movies.  As I bought this on a 2000's-era DVD, it has bonus features including a full Director's commentary I really want to listen to.  But, more importantly, there's all kinds of bonus content about Jerry B. Jenkins - which the DVD itself says is the most famous writer you never heard of.  Apparently he's the mastermind behind this movie?  And (deep sigh) the guy who wrote the Left Behind books.  And a bunch of other stuff.  This seems to be the Jenkins family parlaying their book money into movies.

But, yeah, he essentially uses the bonus features to promote himself.  Amazing choice.

Sellers Watch: Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

Watched:  12/03/2025

Format:  Simon's DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Blake Edwards

I never got onboard the Pink Panther movies back when it made sense to do so.  As a kid, they had some pacing I wasn't onboard with, and when I was really little, I was mad there was no cartoon Pink Panther in the movies.  Instead, it was that detective guy.

At the time, I wasn't aware of who Peter Sellers was, and I didn't ever tune in long enough to give the movies a real chance.  Simon has long found this baffling, so last night he brought over Return of the Pink Panther (1975), and -yeah, it's really funny.  

While it's a sequel, it gives you all the information you need.  Christopher Plummer plays a retired jewel thief who is framed for the robbery of the Pink Panther Diamond - the world's largest diamond.  Inspector Clouseau is called in to once again solve the crime of who stole the diamond.  

Obviously Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers didn't invent physical comedy, but there's certainly something hyper-specific about Sellers' Clouseau - the badly put in disguises, the walking Dunning-Krueger Effect of his real persona, and absolutely the slap stick...  You can certainly see where the ZAZ guys were getting some of their inspiration.

The movie co-stars Catherine Schell as Plummer's wife, and - showing me he's hilarious and I had no idea - Herbert Lom as Clouseau's boss.

Anyway, there are some very dated jokes (read: kinda racist) so proceed with the knowledge that the movie is 50 years old.  

Explaining jokes is lame, so I'm going to just offer this one up as a pretty dang funny movie.

Hallmark Christmas Miscellanea Watch: A Grand Ole Opry Christmas (2025) and Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (2025)

Watched:  11/30 and 12/1/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First for both

Director:  AGOOC - Clare Niederpruem / CatCC - Lucie Guest

Sunday we decided to lean into the Hallmark Season with their big dollar movie, A Grand Ole Opry Christmas (2025).  Monday I was doing other things and we let play Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (2025).  And it was a study in where Hallmark is going in 2025 with a more ambitious, less-boilerplate film versus classic Hallmark formula.

A Grand Ole Opry Christmas was a sincere time-travel movie about a woman (Nikki Deloach) whose father was a 90's country star in a Brooks and Dunn model, but he threw in the towel and quit making music.  A few years later he died, and she doesn't know why he quit making music.  She, and her best friend (Kristoffer Polaha), are transported to the mid-90's via Christmas/ Grand Ole Opry magic to learn what happened.  

Mean, Christmas at the Catnip Cafe is about a big city marketing exec (Erin Cahill) who inherits half of a cat cafe in small town upstate New York.  The other half is owned by an overworked veterinarian (Paul Campbell).  She wants to sell to buy a condo in LA.  He wants to keep his cafe open.  But they mutually wish to get to business time.

RomCom Watch: Happiness for Beginners (2023)

Watched:  11/30/2205

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vicky Wight

We watched Happiness for Beginners (2023) because Jamie had read the book and wanted to check out how it was turned it into a film.  And because Jamie watches so much nonsense of my choosing, I wished to be flexible and watch a movie about Eat, Pray, Loving one's way through a long hike.  Plus, Ellie Kemper is fun.

And, yeah, I am very glad Ellie Kemper got a movie as a lead and was able to show some star quality other than making mad bank as Kohl's Mom.  I've mostly seen her play "wacky" and this wasn't really that.  Here, she's a woman in her 30's who just wrapped up a divorce and decides to go on the aforementioned days-long hike on the Appalachian Trail.  

Helen (Kemper) is accidentally joined by her younger brother's best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes) who accidentally also signed up for the same hike, and along the way she learns, laughs and loves, and the two hook up at the film's end.  Shocker.  (You will know this in the first five minutes of the movie.  This is a spoiler only if you have amnesia that makes you forget how every movie, ever, worked.)

Neo-Noirvember Chabert Watch: The Pleasure Drivers (2006)

Watched:  11/29/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andrzej Sekula

Editor's note:  we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography.  I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online one way or another.  This one set me back about $5.

Truly a product of a particular decade, somehow The Pleasure Drivers (2006) arrived about seven years after that decade.  It's another LA-based low-budget crime movie, with this one peppering itself with vague philosophical aspirations, but what they are saying lacks any insight and is dumb.  And, the movie is entirely populated by characters who take their cues from how human beings behave from other movies, leaving us with weird third-generation xeroxes of motivation instead of anything identifiable as human.  

Everything about the film feels late-90's, part of the post Pulp Fiction indie boom.  It's three stories that loosely intertwine, and, of course, collide at the end.  But none of the three stories is very interesting and none of the characters terribly watchable.  

Noirvember Watch: Saigon (1947)

Watched:  11/27/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Leslie Fenton

I was pretty psyched to see a new-to-me movie starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  And one that was set in a post-WWII Saigon.  I was very curious how they'd handle the dynamics of the French colonialism, Japanese occupation, rise of Communism, etc...  

Well, the answer is, none of that comes up.  In fact, I don't think there's a single Vietnamese person in this movie.  That's... wild.

I *do* like the basic idea of the plot.  

Three Army Air Corp soldiers in post-War China are getting discharged.  One of them doesn't know he has only 2-3 months to live due to an ailment (cancer?  something else?) but will likely just die suddenly.  So, the other two decide to show him the time of his life, which they can do if they take a lucrative but shady gig flying a businessman from Shanghai to Saigon.  

But when they go to get the plane and fly him out, the cops stop the businessman, while his secretary, Veronica Lake, jumps in the plane and they fly off.  The plane crashes in Vietnam, and they make their way to Saigon.  Along the way, the dying man falls for Lake (reasonable) while she spars with Alan Ladd.

Oh, and she has a briefcase full of cash.

And, as Lake humors the dying guy, she and Ladd start to fall for each other.

Anyway, it's super weird.  They treat it as if everyone in Vietnam is French?  Or vaguely European?  There's only one Asian person in the movie at the very beginning who sounds very Southern Californian.  

The movie is fine.  It'll never be a favorite, but when I was thinking "I don't think this is working", it kind of changed directions a few times and saved itself.  It fits into that "it's fine" category, but closer to "it's good".  But I just wasn't 100% on board.  But I maybe need to give it another shot.

Hallmark Holiday Watch: Holiday Touchdown - a Bills Love Story (2025)

Watched:  11/25/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

So, for reasons beyond my understanding, the NFL has entered into an alliance with Hallmark to produce movies about super-fans of their teams falling in love at Christmas.  

In no way will this get repetitive after 32 movies.

Despite some real star-power (for Hallmark) the first movie was a complete mess.  And I expected more-of-same.

Holiday Touchdown: a Bills Love Story (2025) actually solved some of the issues of the first movie but then blew my mind by trying to create a sort of MCU of NFL-themed movies by showing the characters from the first movie in this one.  And the magical Santa is in this one mucking with people's lives.

The last movie had some star power with Diedrich Bader, Richard Riehle, Ed Begley Jr., Christine Ebersole, et al.  What it didn't really have was much actual representation by the Chiefs players.  

This one had Joey Pantoliano playing a version of himself as a wacky uncle.  Our stars are Woman (Holland Roden) and Man (Matthew Daddario, who I didn't know, but people keep fan-casting his sister as Wonder Woman, and... fair).  They're childhood friends and neighbors, and the running gag is everyone knows he's pining for Woman.

There's lot of Bills-specific humor which I vaguely get, and lots of regional-specific stuff, which did not lose me, but sure felt like them making sure we knew they were in Buffalo and not doing the usual "we filmed in Vancouver, but please believe this is Arizona" thing Hallmark will do.

The pair find out Joey Pants has been receiving gifts every year from an anonymous source, going back to when he was drafted and this same anonymous person also sent his family groceries and money.  The movie is them solving the mystery.  

Along the way, they fall in love, blah blah blah...  but there's also LOTS of Bills players and coaches and owners and whatnot.  And the main character is a project manager on the new stadium, so there's lots of discussion about that.  But none about how expensive tickets are supposed to be in the new stadium.

I dunno, like a lot of the new Hallmark movies, it's actually kind of funny.  Not gut-bustingly, but I had a chuckle or two.  It feels more like a sitcom than a Hallmark movie.  And that is not a complaint.  Anyway, they fixed a lot that didn't work in last year's offering.

Happy Birthday, Tina Turner

 

Today marks the birthday of Tina Turner, one of the greats of R&B and rock.  

Y'all put on her Simply the Best collection and thank me later.