Chabert Not-Hallmark X-Mas Watch: A Holiday Heist (2011)

Watched:  06/06/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

So, I thought A Holiday Heist (2011) was going to be a Hallmark movie, but it was not.  It was, instead, one of the weird, trash movies that get made every year in a filmmaking economy I do not understand.  It wasn't A Talking Cat!?! levels of not-giving-a-@#$%, but it was closer to that than it was theater-ready.  It made your typical Hallmark movie look like It's a Wonderful Life by comparison.  I do not know who this was for, where it was shown, who paid for it...  Usually when something is this trash it's called something like "The Dog Who Saved Christmas", but there's no dog in this movie.  They can't afford it.

The filming had to have occurred over, like, two weeks.  There's maybe five locations, and all of the money went to getting hired gun actors with some name recognition to show up, do some schtick, and mostly not be there longer than two or three days.

In this case, it's Vivica A. Fox as the mean Dean of the college and Chris Kattan as a wacky uncle who has nothing to do with anything.  

And... Lacey Chabert as the focal character.  As she does in so many movies, she plays the anchor of the plot.  She is the general-female-protagonist-with-an-artistic-bent, this time a college student skipping Christmas to work in an art gallery (Chabert herself would have been about 28 or 29 when this was filmed).  

Chabert X-Mas Watch: A Christmas Melody (2015)

Watched: 06/04/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  Second?

Director:  Mariah Carey

Job: Unemployed/ diner waitress/ Would-be-Fashion Designer

Location of story:  Silver Falls, Ohio

new skill:  Giving up

Man:  Brennan Elliot

Job of Man:  Elementary School music teacher

Goes to/ Returns to:  Returns to

Event:  Christmas concert/ Snowflake Pageant

Food:  I don't know that they had a food they harped on

The two Queens of Christmas in one forgotten movie!

Chabert stars!  Carey directs?

I'd seen this one during COVID lockdown, but, honestly, I was pretty drunk.  Plus, I blocked out a lot of what I watched during lockdown, so it was kind of like seeing it for the first time.

I re-read my original post on this movie, and I agree with most of it.  It is very fixated on high school and a girl leaving and everyone rubbing it in her face that she had to come home after (checks notes) her husband died and her business failed.  

So, yeah, being a jerk about that seems right.  As we've learned in the last decade, people are the worst.

I also still think the movie is very thin, and that's a screenplay issue, but also I'm surprised I was so surprised by this the first time.  It's kinda par for the course for a Hallmark movie to basically provide a set-up and then people shoot the shit for forty-five minutes, there's a small bit of tension about the two would-be-lovers maybe not getting it on, and then they throw caution and financial security to the wind and go for it.  I'd argue that when there's more to it, that's the outlier. 

But, yeah, it's about Chabert giving up LA to come home where she has what seems like a 2700 sq foot Queen Anne waiting for her in perfect condition.  Her daughter has a gift for singing and poetry, but is sad they've left LA.  

Chabert enrolls her daughter in her old school only to find that her high school nemesis, Mariah Carey, is there and the Queen Bee of the PTA, etc... and a real piece of work.  But Santa works there as the janitor?

Superman 2025: Predictable Patterns

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Well.  With the arrival of the second trailer, it sure feels like people are getting onboard the Superman (2025) train, at least online.  I think the slow roll out of images, ideas, etc... is actually working very well.  

In my years of observing superhero media releases, there's a distinct pattern when it comes to superhero fans and their management of the conversation online.  That conversation can impact what normies see online, which may shape what they may think is the "informed" opinion to have prior to a movie's release - especially in the critical demographic of young adults, who will pay more attention to their peers and what some guy in his mother's house said on TikTok than anything else.

That can be hard.  

Chabert Holiday Watch: A Royal Christmas (2014)

Watched:  06/02/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing: Unknown

Director:  Alex Zamm

Job: Tailor/ Would-be-Fashion Deisgner

Location of story:  vague Europe

new skill: passing for someone allowed in public

Man:  Steven Hagen

Job of Man: Prince

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  The Royal Christmas Ball  

Food:  pancakes

I have two more non-Christmas movies to watch as part of ChabertQuest 2025, but just wasn't in the mood for either after a weird couple of weeks around Signal Watch HQ.  So, instead, I went down the list of the Christmas movies I have to get through, and we picked this one.  

While I had not previously written this one up, I am positive I've seen it in parts or in whole as I certainly remembered bits of it, so I am not calling it a First Viewing.  

Wrongly, I believed that A Royal Christmas (2014) was Chabert's first Christmas movie for Hallmark.  It's not.  We'll get to that one.  Nor is it even close to the first basic cable Christmas movie about an unlikely American regular-ol'-girl who sweeps a prince off his feet.  But it does appear to have been the moment Hallmark fully invested in Chabert for Christmas, and ten years later, she basically signed a contract to be the Queen of Hallmark Christmas.

The movie was filmed in Romania, but with American and English talent.  Jane Seymour co-stars, which can't have been inexpensive.  And they have a whole castle, block off city streets, etc...  Maybe it's a huge budget!  Maybe the dollar goes super far in Romania!  I have no idea.

Our basic story is that Chabert is a normal girl with a dream to be a fashion designer.  She works at her dad's tailor shop in Philadelphia and has been dating an MBA student, Leo, for a year.  Leo is to spend Christmas with Chabert and her dad, but Leo is  suddenly summoned home.  Before he departs, she learns Leo is actually Leopold, a legit prince of a small, independent country in the South of France.  A sort of San Marino, I guess.  But it is what SNL would call The Kingdom of Caucasia.  And, so the movie can happen, she goes along.

Jonathan Joss Merges With The Infinite

Actor Jonathan Joss has passed.  

He was the voice actor for John Redcorn on King of the Hill, appeared on Parks and Rec, and was in many other productions.

I met Joss once somewhat by accident.  I was attending a small swap meet/ convention, and I guess Joss was packing up his table to leave just as I showed up late.  He saw that when we locked eyes I knew who he was due to what I assume was a stupid grin, and... as people so often do seeing an amiable lumbering fellow, shoved a box of stuff for me to carry.  And so it was, I was briefly assisting Jonathan Joss on his way out to his car.

Anyway, I was so f'ing pleased to meet the guy, who cares about carrying a box or two?

Today I learned he was murdered by a former neighbor at the site of his former home.  It seems to be a textbook hate crime, and I find myself helplessly furious that this happened.  Hopefully justice will be swift and certain.

Fuller Watch: Forty Guns (1957)

Watched:  06/01/2025

Format:  TCM forever ago, but on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sam Fuller

I'm gonna say - I've never disliked a Sam Fuller movie.  And, in fact, I like Sam Fuller movies when I watch them, and I probably need to watch more of them.

Forty Guns (1957) is a pastiche on the Wyatt Earp/ Tombstone mythos and OK Corral films, with Barry Sullivan playing the Wyatt Earp stand-in, Griff Bonnell.  The three Bonnell brothers ride into Tombstone to collect a lawman who has been robbing mail delivery.  But on their way in, they're passed by Stanwyck in all black on a white horse, and riding head of forty men - her Dragoons.  

Stanwyck's Jessica Drummond is the hard-as-nails boss of the territory, who has helped turn Arizona into something like civilization, but rules her territory with forty hired guns who ride far and wide doing her bidding while she puppet masters politicians, judges and the law.  

She has a maniacal brother, Brockie (John Ericson), who she covers for even as he causes her no small amount of trouble, this time by shooting an older lawman - who is going blind.

In some ways, this is a familiar version of the Earps and the Cowboys story from Tombstone - three brothers taking on an organized mob on the edge of civilization.  In others, it's a bit different as Griff and Jessica start to fall for each other, seeing in each other that they're the kind of people it took to build the West, but now the use for people like them is coming to a close.

Del Toro's "Frankenstein" Trailer

 

If you hang around this site, you may know I have an affinity for Frankenstein, which is usually associated with the original novel, and definitely the Universal monster films.  More recently, I've also been shown the Hammer Frankenstein films which feature Cushing as the mad doctor, and I've taken a shine to them for their weird perversity.  But I'll also check out other films, comics, whatever - from time to time if the good doctor or the monster is involved.  This includes the take in DCSU's Creature Commandos.  

But, yes, we're always curious when a new movie is in the offing.

Guillermo Del Toro is as good a choice as I could ask for in regards to the material.  That Universal let this movie happen and it isn't coming from them is sort of a shock.  But I can appreciate that Netflix is willing to do something that looks so close to the novel, where I suspect Universal would want to get back to ol' flathead and maintain their brand.  Especially as they just opened a whole amusement park around the idea (which looks amazing, by the way).

Anyway - I can tell nothing.  This is basically the first chapter or three of a very long book, with a few glimpses of SOP Frankenstein tucked in.  But that's okay. Oscar Issac is a personal favorite of mine, so I'm happy with that casting, and I think Mia Goth is Elizabeth, so that's good.

So, this Fall - for Halloween I was already planning to blitz the Hammer Frankenstein movies, which are weird and unsettling in their own way - and I can include this and just make it a Franky-fest.

Brooks Watch: Spaceballs (1987)

Watched:  05/31/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  10,000,000th

Director:  Mel Brooks

Rick Moranis should have gotten the Oscar for this one.

Back In Time Watch: Back To The Future Part II (1989)

Watched:  05/30/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Robert Zemeckis

I have a very strange relationship less with Back To The Future and the two sequels - maybe more strange than I maybe should have for three movies I don't really care about.  I think those movies are perfectly adequate 1980's movies that were kind of an entertaining carnival ride at the time, but that was it.  Over the years, like so much of Gen-X's media from our formative years, the Back To The Future movies have been elevated and elevated in the zeitgeist until, now, they're considered a major cultural touchstone.  Which, to me, is like "what if The Wraith or Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend were the movie that generated a cottage industry for a studio, inspired rides, a West End musical, and endless devotion?"  

Like, the movie was something I enjoyed, sorta, at the time, but it wasn't my jam.

First, as a kid I found Michael J. Fox as much fun as nails on a chalkboard.  It wasn't until Spin City that I found him remotely tolerable.  And in retrospect, that was probably that Connie Britton was such a distraction I didn't notice Fox as much.  I do not wish to speak ill of Fox, but his general Michael J. Fox-ness was a major factor in my reaction to all of his movies.  Sorry, dude.

I felt like, even at the time, "oh, here's more of that Boomer nostalgia about the 1950's and 60's" which was all over at the time.  I mean, 1986 gave us Peggy Sue Got Married, and the previous years had been giving us Happy Days, Grease, Sha-na-na...   As a kid who liked sci-fi, it felt like a waste of the potential for the concept, and only later did I appreciate that time travel was just the excuse to soak in this funny premise of a kid meeting his parents at the same age.  And hear music from 97.7 - all the oldies, all the time.  

The humor in the first one struck me as dumb.  The bit about "I am Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan" just felt... lame to me.