Musical Watch: Kismet (1955)

Watched:  05/14/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincent Minnelli

A couple of months ago, I rewatched It's Always Fair Weather, and remembered Dolores Gray existed. The first time I'd seen the movie, she was my favorite part of the film. And, sure, I like a smile that makes Geena Davis' grin seem understated, but she was hilarious and her two numbers were fantastic.

My understanding is that: as a teen she was given a shot by Rudy Vallee, and became a nightclub chanteuse, headlining by age 18 or so.  There's a whole story about her getting caught as a bystander in a drive-by shooting as a young woman, but that she recovered and was back performing in night clubs in a couple of months, the bullet never removed.  

Gray's career was primarily on the stage, both in New York and London.  She played Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun for two years in the West End.  Back in the US she co-starred in a popular stage production of Destry Rides Again with Andy Griffith.  

Like many radio and stage performers, she'd have disappeared into the collective memory hole if not for her few movies.

Superman 2025: The New Trailer Hits

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

Well.  There it is. 

We finally get an idea of the plot in broad strokes.  For comics-folk and Superman fans, we get the characters and literal from-the-comics stories getting referenced.  I'm seeing Action Comics 900 and All-Star Superman #12.  Maybe a dash of Dini and Ross's Peace on Earth (a great one-off if you can find it).  The take on Lex feels like Waid and Yu's Birthright, or else I'm projecting.

But, and stick with me, this feels like the Superman I look for in the comics and the Superman I occasionally get in TV or film.  It only happens when the creators don't get bogged down with being about their own internal mechanisms or veer off to just punch things (although I like that, too, from time to time).  

This is a Superman who is out there doing his absolute best in a world that is so (unnecessarily) complicated, doing the right thing is frowned upon when you don't ask for permission to save lives.  

Ya'll, from Action Comics #1, Superman was the fantasy of two guys who asked "what if you didn't have to ask to do the right thing?  What if no one could stop you when you tried to help?  What would that look like?  How would we react?"

In his first appearances Superman is seen busting into the governor's mansion to insist on a stay of execution for an innocent man.  An issue or three later, he's taking on weapons dealers trying to start wars, forcing them to the front lines - he is not asking anyone if it's okay.  Superman was intended to be a bit rogue-ish and outside the law, because it's never been too hard to see we build systems that don't benefit the people who need them to function, and certainly that was the case in the mid-1930's.   

Chabert Watch: Thirst (2010)

I need two tubes of Burt's Bees, STAT!

Watched:  05/12/2025

Format:  Fawesome

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jeffrey Scott Lando

ChabertQuest2025 is becoming a study in types of low-budget independent movies.  

This film is the "what can we shoot that's dramatic with a really small cast and give everyone stuff for their reel?" feature that's essentially a horror movie as people are trapped in a remote location and will be killed by nature.  Sometimes that is sharks, sometimes that is getting wedged between rocks.  Thirst (2010) is the desert.

I find these movies mostly deeply unappealing in a "your whole movie could have been an email" sort of way.  Watching a large group of people get picked off by alligators or sharks?  Sign me up!  90 minutes of a small group go through therapy and only one lives at the end?  I'll take a pass.  It's a predictable slog.

Usually the movies move slowly, are often melodramas at their heart (otherwise, why care about these victims?), and you spend the whole movie wondering why they made this and that bad decision.

Chabert Watch! A New Wave (2006)

Watched:  05/11/2025

Format:  Fawesome

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jason Carvey

I don't know if I've ever experienced second-hand embarrassment for my generation of film dudes this intensely before, but here we are.

I assume the name of the movie is trying to wink at the French New Wave, and the belief that this movie was somehow echoing that well established concept.  But I don't know what the filmmakers meant, and I don't want to come out of the gate too strong with how irritating that is as (a) a joke or, (b) way worse, if it's meant sincerely.  But it is indicative of how bad this movie is with comedy that I don't know their intention.

Arriving probably 7 years after the last time this movie might have been considered hep or cool in any way, like many first-time efforts, A New Wave (2006) doesn't know what it is, cramming in three movies or so here, but it sure is trying to work something out that's best left to therapy sessions for the writer/director and doesn't need to involve me as an audience member.  It's also a great peek at the post-Tarantino fantasies of LA filmmakers who all saw something they liked in Tarantino and thus wanted to put their own brand on lo-fi crime ideas.  By 2006, we're just saying it out loud, I guess.

That's paired with a view of women as "unobtainable, mysterious problems" that seemed to permeate film in both studio and indie flicks in this era.  

And none of it works.

Soderbergh Watch: Black Bag (2025)

Watched:  05/10/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven Soderbergh

So, this was the movie I meant to watch in the theater, but we walked out.  And, given the film's style and the necessity of following every line of dialog, I am very glad we made that decision.

I am unshocked that a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender was very much my jam.

I don't want to get too much into the details of this espionage/ counter-espionage thriller.  Part of the joy is going in knowing very little other than that Fassbender and Blanchett are playing a pair of agents for an Mi6 sort of set-up, and seeds of doubt are planted.  

Gangster Watch: The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Watched:  05/09/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  First-ish?

Director:  Raoul Walsh

Fun (likely apocryphal) fact:  This movie from 1939 is thought to be what coined the phrase "the roaring twenties" to refer to the 1920's.  Contemporarily, thanks to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the 1920's were referred to as The Jazz Age and, by others as The Plastic Age.  (There's a Clara Bow film of the same name I've never tracked down.)

Also - This doesn't happen very often, but I am unsure if I've seen this movie before.  

It sure seems like I would have seen it.  It's entirely up my alley.  And when Cagney introduced Gladys George's character by name, Panama Smith, I had my first moment of pause, thinking "wait... have I seen this?".  Because George sure looked familiar and then the name is kind of unforgettable.  Panama Smith.  (It's also insane this was not Eve Arden when this role feels like it should be Eve Arden).

Superman 2025: Relatable

One of the common complaints hurled at Superman is that he's not relatable -  as the superior alternative is somehow being a billionaire with rodent-inspired vehicles, who runs around on rooftops and karates super good, as this is apparently something we all do.  

But what is more relatable than a dog-owner trying to get a dog to be good?  Especially when the dog thinks all attention is good attention?

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

Chabert Watch: The Brooke Ellison Story (2004)

Watched:  05/08/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christopher Reeve

I'm gonna be straight up with y'all.  I am so grateful for a good movie at this moment in ChabertQuest 2025.  Several of the past few have been making this journey less than ideal.  

The Brooke Ellison Story (2004) is a movie I was aware of in 2004 when it came out, but completely missed as an A&E TV movie that came out during a time when I was working insane hours.  As one can guess it entered my awareness because it was directed by Christopher Reeve, who passed just two weeks before the film aired.

And, of course, once I knew about the real Brooke Ellison the film was based on, when she'd pop up in in the news every once in a while, I was reminded I'd heard of her because of the film.  But because it was a TV movie, once it was gone, it was kind of gone, so I didn't know much about it.  

The film is an adaptation of the book written by the real-life Brooke Ellison and her mother, Jean Ellison.  During her middle-school years, Brooke was hit by a car which left her a quadriplegic and living on a ventilator to survive.  She wound up going to Harvard (the thing I did know).

I didn't know, for example, that the movie stars Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and John Slattery as Brooke's parents.  But, holy smokes, is this one of those places where a movie found the right director and cast.  What could have been a saccharine movie about a family with pluck overcoming adversity manages to work because it's not about a can-do spirit and a song in your heart winning the day.  It's about the million steps you have to overcome, from regulations that make no sense, to insurance shenanigans to those who think they know best - at least at the outset. 

TV Watch: Righteous Gemstones gets its benediction

I find it amazing that when we're discussing the best stuff on television, it's so often wildly depressing stuff or puzzle boxes we all know are going to have endings that do not deliver.  I guess it feels good to feel bad.*  And I like a good drama, too.  But as my 9th grade English teacher, the great Ms. Fort said to me "life is tragedy or comedy.  There is no in-between."  Ms. Fort was a smart, smart lady, so I've always believed it.

And because I think comedy holds an equal place to tragedy, and I feel I learn as much from what makes me laugh as what makes me bummed out, I'm sad to see HBO's Danny McBride helmed series, The Righteous Gemstones, come to a close after four seasons.  

At the same time, I understand- get out while the getting is good.  The responsible thing to do is leave people wishing there had been more, while also properly closing things up.  

On Sunday, The Righteous Gemstones finished its fourth and final season, closing the door on less than forty episodes and one of the funniest, most vulgar and profane shows I've seen, while somehow including stellar storytelling, genuine character moments, shockingly heartfelt beats and - underneath it all - somehow managing to sell religion and faith as an option better than any actual televangelist.

Barely Chabert Watch! Anything Is Possible (2013)

Watched:  05/07/2025

Format:   Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Demetrius Navarro

This journey through the career of Lacey Chabert (just live action work, and only movie-length material - we have to contain this somehow) has become a study of the work of someone who is truly a working actor.  

Sure, Chabert is a star.  Even if she'd never been in anything after Lost in Space, I'd remember her as a young actor.  If Mean Girls had been her last role, we'd all definitely still know her.  But Chabert started in movies as a child (and we'll get to that), and her current role as the face of Hallmark and Christmas movies was not a foregone conclusion.  She had a lot of work that was clearly putting food on the table, and that's kind of what we've been watching for a bit.

And so we find a movie here from 2013 in which she barely appears. It's one of six films she had released in 2013, and one of ten projects - as she voiced cartoons and video games (she's the default voice for Zatanna at DC Entertainment).  But I'm betting she was in and out of Detroit - where this movie seems to have been filmed - in about three days.

This movie is very independent, very well intentioned, and very much not my thing.  It is also less about Chabert's character, who book-ends the film, and a vehicle for real world child prodigy of the piano, Ethan Bortnick.*  Based on the age of the child star and editing timelines, I am guessing it was filmed in 2011, and finally found distribution in 2013.