Christmas at Sea: I Watched a Hallmark Christmas Cruise Reality Show

The word that comes to mind, over and over, when watching Christmas at Sea (2025) over on the Hallmark Channel is "awkward".  

The concept of a cruise where people get on a boat to share oxygen with working actors while also desperately celebrating secular adult Christmas a month early with hundreds of tipsy strangers is just kinda... awkward. 

The folks who they recruit for the show?  We'll get into that. 

Trying to make something of a 3-day cruise?  And try to film it and make it look natural when it so clearly is all staged and stage-managed?  Awkward.

I've long withstood the slings and arrows of others' discomfort by throwing on Hallmark movies at Christmas - which led to me spending the first half of 2025 watching 70-odd Lacey Chabert movies.  But for a few years I've been aware that the Hallmark company now has basically Christmas Cons in Kansas City each December over two separate weekends, and now there's a Christmas Cruise, where one can set sail with Hallmark devotees and a handful of stars from Hallmark movies.

Yes, Hallmark has it's own galaxy of stars.  

Super Third Watch: Superman (2025) - the Score, Design, Plot Holes and Discourse

Watched:  07/30/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  Third!

Director:  James Gunn

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

For More on the Movie:

• Super Watch:  Superman (2025) - a pre review post
• Super First Watch:  Superman (2025)
• Superman Second Watch:  Superman (2025) - Part 1 - Likes/Dislikes/Punk Rock Superman
• Superman Second Watch: Superman (2025) - Part 2 - Characters
• Superman Second Watch: Superman (2025) - Part 3 -  If You Now Like Superman, Hooray!
• Super Third Watch:  Superman (2025)

This will be the last time I watch this in the theater unless it's out for a long, long time.  Or if it gets re-released, I suppose.  But I'm glad I saw it a third time.  Seeing the same movie three times between the 8th and the 30th is a lot, friends, especially when you've spent considerable time writing too many posts on the film.

Good Golly

I didn't previously mention it, but I really liked how the movie handled Superman's language.  Taking a page from Superman: The Movie having Clark say "swell", Superman is mid-kaiju-fight and still saying "golly" and "good gosh" and delivering it absolutely earnest?*  

All this as our guy is getting walloped by a 10 story monster.  Major points for Corenswet there.

It's a movie and a world in which people do swear (Mr. Terrific has a bit of a potty mouth - a sign of higher intelligence if the memes are to be believed) - so it's a delight to see the same Superman who just saved all those people muttering polite swears under his breath.

Ryne Sandberg Merges With The Infinite

Hall of Famer baseball player and beloved Cub favorite Ryne "Ryno" Sandberg has passed.

Sandberg played for the Cubs through the 1980's and 1990's, and during those days when I'd watch on WGN, he was one of the names I recall, even as a kid who knew nothing at all about baseball.

Sandberg was a Golden Glove second baseman, and was one of the best players the Cubs has seen since the heyday of Ernie Banks in the 1950's.  He played until 1997, racking up all sorts of very baseball-ish records and stats, and was only the fourth Cub in the team's storied history to have his number retired.  

For years, Sandberg sort of drifted around as all star players do in retirement, coaching, managing, trying his hand at baseball columns and whatnot.  And, befitting his beloved position in Chicago, has been a goodwill ambassador for about a decade.

Sadly, he passed on July 28th at the age of 65.

Sandberg is just a beloved figure around The Friendly Confines, and he'll never be forgotten.  

Apparently *today* is Hannah Waddingham's Birthday

I made a mistake a few days ago and believed that day was Hannah Waddingham's birthday.  It was not.  It is today.

So, happy correct birthday, Ms. Waddingham.  We are happy to have an excuse to once again post a photo.

Ms. Waddingham is, apparently, in the new Smurfs movie.  And makes a full denim outfit work.  Who knew?

French Noir Watch: Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Watched:  07/27/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jean-Pierre Melville

So, there's a whole bunch of Criterion movies on sale on Amazon, and I wasn't doing much this weekend, so I got silly and justified the expense on this movie.  Because.  

Leave me alone.  Sometimes I do things.

If you've never dipped your toe in French noir, or only watched Breathless, the French noir movement is fascinating as it's so clearly done with love for and homage to American noir (which the French coined - we just called them crime movies).  I assume American culture was imported via Hollywood in the post-war years as American GI's rambled around Europe and France took a minute to get its film industry fired up again.  But the American movies are refracted through the lens of a nation crawling out from occupation, and maybe contain the spirit which gave us Camus.  

I mean, one of the French noir films I'd rec is called Elevator to the Gallows.  Fate vs. freewill and existential dread hangs heavy on the minds of these movies - more so than American films mostly being about "don't pursue the wrong dame".

Le Cercle Rouge (1970) is a crime/ heist movie in which we're told at the outset, before we meet any characters "these people will come together, and it will go very badly, indeed".  And, that is what happens.

Marvel Watch: Fantastic Four - First Steps (2025)

Watched:  07/27/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Matt Shakman

Well, nothing says "I am a cool dude" like showing up for a 9:00 AM screening for Fantastic Four by yourself.  I don't know if 12-year-old me is dying inside or deeply impressed I'm still committed to the cause.

Fantastic Four is not a comic I read a lot.  I very much enjoy the first issues by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, but kind of lose interest after that - though Mark Waid's run is mind-boggling.  I do love the idea of the team as a bunch of science-adventurers more than just caped vigilantes,* and their individual personalities and the family dynamic.  Also, my earliest memories include watching that jenky Fantastic Four cartoon of the 1960's the movie references.  

I've never seen the Corman movie, but have seen the two 00's-era movies, and the 10's body-horror movie that was Fox's "edgy" take on the FF.  The movies were uniformly not-good, no matter what your Millennial nostalgia brain is trying to Space Jam Fallacy you into believing.

Happy Birthday, Darlene Love

Happy 84th birthday to Ms. Darlene Love - one of the greatest vocalists of the past 84 years.

Ms. Love was maybe *the* voice that came out of Phil Spector's studio/ Philles Records - and a colossal force in American music, often when people had no idea whose voice that was on a record.  She performed her own solo work, that of The Crystals, the Blossoms, The Ronettes, and performed with everyone from Elvis to Boris Pickett on The Monster Mash.  

She's been in movies - she's Glover's wife in Lethal Weapon - and been on Broadway.  Every year since the mid 1980's on Letterman she's been on TV singing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) and it's a highlight of the holidays.

Personally, I saw her Christmas show at Austin's Paramount Theater - and it was the greatest concert I've ever been to, and I'll stand by that one.

Happy birthday, Ms. Love.  

So, here she is singing a favorite version of a favorite song

Coen Watch: Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Watched:  07/25/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ethan Coen

Is anything more telling about what the Coen Bros. each brought to their team than that when the brothers decided to do independent projects, Joel Coen made a mannered and styled Macbeth and Ethan Coen made Drive-Away Dolls (2024)?  

The mix of high-brow and low-brow - even Raising Arizona has thematic and nigh-poetic aspirations - was their hallmark, with ultra-specific characters, absurdist humor, and deeply human stories - culminating in the excellence of their track record over years and movies that had a stamp audiences recognized and sought out.  

I was vaguely aware Drive-Away Dolls received very mixed reviews, and audiences were kind of irritated with it.  

Which, no kidding.  The movie isn't overly concerned with good taste or your politics or the horseshoe turn lefties online took into agreeing with the Catholic League about how movies are for perverts if they acknowledge sex and show blood with violence.  Instead, this flick is an old-fashioned pulp crime comedy with a heavy layering of what turns out to be the sense of oddball humor that the Coens always brought, that apparently was Ethan Coen's contribution.

Happy Birthday to Hannah Waddingham

Happy birthday to Hannah Waddingham, who has had a busy year - and looks to return next year to TV screens as Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso Season 4.  

Vroooom Watch: F1 - The Movie (2025)

Watched:  07/24/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph Kosinski

Growing up in the US, racing has been mostly NASCAR, and I just never got into stock car racing.  But Austin is, for vaguely shady reasons, home to an F1 track, and we all went from finding it weird to being kind of proud of it.  It's not Monaco or anything, but it's a feature few other cities have.  And, anyway, I started watching some videos about F1, and it is really neat.  But I'm only aware enough of autosports to know that they are infinitely complex and I don't know how any of it works. But rocket cars go super fast and that is cool.

Something about the trailer for F1: The Movie (2025) had me sold.  But I thought I'd probably see it at home on HBO eventually.  However, SimonUK had seen it, liked it, and recommended I check it out, so we went together.

And, yeah, I dug it.  Quite a bit, if I'm being honest.  If I came to watch F1 cars zip around, it does that a lot.

After the movie was over, SimonUK stated "it's basically Top Gun: Maverick in cars, but...  it works" and that is very correct.  This movie is directed and written by the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, so do your own math.