Chabert Holiday Micro-Watch: Maybe This Christmas (2025)

Chabert may have signed an exclusive deal with Hallmark for making movies and selling some lovely products in Hallmark stores, but after last year's slam dunk ad with Philosophy, she's now got a gig with Maybelline.  And while we don't believe she could possibly have a blemish, this year she's re-teaming with Dustin Milligan to sell concealer.

Over a handful of 30-second episodes, we get more story than most Hallmark movies.

All 5 episodes in one convenient video:

Noirvember Watch: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Watched:  11/22/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Billy Wilder

If you ever wanted to crush the human soul with a pair of slick mid-century movies, you could do worse than to schedule this movie alongside The Sweet Smell of Success.  

The movie probably seems a little over the top in some ways, but holy christ, you kind of know it's more accurate about our relationship with the media and how the media keeps us invested than any of us really want to admit.  

Kirk Douglas plays a talented journalist who has been run out of every decent newspaper on the East Coast.  He rolls into town in Albuquerque in a broken down car and takes a job at a small paper that insists he publish only the truth.  

A year later, he's sent to go cover a rattlesnake roundup but en route stumbles across an accident.  At a roadside shop and restaurant they find that across the way the owner of the place has gone into an old cave where he often finds Native American artifacts, and the place had collapsed on him.  Douglas smells a story, and calls it in.  It's the first time he's really been able to cut loose with some real sensationalism, and the story gets picked up by the wire.

Udo Kier Merges With The Infinite

Udo Kier, an actor who has been in a ridiculous number of movies, has passed.

Kier was in some of Andy Warhol's films, Suspiria, and a handful of Lars Van Trier movies.  But also appeared in comedies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,  TV classics like V.I.P. and no shortage of German films.

"Hallmark Channel's Christmas Concert" (2019) might be the Hallmark Channel's Star Wars Holiday Special

This item does not appear on the IMDB for Ms. Lacey Chabert under "actor", but under "self" so I'd initially missed it.  But it popped up on Hallmark as an option, and I wasn't going to not watch it.  

So, what is it?

It's a bizarre artifact of where Hallmark was in 2019, I guess.  And the watchword for the whole show is "awkward".  There clearly was a lack of rehearsal time, and a spirit of "we're pros, we'll wing it" that doesn't play particularly well.  No one here is Bob Hope and keeping this on the rails.

The show is *not* exactly a concert, but kinda, sorta framed like one of those old-school Christmas specials where a celebrity pretends they're in their house.  Lacey Chabert is throwing a party where other Hallmark stars are her guests, but she's also acknowledging the camera (and sometimes awkwardly looking at it).  

One-by-one, a series of Hallmark stars come in, and then they each sing a Christmas standard in what I assume is not actually Chabert's livingroom and kitchen.  But it's not a set - I'm pretty sure that's a real house.  No set would be this poorly designed for television coverage.

Happy Birthday, Jamie Lee Curtis

Today is the birthday of Signal Watch favorite Jamie Lee Curtis.  

Happy b-day to actor, director, writer, etc... et al...  Ms. Curtis.  

Happy Birthday, Ingrid Pitt

Today marks the birth of actor and author Ingrid Pitt, born this day in 1937 in Warsaw, Poland.

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.

Pitt passed in 2010 at only 73 years old.

Chabert Holiday Watch: Matchmaker Santa (2012)

Watched:  11/20/2025

Format:  UP Faith and Family

Viewing:  First

Director:  Davis S. Cass Sr.

Job: Baker

Location of story:  Somewhere in California?  Outside of San Francisco

new skill:  Elfing

Man:  Adam Mayfield

Job of Man:  Bitch Boy to a CEO

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  Christmas tree lighting ceremony

Food:  Cookies

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.

Netflix Watch: Trainwreck - Storm Area 51 (2025)

Watched:  11/19/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  

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.

Chabert Hallmark Holiday Watch: A Merry Scottish Christmas (2023)

what do you know?  I watched this on the 2nd anniversary of the movie's release

Watched:  11/18/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Dustin Rikert

Job: Doctor

Location of story:  Somewhere in Scotland

new skill:  Lording over peasants

Man:  James Robinson

Job of Man:  Groundskeeper

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  Some underwhelming solstice thing, a banger of a party and a ball

Food:  liquor, really

So, I thought I'd covered this movie because of the image I used for my 2023 Hallmark report when I was moving too fast assembling my ChabertQuest2025 list.  But I had not.  So here we go.

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.

(take 2)

Netflix Watch: Trainwreck - Poop Cruise (2025) and Balloon Boy (2025)

Watched:  11/17/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  

I will never, ever get on a cruise ship.

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.