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.
Goes to/ Returns to: stays in same place (this is the 2nd installment)
Event: Several ongoing Christmas festivities
Food: Cookies
Editor's Note: So, y'all. Despite my stated goals and belief I'd done a phenomenal job documenting ChabertQuest 2025 (pats self on back), I messed this one up. Yes, I'd seen this movie, but had I written it up? I had not. Thought I had, but that was a lie I told myself, and discovered my error in July. I felt terrible as we agreed the the deal was I would watch and review all of the movies I could find starring one Lacey Chabert and you'd be like "why are you doing this?"
So, here we are, rewatching this one. And writing up this movie. For you, the people.
There were really only so many directions one could go with the premise of Haul Out The Holly (2022), the first film in what is now a trilogy.
The premise of the first film is that a woman breaks up with her live-in boyfriend and goes home for Christmas, only to find that her parents weren't expecting her and are actually moving to a seniors' condo in Florida. She's essentially left behind in her parents' McMansion. However, her own father was head of the HOA, and he set up a very Christmassy set of rules, which Chabert finds herself required to adhere to (despite the fact she does not own the house) and is force marched through the holiday season.
Guys, she also falls for Man nextdoor along the way.
So... we end the film with Christmas, love, and a 5000 square foot house in which she'll creep around like a Victorian ghost, I guess.
But what next? Haul out another holiday? Tragedy strikes Evergreen Lane? She casually starts putting out inverted pineapples when the neighbors come over?
Here in the sequel, Emily (Chabert) been gifted her parents house, she's all-in on Christmas madness, dating Man, and helping out with the neighborhood festivities.
However, as Christmas approaches and events are just beginning, the Jolly Johnsons, winners of a Christmas-themed reality show, move into the cul-de-sac. To the longtime Christmas-nerds of Evergreen Lane, this is like having your favorite quarterback or rock star move in and they flip out (yes, these movies operate in a cartoonish heightened reality).
Three Wisest Men (2025) is the third film in the very popular (for Hallmark) Wise Men series. We previously covered the first and second installments.
The problem with this movie is that we've established not just three characters, but their mom, spouses and partners, children, etc... and it is not a small cast. And everyone needs to get a plotline. So it's a lot of movie. I couldn't help but notice that this one was an "extended cut", which means whatever aired with commercials had less movie, and I have to assume that made this even more of a jumble.
From a business perspective, it's a fascinating peek into how Hallmark now functions like an old-school studio with their constellation of stars.
We are somewhere in the year of the 100th Anniversary of the release of Phantom of the Opera (1925), the silent film starring Lon Chaney, man of 1000 Faces.
I haven't watched it again this year, but I will! I promise.
I can't say when or where we are in relation to the original release schedule. Google is telling me the release date was November 15th, but I'm seeing much earlier in the year on Wikipedia. In the 1920's the movie would play in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major markets. Then, it might move on to other cities. This could be several months apart. Eventually, beat-up prints might leave the country or be sent to podunk towns. So who knows when or if Phantom of the Opera played most cities. But 1925 is the year in which the movie was released.
I saw Phantom of the Opera the first time circa 1990 on a lo-fi VHS tape obtained from a bin at Walmart. As the film precedes 1928, it fell out of copyright, and I found a copy produced by "Goodtime Videos" that set me back less than $10, and as an angsty teenage kid I spent an evening watching my first feature-length silent film while listening to some moody music.
Frankly, I was blown away.
I'd expected the movie to just be actors more or less pantomiming in front of shoddy sets, and all in wide shots. And, instead, a film taking place against the massive backdrop of the Paris Opera House unspooled, with wild visuals and dramatic moments. What I do not recall is if I had already read the novel of Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, but I sort of suspect that I had. I do know I had seen the film and watched the movie by the time I saw a non-Andrew Lloyd Webber stage play of the story toward the end of that same academic year.*
If silent-era films aren't your jam, I get it. I struggle with them as well and hats off to the folks who've trained themselves to watch silent films that aren't Buster Keaton or Chaplin. But I think Phantom of the Opera is practically must-see/ assigned viewing. It gives you an idea of how complex storytelling was handled during the era and the spectacle that could be created on the silver screen with visual tricks, gigantic sets, etc... It's almost hard to believe it wasn't actually filmed on location somewhere.
Lon Chaney is absolutely brilliant as Erik, which seems trite to say, but every time I watch the movie, I'm stunned by how terrifying he is. Others are good, no doubt. One does not dismiss Mary Philbin who plays Cristine and Mary Fabian's Madame Carlotta is terrific.
Whether I loved the recent Frankenstein or not, what I can say is that I love how it swung for the fences as an epic. We get one of those every few years in the horror genre, and it feels like Phantom of the Opera is the first of these in America. And, dang, you owe it to yourself to see this thing.
Happy 100th, Phantom of the Opera!
*I have no feelings on Andrew Lloyd Webber's version as I've only heard it and never seen it
One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard. With a relatively modest output compared to other popular historical writers, I would gladly put every one of her books in your hand.
A bit like Eddie Muller over at Noir Alley, Millard manages to humanize and make her subjects deeply understandable despite the gulf of time and geography. A while back, Jennifer R rec'd, Destiny of the Republic to me, which made me a true Millard fanboy and, these days, I'll happily pre-order any new Millard book when I hear it's available.
Shockingly, her first book, River of Doubt, is not the book which has received an adaptation. No post-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt mapping the Amazon for us. Instead, it's Destiny of the Republic, an account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the election of James Garfield to the US presidency, and his subsequent assassination by Charles Guiteau (spoilers on basic high school US History).
Most Americans are vaguely aware we had a president named Garfield, and some know he was killed early on in his presidency. What gets lost is the fascinating inflection point US politics were in that saw the Ohioan elected after years of prime 19th-Century corruption. And while some may know Guiteau was, as they say, crazy - until I'd read Millard's book, I sure didn't know how Guiteau scrambled along the edges of society, his story reflecting so much of what they don't teach in school about America in the 19th century and what would come to echo through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Now, Netflix has rolled out a star-studded series roughly based on the book and entitled Death By Lighting.
Crossfire (1947) is one of the movies they recommend when you're first trying to sort out noir, which is a bit odd. It's about as far from Maltese Falcon or Out of the Past as you're going to get. Heck, it's a social message movie, and feels like a prestige film on top of that - earning a few Oscar nominations, including that for Gloria Grahame in a small but powerful role.
The movie is about a murder that occurs, and the suspects are from a group of soldiers waiting to be de-enlisted from the army in the wake of World War II. There's no obvious motive,just possibilities for opportunity.
Robert Young plays the cop figuring out who did it, and he pulls in a young Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and is looking for Steve Brodie and George Cooper. None of these guys seem to particularly like each other - their grouping is the loose affiliation of their unit, but they all know Cooper's character, Mitchell,is struggling.
Mitchell had really tied one on, and tried to find solace with a girl from a dime-a-dance joint, Ginny (Gloria Grahame). And, man, is there a lot of story in her relatively few minutes on screen. There's a whole other noir here about a girl trapped in hell who maybe saw Mitchell as anything from a chance at one night with a decent guy to maybe a way out.
And, kudos to Paul Kelly who plays a singularly weird role as "the man" against Graham.
The victim is played by one of my favorite supporting actors of this era, Sam Levene. And eventually it becomes clear that the only motivation that Young can figure is that he was killed merely for being Jewish.
If it's noir, the movie is a post war film reflecting on the darkness waiting for people as they came home, from cheating spouses to the same hatred that fueled the fascism in Europe and Asia that's festering at home. This is about people already out of control before the movie even starts.
The look is probably the tipping point. This movie is *beautifully* shot, and in the version on Criterion, you can really see how brilliantly J. Roy Hunt lit and filmed each scene. This is a movie that takes place mostly over one night, in the dark of the city, in bars, walk-ups and hotel rooms. And a few scenes in the balcony of a theater. As good as the film is story-wise, acting (Grahame was nominated for Best Supporting Actress), directing (Dmytryk also nominated), it's worth watching just for Hunt's work.
Also, the scene where Graham meets Mitchell's wife (Jacqueline White). Hoo-boy.
In short, I love this movie, but felt I'd watched it several times and could take a break. But I am so glad I returned to it. It remains as relevant and powerful as ever, and maybe hits harder in 2025 than it did a decade ago.
I saw Superman (2025) a few times in the theater and have seen a number of reaction videos to the film. Mostly audiences responded very well to the Jimmy Olsen stuff once they started catching on to what the movie was doing and learned that Jimmy wasn't just a generic reporter guy there to give Lois someone to talk to.
It seems fair to say that the Jimmy and Eve Tessmacher stuff was better than it had any right to be, and as a Jimmy Olsen stan (are we saying sicko now? It seems like we're saying "sicko"), I was absolutely delighted. It's just funny that the audience was so utterly thrown by everything Eve and Jimmy were doing. And it warms my cold, leaden heart to know that James Gunn is continuing on his quest to make a DCU of movies based on doing whatever-the-@#$% he wants instead of worrying about selling Batman toys.
The headline here is that on November 11th I saw some notices that, after some rumors cooking since July, Jimmy might get his own show.
Look, no one wants a weekly show following Jimmy in and out of scrapes more than yours truly. But if the current mode at DC is proof of anything, it's that they'll sell no wine before its time. Gunn and Safran have already canned numerous projects that seemed to have traction, and decided to play it smart rather than standing in front of investors and promising a slate of projects, each more lucrative than the last. We've all learned from Disney's hubris and the absolute self-own that was Diane Nelson's DCEU.
Do I want a Jimmy show? Yes. Do I want it to co-star Sara Sampaio? Also, big yes.
Word is that, as of today, the American Vandalteam is looking to produce this, which is a mixed bag for me. Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault put out one season of a show I watched and enjoyed years ago, but I didn't finish the second season and have heard nothing from them since. Whether they actually take this across the finish line or not is an open question as these big properties tend to change hands a few times before they land. But maybe the pitch was just that good.
Honestly, the answer is Lord and Miller, but they're otherwise occupied.
We'll see what comes out of this. I am hopeful for the moment.
