Superman 2025: Reaction to the Trailer

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

I was shocked at the reaction to the Superman trailer.  Genuinely blown away by how people have taken to it.

A couple of follow ups:

I didn't realize one of the characters we see is an extreme close-up of Metamorpho, and that's good news.  I knew he was in the film, but *kind of* forgot, given everything else we were seeing.  

There's also glances of a character who is unidentifiable, and rumors abound as to who that is.  And, of course, the kaiju thing, which I suspect isn't going to be seen after the first few minutes.

When I finished my very long post about the release and first reaction to the trailer for Superman (2025), I thought I'd have a long wait between posts.  After all, it seems that after the first trailer, we'd be in a period where new information about the movie will be very carefully released, usually in the form of more trailers, staggered up to the movie's release.  Plus, any press the cast will do.  

But in no way did I anticipate how ready people seemed for mere visuals in a two minute and twenty second trailer.  Stuff that I wasn't sure how it would be received.  

Chabert Holiday Watch: A Wish For Christmas (2016)

Watched:  12/21/2024

Format:  Amazon streaming

Viewing:  At least second

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

In addition to riding into the sunset on Hallmark-type Christmas movies, I'm also trying to make my way through the Chabert Hallmark catalog.  I mean - why not?

So, apparently I'd seen this movie before about five years ago.  I'd forgotten because apparently I watched it when I had the flu after a work trip (I very much remember being sick).

In this movie, Santa uses his fantastical powers to bestow Lacey Chabert with her Christmas wish of courage.  This is coupled with a reckless sense of agency and a Zoom-In-Dolly-Out effect familiar to fans of the movie Jaws.  

I don't have much to add to the post I linked to above.  

I will mention that the lead is only two years younger than the woman playing his aunt, and I don't know why on earth Hallmark does this.  Surely they could have dug up an actress who didn't look right as a love interest for our lead.  I would guess the mom is less than a decade older that our lead as well.  

The film also co-stars the woman who played Eve Tessmacher on Supergirl.  

Chabert is Chabert, but they keep commenting on her earrings, which you absolutely cannot see under her hair.  I don't know what happened on this movie, but that's a fixable problem.  And it makes me wonder if they didn't have the earrings people keep describing as "Snowmen" or what happened.  Do not insert details into your movie if they just raise unanswerable questions.

Regret Holiday Watch: Christmas In The Spotlight (2024)

Watched:  12/20/2024

Format:  Amazon/ Lifetime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michelle Ouellet

Thanks.  I hate it.

Well.  Two movies were released for Christmas this year counting on the public's fascination with the Taylor Swift/ Travis Kelce real-life romance between a music star of epic proportions and a pretty good football player.  The first film blinked, dumped any comparison to that romance, and made itself about the Chiefs being a really good football team since Andy Reid showed up, and avoided mention of Kelce and Swift.

This one is a weirdly lofi version of someone imagining how the romance between a pop star and football player would go down.  And then cast someone you know that, back in high school, would have been mean to you for no reason as the pop star, and then cast a ham with eyes as the football player.

About twenty minutes into the movie, I realized I don't know anything about Taylor Swift or Kelce.  I don't even know any Taylor Swift music aside from "Shake It Off" which has to be a decade old at this point, and I haven't watched a Chiefs game since last season.  But we'd committed, and so we persevered.

It's just a movie that doesn't know how football works, or what it looks like to watch an actual football game.  I won't pretend I know how the pop music machine works in 2024, but I'll guess this is just as accurate as their football take - which includes a pro football fields with soccer markings painted on the field.  

But, wow, you don't really appreciate the talent in these movies until you're left with two largely unlikeable leads role-playing what it would be like to watch two shallow, boring people circle each other until sex happens.  And because this is Lifetime and not Hallmark, sex is definitely implied.

It is funny watching the difference between Hallmark and Lifetime as Lifetime *does* seem to exist more in a world where people do normal things, like make out.  But it turns out real life is kind of dull.  I don't actually want to see two people doing puzzles and cooking together.  Especially not these two.

And if you want to know how awful they are, the finale is them hi-jacking a Christmas performance benefiting a children's hospital to declare their love for each other.  The supporting cast is fine and mostly better than the stars, especially the mom.

This movie exists because someone was going to make it, not because it was a good idea.  Or had any particular story to come up with other than idly speculating about Swift and Kelce, I guess.  Is this what it's like to be famous?  I don't know.  Probably not.  There's no agents, no coaches, no regimens, no concert tours or press to do.  No press agents to handle mishaps.  But there are two 30-something actors fumbling with each other whether you like it or not, giggling way, way too much.

And, I'll say it, both actors have weird heads.

Holiday Horror Watch: Black Christmas (2006)

Watched:  12/20/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Glen Morgan

I watched this movie because last weekend, Brandon Z told me that he'd watched all three version of Black Christmas (I did not know there were three) and that the 2006 edition featured Mary Elizabeth Winstead (always great) and our Christmas Queen, Lacey Chabert.  He did not endorse this version - just let me know: it exists.

Well, this is the opposite of a Hallmark movie, but if it has Chabert, and it's Christmas, who am I to not watch this movie?

A few years ago I watched the 1974 original version of Black Christmas (2006) and it scared the bejeezus out of me.  THAT is a horror film.  It leaves us with unknowns, an uncaught murderer who we never fully see, no motivation...  it's just... people getting popped off one-by-one and because of how college worked in a pre-internet/ pre-cell-phone era, when people weren't around, you just assumed they were okay until you heard otherwise.

This movie is bad.  It feels like it has no idea what worked in the original film, and made it smaller and less believable and went for gore over the terror of a guy slowly picking off unsuspecting sorority girls.  It changes it into a Halloween movie, but if Michael Meyers' thing was being mistaken for a banana.*  It even ends like Halloween 2 instead of leaving us with the absolute spine chiller of the original's conclusion.

Full stop - I am well known for face blindness with young Hollywood talent, male and female.  There was a hot minute where I thought Eva Green and Emily Blunt were the same person circa 2006.  So throw a sorority house full of girls at me who have no discernible personalities, different wardrobes or even really have blemishes, and my only hope for knowing who they are is "that one wears glasses" and that one is "MEW".  But I literally couldn't tell you how many girls were in the house, who they were, what their stories were, etc...  But, yes, I did look at IMDB and vaguely remember Michelle Trachtenberg.  But if they're all the same person, plus Andrea Martin, it makes it hard to care about anyone but Andrea Martin.  

And... look, MEW wasn't quite a thing yet in 2006, but Chabert kind of was.  So it's weird she has like 10 lines and is shoved in the background.  She's kind of funny in this.

As mentioned - awesomely, this movie *does* have Andrea Martin in it as a new character - the house mother.  And we love Andrea Martin.  Glad to see her.  And - because it's the writer/ director's wife, we also have Kristen Cloake, who is not a bad actor, btw, but it seems like she's hung up her acting guns.

This movie isn't scary.  1974's Black Christmas is so spooky, it's going to take some effort for me to watch it again.  This one is what you always see me complain about - jump scares in place of scares.  There's no real mood.  The backstory is just dumb and in no way an improvement - especially the post-Scream two-killer reveal (whoops, spoilers).  And the last act in the hospital just sucks.

I don't know why this exists.  And I don't blame the talent.  The people I do know in this are fine actors, so it's not them.  A quick look at wikipedia shows the problem was likely The Weinsteins.  So.  There you go.  Something else they made horrible.

I do not think I will watch the 2019 version unless there's a very pressing reason to do so.

*there's some liver problem we're told he has, and that it makes him yellow.  It looks *ridiculous*

Not Quite Christmas Watch: Winter In Vail (2020) - a study in StrudelFest

Watched:  12/19/2024

Format:  Hallmark Streaming

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

So.... we were maybe 35 minutes into this movie before I realized it wasn't a Christmas movie.  It was a "winter" movie.  I guess this is what Hallmark puts on between Christmas and springtime?  I don't know.  

This movie was essentially a misguided travel brochure for Vail, Colorado, which - as I understand it - is a high end resort town and place for rich people to live and play.  I've been to Colorado once for 3 days for a conference.  It was nice.

The basic gist is that Lacey Chabert is a go-getter at an events planning company.  She's by-passed for a much deserved promotion the same time she inherits a whole "chalet" in Vail, and says "@#$% it, I'm quitting and heading for Vail."

She meets a nice handy-man/ failed architect, gets to see very select parts of Vail and Canada doubling for Vail, and - this is where things get dicey - gets involved with the "old town" portion of Vail that the movie purports to be a sort of hokey German styled tourist trap, where people wear lederhosen and sell German food.*  I assume this is a real thing in Vail.

But by 2020, Vail was also where one went for high end cuisine and fancy nouveau riche nonsense like drinking hot chocolate with gold in it, and I guess the folks who go to Vail in this world abandoned the kitschier part of town.  I have to think calling out people for not sticking to schnitzel and their roots and side-eyeing tourists for wanting sushi is probably a fair point?  Maybe?  But it seems like poking the town you're filming in in the eye for being what it is, is maybe an iffy proposition.  Although this columnist was pretty sure a lot of this wasn't even Vail, and the idea of this house in Vail was even wackier and wasn't so sure they all eat German food non-stop in Vail.

Using her event planning super powers, Chabert cooks up "StrudelFest" to attract people back to German-land.  It works, blah blah blah.  

Anyway, the most fun part of this whole movie is that they simply cannot stop saying StrudelFest.  Once the word is introduced, it's repeated every 30 seconds until the end of the film.  

I think Jamie and I have decided that "StrudelFest" is our go-to codeword for "things are getting out of control" - perfect for the holidays.  

There's something about the need for StrudelFest at all in the movie and the slobs vs snobs posturing that winds up getting squished in favor of including the high-end chefs as judges for Strudelfest's Strudel Contest that just feels like it's both giving us the necessary party, and throwing fuel on the unnecessary fire.  It's a real StrudelFest.

Never before in a narrative has strudel played such a vital part.

StrudelFest.

There's a lot more to this, but no one cares, and all I want to do is talk StrudelFest.

*Central Texas has a heritage of Czech and German settlers.  So I'm actually pretty familiar with the odd Oktoberfest-style celebrations and whatnot 

Superman 2025: A Trailer Drops

I think this Krypto movie will have Superman in it

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

Firstly, I meant to spend any Super-writing time this week on discussing Elizabeth Tulloch as our Lois Lane on the recently completed TV series Superman and Lois.  But I guess I'm punting on that 'til we're done talking the trailer for Superman.  Suffice to say, my discussion of Tulloch will be a deeply positive one, so just... insert that in your brain for now.

As is evidenced by now, WB, DC and the popular movie community has lost its collective mind over the Superman trailer, happily following the marketing breadcrumbs along the way.  This isn't a criticism.  Movies stopped advertising during the covid-era, and I have no @#$%ing idea why they did that.  You need to advertise to get people excited.  Wicked advertised and is doing swell.

We knew Gunn had been working on a trailer and it would come out this winter.  I thought it would come out for The Big Game, but... I think they wanted it out there for NCAA football game commercial breaks as we head into Conference Championships (SEC is this Saturday), and then bowl games.  

The timeline, as near as I can tell, is that around end of October or early November, actor Frank Grillo said he'd seen the trailer for Superman 2025 and loved it.  

Rumors abounded we'd see a trailer in December, but the internet is full of all kinds of non-facts, and so I was in a wait and see mode.  Then - I saw that they were holding a showing of the trailer on the WB studio theater on Monday, and said "oh, I guess... maybe?  For Christmas?"  

What I didn't anticipate was that WB re-awakened their mostly dormant hype-machine and went into full-court-press.  It seems obvious now.

Hallmark Holidaze Watch: Time For Us To Come Home For Christmas (2020)

run away, Lacey!

Watched:  12/18/2024

Format:  Amazon Streaming - Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Winning

So:  Tonight Jamie and I admitted to each other that we weren't going to watch any of our usual holiday movies.  We gripped hands, Thelma and Louise style, and declared we are going over the Hallmark cliff this year.  I still have two movies I want to get in that are not Hallmark, but if it doesn't happen, I'll live.

Also - I started wondering if the movies at Hallmark had actually gotten better and harder to drag, or if I just got soft.  I mean, I keep talking about how Hallmark recognized it's issues and doesn't make the exact same junk anymore.

Well.  Thank you, Time For Us To Come Home For Christmas (2020), because I've realized, it not me, it's Hallmark.  Or, it was, as recently as 2020.  This movie was super fun to riff and I had a great time.

What's remarkable about Time For Us To Come Home For Christmas is that it's a horror movie in almost every way, but instead of it ending with Lacey Chabert running for her life before putting an axe through a dude's skull, it wimps out and has a nice, Hallmark ending.

Why it's a horror film:  

Hallmark Holidaze Sequel Watch: Three Wiser Men and a Boy (2024)

Watched:  12/17/2024

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

For some time, we have lived in a world where Hallmark and Netflix Christmas movies have sequels.  We catch up with our imaginary friends and see them grow a little more, learn and love a little more, and pretend that the houses they're in are the same ones from the prior film, when they kind of aren't.

As predicted, we watched Three Wiser Men and a Boy (2024), the follow up to 2022's Three Wise Men and a Baby.  

Remarkably, this film got back all but one of the large original cast - Ali Liebert, one of the romantic interests - and brings in Erin Karpluk as a different sort of match.  It's also written by the team of Sustad and Campbell (returning) and tapped in the apparent go-to for making sure your holiday movies are nailing the comedy, Russell Hainline (Hot Frosty, Santa Class).  

It's now roughly 5 years after the events of the epilogue to the first film.  Our three brothers have new spins on the problems they had in the first film.  But now Thomas, the baby, is a boy in Kindergarten.  They accidentally wreck the school Christmas play and are made to take it over, while also all de-camping to their mother's house again for Christmas.  Meanwhile, Mom is now dating someone - a nice-guy pastor.

This film definitely ups the wacky-factor, and is more in line with what I expected from hearing the first one was zany.  And it works!  It is zany.  It is also heartfelt, and, maybe because it is building on the prior movie it is assuming you've seen, actually has problems for the characters that feel semi real, even if they manifest in goofy ways.

I do think the movie falls prey a bit to illogical things occurring for sake of the movie, and that's okay.  Videogames in 2024 are not made by a single person.  No principal would bring in 3 unlicensed people they remember as bad students 30 years later in order to put on a Christmas play - they'd cancel it.  Nothing about how a play is put together here makes any sense, but all right.  Look - it's fine!  This is a hyper Christmas reality.  I get it.  You don't do this, you don't get the jokes.

The one thing I will absolutely buy is that child-free uncles would buy peanut-laden cookies for kids and not think about it.  This is me.

But, yes, if you like the first movie, this is more of that, and that is not a criticism or complaint.  It's an acknowledgement, but - I do think, on reflection, that on a channel that is usually focusing on the issues of women, they do have this movie about men in semi-crisis.  Boys and men adapting to their moms having inner lives is hard.  We don't just overcome anxiety with a system, we live with it and work with it.  We can go from being tired of being depended upon to wondering why nobody seems to need us.  We don't always get what we want, but if we try sometimes, we might just find, we get what we need.

Also, off-brand Christmas pageants are inherently funny.

The movies just aren't long enough to spend runtime on all of the partners of the men, especially now that they needed to show the kids (who were all pretty solid kid actors.  Well done, movie) and the three brothers interacting with them.  But, who knows?  Maybe in two years they wives and partners get a bit more screentime for 3 Wisened Men.

Hallmark Holidaze Watch: Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022)

this movie's title is way better in Portuguese

Watched:  12/16/2024

Format:  streaming

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

So, among the new formulas Hallmark has been deploying, one mainstay has been the adaption of concepts from older, popular films but not so close there's potential legal action, and mostly by Hallmarking them up.  You liked Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?  Go enjoy The Christmas Quest.  Any of a hundred snobs versus slobs comedies?  Go see The Santa Class.  It's nothing new in movies to lightly borrow from each other - or heavily borrow - and Hallmark is not alone in this.  But there's a certain gloss that makes things Hallmark, from casting to the required baking scenes.  And that's fine.  It's an all-new version of Hallmark bingo.

Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022) echoes the 1980's popular comedy Three Men and a Baby.  It's in the title.  No one is playing hide-the-ball here.   I did not like Three Men and a Baby in the 1980's when I saw it, because I was 13, mostly concerned for the baby, do not swoon over Tom Selleck, and knew the baby would be taken away eventually.  Virile 80's dudes only deal with babies in short bursts.  I'd be lying if I said I remembered details.

Written by Hallmark writer/ actors Kimberley Sustad and Paul Campbell, and directed by workhorse Terry Ingram, this film stars three familiar Hallmark faces - Paul Campbell, Tyler Hynes, and Andrew Walker as three adult brothers, living in close proximity to their single mom, played by ID4's Margaret Colin (the First Lady.  You know who I'm talking about).

Hallmark Holidaze Watch: Santa Class (2024)

Watched:  12/14/2024

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lucie Guest

So, this was actually funny.  Not laugh-til-you-cry funny, but I guffawed, chortled, etc...  Some laughs came because I couldn't believe this was happening in a Hallmark movie, but mostly because the jokes landed.  It is possible that Hallmark made a pretty funny, okay movie movie utilizing their resources, financial and talent-wise, that wasn't Christmas wallpaper.

So... let's not go crazy overselling this, but I do think it's shocking to see a Hallmark movie with actual comedic timing, funny lines, goofy characters and an underdog storyline that feels like it was imported from a circa 2005 comedy, and made something generally entertaining.

And that's fine!  That is massive progress for Hallmark.