Vampire Watch: Nosferatu (2024)

Watched:  12/29/2024

Format:  Cinepolis Theater

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Eggers

I am looking forward to seeing this movie again soon, which I believe I am planning to do with PalMrshl.

SPOILERS BELOW

As advertised, Nosferatu (2024) is a gloriously detailed, stylized retelling of the 1922 classic horror film.  That original film, in turn, was a copyright-infringing German production that liberally stole from the novel Dracula, changed some names, set the story in Northern Germany, and had a production company with weird, cultish origins.  

In general, I was looking forward to my third Robert Eggers film, having previously seen The VVitch and The Northman.  A big, studio remake of Nosferatu is something I think could go a lot of ways, but if anyone working now was going to do it, Eggers was one of the strongest choices.  I'd only seen two of his three prior films, but I think - and argue with me here - Eggers isn't so much concerned with telling wildly original stories, but telling almost primordial stories and relaying them in ways that show why those stories work, and that it's in the teller and telling that we get at what the stories are about in ways that declutter them from romanticism and remove some of the guard rails.  

Example:  The VVitch is the earliest Anglo North American arcana - it captures the old world fears we brought to the New World as we faced it's sprawling wilderness we couldn't quite tame. Against that backdrop, our concerns about the unknown were turned inward and metastasized.  Those concerns continue to manifest and mutate in paranoid American fantasies that go well beyond the scope of this post.  The Northman is a sort of proto-Hamlet, digging into Nordic tradition and beliefs, and bringing the brutality of the stories in the Eddas to life, exploring revenge in a world that relishes might making right.  With some promise of glory for the fallen warrior along the way.

For veterans of prior incarnations of Nosferatu, whether we're talking the 1922 film or the 1979 version by Werner Herzog, there's a mix of old and new in Eggers' vision.  It's certainly, at it's core, not too different from the original 1922 version, but expanded and...  really well considered.  

President Jimmy Carter Merges With The Infinite

Former US President Jimmy Carter, the President who was in office when I became aware of what a President was circa 1978-79, has passed at the age of 100.

He was proceeded in death by his wife Rosalyn in 2023.  They had been married since 1946.

President Carter was president in the post-Watergate era of the U.S.A., and oversaw challenges such as the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Three Mile Island, which included him walking right into the plant as someone with a background in nuclear engineering.  He opened up Camp David for the Egyptians and Israeli governments to meet, leading to the Camp David Accords.  

He lost the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, but would go on to show how one can be of service to a country, acting as a peace ambassador and representative for Habitat for Humanity.

President Carter will be missed.

Hitchcock Watch: Saboteur (1942)

Watched:  12/28/2024

Format:  4K Disc

Viewing:  First, as it turns out

Director:  Alfred Hitchcock

For Christmas, K and Dug got me a set of Hitchcock movies, and I am pretty jazzed.  I hadn't seen latter-era Hitchcock, but was under the impression I had seen this movie, but... as I found out two minutes in, I had never seen Saboteur (1942).  So, all the better.

My Hitchcock era was, like most 90's film school kids, in the 1990's, and I haven't gone back a lot, which seems... dumb.  I loved Vertigo and North By Northwest back in the day.  So to have a chance to fill in some blanks and refire my interest in Hitch is a great opportunity.

Firstly - there's some amazing stuff in this film, which should be obvious, I guess, Hitchcock being Hitchcock.  But the visuals of the sabotage and conflagration that follows in the film are remarkable.  I suppose I should know the name Joseph A. Valentine, but it's one I'll now know as the eye behind the camera here, bringing us visuals like the wall of white with black smoke drifting in, the desperate reach for Frank Fry off the hand of the Statue of Liberty, the barren plains of the desert southwest, and the train car full of circus-folk by night.

Stuff I Liked as a Kid Watch: Treasure Island (1950)

Watched:  12/27/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Byron Haskin

For Christmas, I gave the nephew - a voracious reader - a copy of Treasure Island.  He's now the same age I was when I checked the book out of the library, already pretty familiar with the story, thanks to the movie or movies I'd seen up to that point.  But the book stuck with me, just as the Disney film had.

I know I saw a version of Treasure Island when I was about seven years old.  It came on, and my parents decided we could stay up and watch it.  I suspect, now, it was the 1934 version, but it's possible it was the Disney version from 1950 - maybe it's more likely it was, but I also don't quite know what Houston television would have been showing on a Saturday night.  What I do know is that I eventually did watch this version when I was a bit older, maybe in school, and I was a fan.  And this has been my version ever since.

As a kid, what wasn't to like?  A young boy, not yet a teen, gets wrapped up in a grown-up adventure with pirates, ship captains, maps, all the stuff we've since incorporated into our general ideas of what pirates are supposed to be.  I know now that Stevenson himself borrowed from other books, from Robinson Crusoe and other works.  But don't we all borrow?

It also understands, in a way I think we've forgotten in kid-oriented media - that what a kid wants is to be included as an equal alongside the adults in the action.  As a mix of the expectations of kids in the era in which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his book - released in 1881-2 as a serial and 1883 as a novel - and as the primary POV of the novel, Jim is *valued* and doesn't realize he's being handled differently, even if and when he is.

What Did I Just Do? A Holidays 2024 Viewing ReCap in Hallmark and Chabert

It was a Chabertmas

In 2024, Jamie and I just decided we were bailing on our usual annual viewing options and going to try to watch new-to-us movies, and - at some point - decided we were going to just watch the offerings that were the lightest, most-conflict-averse films we could dig up.

This didn't always work out.  We did watch Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, which was nothing but conflict.  And I watched the 2006 remake of Black Christmas.  

We started off watching an older Alicia Witt movie the weekend before Thanksgiving, and attending a screening of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever the next night. 

I will admit - I think there's probably two or three movies on here we could probably add, but I was kind of in and out of the movies, and so I'm not going to.  I'm sure you'll be fine.  But the grand total of what I want to claim is that we watched 24 Holiday movies in the Holiday Season, 2024.  

Hallmark Holiday Watch Bonus Round - 3 movies I kinda watched

Christmas at Castle Hart

Watched:  12/?/2024

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stefan Scaini

Some Hallmark movies I just put on, and they played and I didn't pay them much attention as I did other things.  In the past, I generally didn't even bother with mentioning them or doing a write-up with these, but I feel like I'm doing everyone a disservice if I do that to you good people here.

Chabertmas: Pride, Prejudice and Mistletoe (2018)

Watched:  12/23/2024

Format:  Amazon/ Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Don McBrearty

I dunno.  Chabert is maybe an investment banker in NYC.  She comes home to help her mom run a Christmas charity event in the most persnickety version of charity events that seems way too high stakes for something like this - but I also know in real rich people land, there's probably some reality here.

Chabert's colleagues wait until she's gone to also try to poach all of her clients and run her out even though she's a partner, which means - yikes.  What a terrible place she's working.  

She runs into her old high school Debate Club sparring partner, who is now running a restaurant.

Anyway, it kind of writes itself.  

I have no idea what it had to do with Pride and Prejudice other than Chabert's character's name is "Darcy".

Happy Christmas, Pals

Merry Christmas, pals-o-mine, near and far.  

It is Christmas Eve, the day of waiting.  And, according to Hallmark, the day when Cookie Factories must be saved, business deals are completed and romance found.  

It's been a tough year for many, and so I hope that the days to come are quiet and peaceful for you.  

As we do each year, we're posting our favorite Christmas song being performed by our favorite Christmas singer.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Darlene Love.

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.