Watched:  11/30/2205Format:  NetflixViewing:  FirstDirector:  Vicky Wight We watched Happiness for Beginners (2023) because Jamie had read the book and wanted to check out how it was turned it into a film.  And because Jamie watches so much nonsense of my choosing, I wished to be flexible and watch a movie about Eat, Pray, Loving one's way through a long hike.  Plus, Ellie Kemper is fun. And, yeah, I am very glad Ellie Kemper got a movie as a lead and was able to show some star quality other than making mad bank as Kohl's Mom.  I've mostly seen her play "wacky" and this wasn't really that.  Here, she's a woman in her 30's who just wrapped up a divorce and decides to go on the aforementioned days-long hike on the Appalachian Trail.   Helen (Kemper) is accidentally joined by her younger brother's best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes) who accidentally also signed up for the same hike, and along the way she learns, laughs and loves, and the two hook up at the film's end.  Shocker.  (You will know this in the first five minutes of the movie.  This is a spoiler only if you have amnesia that makes you forget how every movie, ever, worked.) Unfortunately, aside from Kemper's energy and the honestly stunning outdoors scenery, the movie kind of never raises above a mediocre sitcom.  It's a will they/ won't they question, and doesn't know a sitcom cliche it doesn't want to exploit.  Cumulatively, it makes the characters unbelievable and nearly unlikable.  While also introducing major character items and then ignoring them completely. It's the kind of movie where every time something is going to happen - an important conversation, a kiss, whatever...  people are interrupted.  Which, fair, but the characters are in the woods with only one another for company.  They do not teleport and travel through time from scene to scene.  It's almost confusing why they don't just let the interruption pass and then pick up again.  At least in a workplace sitcom you assume they have to move on with their day.   But the characters will even self-interrupt.  There's a scene where one of those two major character items shows up as Kemper explains how her middle brother died and how it destroyed her family (something which impacts nothing else in the movie and feels weirdly out of place), and after she's done - Man just says "we should get some sleep".  Not "let me comfort you" nor does he ask any follow up questions.  Just "we should get some sleep".   It's so weird.   The other thing is that SPOILERS we find out Man is slowly going blind.  And is, in fact, night blind already.  But it only impacts him one time, not all the time when it is dark, when he apparently can get around just fine without his glasses, which he almost never wears. Most of the supporting characters are just sketches.  When characters do say who they are, they must do it by interacting with Helen, in which case they stop the movie to explain their whole deal.  It's wildly lazy writing of the tell-don't-show variety and completely unnecessary.  The little character beats seem to want cheaply earned gravitas for the movie - but instead the beats just dump a paragraph of character bio that will never again be relevant or come up in a meaningful way. The odd thing is that you can exactly triangulate how all of this happened.   The movie has a single writer/ director/ producer in Vicky Wight.  While Netflix surely had final edit and some say, this is her baby.  She's the one who doesn't think that someone who has been pining for someone for a decade and who took the crazy leap to spend time with the woman he's loved would ask her to hold up so he could tell her instead of just standing there like an idiot while she slowly gets in her car and drives away.   And from what Jamie groused to me, the movie does what many an adaptation do as uses the book as a rough outline, but so much is changed which changes the meaning (see: Frankenstein).  This includes a massive reduction in the number of hikers, which causes logistical issues I kept asking about.  "Why would you do that if you're on the Appalachian Trail?" type stuff, like having your trail guide split the group and then not follow up behind the first group, potentially losing hikers in the woods.  Which absolutely happens.   The movie also forgets to do basic things like showing Helen blocking her ex from calling her as a sign of growth.  She kind of just comes back ready to love her brother for reasons. Anyway, it wasn't so much a problem of "not for me" as "this movie is badly written and is hoping the gorgeous scenery will distract me".  The scenery did not distract me.   https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/29/2025Format:  DVDViewing:  FirstDirector:  Andrzej Sekula Truly a product of a particular decade, somehow The Pleasure Drivers (2006) arrived about seven years after that decade.  It's another LA-based low-budget crime movie, with this one peppering itself with vague philosophical aspirations but what they are saying lacks any insight and is dumb.  And, the movie is entirely populated by characters who take their cues from how human beings behave from other movies.   Everything about the film feels late-90's, part of the post Pulp Fiction indie boom.  It's three stories that loosely intertwine, and, of course, collide at the end.  But none of the three stories is very interesting and none of the characters terribly watchable.   One story is a completely undercooked segment or two about a hitwoman who was just dumped by her girlfriend.  That's it.  I never caught the character's name, why she was dumped, or what her deal was, if she had one.  She appears at the beginning and again at the end. The second story is about a college prof who teaches what I gather to be Freudian/ Jungian psychology, but as if psychology is still stuck in 1905 or so.  He's a peculiar stock indie movie stock character from the 90's that is obviously a fool to the audience, but espouses expertise, and meets someone who hasn't caught on to the fact he's a fool so we can see him be a fool.   His wife kicks him out of his house as she's taken a female lover she's selecting over him.  He stumbles across Lacey Chabert in a hotel bar as he waits for a room in the hotel, and the two hit the road?  Chabert plays a nymphomaniac sex worker.  Kind of a turn for those of us who know her better as the Queen of Hallmark Christmas.   The third and main story (and the only story that should have been in this movie, honestly) is about Lauren Holly who is a paid in-house caretaker for the son of a now famous religious/ cult leader.  It seems the cult leader has stopped paying for his son's care, and when his representative (Billy Zane) rejects Holly's demands for money, she kidnaps her client's twin sister, who is a sort of oracle for the church.   She grabs her client, Tom, and the pair drive out to the desert.  For a connective tissue sequence with Meat Loaf, who gives her a motel to hide out at, while he calls the cult, and they hire the lady-assassin from Story 1.   The movie wants for Lauren Holly to be white trash, but... this is Lauren Holly, and...  while she's very good, if the box didn't say "she's trailer trash!" on it, I would literally not know what was going on here. What's most irritating bit is that at least Holly and Chabert are doing their best with what they have, and for Holly, I think she's basically acting by herself in front of the camera in 85% of her shots, which is kind of hard to do.  Her major scene partner is supposed to have brain damage and isn't reacting (which I understand is still acting), so she's kind of on her own.  Oddly, she's in a much more plot-driven arc than Chabert, who is in more of a character driven-arc. Chabert is playing opposite the fool, and this is from her "I don't want to play high schoolers" era, and the 00's were offering her up sex pot roles.  Here, she's supposed to be maybe the apotheosis of what the fool teaches and studies, a 20-something nymphomaniac who gets turned on by... being driven places?  She's turned her issue into a career as a hooker.  Why she's in the car with the guy makes no sense... he was literally getting a hotel room.   And, ho ho!  When it comes time to seal the deal, the guy can't get it up.  Which anyone could have seen from a mile away.   Frankly, I have no idea what this movie is trying to do or say.  The tag line is  The Pleasure Drivers energetically explores the shadow side of Los Angeles and how it gleefully relates to the gasoline of libido. But more than half the movie is not about that at all.  It's Lauren Holly kidnapping two people and her federal crime going sideways.  If there's an implied sexual relationship with her client, I missed it altogether. The movie also has brief appearances by an early-career Rachel Dratch as a gas-station attendant in a pointless scene where Holly buys cigarettes.  And then Meat Loaf plays someone who seems brain damaged, too.   Mostly, the movie is weirdly boring.   The pacing is absolutely deadly and meandering.  There are lots of shots of people looking at LA, which maybe means something to people in LA, but to the rest of us...  not so much.  Characters go about their business in ways that don't advance anything (note the scene with Rachel Dratch) and aren't really character moments.  It's a movie with about a 100 minute runtime that felt like 2.5 hours.  Scenes seem to begin to early and end too late.  But it feels like a director's decision, not that of the editor.   It's directed by the cinematographer of Pulp Fiction, and you can't fault the look of the movie (or at least what I gathered of it from the transfer I got, which seemed imperfect).  You've never heard of anything else the person who wrote the movie wrote.  And the producers all have a minimum number of credits.  So how and why this got made is a mystery.   Further, the movie shares at least three actors with the 2006 film Fatwa, which we watched.  And I can only think Lauren Holly recruited those actors to the movie or brought them to this one.   Also, Chabert would work with Billy Zane on Ghost of Goodnight Lane, but that would be about eight years later (and she shares no scenes with him in this film). I've previously said that after Mean Girls, Chabert entered into a very weird career twilight zone that I don't really understand.  Moving away from teen roles, she wound up leaning hard into the indie movie world, only resurfacing in another big studio movie with Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in 2009.  But she hung in there in a variety of parts, making sure she was playing a college student or an adult until she landed her first Hallmark movies.  This role (and her role in Fatwa) definitely has that vibe of "I'm going to prove I can take risks and do whatever needs to be done".  But, oddly, the movie feels like it's failing her, like the filmmakers just come off as dirty old men rather than honestly looking at what the character is while hand waving the movie's depth. It's a movie that literally includes a guy getting pegged by a gun (and loving it) as the culmination of his eros/ thanatos dichotomy he introduces at the end of the movie.  But it doesn't... mean or say anything other than a big "see what we did here?  Clever, right?" There's movies like Possession that are baffling, but keep you interested and make you want to stick with it and sort it out because unlocking the movie is just out of grasp.  And there's movies like this that feel like pretentious nonsense that mistake what they're saying with profundity and what feels like bad editing with edginess.  https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/27/2025Format:  BluRayViewing:  FirstDirector:  Leslie Fenton I was pretty psyched to see a new-to-me movie starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  And one that was set in a post-WWII Saigon.  I was very curious how they'd handle the dynamics of the French colonialism, Japanese occupation, rise of Communism, etc...   Well, the answer is, none of that comes up.  In fact, I don't think there's a single Vietnamese person in this movie.  That's... wild. I *do* like the basic idea of the plot.   Three Army Air Corp soldiers in post-War China are getting discharged.  One of them doesn't know he has only 2-3 months to live due to an ailment (cancer?  something else?) but will likely just die suddenly.  So, the other two decide to show him the time of his life, which they can do if they take a lucrative but shady gig flying a businessman from Shanghai to Saigon.   But when they go to get the plane and fly him out, the cops stop the businessman, while his secretary, Veronica Lake, jumps in the plane and they fly off.  The plane crashes in Vietnam, and they make their way to Saigon.  Along the way, the dying man falls for Lake (reasonable) while she spars with Alan Ladd. Oh, and she has a briefcase full of cash. And, as Lake humors the dying guy, she and Ladd start to fall for each other. Anyway, it's super weird.  They treat it as if everyone in Vietnam is French?  Or vaguely European?  There's only one Asian person in the movie at the very beginning who sounds very Southern Californian.   The movie is fine.  It'll never be a favorite, but when I was thinking "I don't think this is working", it kind of changed directions a few times and saved itself.  It fits into that "it's fine" category, but closer to "it's good".  But I just wasn't 100% on board.  But I maybe need to give it another shot.https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/25/2025Format:  HallmarkViewing:  FirstDirector:  Dustin Rikert So, for reasons beyond my understanding, the NFL has entered into an alliance with Hallmark to produce movies about super-fans of their teams falling in love at Christmas.   In no way will this get repetitive after 32 movies. Despite some real star-power (for Hallmark) the first movie was a complete mess.  And I expected more-of-same. Holiday Touchdown: a Bills Love Story (2025) actually solved some of the issues of the first movie but then blew my mind by trying to create a sort of MCU of NFL-themed movies by showing the characters from the first movie in this one.  And the magical Santa is in this one mucking with people's lives. The last movie had some star power with Diedrich Bader, Richard Riehle, Ed Begley Jr., Christine Ebersole, et al.  What it didn't really have was much actual representation by the Chiefs players.   This one had Joey Pantoliano playing a version of himself as a wacky uncle.  Our stars are Woman (Holland Roden) and Man (Matthew Daddario, who I didn't know, but people keep fan-casting his sister as Wonder Woman, and... fair).  They're childhood friends and neighbors, and the running gag is everyone knows he's pining for Woman. There's lot of Bills-specific humor which I vaguely get, and lots of regional-specific stuff, which did not lose me, but sure felt like them making sure we knew they were in Buffalo and not doing the usual "we filmed in Vancouver, but please believe this is Arizona" thing Hallmark will do. The pair find out Joey Pants has been receiving gifts every year from an anonymous source, going back to when he was drafted and this same anonymous person also sent his family groceries and money.  The movie is them solving the mystery.   Along the way, they fall in love, blah blah blah...  but there's also LOTS of Bills players and coaches and owners and whatnot.  And the main character is a project manager on the new stadium, so there's lots of discussion about that.  But none about how expensive tickets are supposed to be in the new stadium. I dunno, like a lot of the new Hallmark movies, it's actually kind of funny.  Not gut-bustingly, but I had a chuckle or two.  It feels more like a sitcom than a Hallmark movie.  And that is not a complaint.  Anyway, they fixed a lot that didn't work in last year's offering. https://signal-watch.com

  Today marks the birthday of Tina Turner, one of the greats of R&B and rock.   Y'all put on her Simply the Best collection and thank me later.https://signal-watch.com

Film. Comics. Sci-Fi. Superheroes. Noir. History. Superman. 20th Century Archaeology.

Watched:  11/24/2025Format:  Disney+Viewing:  FirstDirector:  Xavier Koller I don't know that I've ever seen a movie make me decide, while watching an uplifting story that's part of the well-worn self-mythologizing of America, that the hero is 100% wrong.  But that's where I landed with Squanto: a Warrior's Tale (1994).    And maybe that's what director Xavier Koller truly felt we should think.  He's Swiss, not American, and based on the script Disney gave him, it really isn't a compelling argument that Squanto was right that what his fellow locals needed to do was put down their weapons. Before we get rolling, I have not thought about the narrative of Squanto since I was probably eight years old and we had a children's book about his life, which I can safely say:  I do not remember anything from that book, just that Squanto helped keep the Native Americans and the Pilgrims from murdering each other which led to the first Thanksgiving.  I also vaguely remembered he was not part of any tribe. As the movie starts, Squanto is having a good week.  He just married Irene Bedard, which is a check in the win column.  But no sooner do they go for a lovers' leisurely stroll than he sees an early 17th Century British ship pulling up to his beach.  He's promptly kidnapped by the Brits who take him back to England, along with a warrior from the neighboring tribe.    He's sailed to Plymouth, England where he finds himself in the clutches of an evil Michael Gambon.  After being forced to enter an arena and fight a bear (which he sings into a nap), Squanto escapes into the water and washes up on Mandy Patinkin's shore.  Patinkin is playing a friar living in a monastic-type situation.   Once Squanto settles in with the cloister, he learns English and how to ride a horse.  Oddly, this is the bulk of the movie.   Squanto's pal is stuck with evil Michael Gambon and has to perform for the amusement of others, until pulling the 'ol "oh, we have gold, I'll show it to you" trick that Europeans seems to fall for every single time.  So a ship readies itself to set sail for Massachusetts, and after shenanigans, Squanto heads back. Did I mention the mystical hawk that seems to have a spiritual connection to Squanto and which allows the movie to blast a "caw!" at you every ten minutes?  Well, we have one. Anyhoo, after almost being enslaved and/ or killed by the British for years, Squanto sails back safely to near his home, and to his buddy's tribe.  The buddy sees the Brits acting like colonizers and grabbing the women, so while the Brits sleep on their ship, he sets it on fire.  *THIS*, as it turns out, could have saved the natives of North America a lot of trouble.     Squanto is mad at his pal's tribe for all the murder and returns home only to find his whole tribe is wiped out by disease brought by Europeans, including Irene Bedard.  I mean, at this point, it seems that unless you're a friar, the Brits are a massive problem, and setting the colonizer's boats ablaze with colonizers onboard is the right move. Instead, as the Pilgrim's arrive, Squanto brokers peace, giving a speech that is absolute nonsense about sharing a sun and moon.  Everyone hugs and has a big dinner.  All will be well! But before credits roll, we're told that in 20 years Britain says "nah, we're gonna own all that land now".   Should burned that boat, too, pal. I kinda wanted to like this movie.  It was not as cringey as I expected - which is good.  The magical Native American stuff was a bit much, and the speech at the end absolutely horrendous.  It doesn't really paint the indigenous tribes as living in a Utopia, but it does portray a functioning society - maybe a little underpopulated and under built in our movie compared to reality, but it functions in a hand-wavey sort of way to get the ideas across.  As does the role of the Europeans. The acting is fine.  The entire movie is clearly Nova Scotia trying to double for both Massachusetts and England. But the script and editing do the movie itself no favors if we were supposed to think Squanto wasn't a sucker for seeking peace.  And that's a problem. Now, from an historical perspective - at least according to a quick Wikipedia check, this movie is only partially accurate, but still is doing way better than Pocahontas for cultural accuracy.  It does feel like whatever movie was being made realized it needed to do some truth telling in the wake of the success of Dances With Wolves and couldn't leave the movie with a kumbaya ending, so we get that text on screen saying "anyway, the Europeans went ahead and did the wrong thing anyway". I am unaware if the traditionally known figures of colonial North American history like Squanto are even known or discussed in schools these days. I suspect no one knows how to talk about them anymore, and it's not hard to see why.  As a kid, I was basically told Squanto was the friendly buddy of the Pilgrims who helped them out because he was good and so were the Pilgrims, but older and wiser, one suspects Squanto's life before the Pilgrims where he was in Spain and England taught him to get in good with the people with guns and ships, that he knew they had the wealth and might of Europe behind them.  It certainly colors his motivations as less than simple kindness.https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/24/2025Format:  NetflixViewing:  FirstDirector:  Isabel Castro Living in Texas in the early 90's, if you had your head up at all, you heard about Selena.  While I didn't listen to Tejano or Cumbia, she'd become so big that a dumb Anglo kid like myself heard Bidi Bidi Bom Bom somewhere along the way, and I admit that I probably paid more attention to Selena because she was very pretty with a Colgate smile. Candidly, in the 1990's and now, the names of most Tejano acts were just not known by Anglos and English speakers.  But Selena was rapidly breaking down that particular divide through sheer force of scale - she was selling out the Astrodome, something reserved for the biggest acts on the planet - and wildly popular local acts like ZZ Top.   As a Texan whose first language was English, it seemed like Selena was about to cross-over to a larger audience the second she put out a record in English (see: Shakira). But then, in 1995, at the age of 23, Selena was killed.   As popular as she was when that occurred, it's very hard to quantify the scope and duration of the public mourning that spilled out. Today, Selena is as popular as ever.  My local MLS club incorporates part of El Chico del Apartamento 512 in its chants and has put up a Selena-themed tifo.  When our state-wide grocery chain, HEB, put out Selena *grocery bags*, they sold out immediately.  Thanks to the J-Lo movie and her enduring fanbase, I expect she'll still get listens for the next several decades. Anyway, I've never seen the movie they made about Selena, because I could never get over the casting of a Brooklyn kid to play a Texas kid, which is me being weird, but here we are (and I like Jennifer Lopez on screen).   But I was more than willing to watch a documentary, and Netflix recently released Selena y los Dinos (2025), a brief history of Selena Quintanilla's life and how the family act that is/ was Los Dinos rose to fame.  It's a glimpse of what it looked like at the top and a horizon in front of Selena where everything was about to get even bigger.  But at some point, those years creeping toward 1995 start becoming a countdown. It's a story about a tight-knit family that leans all the way into the family-band idea as they have two secret weapons, Selena's star power and her brother's talent as a producer.  It details how the band grew, worked with additional artists who joined Los Dinos, and just kept spiralling upward.  Eventually, the girl from Corpus Christi was on stage accepting a Grammy.  She was selling out venues in Texas and Mexico.  And she was about to break into the English language market. That said, I could tell you pretty much exactly when I figured out who Selena was from the cover of her album Entre A Mi Mundo.  The cover art was everywhere.   The doc makes obvious what Selena meant to the Latino community, for kids and adults alike.  It was kind of odd before she died how so much was being put on her at such a young age, and it's not like she was giving political speeches.  She just managed to hit just right.   The doc skips the circumstances of her murder, at least in the way of a true-crime doc.  It jumps over that, drops some bare details about the crime, and lands with the family at the hospital and goes into the funeral. There are details I would like to know more about.  What did the band say to each other - where did they wind up?  What have the family members done for the past three decades?  Did they fall out with Selena's husband?   But it does show the impact and legacy of Selena, still very popular and, like so many artists who die before their time, enshrined with the tragedy of their passing.   I don't spend a tremendous about of time thinking about Selena, but the evidence of her posthumously released album Dreaming of You, she was about to move into a completely different echelon (and her track with David Byrne, God's Child (Baila Conmigo),  is an absolute banger, imho.) The death of Kurt Cobain was a tragedy, but the murder of Selena Quintanilla Perez is as maddening as it is sad.  And I think this doc shows why. But it also shows a bright, lovely life and provides a history to the face and story to go with the voice and told by those who knew her best.https://signal-watch.com

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: https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/22/2025Format:  DiscViewing:  FirstDirector:  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. The victim's wife (Jan Sterling) had one foot out the door, but she sees the angle as people begin flooding in, looky-loos and gawkers, and she stands to make a quick buck feeding people and letting them come see the sights for a quarter a spectator. But Douglas knows you have to milk these stories, and so works to slow the rescue efforts, while playing up his friendship with the victim, whose wife is starting to throw herself at Douglas.   SPOILERS With the Sheriff seeing the news story as a chance at publicity, he supports Douglas in pushing for drilling down to the cave rather than just shoring up the cave and pulling the guy out. Soon, they have an ad hoc tourist attraction that just keeps expanding.  From a few people coming to see what they read in the paper to a literal carnival is setting up outside, with hundreds of cars full of people turning up to be near the story.  A circus tent is erected, carnival rides for the kids...  it's insane. And then Leo, the victim, starts getting sick.  And Douglas finds out he can't just default to the original plan.   For those of us old enough, it's not hard to remember the rescue of "Baby Jessica", which was the first full-blown media circus like this I really remember.  And if you don't remember, 18-month old Jessica McClure fell down a well?  a hole?  And was trapped for something like 2.5 days before they were able to rescue her.  And every bit of televised media was providing updates, enough so that if you mention "the baby in the well" to anyone over 47, they know what you're talking about.  (Baby Jessica is alive and well in West Texas, by the way.)   The movie is Billy Wilder.  It's going to be good almost by default.  And this is a perfect use of Douglas' almost predatory energy on screen.   It's utterly damning not just of the media and reporters and how they're incentivized to follow human interest stories, exploiting the subjects (Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, anyone?).  It's damning of us, the rubs who can't look away, who can't make the connection between real lives and tragedies in play, and what we take in as "entertainment".   And, so the press, then and now, is worth more (literally financially) if they can keep the story going as long as possible and keep everyone glued to the news to see the outcome.  And if you don't have a full story at the outset, you can kind of make one up as you go along. Parts of this movie have become so baked into how we think of media, stories much like this movie were the focus of, or part of, many movies through the 80's into the early 00's.  These days we don't tend to reflect on our relationship with the news as part of our cultural conversation.  Surely there's movies and TV shows out there very much about this, but good luck getting a critical mass to see them. It doesn't mean cable news doesn't latch onto stories and run them into the ground - but these days it's gone from wide-reaching human interest to thinly veiled partisan nonsense.   Anyway, it's a super @#$%ing bummer of a movie.  But well worth the watch.   https://signal-watch.com

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. https://signal-watch.com

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.   It's 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 somewhat (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 awkward. What's absolute gold is, it's a chance for Hallmark stars who would love to also sing for a living, to ham it up and show off their talents in a barely contained format.  The set is just a living room with a piano shoved into a corner, and an increasing line of Hallmark actors, as each ding-dongs the doorbell and Lacey lets them in.  Then they wind up sitting too closely together on the furniture while whomever is singing awkwardly stands at the end of the couch so everyone is always on camera.   It's so weird and awkward.  I have absolutely no idea why they set it up this way.  It's also not clear that these people actually know each other.  There's no real reason they would.  They clearly didn't really rehearse together as the penultimate song is a trainwreck. The cast is: * Lacey Chabert * Jen Lilley * Nikki Deloach * Paul Greene * Jessica Lowndes * Jack Wagner * Larissa Wohl * Happy the Dog? * Peter Dyer on piano Back when this came out I guess Hallmark had a sort of talk show called Home and Family, and I guess Larissa Wohl was on it?  Because she's not an actor.  She has lots of "self" credits on IMDB appearing on shows about dogs.  Because she has no acting credits, for a minute I thought maybe the dog trainer just assumed she was on screen for this and dressed up and they were like "yeah, you look terrific.  Join the show." Happy the Dog and his three minutes of screen time gets a credit but the kids choir that briefly appears does not. 2019 is also just before Candace Cameron Bure got mad they let movies have gay people in them and was so furious she ran off and started her own network, Great American Family, and took a few Hallmark stars with her.   It may be that this special is the last time two or three of these people worked for Hallmark before defecting to the GAF camp.  Because only like 2.5 of them are still among the favored actors Hallmark is shoving at fans in 2025.   One of the stars shows up and guilts you into adopting a dog from a shelter (big agree) so at least we briefly see some cute dogs.  I also don't think any of the other actors like Jessica Lowndes.  It's just a vibe. By the way, clearly Chabert doesn't trust her own voice enough to sing solo.  And yet, she's the host of the sing-along show.  She is also clearly a bit unsure of herself as she keeps dropping the Chabert chuckle. Like when one of the other actors takes way too long to tell a story about fudge.  And then proceeds to lip synch to "Sleighride" while decorating cookies, which is accidentally and curiously flirty. What's weirdest is, it's like they really brought Lacey presents and she has to respond in real time.  It's all so half-assed.  Even pre-recorded, no one has a phenomenal voice that would lead one to believe this was a good idea. That I don't think Hallmark ever did this again is probably very telling.   As mind-numbing and tedious as the Star Wars Holiday Special?  No.  But do you get to see actors kind of make goofs of themselves on camera in the most cringe-tastic way?  You sure do.  But it is blessedly short. https://signal-watch.com

Today is the birthday of Signal Watch favorite Jamie Lee Curtis.   Happy b-day to actor, director, writer, etc... et al...  Ms. Curtis.   https://signal-watch.com

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. https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/20/2025Format:  UP Faith and FamilyViewing:  FirstDirector:  Davis S. Cass Sr. Job: BakerLocation of story:  Somewhere in California?  Outside of San Francisconew skill:  ElfingMan:  Adam MayfieldJob of Man:  Bitch Boy to a CEOGoes to/ Returns to:  Goes toEvent:  Christmas tree lighting ceremonyFood:  Cookies 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 and almost forces her into a relationship with someone else.  He 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 for North American distribution.  But after X amount of time, these movies were back in the hands of the producers.  Part of how they had so many movies in the years where it seemed like a factory cranking out way too many movies, this was the trick.  They were essentially licensing very cheap indie movies, and part of them funding those movies was that they were given script approval.   And, thus, the sameness of Hallmark.   But you want to know about Santa. As a child, one Christmas Chabert watches her parents start making out.  This sets in her heart her fondest wish, her own Prince Charming with whom to mack down for the Holidays.  20 years later, Chabert  seems to be running her own bakery and is dating a very distracted, young CEO (Thad Luckinbill).  CEO's best pal and major domo is Man (Adam Mayfield), who he seems to treat like a personal assistant, including having Man pick up Chabert for dates.  This has been going on for a while, and they seem indifferent to one another, but Santa (Donovan Scott) has decided these two need to bang. CEO does seem like an idiot.  Even as he invites Chabert to his family's lakehouse, he neglects to mention he's actually hosting a Christmas party to entertain the Board?  Like, this lakehouse isn't nearby, Chabert has to take a flight, and is cornered by Santa who insists on talking to Chabert the whole time while arguably seeming like he's hitting on her. The plot of the movie is then 10,000 manipulations of the fabric of reality as Santa just wrecks the CEO's life, while also offering CEO his throwing his ex at him so he doesn't go away without a prize of his own.   Chabert and Man take their incognito Santa to a small mountain town where he's to play Santa, and their car breaks down (because Santa magic!).  John Ratzenberger plays the lazy mechanic, and Florence Henderson the hotel manager.  And wouldn't you know it, there's not enough rooms and Chabert and Man need to share a room.  Which is in no way awkward.   It is not until Santa has coerced Man and Chabert into elf outfits that suddenly Man is like "whoa ho!  What a hottie!"  which is definitely a kink choice.   Anyway, yeah, at some point Santa either teleports a poor bear or creates a living bear from nothing.  He creates a rockslide off-screen burying a road.  He makes it snow.  He makes GPS devices fail and reservations for restaurants merely disappear.  He's basically *a* deity of some sort.   Any time it's looking like Chabert might escape or CEO might make it to her, Santa plays supernatural cock-blocker.   Curiously, this movie has the weirdest scene you're going to see at the end as Chabert and CEO stand facing each other with their newly selected sexual partners and just say "It's all good.  I'm gonna @#$% this one now." to each other.   Full stop, this is a movie that, Santa or not, is about people cheating on their partner and then both basically laughing about it, high fiving, and going separate ways.  Except Man still has to go report to CEO and his new girlfriend on Monday. Santa is a freak. he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake... https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/19/2025Format:  NetflixViewing:  FirstDirector:   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... Area 51 is in the middle of nowhere and still well guarded for a reason.  If you cross onto the property and don't stop for the guards, you will be shot.  And 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 in a way, 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.  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. Essentially, it follows a young man who puts a gag event on Facebook, that event goes viral, and before long, he's (1) got over one million people saying they're coming to party/ run onto Area 51, and (2) has the FBI knocking on his door. I don't want to say too much more as the fun is the slow motion trainwreck (hence the branding) of what happened.  So read no further or rejoin us after you've watched the two-parter (about 90 minutes total). These docs are all about schadenfreude, and it really is wild to watch something spin out of control. What's odd is that the Trainwreck docs (of which I've now watched 4) do nothing to reflect upon the events of the doc or draw any useful comparisons.  And while it keeps the docs to a neat 45-55 minute runtime, it kind of defeats the purpose of why you go back over things in a documentary - it need not be just a simple recounting of events. And there's lots to say, not just vaguely hint at.  Like: * What the fuck is wrong with YouTubers?  Why are the worst people on Earth so popular for young viewers? * Why was it only YouTubers who showed up at the gates of Area 51?  (this point may be correlated with the prior point) * Imbeciles can cost us all untold money and will willingly create disasters to do something "cool" * How is this a microcosm of any movement - where the thing takes on a life of its own, and ultimately gets co-opted by those who angle for personal, financial gain?  Especially strong men/ con men * Oh, this is how the mob steps in But they just won't go there and talk about it.   The doc instead tries to keep it simple as the story of a dude who is in way over her his head.  Like, on a cosmic scale.  Sure, this guy who seems nice enough, he just does not have the tools at all for what he went through (and still seems to live in his Mom's garage at age 26 or so).   Honestly, some of the doc never ads up, and I suspect there's a much weirder version of this story.   I absolutely understand the part where a meme takes on a life of its own, but things like the County Commissioners deciding to approve the permit that will piss off local voters and lead to endangering them and their property *could* have been a choice to hold the permit holders legally responsible for what's coming.  The *more likely* case is someone gave the commissioners a briefcase full of money.   How our motel owner wound up paying any bills herself seems like a scam-artist was involved, and she got suckered by other scam artists along the way.   How the guy from Vice was so in his own bubble he seemed oblivious to what was actually happening then or since is kind of remarkable.  Terrible job! How ANY of this got to this point seems nearly impossible to conceive, but it is worth noting that it's one thing to click you're coming to an event on facebook, and another to actually show up. I wish these docs did go a bit deeper, because it's a missed opportunity to illustrate to people how things like Russia's Communist Revolution got taken over by the worst possible people.  Or how *any* movement you think about joining needs to be watched carefully, even if you think it's just for fun. Younger viewers will think that the military and police over-reacted.  "It's just a joke" by morons with a camera is a real @#$%ing issue.  We had some influencer visiting town a month or two ago and shooting people at the park with a pellet gun.  They were arrested, but enough 14 year old dipshits will have watched to both make the arrest profitable and make it go away - as well as encouraging the next dipshit to try it. Frankly, I think the FBI underreacted, or else we got a very soft version of events.   https://signal-watch.com

no no.  You're playing siblings again.  Back up a pace. Watched:  11/18/2025Format:  HallmarkViewing:  SecondDirector:  Dustin Rikert Job: DoctorLocation of story:  Somewhere in Scotlandnew skill:  Lording over peasantsMan:  James RobinsonJob of Man:  GroundskeeperGoes to/ Returns to:  Goes toEvent:  Some underwhelming solstice thing, a banger of a party and a ballFood:  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 woman 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) This is a movie that makes the 2009 Folger Christmas advert seem positively chaste.  Scott Wolf (Party of Five) and Lacey Chabert (Party of Five) play the adult children of a former Scottish Dutchess who find she ran away from her duties to become a folk-rock singer.  Now the whole family is reconnecting in Scotland as the mom is the inheritor of the family estate, and she's offering it to Wolf and Chabert.   From the moment they land, Chabert and Wolf - who live in LA and SF so don't see each other often - have eyes only for each other.  Wolf immediately begins ignoring his wife (Kellie Blaise) and the two siblings spend every minute together trying to reconnect.   At the film's end, Chabert is hurt by Wolf's decision to stay in Scotland and run the estate, and one is not left wondering why she feels so abandoned as he seems to recommit himself to his wife.  But seeing no other way to be together, she returns to the Castle instead of going back to SF. (take 3) This is a movie about something called a "Dirty Reindeer", which is not a disgusting euphemism.  Unless you want it to be. (take 4) A Merry Scottish Christmas (2023) is a movie about a mother who guilt-trips her kids into coming to Scotland for Christmas.   It's a Hallmark travel movie, a popular genre, wherein a woman over 30 goes to Europe and bangs a local and feels it is very authentic.  In these movies everyone loves Americans, the three or so things everyone knows about another country are treated like the deepest lore, and it's often shot not at all in that country.  Example, this movie extolling the virtues of Scotland is filmed in County Kildare, Ireland and asks Irish people to do their best Scottish accent. It's about a mom who ran away from her role as a Dutchess, blah blah blah.  The kids have to wander around and try and figure out if living in a @#$%ing castle with free servants is the right move.  It has the usual "let's bake a local item" thing, and says stuff about Scotland I'll just accept to be true because I've never been there, and don't currently know any Scots I could ask.   Chabert plays a doctor with her own GP clinic, Wolf plays a busy accountant and a wife who is unhappy, and their mother is played by Fiona Bell.   There is a creepy groundskeeper (James Robinson - actually Scottish!) who should be scaring the shit out of the whole family, but instead they love him.  And, man, this guy shows every red flag in the book, just following Chabert everywhere so he just happens to show up.  And flatter her professional skills in one way by asking for her help when he clearly just bruised his wrist, and then negs her by making her double-check her work by going to his mom's clinic where it is clearly stated there is no X-Ray (not a plot point, somehow).   The highlight of the film is the party where Hallmark star Will Kemp shows up, they throw in some jokes for Chabert fans who've seen the two paired before, and it seems like they're having an actual good time. I did wonder how Chabert felt opposite Wolf who is a pretty solid actor.  Like, someone was kind of meeting her energy level and the scenes are mostly very watchable and the two work much better together than Chabert and her supposed love interest here.   Is it any good?  Yeah, it's fine.  I mean, I absolutely hate the writing and acting (dead eyed enthusiasm) of the love interest, but there's enough other stuff going on, it's fine.  Fake-Scotland is picturesque, and Wolf's wife's hair is amazing. Chabert is given fairly good stuff to do in this movie, like having understandable doubts that don't seem ginned up.  I just don't believe she connected so much with Man as she did with hanging with her family and the promise of a big-ass castle with staff and having kind of a guaranteed clientele thanks to the only other doctor approaching retirement age.  Also, she'll probably buy herself an X-Ray machine with her Dutchess money. Also, the line of sight in this make it looks like Chabert and the wife are looking at each other longingly while Goofus there on the left is checking out Scott Wolf.  https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11/17/2025Format:  NetflixViewing:  FirstDirector:   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. https://signal-watch.com

by Fiona Underhill, Staff Writer Although she played a range of roles, Totter said herself that “the bad girls were so much fun to play.”

Watched: 11/16/2025Format:  HallmarkViewing:  secondDirector:  Maclain Nelson Job: Copywriter/ Editor?  She never works during this whole movieLocation of story:  Evergreen Lane - which I think is in Salt Lake Citynew skill:  Mastery of the Christmas ArtsMan:  Wes BrownJob of Man:  ArchitectGoes to/ Returns to:  stays in same place (this is the 2nd installment)Event:  Several ongoing Christmas festivtiesFood:  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).   The *conflict* is that the Jolly Johnsons want to own Christmas.  The well-oiled machine of the HOA starts to break down as the Johnsons immediately start elbowing in and try to make Christmas theirs - turning community events into a series of competitions with different rules and essentially pitting people against each other. To be real, as someone who has to organize group activities as a PM and who used to manage *large* activities (conferences, workshops, etc...) for a living, this one is maybe too close to my personal point of irritation, as I have been in *plenty* of places where someone waltzes in at the last minute and wants to keep grabbing the wheel and drive.  Sometimes people do have good ideas, and you can't just shut anyone down who wants to participate.  Further, shutting people down can also halt participation from more timid souls watching how this plays out.  It's a challenge! But because most of the characters are default "nice", and the Johnsons are Grade-A assholes, Our Heroes keep getting railroaded, and eventually bullied as the Johnsons set up their own events. To be honest, I am sure playing the Johnsons was a lot of fun.  I am less sure that maybe the movie didn't need to dial it back a bit, because at some point, it's honestly sort of unpleasant.  You don't really see anyone coming back from this.  They will, it's Hallmark, but if it were me?  I'd now be in a cold war with the folks down the street and hand over the keys to the neighborhood events and wish everyone the best of luck.  Sometimes you have to let people self-immolate. Fortunately, our film ends with a mostly unearned kumbaya moment, and then a proposal.  I guess these two forty-year-olds are ready to seal the deal.  But peace is restored as Chabert's character shrugs and does the first sensible thing all movie. The cast from the prior movie is back, including Melissa Peterman, Stephen Tobolwsky, Ellen Travolta, and Walter Platz.  The Johnsons are played by Seth Morris and Jennifer Aspen (apparently an old Party of Five co-star with Chabert).   Is it any good? It's at least trying something!  Many of the jokes land, especially if you're already in and onboard from the first movie.  Without it, it's going to take a minute to sort out.  My favorite joke of the movie is Lacey Chabert's frustration as she learns the Johnsons refusing to participate in HOA mandated activities is an actual option, and she could have skipped everything in the first movie.   I've previously opined that Lacey Chabert is underserved as a comedian.  She is pretty funny, and as the straightman here (the hardest bit of all), she has some genuinely good moments of exasperation with both the Johnsons and the still unfolding reality of Christmas mania on Evergreen Lane.  Plus the recurring Nickleback jokes are pretty solid. Hallmark movies are divorced from reality in so many ways, they kind of critic proof themselves.  As a screwy comedy, the Haul Out the Holly movies kick it even further up a notch, and practically dare you to challenge the movie's premise.  And that premise is that what people want to do during Christmas is hang out with their neighbors and play games and drink cocoa.  Not deal with visiting family, obligatory activities, etc... At least this one is *trying* to be funny, have some zaniness and has, like, characters.https://signal-watch.com

Watched:  11.16/2025Format:  AmazonViewing:  SecondDirector:  Brian DePalma There's a lot going on in Phantom of the Paradise (1974).   Here's a pie-chart as shared by The Dug about half-way through the movie (we'd thrown together a last-minute watch party). And then without about ten minutes left: it helps to know that "giraffe" is code for "no, thank you"  This seems right.   It's a rock'n'roll odyssey put out at the height of the music industry's debaucherous post-60's embracing of glitz and glamour and hard drugs.  It's hard not to see the movie as helping push boundaries with formats for music (gestures broadly at Jim Steinman) and as reflecting what was going on out there in the pre-punk days.   The story borrows from Faust, barely from Phantom of the Opera, Dorian Gray and nods to German Expressionism.  But it's also a musical propelled by a Paul Williams-penned soundtrack.  It's more or less a young filmmaker going nuts and having fun putting *ideas* up on screen, as well as homage.   DePalma has fun with lens and shot selection, set design, and a star in William Finley who is not afraid to disappear into his over-the-top character with silver teeth and an oddball headcovering that leaves one wild eye rolling inside the mask.  The movie was filmed a few places, but I learned that the theater that plays "The Paradise" is the Majestic Theatre of Dallas, Texas.  So it's very possible extras from Logan's Run are also in the audience here.   As I opined, Phantom of the Paradise is somewhat like Showgirls in that it is actually very successful at doing what it set out to do.  Whether you like what it's doing is unrelated.  Looking at the reception bits on Wikipedia, arguably most of the reviewers kind of missed DePalma's goals, which happens as the new generation comes along.  He wasn't *spoofing* anything, he's using pieces of pop culture and culture to simply tell a modern rock fable.  And doing it with a wink as he's doing it - knowing how over the top and absurd it is.  It's mostly a study in seeing what you can get away with.   We're taking a journey, man.  A journey that starts with a nostalgia act, The Juicy Fruits doing that 1970's thing of playing a sort of Greaser version of a doo-wop act that would bring is Sha-Na-Na, moves into a Beach Boys pastiche.  Paul Williams' soundtrack has some pretty good tracks as the film progresses, but who gets songs and when doesn't really match the usual format of a musical.  Swan (Williams) never has a solo explaining himself.  We kind of subvert Phoenix's (Jessica Harper) song and it's not much of an "I Want" song.  It's more... just songs.  And I wasn't able to dig in enough to the lyrics during my two viewings to hear what they had to say.  But I did listen to the soundtrack on its own, and it's very Paul Williams and listenable. Do I like this movie?  Well, yeah.  I kind of think I do.  In the way I always like it when a movie swings for the fences and wants to do its own thing.  Maybe it winds up being a bit off-putting as there are no heroes in this movie, exactly - even our wholesome female star/ Christine stand-in gets immediately compromised when success and possible celebrity is thrust upon her.  And Winslow (our Phantom) is kind of weird and hard to cheer for, so you're just sort of watching things happen. Does it make much sense and is it hard to follow on a first viewing?  I don't know, but it is more fun when you know what's coming.  https://signal-watch.com