On 12/8/2024 10:06 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
On 12/8/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
What did you watch?
I took it easy yesterday, so not too much:
DOOL - Wed's & Thur's ep's. They're moving beyond Doug's memorial, but
not in particularly interesting ways - Doug's "grandson" (Disney's
Peyton Meyer) shows up, and he's stolen a necklace... Meh. Why should I
care about this? And why have they brought him on? - There's almost no
one to pair him with - Stephanie? Chanel? Joy, if she sticks around?
Meh... Meanwhile, I enjoyed Xander clashing with Stephanie - he kind of
has her number!
Lioness (Pee+) - First two episodes of season #2.
Ep. #2.1 is a barn-burner - Cartel types enter the El Paso(?) house
of a U.S. Congresswoman, kill her husband and child, and kidnap her.
Without even her own team (who were not in ep. #2.1 at all), Joe is
ordered into Mexico to retrieve the Congresswoman, though she's backed
by a team consisting of Max Martini (The Unit) and Taylor Sheridan
himself!! They retrieve the Congresswoman with EXTREME PREJUDICE! - I
love how they just eliminated the banditos like swatting flies. Then
they waste probably about three dozen Mexican federales and Mexican army troops on the way back to the border!
Ep. #2.2 brings back Joe's team (sans Cruz), along with Martini and Sheridan, and CIA bro Kyle (Thad Luckinbill, who's now main cast in
season #2, along with Michael Kelly and Morgan Freeman) for their new
mission - plant a new lioness inside the Cartel to track down the
Chinese Intelligence operative who organized the original kidnapping.
The new lioness? - A U.S. Army(?) captain and chopper pilot who also
happens to be the niece of the Cartel's head. But Carrillo, the new
lioness, seems even more problematic than Cruz was. And this mission
isn't even an assassination mission, but a "trojan horse" operation!
I otherwise left Christmas TV movies or the Oregon-Penn State game on as background noise, until:
Sugarplummed (Hallmark) - New X-Mas flick starring Maggie Lawson and
Janel Parrish.
This started out really promisingly, as it was basically a spoof and "meta" examination of Hallmark's own X-Mas movies.
Sounds like the sort of thing I would like.
It started out
turning the formula on its head, but explicitly examining it.
Unfortunately, the film succumbs to all the very tropes it was originally satirizing in the Third Act.
Too bad, because Hallmark was coming dangerously close to breaking
the formula with this one...
What did you watch?
Another day of vegging out. I watched:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (4K disc) 1956 sci-fi movie based on the
1954 novel by Jack Finney about alien pods that come to Earth and take
over by copying people. People first start to notice something is off
when their loved ones begin to act emotionless. Kevin McCarthy stars as
Dr. Binnell, who tries to stop them. I watched with a pretty good
commentary that talked about the movie, but also tons of gossip about
the making of the movie. Some gossip from 1950s included the wife of
the movie's producer was having an affair. The producer hired a private investigator to track down his wife and the man. The producer
confronted them and shot the guy (very close to his privates) leading to
an attempted murder charge. The producer then hired a celebrity lawyer,
who specialized in temporary insanity defense, and got off. At the time
when all of this was very publicly happening, the studio just ignored it
and continued to promote some other movie, and the producer, as if
nothing was happening. He was literally in prison at one point the
studio named him as producer of their upcoming movie. But he was
already out by the time he produced Body Snatchers.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (4K disc) 1978 sci-fi movie based on the
1954 novel by Jack Finney about alien pods that come to Earth and take
over by copying people. People first start to notice something is off
when their loved ones begin to act emotionless. Donald Sutherland stars
as Mr. Binnell, who tries to stop them. I watched it with a commentary.
The commentary was OK, but didn't talk much about the movie. I was
tempted to turn off the commentary, but decided to leave it on since the
movie was going to be background noise anyway.
Seedpeople (Amazon streaming) 1992 direct to video movie written by
Charles Band about alien pods that come to Earth and take over by
copying people. People first start to notice something is off when
their loved ones begin to act emotionless. I rented this on VHS back in
92 when the movie first came out. I liked it then and have been eager
to see it again. It holds up well enough, but I wonder where did
Charles Band get such an original idea from?
Body Snatchers (blu-ray) 1993 sci-fi movie based on the 1954 novel by
Jack Finney about alien pods that come to Earth and take over by copying people. This version moves the action to an army base which means there
are plenty of weapons and people trained to use them to fight back.
This is a very underrated movie with a great cast that includes Meg
Tilly, R. Lee Ermey, and Forest Whitaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11aUKrc_b9c
The Invasion (4K disc) 2007 sci-fi movie based on the 1954 novel by Jack
Finney about alien virus that come to Earth and take over by, I have no
idea what. Maybe giving people the flu? People first start to notice something is off when their loved ones begin to act emotionless.
Nicole Kidman stars as Dr. Bennell, who tries to stop them. Pre James
Bond, Daniel Craig also stars, along with pre James Bond Jeffrey Wright.
This is a new 4K release with a new commentary track. I watched with
a commentary track in hopes that the commentary could make some sense of
this movie. On the commentary they mentioned the movie went through
multiple rewrites and reshoots, unfortunately the people doing the
commentary had no idea what was changed. They couldn't follow the plot
either and just kept pointing out all the dropped plot threads and what
they assumed were reshoots. Some of the best bits from the commentary included, "Why is there that giant blood splatter on the wall?" I looked
up at the screen and saw a giant blood splatter that took up half the
frame. There is *no* indication of what caused it, and no dead bodies
around either. "Why is the lock of the employee entrance on the outside
of the door? Are they locking the employees in?" And, "Who is Sally?"
They had me wondering that too. I checked the Wikipedia cast page, and
there is no character named "Sally" listed. They were pretty sure all
the Jeffrey Wright scenes where he spouted nonsensical exposition were reshoots. And they said all the action beats at the end were definitely reshoots. They did say the original script was thoughtful and scary. Apparently the studio brought in a European (the same guy who directed, "Downfall"), who made a weird complicated film, then after test
screenings and showing it to execs they went in and changed everything
with reshoots. The result is the mess of a movie that escaped to the
public. Even the people doing the commentary couldn't make any sense of
it. :-/
The Puppet Masters (1994) sci-fi movie based on the 1951 novel by
Robert A. Heinlein about aliens that come to Earth and take over by
controlling people. People first start to notice something is off when
their loved ones begin to act emotionless. Donald Sutherland stars as
the head of a government agency hunting the aliens. Another underrated
movie that holds up great. If I didn't know any better, I might suspect
Jack Finney ripped off Heinlein.
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