I watched:
The Good Place - "A Girl From Arizona Part 1" - The 4th and final season
kicks off, and I was a need of a better recap to fully get me up to
speed. Anyway, with Eleanor now in charge of the fake Good Place, the
fate of all of humanity rests on the gang's ability to take 4 human
souls and make them better people. Except demons from the bad place get
to pick the 4 souls and are actively working to sabotage things. I
loved the bad places' theme song.
Evil - In a surprisingly good pilot episode Katja Herbers stars as a
forensic psychologist, and I think lapsed Catholic, who works as a hired
gun for the DA. In her latest case she's surprised when out of the blue
the defense starts to raise the prospect the defendant was possessed by
a demon even though the defendant never hinted it at during their
interviews. After doing a bit of sniffing around she runs into Luke
Cage who works for the Catholic church investigating reports of Demon
possession. Things start to happen that may or may not involve Katja
coming face to face with a demon and she suddenly starts to rethink her
life. And as luck would have it she finds herself in need of a new job
and Luke Cage just happens to be in need of someone who can help him
debunk fake allegations of demon possession, or verify the real thing.
Aasif Mandvi and Michael Emerson round out the cast, with Emerson
playing the type of creepy character only Emerson could play. Rather
demons exist or not, Emerson definitely exists and he just oozes
evilness. It was a solid premier that has me interested.
On a side note I originally didn't realize that "Emergence" and "Evil"
were two separate shows. I spent the entire episode of "Emergence"
convinced the little girl with powers was evil! I assumed she caused
the plane to crash (still not sure she didn't) and she definitely caused
the car to crash. I figured the shady government agency trying to
capture her knew she was evil and that's why they were after her. Now I
guess I should maybe rethink the events of the pilot. ;-)
The Shining (theatrical) 1980 Stanley Kubrick movie. It got a 4K
restoration and theatrical rerelease. I'm not going to bother trying to
recap it, because I'm honestly not at all sure what was happening! I
probably haven't watched it in about 10 years. And I didn't remember it
all that well. There was a lot in the movie that I was actually
surprised by especially that it was a solid "R" flick. Even though I
was not in any way impressed with the so-called new 4K print, I thought
the cinematography, directing, and acting were all fine. The problem
was the script! The movie makes *no* sense!!!! What exactly is the
voice the kid hears? A ghost? Does it possess him? So Does Jack
Nicholson's character *also* have the Shining? If he does, that would
explain a lot. But that doesn't explain how Shelley Duvall also sees
the ghosts. If you don't need the Shining to see the ghosts then what
difference does it make that the kid even has the power? And are they
ghosts or not? Something had to let Nicholson out of the room, so I
guess yeah. But what exactly causes Nicholson to go insane in the first
place? This gets back to secretly having the Shining? Reincarnation?
Bad writing? Inquiring minds want to know!!! I can't say it's
necessarily a bad movie. It certainly held my interest. But the movie
seems to be almost entirely dependent on the audience having already
read the book in order to make sense of the holes in the plot. It's as
if Kubrick figured it's not a plot hole if it was explained in the book.
That's *not* how movies work! :-/