What Did You Watch? 2019-12-26 (Thursday)

[Ubiquitous]

On Boxing Day, I watched:

FAMILY GUY:
Several eps.

DOCTOR WHO:
"THe Macra Terror". The TARDIS arrives at a Human colony that runs along the
lines of a holiday camp. This was a cartoon version of the 2nd Doctor with
Jamie, Ben, and Polly.

What did you watch?

--
"We need to impeach the President to find out what crime he committed."
- Nancy Pelosi

[Arthur Lipscomb]

On 12/27/2019 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> On Boxing Day, I watched:
>
> FAMILY GUY:
> Several eps.
>
> DOCTOR WHO:
> "THe Macra Terror". The TARDIS arrives at a Human colony that runs along the
> lines of a holiday camp. This was a cartoon version of the 2nd Doctor with
> Jamie, Ben, and Polly.
>

I hit play all ready to watch the Holiday episode of the new season and
got this instead. I was *not* happy. I only watched a few minutes
before turning it off.

> What did you watch?
>
> --

Batman Begins (4K disc) Christopher Nolan's reboot of the franchise
staring Christian Bale as Batman. After learning the ways of the ninja
from Ra's al Ghul, Bruce returns to Gotham and starts crime fighting.
Things start out well enough until Batman goes up against The Scarecrow
(Cillian Murphy) who doesn't scare as easily as the common street hood.
And if Scarescrow isn't bad enough, it turns out Ra's al Ghul may be
immortal after all. Wonderful movie with a great tag at the end.


The Dark Knight (4K disc) picking up where Begins ended, a new villain
is in town, he wears "war paint" and offers to deal with the mob's
Batman problem in exchange for "half." Batman isn't scared of some
joker wearing face paint and with the help the city's new DA and his
trusty lucky coin, what could go wrong? This movie is near perfect.
The only flaw is they replaced Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Other than that, the movie is outstanding in every way. I also love
that the 4K disc shifts aspect ratio like it did in IMAX. I was also a
little worried (and annoyed) that none of the Christopher Nolan discs
have a Dolby Atmos track, but those worries were set aside when the
booming base on this one kicked in. It sounded great in spite of not
being Atmos.


The Dark Knight Rises (4K disc) Following the events of "The Dark
Knight" Batman has gone into retirement, but he's decides to return
after a run in with an attractive cat burglar. But he may have bitten
off more than he can chew when Bane comes to town looking for payback on
some over due debts. I've had some complicated feelings about this one.
I loved it, for the most part, while watching. But years back, I
hated this movie. The plot holes in it are massive. But now I can
willing suspend my disbelief, turn my brain off and enjoy the ride. And
the first fight between Batman and Bane is the best Batman fight ever.


The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (blu-ray) Sequel to "The Lion,
the Witch, and the Wardrobe" that picks up with the four original kids
about a year later their time, but 1300 years later in Narnia time. The
4 former rulers are called back to help save the land and the would be
new king from his evil uncle who wants to wipe out all the Narnians. I
guess it was OK. I wasn't always paying attention, but the scene in the
cave where they try to bring back the White Witch was really good.

[Timothy Bruening]

Doctor Who marathon on the BBCA.

[Ian J. Ball]

On 2019-12-27 09:30:41 +0000, Ubiquitous said:

> What did you watch?

Primarily movies:

Mortal Engines (HBO (East)) - I remember in his review that Arthur
compared this flick unfavorably to "Alita: Battle Angel" (aside: I
recently saw that they were raving about how great "Alita" is on
Quora...), in that the "world" here was pretty underdefined. I'd agree
that the "world building"/logic-of-the-world was weak in this flick.
Honestly, this felt a lot like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"
in that this was really an exercise to put cool cyberpunk-type stuff up
on screen (e.g. the flying airships in this...).
Another problem I had was that the lead actress, Scandanavian Hera
Hilmar, is a pretty good ringer for a young Emily Blunt, and that kept
distracting me in every scene she was in (which is nearly all of
them!). (However, I did like Leila George as the second female lead -
hey! this is Vincent D'Onofrio's *daughter*!!...) And, of course, this
also sported Hugo Weaving as the 'Big Bad' - gosh! we've never seen
Weaving play a 'Big Bad' before!!1! [roll]
But I didn't hate this flick, and it was generally pretty
entertaining, if incredibly dumb in spots. (To wit: As the start of the
film's climatic sequence, EVOL!!1! Hugo Weaving deploys the Big Bad
Weapon, and starts firing it. But them in explicable, in the ultimate
climatic scene, they show the weapon deploying *again*!! But they
already deployed it, five minutes before!! [double-eye roll!] ) They
also bait-and-switched me pretty good, as at the start of the film, I
assumed that Robert Sheehan's character was meant to end up with Leila
George's - it didn't occur to me that he'd end up with Hilmar's.
I didn't realize this was a Peter Jackson production. I also didn't
realize it was the "Biggest Box Office Bomb" of 2018 - it's really not
*that* bad!

soaps: DOOL - More people I don't care about, so I didn't pay much attention.
GH - Nelle almost snookers Willow into letting Nelle hold baby
Wylie, but Michael shows up just in time. Finn advises Anna to drop the
dime on her suspicions about Peter August. In a scene I didn't really
understand, matronly bitch Maxie goes after Brook Lynn Ashton (now
played by Amanda Setton! hey, Fred, it's Amanda Setton!!) - I barely
remember the character of Brook Lynn, so this didn't help...

Asylum (HBO Zone) - This was a 2008 horror movie that I only watched
because it starred the lovely Sarah Roemer (I'm pretty sure all of the
nudity on her part was a body double, though...), and very young Travis
Van Winkle and Ellen Hollman. The gist: College kids move into a dorm
that was actually a former mental asylum, and the location is possessed
by the spirit of the cruel, mad doctor (Mark Rolston) who used to run
the asylum. So the college kids are gruesomely tortured and murdered
one by one.
In general, this was mediocre, and wouldn't have been worth watching
were it not for its cast.

Black Lightning (recorded) - "The Book of Resistance: Chapter Two:
Henderson's Opus" (ep. #3.7). I thought this episode was a lot better
than "Chapter One".
In the one thing that annoyed me, they hand-waived away Anissa's
nearly dying in the previous episode (I had assumed that the "antidote"
that Gambi gave her at the end of "Chapter One" was just a temporary
fix, but I guess we're supposed to believe it was the actual "cure"...)
- though Anissa is currently "depowered" as a result of the poisoning.
Also, there's almost no development on the Jennifer front.
But I really liked the Black Lightning versus both Henderson's
"resistance" and the ASA (now under Major Grey's command). And even the
stuff with Lynn, where she and Ganbi discover "Painkiller" was good.
And BL smuggling out the meta kids, and also Grace, was good too.
I'm actually looking forward to the next episode of the show, after
this one...

Scarecrows (Tubi) - This actually wasn't bad, I thought. I watched this
because it starred Hannah Gordon, who recently popped up in the LMN
flick "My Mom's Darkest Secrets".
The premise is pretty simple: psycho farmer makes scarecrows out of
people! (i.e. his victims!), whose mouths' he sews shut, and whom he
then basically crucifies, to make his "scarecrows".
Tonally, I'm not sure this flick totally worked - the horror parts
did; but large stretches of the film, esp. early on, are comprised of
goofy humor, which is generally making fun of the adle-brained college
kids. I'm not sure this worked with the "darker" parts of this flick...
Anyway, I didn't hate the ending of this one, even though, 1) it
suffers from the "incredibly dumb horror heroine" syndrome, and 2) it
was pretty downbeat (obviously setting up for a potential sequel...).


--
"Three light sabers? Is that overkill? Or just the right amount
of "kill"?" - M-OC, "A Perilous Rescue" (ep. #2.9), LSW:TFA (08-10-2017)

[Ian J. Ball]

On 2019-12-27 17:01:29 +0000, Arthur Lipscomb said:

> On 12/27/2019 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>>

>> What did you watch?

>
>
> Batman Begins (4K disc) Christopher Nolan's reboot of the franchise
> staring Christian Bale as Batman. After learning the ways of the ninja
> from Ra's al Ghul, Bruce returns to Gotham and starts crime fighting.
> Things start out well enough until Batman goes up against The Scarecrow
> (Cillian Murphy) who doesn't scare as easily as the common street hood.
> And if Scarescrow isn't bad enough, it turns out Ra's al Ghul may be
> immortal after all. Wonderful movie with a great tag at the end.
>
>
> The Dark Knight (4K disc) picking up where Begins ended, a new villain
> is in town, he wears "war paint" and offers to deal with the mob's
> Batman problem in exchange for "half." Batman isn't scared of some
> joker wearing face paint and with the help the city's new DA and his
> trusty lucky coin, what could go wrong? This movie is near perfect.
> The only flaw is they replaced Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Agreed. The problem is, this is a *big* flaw. :(

If we can blame anything bad on Tom Cruise, we can certainly blame him
for this!

> Other than that, the movie is outstanding in every way. I also love
> that the 4K disc shifts aspect ratio like it did in IMAX. I was also a
> little worried (and annoyed) that none of the Christopher Nolan discs
> have a Dolby Atmos track, but those worries were set aside when the
> booming base on this one kicked in. It sounded great in spite of not
> being Atmos.
>
>
> The Dark Knight Rises (4K disc)

I *still* haven't seen this one. I've kind of decided I refuse to watch
it with commercials, but it never seems to pop up on the premium
channels or streaming services I have...

> The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (blu-ray) Sequel to "The Lion,
> the Witch, and the Wardrobe" that picks up with the four original kids
> about a year later their time, but 1300 years later in Narnia time.
> The 4 former rulers are called back to help save the land and the would
> be new king from his evil uncle who wants to wipe out all the Narnians.
> I guess it was OK.

Oh, no - it's *terrible*! >:/

> I wasn't always paying attention, but the scene in the cave where they
> try to bring back the White Witch was really good.

[Arthur Lipscomb]

It might work a little better as a stand alone. A couple of the plot
holes come from watching it back to back.

I was thinking if Warners wanted a Batman vs. Superman movie, it would
have been perfect to make *that* movie after The Dark Knight. At least
within that context, people thought Batman was a bad guy so Superman
would have had an excuse to fight him.

On the other hand, "Rises" would have been a pretty good 4th Batman
movie within the original Burtonverse. Maybe combine it with "Begins."
In my 4th Burtonverse movie, it starts off with Baman vs. Bane, keeping
the same fight as is. After Bane breaks Batman, Robin rescues him then
as he recuperates, Batman tells Robin his origin story.

[Arthur Lipscomb]

On 12/27/2019 9:58 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
> On 2019-12-27 09:30:41 +0000, Ubiquitous said:
>
>> What did you watch?
>
> Primarily movies:
>
> Mortal Engines (HBO (East)) - I remember in his review that Arthur
> compared this flick unfavorably to "Alita: Battle Angel"

I don't remember that (I never do. LOL) but that sounds like something I
would have said.

(aside: I
> recently saw that they were raving about how great "Alita" is on
> Quora...),

I went in to Alita with *LOW* expectations and was blown away by how
great it was. This is one of those cases where the movie is way better
than the trailers would have you believe. Unfortunately they were so
sure they were going to do a sequel, that they didn't bother to give it
a proper ending. The lack of a proper ending really kills the end of
the movie.

in that the "world" here was pretty underdefined. I'd agree
> that the "world building"/logic-of-the-world was weak in this flick.
> Honestly, this felt a lot like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"
> in that this was really an exercise to put cool cyberpunk-type stuff up
> on screen (e.g. the flying airships in this...).
>   Another problem I had was that the lead actress, Scandanavian Hera
> Hilmar, is a pretty good ringer for a young Emily Blunt, and that kept
> distracting me in every scene she was in (which is nearly all of them!).
> (However, I did like Leila George as the second female lead - hey! this
> is Vincent D'Onofrio's *daughter*!!...) And, of course, this also
> sported Hugo Weaving as the 'Big Bad' - gosh! we've never seen Weaving
> play a 'Big Bad' before!!1!  [roll]
>   But I didn't hate this flick, and it was generally pretty
> entertaining, if incredibly dumb in spots. (To wit: As the start of the
> film's climatic sequence, EVOL!!1! Hugo Weaving deploys the Big Bad
> Weapon, and starts firing it. But them in explicable, in the ultimate
> climatic scene, they show the weapon deploying *again*!! But they
> already deployed it, five minutes before!! [double-eye roll!] ) They
> also bait-and-switched me pretty good, as at the start of the film, I
> assumed that Robert Sheehan's character was meant to end up with Leila
> George's - it didn't occur to me that he'd end up with Hilmar's.
>   I didn't realize this was a Peter Jackson production. I also didn't
> realize it was the "Biggest Box Office Bomb" of 2018 - it's really not
> *that* bad!
>

Yeah, it's not *that* bad. But it's not that good either. I have both
Engines and Alita on disc. Maybe I should double feature them. I have
a week to catch up on my DVR and movie backlog. I'm still deciding what
I'm going to watch. These two together, could work.

> soaps: DOOL - More people I don't care about, so I didn't pay much
> attention.
>   GH - Nelle almost snookers Willow into letting Nelle hold baby Wylie,
> but Michael shows up just in time. Finn advises Anna to drop the dime on
> her suspicions about Peter August. In a scene I didn't really
> understand, matronly bitch Maxie goes after Brook Lynn Ashton (now
> played by Amanda Setton! hey, Fred, it's Amanda Setton!!) - I barely
> remember the character of Brook Lynn, so this didn't help...
>
> Asylum (HBO Zone) - This was a 2008 horror movie that I only watched
> because it starred the lovely Sarah Roemer (I'm pretty sure all of the
> nudity on her part was a body double, though...), and very young Travis
> Van Winkle and Ellen Hollman. The gist: College kids move into a dorm
> that was actually a former mental asylum, and the location is possessed
> by the spirit of the cruel, mad doctor (Mark Rolston) who used to run
> the asylum. So the college kids are gruesomely tortured and murdered one
> by one.
>   In general, this was mediocre, and wouldn't have been worth watching
> were it not for its cast.
>

I keep seeing this pop up, but I haven't been moved to record it.

> Black Lightning (recorded) - "The Book of Resistance: Chapter Two:
> Henderson's Opus" (ep. #3.7). I thought this episode was a lot better
> than "Chapter One".
>   In the one thing that annoyed me, they hand-waived away Anissa's
> nearly dying in the previous episode (I had assumed that the "antidote"
> that Gambi gave her at the end of "Chapter One" was just a temporary
> fix, but I guess we're supposed to believe it was the actual "cure"...)
> - though Anissa is currently "depowered" as a result of the poisoning.
>   Also, there's almost no development on the Jennifer front.
>   But I really liked the Black Lightning versus both Henderson's
> "resistance" and the ASA (now under Major Grey's command). And even the
> stuff with Lynn, where she and Ganbi discover "Painkiller" was good. And
> BL smuggling out the meta kids, and also Grace, was good too.
>   I'm actually looking forward to the next episode of the show, after
> this one...
>
> Scarecrows (Tubi) - This actually wasn't bad, I thought. I watched this
> because it starred Hannah Gordon, who recently popped up in the LMN
> flick "My Mom's Darkest Secrets".
>   The premise is pretty simple: psycho farmer makes scarecrows out of
> people! (i.e. his victims!), whose mouths' he sews shut, and whom he
> then basically crucifies, to make his "scarecrows".

Sounds like House of Wax.

>   Tonally, I'm not sure this flick totally worked - the horror parts
> did; but large stretches of the film, esp. early on, are comprised of
> goofy humor, which is generally making fun of the adle-brained college
> kids. I'm not sure this worked with the "darker" parts of this flick...
>   Anyway, I didn't hate the ending of this one, even though, 1) it
> suffers from the "incredibly dumb horror heroine" syndrome, and 2) it
> was pretty downbeat (obviously setting up for a potential sequel...).
>
>

Don't think I've ever seen this before. Must be newer.

[Ian J. Ball]

On 2019-12-27 18:56:44 +0000, Arthur Lipscomb said:

> On 12/27/2019 9:58 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
>> On 2019-12-27 09:30:41 +0000, Ubiquitous said:
>>
>>> What did you watch?
>>
>> Primarily movies:
>>

>> Scarecrows (Tubi) - This actually wasn't bad, I thought. I watched this
>> because it starred Hannah Gordon, who recently popped up in the LMN
>> flick "My Mom's Darkest Secrets".
>>   The premise is pretty simple: psycho farmer makes scarecrows out of
>> people! (i.e. his victims!), whose mouths' he sews shut, and whom he
>> then basically crucifies, to make his "scarecrows".
>
> Sounds like House of Wax.

Not really. I've seen both, and I wouldn't even think to compare them.

>>   Tonally, I'm not sure this flick totally worked - the horror parts
>> did; but large stretches of the film, esp. early on, are comprised of
>> goofy humor, which is generally making fun of the adle-brained college
>> kids. I'm not sure this worked with the "darker" parts of this flick...
>>   Anyway, I didn't hate the ending of this one, even though, 1) it
>> suffers from the "incredibly dumb horror heroine" syndrome, and 2) it
>> was pretty downbeat (obviously setting up for a potential sequel...).
>
> Don't think I've ever seen this before. Must be newer.

It is - it's from 2017.

[Ubiquitous]

In article <qu5ddb$i9k$1...@dont-email.me>, art...@alum.calberkeley.org wrote:
>On 12/27/2019 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

>> On Boxing Day, I watched:
>>
>> FAMILY GUY:
>> Several eps.
>>
>> DOCTOR WHO:
>> "THe Macra Terror". The TARDIS arrives at a Human colony that runs along
>> the lines of a holiday camp. This was a cartoon version of the 2nd Doctor
>> with Jamie, Ben, and Polly.
>
>I hit play all ready to watch the Holiday episode of the new season and
>got this instead. I was *not* happy. I only watched a few minutes
>before turning it off.

Consider yourself lucky you recorded a classic ep instead of a new one.
(I assume you were talking about the latter)

>> What did you watch?

>
>Batman Begins (4K disc) Christopher Nolan's reboot of the franchise
>staring Christian Bale as Batman. After learning the ways of the ninja
>from Ra's al Ghul, Bruce returns to Gotham and starts crime fighting.
>Things start out well enough until Batman goes up against The Scarecrow
>(Cillian Murphy) who doesn't scare as easily as the common street hood.
>And if Scarescrow isn't bad enough, it turns out Ra's al Ghul may be
>immortal after all. Wonderful movie with a great tag at the end.

I remember starting to watch it but lost interest b/c they kept time-shifting
without any sign of a transission and the nonsense about Bruce
Wayne studying Kung Fu in Mongolia/Tibet.