Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-05-05 (Sunday)

On 5/6/2024 5:56 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 5/6/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 I got through more grading yesterday (as predicted, it will take me until today to finish the second exam...), but still managed to watch more TV than I was expecting to:
 soaps: Fri's ep's.
    GH - Sonny goes to Dante, to basically imply that Dante shouldn't "trust" Dex (IOW, shouldn't allow him to become a cop); later, Dante wonders to Sam if he shouldn't be a cop anymore (talk about an overreaction!!). Carly goes to Sonny's to confront him, and after swatting Ava away, confronts Sonny and tells him she won't allow their daughter to come over anymore. She then becomes convinced that Sonny "isn't taking his medication" with (a guilty!) Ava looking on. Josslyn discusses whether she should carry on her path to med school with Trina, and later spies Dex and is clearly not over him.
    DOOL - A drunk Leo spills the beans to EJ, but stupidly doesn't get any extorted money out of it. EJ races over to confront Sloan, who informs EJ that the baby isn't his!! Eric figures out that Leo has been blackmailing Sloan, and races over to confront him, but finds nothing but a sad sack of drunk in Leo. Constantine manages to "activate" the pawn to successfully steal the prenup out of Maggie's safe. Holly is all stressed out about school, and has to have Marlena calm her down.
 golf - At the Byron Nelson in Dallas, Day 3 leader Jake Knapp kind of fell apart on Day 4. This allowed Canuck Taylor Pendrith to vault into the lead to win it. American Ben Kohles came in second. (As you can see, none of the "big names" played this one apparently.)
 My Life Is on the Line (Lifetime) - This was actually a pretty good thriller. Unfortunately, the setting and background made it hard to watch - the lead (Andrea Pazmino) is a hardscrabble loser, apparently in the midst of divorce, who works at a bank call center. She has to meet with a mediator (about custody of her son?), but her clueless, unsympathetic (and useless - as she's not available when needed) supervisor boss won't let her have the time off.
    Of course, she also gets conned by a caller who doesn't have the passcode for his "wife's account", but who claims she just had a medical emergency, and who needs to money "immediately" to pay the medical bills. (It's the kind of story that, if you think about it for a second, doesn't make any sense!) Of course, the downbeat loser of a mom approves the money transfer without supervisor's approval.
    She fairly soon realizes that she's been conned when the real "wife" on the account calls in to find out why her account has been frozen!
    The rest of the flick is the woman trying to scramble to block the transfer while the original caller starts to lean on her to complete the fraudulent transfer anyway.
    Parts of this were a good thriller. But parts were hard to watch because the main character has such a shitty life/job, which she will likely lose when her mistake is made public.
 

Is this set in the present day?  I just watched a movie with a somewhat similar premise.  But it was set in the past and one of  the plot points was they had to do the heist before the bank implemented certain modernizations that would have made the heist impossible.

 What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (4K disc) 2011 reboot of the Planet of the Apes series.  Set in the present the movie follows James Franco's character who develops what he hopes to be a cure for autism and tests it on a chimp.  The chimp then gives birth to "Caesar" (Andy Serkis) that develops human level intellect and by the end of the movie the ability to speak.  Caesar uses Franco's drug to enhance the intelligence of other apes and leads them on a revolt for their freedom.  However the drug has a deadly side effect on humans and becomes airborne virus.  The movie also makes several references to a spaceship that gets lost in space.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (4K disc) 2014 sequel which finds humanity mostly wiped out by the same virus that gives apes enhanced intelligence.  A surviving group of humans lead by Gary Oldman living in San Francisco attempt to divert power from a damn, but to do so they must get permission from "Caesar" (Andy Serkis) who rules over the apes.   Caesar is willing to let the humans work on their project but some humans don't trust the apes and think of them as just animals to be slaughtered.  Worse, one of the apes "Koba" (Toby Kebbell) hates the humans and wants a war to wipe them out.  Pretty good movie and better than the first one.
War for the Planet of the Apes (4K disc) 2017 sequel which picks up where the last movie ended.  A military group lead by Woody Harrelson is hunting Caesar and his apes for their actions in the last movie, but Caesar's apes are pretty good at gorilla warfare.  In the backdrop the virus that wiped out most humans has mutated and is now turning people into mindless mutes.  I haven't watched this one since I saw it in the theater.  This one held up great and was the best of the three.  It's a rare franchise where each movie is better than the one before.
One annoyance and I've experienced this with some other movies too, is I watched with the commentary track and the commentary track is closed captions so I can read the commentary while listening to full audio.  I love that!  But most of the apes use sign language to talk, and when they sign it's translated through closed captions.  Most of the ape signed dialogue is not translated when the director is talking.  If the director isn't saying anything, it's translated otherwise it's not.  I found myself constantly rewinding the movie so I could read the apes dialogue scenes.  I've seen this happen on other movies where the dialogue is translated from another language and it is beyond annoying. They need to put the language translation on a separate burned in track.
Tales of the Empire (Disney+) - This is the second season of an animated anthology series set in the Star Wars universe.  I binged through all six episodes.  The first three episodes gave the backstory for "Morgan Elsbeth" who was one of the main villains on Ahsoka.  The second half gave the back story of "Barriss Offee" who was a former Jedi who worked for the empire as an inquisitor before turning good again.  I was not familiar with this character but apparently she appeared in other shows.
The Equalizer - "Condemned" - Mostly background noise.