Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-03 (Monday)

On 6/4/2024 10:48 AM, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

On 6/4/2024 10:00 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 6/4/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
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What did you watch?

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Ran errands in the morning. Then I watched:
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soaps: DOOL - Still Sloan doesn't tell either Nicole or Eric that the baby is Eric's; then she re-conspires with EJ to get out of town. But I think Leo is close to figuring it out. Meanwhile, Melinda seems to strike a quid pro quo deal with Rafe to avoid jail in exchange freeing Nu(Faux!)Gabi.
    GH - Somebody tries to kill Jason, but Jason neutralizes one of the assailants and the other gets away. We're initially supposed to assume Sony was behind it, but it turns out it was Valentin trying frame Sony - the problem is, Anna now knows that Valentin was behind it! More pointless NuKristina drama. That bitch Ava manages to record Booby Vista being a bigot "on tape" (there is no "tape" anymore!!).
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Shogun (Hulu) - The 2024 version, not the 1980 version! (the latter is apparently available on Pee+, if anyone cares).
    First two episodes.
    I did actually quite like this. I mean, you have to be somewhat interested in 16th-17th century internal Japanese politics to to find this compelling, but the whole external angle of the Portuguese/Spanish versus the English adds layers to this.
    However, Blackthorne's not wrong when he says the Japanese are savages (one of his sailors gets boiled in a pot simply because one the Japanese fief lords is a psychopath).
    I had forgotten that Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis - really?! "Cosmo"?! his name is "Cosmo"?!!) is kind of an asshole - I remember this also being the case in the 1980 version (though I watched that as a child!).

 I missed the original when I was a kid.
 

    Anyway, I will definitely stick with this, even though I think the idea of doing a seasons #2 and #3 is a bad idea.
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A Quiet Place Part II (Hulu) - This was OK, but it actively annoyed me that so much of this sequel was actually designed to set up the forthcoming spinoff film "A Quiet Place: Day One" - not only is the entire first sequence of the film a "Day One" segment (cynically bringing back John Krasinski just for this), but this film also has Djimon Hounsou from "Day One" as a character in this film (whom they needlessly kill off, which strikes me as undermining the point of trying to get people to watch the spinoff film!!).
    Anyway, this was about what I expected, and definitely felt like a step down from the first film.
    Cillian Murphy guest-stars in this as a local yokel from Day One whom they run across again, in a part that a decade ago would have been played by Barry Pepper - what did Barry Pepper every do to deserve being dissed?!
    It looks like a third and final "Part III" film is planned, though they obviously got sidetracked doing "A Quiet Place: Day One", so who knows when we'll see Part III.
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 I'll watch them in reverse release order since each movie is a prequel to the one before.
 

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What did you watch?
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 I watched:
  Dark Matter (AppleTV+) - "Are You Happy in Your Life?" and "Trip of a Lifetime" - New sci-fi series starring Joel Edgerton as a physics professor who is happily married to Jennifer Connelly until one day when he's kidnapped by his alternate from another universe and forcibly swapped.  He wakes up with no idea what happened except now everything is different and he's living with Alice Braga.  He protests that this isn't the way things are supposed to be but most people think he's crazy or something. Meanwhile back in his old universe his double is happily putting the moves on his wife.
 Two episodes in and so far I'm not particularly impressed.  But I'll stick with it.  This show better turn into Sliders fast.  Or at least Doorways.  ;-)

It's okay. I remember reading the book a coupla years ago, though I don't remember much except the 'boxes' and that he was flipped into different timelines.