Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-02 (Thursday)

On 1/3/2025 8:32 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 1/3/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 During the day, not much. In the afternoon, I watched some of the Sugar Bowl, where Notre Dame easily beat Georgia, to grab the last College Football Playoff semi-final spot.
 That night, I mostly caught up on "General Hospital" (it turns out I haven't missed many episodes over the holidays as ABC has preempted GH on multiple days over the past couple of weeks).
 GH - NuNuLulu

I thought this was ROT13 at first.
catches up with Charlotte in Prague, but fails to convince

Charlotte to come back with her; then Valentin, and then Dante, show up - a sniper is about to take Valentin out... Brook Lynn is still not pregnant, so she and Chase are going to go to the doctor to get checked out... Robin's teen daughter Emma turns out to be a real piece of work - Anna discovers that Emma got herself expelled from college; then Emma seems to goad grieving Josslyn over their teen rivalry over Cameron and over Cameron's new girlfriend. (What a bitch!)... Ava is in desperate financial straits, after the Cassadine estate cancelled her divorce settlement... The hospital seems to be going after Lizzie, after a potential third victim is ID'ed, so Ric Lansing lawyers her up... Nina and Drew encourage Willow to go on the offensive about the custody of the kids, after Lucas irately berates Willow for taking the kids away from Michael.
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Creature Commandos (HBOMax) "Priyatel Skelet" - Episode 6 and I think the penultimate episode.  This one has the backstory of  "Doctor Phosphorus" while in the present the Suicide Squad, I mean Creature Commandos, continue their mission while Frankenstein's monster continues to stalk his reluctant bride.  Another good episode.  But I have to mention this show is just so violent! One character punched their fist through a man's heart pulled out his still beating heart and showed it to him.  And what Doctor Phosphorus does to people every week can't even be described.  But let's say it involves a lot of screams and melted off flesh.
The Phantom of the Opera (4K disc) - I watched the 1943 classic Universal Studios version.  When I put the disc in, I was expecting the 1925 black and white, silent version, and was very pleasantly surprised when this version (filmed in color) played instead. I bought a 4K box set of the classic Universal horror movies a couple of years ago.  I'm finally cracking it open to start to watch some of them.  With the exception of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," I've never seen any of the classic Universal horror films.
Going into this, I was only familiar with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version.  In that version the identity of the phantom is unknown.  And he's already the Phantom at the start.  In this version Claude Rains plays a music composer who believes someone is stealing his work and tries to murder the man.  The man's wife throws acid on his face to stop him.  So, everyone knows who the Phantom is and his back story.  He spends the movie trying to help a young woman in the opera become a star. To my surprise, this version is practically a musical too.
The Wolf Man (4K disc) 1943 version of the Universal Studios classic about a man who is bitten by a werewolf and turns into one himself.  On the commentary they said the movie was a huge success.  I forget the names, but when all the money came flowing in, one guy bought his wife a diamond ring, another got a $50,000 bonus, and another asked for a $25 raise, and to the guy who requested the $25 raise, Universal said, no.
When I pulled out the box set, I had a general idea of which movies I planned to watch, but not the order.  My first thought was to go to Wikipedia, figure out the release order, and watch in that order.  But I *wanted* to watch Phantom first, so that's what I went with.  Turns out, Claude Rains stars in this movie too.  And he stars in "The Invisible Man." Had I known that I would have started with "The Invisible Man" and watched in release order.  In addition to Claude Rains this movie stars Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi as a different werewolf. I was on the fence, but I decided to hold off on watching "The Invisible Man" until the reboot's sequel is released. I'm holding off on watching "Frankenstein" for similar reasons.
The Wolfman (4K disc) 2010 remake of the 1943 classic starring Bencio del Toro as the Wolfman and Anthony Hopkins as his father.  I watched with a new commentary.  The guy doing the commentary talked about how much of a mess this movie was to make, in particular due to the director being replaced along with other behind the scenes fighting. Unfortunately there were often long gaps of silence, I suspect because much of what he was saying being edited out.  That wouldn't have been too bad but for whatever reason, they muted the movie audio, so whenever he was speaking there was just dead silence.
The Creature From the Black Lagoon (4K disc) 1954 Universal Studios classic about a group of scientists who go on an expedition to find a strange fossil and find a living creature instead.  This was just above background noise with the commentary, but it did generally hold my interest whenever I looked up to watch.  On the commentary they said the movie was originally going to be shot in color and 3D, but they crunched the numbers and realized that they could save $100,000 if they shot it in 3D black and white instead. They also mentioned they weren't going to let the elaborate suit they constructed for this movie go to waste, so they quickly cranked out a sequel.  My box set only includes the 4K version, but a 3D version is also available too.
Abbott Elementary (Hulu) "Ava vs. Superintendent" Season2, episode 12. Another "best" episode.  This one picks up with Principal, "Ava" after she loses her blackmail leverage over the school superintendent.  She has to go to the school board and make a presentation to keep her job and funding for the school.  Some of the other teachers come up with a scheme where they will do the presentation "with" her.  All she has to do is stand there and smile while they do all the actual work.  It was OK, I guess.
Silo (AppleTV+) - "The Book of Quinn" - I can't really say what happened without getting into spoilers.  But there were some revelations and confirmations this episode. The slow pace of this season is killing me, but at least we are slowly getting answers and making limited progress.