Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-03-09 (Sunday)

On 3/10/2025 8:51 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

While I did get stuff done on Sunday (both some work stuff, and household chores like working up my taxes), I was still able to take it mostly easy yesterday, and watch some TV:
 soaps: Y&R - Thur's and Fri's ep. A lot of this was taken up with the Summer-Kyle-Claire triangle, with Summer seemingly getting more determined to get Kyle back, with even Jack Abbott picking up on it. And it's freaking Claire out some (maybe she's get homicidal again?!). The rest of this was more Damien drama, which I don't really care about.
    DOOL - Fri's ep. Predictably, Brady pressuring Ava to drop the charges against everyone has blowback, when Kristen's crazy mommy again targets Ava after she's released from prison. Tate continues trashing "thief" Doug to Holly, esp. when she admits Doug stole "Julie's necklace", and she reverts to Holly the Brat form when she blows Tate off after Tate admits the adoption lunch was a disaster. Leo interrogates Doug about his feelings for Holly. Finally, Marlena and Steve (Patch!) are going leave town to look for John.
 golf - Day 3 leader Collin Morikawa seemed to have the Arnold Palmer in hand, until Russell Henley eagled the 16th hole to vault into the lead. Morikawa could never recover it, and had to settle for second, with Henley winning his first tournament since 2022.
 Then I watched a couple of Lifetime flicks:
 Lethal Desire (Lifetime app) - Sidenote: I originally tried to watch this off the Lifetime website, using AirPlay to send it to my TV, but there was no way to AirPlay or Cast directly from the Lifetime website, and using AirPlay to send my whole screen to the TV ended up making the playback of the Lifetime flick from the website choppy/jumpy... Luckily, I then remembered I still have the Lifetime app on the Apple TV, and using that instead eliminated the playback issues. (Sidenote of a Sidenote: I checked, and all of my old ABC/Disney channel apps (e.g. Freeform) no longer work at all; neither did the old Fox network app - so I deleted all of these apps off the Apple TV.)
    I mostly enjoyed this flick. The only real issue was, despite the subject matter, it wasn't very "steamy" and I think no "love scenes" were shown.
    Gist: Woman (Kayla Raelle Holder), in a miserable and failing marriage (we don't find out until near the end of the flick that they haven't had sex in a year!) to a jerk (Ty Trumbo), moves to a new city thanks to jerk husband's job.
    Once in the "company neighborhood" of the new town, they meet the neighbor couple (Lifetime semi-staple Justin Berti (but he usually plays villains!) and Alexandra Corin Johnston (Shark Girl!!)) and soon find out they're "swingers"! (In fact, everyone in this neighborhood seems to be!) The woman, desperate to save their marriage, gets the husband to agree to this nonsense.
    But, soon after, the neighbor (Berti) ends up dead the morning after Our Heroine!(tm) stayed over with the neighbor, when the husband was out of town (but it sure seemed like she was drugged!). And conveniently, the evidence seems to point at Our Heroine!(tm) as the prime suspect, esp. as far as the suspicious and hostile detective is concerned.
    Can Our Heroine!(tm) clear her name as the bodies start piling up?!
    This being a Lifetime flick with this particular set-up, I'll give you one guess as to who's trying to frame Our Heroine!(tm) for murder most foul!
    However, I found the ending's final "twist" to be preposterous.
    Overall, I did enjoy this one, and Kayla Raelle Holder (and Alyona Grace (Real), who plays her sister) fill out "sexy dresses" well. But this didn't get nearly prurient enough for the subject matter, and like I said the final reveal was pretty ridiculous.
 The Last Woman Who Lived Here (Lifetime) - I enjoyed this one much less than "Lethal Desire".
    Gist: New couple (again!) move into a new house. But the husband (David Chinchilla) hides from the wife (Tamara Almeida, headlining her second or third Lifetime flick) that the house is a probable "murder house" - the previous young woman living there died under mysterious circumstances.
    Of course, once the wife finds out, she starts investigating the young woman's death, and soon enough becomes convinced that she was in fact murdered.
    Wackiness ensues!
    At least this time, they didn't go with the obvious - that the husband was somehow involved! This time, the husband was just a chump.
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
The Karate Kid (4K disc) 1984 movie starring Ralph Macchio as "Daniel LaRusso" a young man who moves to California from New Jersey.  Daniel meets another high school kid named Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and promptly starts putting the moves on Johnny's girl.  Johnny doesn't like this and begs Daniel to please leave him and his girl alone, but Daniel is a bully and starts picking fight with Johnny.  Johnny is a better fighter, so Daniel goes to the maintenance man Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) where he lives and recruits him to beat up Johnny and Johnny's friends. The maintenance man, who is also a trained soldier, starts to personally train Daniel to make him a better fighter so he can enter the local karate competition.  Now this is supposed to be a friendly competition where the children display their martial arts skills.  But Daniel treats it like a matter of life and death.  The maintenance man works him like a slave turning Daniel into a killing machine that doesn't care about rules.  During what should have been a friendly local karate competition, Daniel ignores the rules which explicitly said no kicks to the face and kicks Johnny right in the face!  And for some reason the judges ignore the fact that Daniel broke the rules and awarded him the trophy.
The Karate Kid II (4K disc) 1986 sequel which picks up where the first movie ends but finds Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) traveling to Japan to visit Mr. Miyagi's father before he passes away.  But while there they are confronted by Mr. Miyagi's old enemy and his enemy's nephew "Chozen."
The Karate Kid III (4K disc) 1989 sequel which picks up with Daniel La Russo one year later (although oddly enough LaRusso looks like he's pushing 30) who has returned to the U.S. and must face the greatest challenge of his life, defending his title in the All-Valley Karate Tournament.  Sense John Kreese is also back and out for revenge after his student's devastating defeat due to an illegal kick to the face a year earlier.  Kreese turns to his best friend, and millionaire, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) for help.  Silver decides to use his vast wealth and resources to seek revenge on a 17-year-old boy and the maintenance man the boy lives with (don't ask, it's a long story). Anyway, Silver decides the best way to get revenge is by faking Kreese's death and hiring an outside champion to defeat La Russo in a Karate tournament.  I can't think of any revenge that could possibly be more devastating than that!  Can La Russo win the All-Valley Tournament two years in a row?  Or will this be the end of La Russo's title?  I know people hate this one, but I love it.  It's so over the top.  The more you think about it, the more ridiculous it becomes, and the more fun to watch.
The Karate Kid (blu-ray) 2010 remake, or um sequel, or requel, whatever you want to call it, especially now that's it's in continuity with the original movies, which finds Jackie Chan training a boy (Jaden Smith) who moves to China and promptly starts getting bullied by a group of kids from a local Kung Fu school.  Chan teaches the boy Kung Fu by making who do various odd jobs or whatever like picking up his jacket, which turns out to secretly also teach him Kung Fu so he can fight the bullies at a Kung Fu tournament.  Considering Chan taught him Kung Fu instead of Karate, I wonder if anyone considered naming this movie The Kung Fu Kid?  Anyway, this is actually a solidly good movie with a surprisingly dramatic performance from Jackie Chan.  I'm looking forward to seeing Jackie Chan team up with Ralph Macchio in the next movie.
And now I can finally watch the last season of Cobra Kai.  I've been looking forward to that too.