Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-06-12 (Thursday)

On 6/13/2025 1:18 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
 

Law & Order: Organized Crime - "He Was a Stabler" - (Peacock) - Season 5
finale.  The rest of the cast mysteriously return for the final episode
of the season which has Stabler hunting down the season's Big Bad.

 Are you implying he wasn't working the case the rest of the season?
 

He was working a totally different case at the start of the season. Then there was the evil terrorist art gang for a while, before they moved on to Tom Payne to wrap up the season.  He did spend the last episode literally hunting down Payne to the point of showing up at Payne's wife and kid's house and subtly intimidating them.
There was a pretty good scene where the wife, not knowing what was up, called Payne and put him on speaker phone so he could talk to Stabler and once Payne realized Stabler was in his house threatening his family, he basically told his kid good luck you're never going to see me again, and hung up.

He'll always be Keller to me.
 

And Schillinger was a police captain.  NYPD will just hire anyone!

Shazam! (4K disc) 2019 movie set in the DCEU.  Asher Angel stars as
Billy Batson, a young orphan who, after being shown to be a liar and a
thief, is gifted by a wizard (Djimon Hounsou) magical powers that
transform him into the superhero Shazam (Zachary Levi).  In spite of
being the same person, the two actors seemingly make no effort to even
try to play the same character.  Anyway, when he's not goofing around
making YouTube videos and otherwise exploiting his powers, Shazam must
stop Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong AKA Sinestro) from unleashing the Seven
Deadly Sins upon the world.  This one is generally pretty good.

 I dunno. I tried to rewatch this a few days ago on HBO and couldn't make
it past 45 minutes. I agree with your criticism of Billy's behavior;
what was the wizard thinking? And I agree that Chuck is playing a
different character.
 The script is weak. The foster parents' saintliness is used as an excuse
not to make them seem realistic and the foster siblings don't work
either.
 Also, I really really wish they hadn't padded Chuck's suit so much. Some
men can add muscle preparing for a role but cannot add bulky muscle
without taking hormones. It doesn't matter. Just let them act.

Yeah, the padding was noticeably distracting.