Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-14 (Thursday)

On Fri, 15 Nov 2024 08:19:41 -0800, "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/15/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
>

What did you watch?

>
On the day I woke up at 3:30am and couldn't get back to sleep, I finally
managed to get through "Deadpool & Wolverine", and also a Lifetime flick.
>
So I watched:
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Deadpool & Wolverine (Disney+) - Going in, I expected this - but this
was definitely less funny than the first two "Deadpool" flicks,
especially "2" (which is my favorite).
   And the recurring characters from the first two flicks, even Morena
Baccarin, get little more than cameos here (and T.J. Miller's character
is completely memory-holed without reference; Brad Pitt's "character"
from "2" is also inexplicably absent, though this one may have gotten an
oblique reference!).
   In short, this flick suffered a lot of the same problems as "Ant-Man
3" - generally ignoring cast/characters from the first two films; being
less funny (pretty much *un*funny in the case of "Ant-Man 3"!);
launching into a new "quest" with a new "big bad" that we don't
particularly care about - though this one is admittedly a lot better
than "Ant-Man 3"!
   The other problem I had with this one was its deliberately much
closer integration with the rest of the "MCU" (and especially in the
recent "Multiverse" stuff) - the first two films worked as well as they
did, I believe, exactly *because* they were nowhere near the MCU, and
only had ties to 20th Century Fox's "X-Men" flicks. This one explicitly
*forces* both Deadpool, and Wolverine, into the MCU, and the film wasn't
the better for it, IMO.
   What does work here are the cameos. I don't want to spoil it, but
some of the cameos actually wowed me, because I didn't see them coming,
and they tie this film in with some earlier franchise stuff that was
pre-MCU as well.
   That said, I was disappointed that Channing Tatum was playing Gambit
here (yes, I know he's wanted the role for years!), and that poor Taylor
Kitsch was once again ignored.
   Sidenote: I had totally - I mean totally! - forgotten that Chris
Evans was in the original "Fantastic Four" flicks!
   Anyway, some of this does work - I really like the montage where
Deadpool tries to find himself a "Wolverine" in the Multiverse and keeps
getting brutally beaten by various versions (including by "The
Cavillrine"! Ha!!). And the creepy looking dog with the mutant tongue
("Dogpool") is a great bit too.
   But it almost feels like it takes way too long before they give Hugh
Jackman something to do. And placing this in the retreads of the "Loki"
TV series just felt... off.
   Sidenote: Emma Corrin is scary skinny and, like, not in a good way.
   All the archive footage from the earlier "X-Men", etc. flicks does
seem to imply that this is in fact the end of the road for both Jackman
and Reynolds (both are probably getting too old to keep doing this).
   I did like the post-credits scene - like the other "Deadpool"
flicks, this post-credits scene doesn't set something up in an upcoming
film, but it does prove a claim Deadpool makes earlier in this film!
   Overall, I guess I liked this. I just didn't like it nearly as much
as the first two "Deadpool" films.

I haven't gotten around to watching this yet even though I also had a
somewhat sleepless night thanks to a car alarm that kept going off
every 30 minutes or so. I tried to watch the all female GHOSTBUSTERS
from 2016 (I think) but couldn't last more than about ten minutes. It
just felt so forced with the attempts at humor. While I've liked the
actresses in other movies they just never had the same chemistry as
the original Ghostbusters.

Not having a number of the original characters from the first two
Deadpool movies wasn't going to  help. As for Jackman I've recently
seen discussion that said he wants to keep playing the role so he
seems likely to show up in future movies and maybe some of the shows.
Haven't heard anything about Ryan other than he loves the character
but having to fight Disney all the time over what he wants versus what
they want has to get old.

Ryan wants to be true to the character so plenty of violence and
offensive language but that's not what Disney likes. (For instance
Reynolds really wanted a long segment of Wolverine back in the Nazi
days that would have been very bloody but Disney didn't want that.) As
for Disney they kept wanting to add things to their movies that either
go along with female empowerment or adding in bits that are just ads
for upcoming movies. Neither of which have anything to do with the
original concepts for the movies.

soaps: Y&R - Fri's thru Wed's(?) ep's. Phyllis sets a good trap for
Sharon, and still no one will believe her that Sharon is EVOL?!!! At the
end, it looks like we will finally learn who is behind all of this, as
both Phyllis and Sharon look to have been "summoned" by a third party...
Meanwhile, Victor reveals to Nikki, family and friends that he has
rebuilt the Newman ranch. And both Jill and Ashley return to town for
Abby's and Devon's wedding (at the ranch), which takes up most of the
Tues & Wed episodes.
>
The Woman With My Face (LMN) - For the second time on Lifetime, Nicole
Marie Johnson stars as identical twin sisters.
   In this one, Johnson plays a single-mom journalist who moves to the
town she was apparently born in to discover... that she has a married
identical twin sister (a librarian?) she didn't know existed!
   Being a journalist, she soon keys into the fact that the
circumstances of both twin sisters' original adoptions is shady, and
starts investigating. As does another obnoxiously ambitious local
reporter (Brey Noelle).
   Soon enough, our heroine reporter(tm) is getting threatening notes
to drop it, and is possibly being followed... Will her dogged
investigation get her, her sister, or her teen daughter killed?!
   Honestly, this one was very convoluted and the revealed motive was
almost like something out of a comic book.
   Of Johnson's two "identical twin" Lifetime movies, I vastly prefer
"Lies My Sister Told Me".
>
>
What did you watch?

I got in the latest episode of SURVIVOR last night which was great.
Only thing I didn't like was the tribal council where there was much
confusion but yet ended up with essentially a unanimous vote but we
never saw why they came together to vote out Sol when so many names
were being floated.

What did you watch?