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

On 2/2/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

What did you watch?

Yesterday, I did household chores, and watched soaps, golf and a theatrically-released movie!:
soaps: Y&R - I believe Tue's and Wed's ep's. Mostly this concerned Victor summoning Ian Ward to the ranch house, but the situation quickly going south as Ian Ward turns the tables and holds a gun on Victor and Nick, and then increasing numbers of the Newman family who show up (most of the principals, except for Abby). In the end, both Victor and Ian get shot, but Ian is almost certainly on the way out... There was Billy/Sally stuff on the side, but it wasn't important.
    DOOL - Fri's ep. Very disappointing - as expected, the writers don't let Rafe escape, and it looks like EJ is going to successfully implement his plan to ruin the wedding and Jada's career.  >:/  But more and more people are suspicious of FauxRafe.
golf - Day 3 at Pebble Beach was a mostly miserable affair of wind and rain (it was so rainy in parts that CBS's cameras were all wet, and you could only barely see the action on TV!!). The weather did improve for about the last 6 holes though. Right now, it's a shootout, with Sepp Straka barely in front by 1. It should be anyone's tournament today.
Gladiator II (Pee+) - Such an uninspired title! They could have at least called it "The Gladiator Returns" (or "The Gladiator Rises"?!) or "The New Gladiator", or even better "Gladiator II: The Spawning" or "Gladiator II: Electric Boogaloo"!!
    It took me a while to realize how this sequel directly tied into the original, but I figured it out about 15 minutes before the movie got there.
    To say that this movie is not historically accurate is an understatement!! Yes, the twin emperor bros existed (though their father, and especially their mother, were important figures, who don't even get a mention here!), and yes Macrinus (Denzel Washington) was a real person whose background loosely matches with what's in the film. But that's about the only parts of this that come close to being right!
    This is full of spectacle and is generally entertaining (and looks pretty awesome in 4k), doing a decent (though in some places maybe an over-enthusiastic!) job of tying things to the original film.
    I mean, they bring Derek Jacabi back! though he's actually barely in the film, only showing up in about three scenes. (He's in his 80s so it's understandable!)
    Hey, they cheat! That's not Spencer Treat Clark as Lucilla's (Connie Nielsen) son in the flashback sequence! Couldn't they have used CGI trickery to make Clark appear for this!?!
    While I was mostly entertained through this film's 2-and-a-half hours, I did not care for the ending which is both massively ahistorical, and lacking in an actual resolution to the overall story.
    But this is mostly a fun ride if you're up for this sort of thing.
What did you watch?