Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-17 (Sunday)

On 11/18/2024 6:58 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 11/18/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 No movies yesterday. In fact, I mostly just put football on throughout the day 'cos we're at the part of the year where Lifetime is only running X-Mas movies, and LMN wasn't rerunning anything good yesterday!
 NFL football - I don't even remember the morning game... I think it was the Steelers vs. the Ravens - disgustingly, the Steelers won.
    The afternoon game was the 49ers vs the Seahawks - the 49ers threw this game away.  >:/
    The evening game was the Chargers vs. the Bengals - after taking a commanding lead in the first half, the Chargers nearly threw this game away in the second half, letting the Bengals score with near impunity. The Chargers managed to get it together at the last second of the game to take a go-ahead touchdown. A win is a win, but this was the kind of win that makes you wonder if these guys have what it takes!  :|
 soaps: Fri's ep's.
    GH - Drew is right about one thing - he aggressively challenges Carly after she goes to bat for Jason after Jason attacked Drew. Drew sends Ric to try to make a deal with Jason to keep his mouth shut - no deal is made, though Jason does pledge to keep quiet. The new guy (Xavier?) is offered a job at GH. Anna discusses the Robert situation with Felicia.
    DOOL - Sophia throws it all away!! After Tate calls her "Holly" accidentally during the "love making", Sophia says they're "over!" and storms out. She goes running to Ava for a shoulder to cry on. (I love how Ava is suddenly this sympathetic matronly type!!) Tate goes to Holly and tells her he wants to get back together afterall. Brady discusses the Kristen situation with Ava; Brady then tells Kristen that this situation between then hasn't changed, but I'm pretty sure Kristen smells blood in the water! Dumb Kayla agrees to give Sarah Dr Rolf's serum.
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Gantz (blu-ray) 2011 Japanese sci-fi movie.  The plot is very hard to summarize.  Basically, the movie opens inside a subway station when a young man see's his old friend apparently fall into the subway tracks. He goes to help him get off the tracks and accidentally falls down too. The two of them are hit by a train and wake up in a strange room with several other people and a large black orb.  They soon learn the orb is called "Gantz" and that they along with everyone else in the room died. Gantz brought them back to life and now sends them out on missions to hunt aliens on Earth.  The people who are brought back often have no idea that they died and no idea what's happening or why.  Most of them tend to stand around asking questions until an alien kills them.  But the survivors who see this catch on quickly enough or die.  People are given weapons and advanced suits that powers them up.  They can take a great deal of damage, and as long as they don't die, Gantz can completely heal any damage.  Each alien is totally different and it's unclear if they are related in any way or why Gantz wants the aliens dead.  Much of this is not entirely clear and the people sort learn by doing as they muddle through on the missions.  At the end of each mission Gantz awards a few points based on performance and send them back to their old lives until Gantz teleports them back to fight another alien.  Once someone hits 100 points, they can have their memory wiped and be set free or resurrect someone who has died.  This is a movie that I like, but it is very frustrating to watch.  A lot of the details were left very ambiguous like did they die or not, because if they were dead how were they so easily reintegrated into their old lives?  The movie ends with one friend being killed and the other vowing to earn enough points to resurrect him.
Gantz: Perfect Answer (blu-ray) 2011 sequel.  First, let me mention that in 2011 there was a made for TV movie called, "Another Gantz."  I've never seen it before and it's not available to stream.  According to Wikipedia, the plot takes place at the same time as the first movie, but from the perspective of a journalist investigating the events of the first movie.  I think it *really* would have helped if I could have watched this movie!  Part 2 opens with a recap of the first movie and introduces the journalist character from the TV movie.  The opening recap clarifies when people died, their bodies disappeared and the people who disappeared. This explains how two people could be hit by a train yet return to their old lives.  Everyone saw the accident, but there were no bodies.  This is what prompted the journalist to start his investigation.  Along with the damage left behind from the multiple battles they found against various aliens, which left damage, but no evidence as to what caused the damage.
Anyway, part 2 picks up where part 1 ends, but at first plays out more like a mystery as the journalist begins to learn more about the mysterious Gantz, and the people who are being forced to fight aliens against their will as well as a separate secret group that is also looking into Gantz for their own sinister reasons.  But Gantz does have its' own army of people at its' disposal to fight back leading to the second half of the movie having a lot more action with battles spilling into the public.
Dune: Prophecy (HBOMax) "The Hidden Hand" - Season 1, episode 1.  New series set in the Denis Villeneuve "Dune" universe and set 10,000 years before those movies and about a century after humanity defeated the machines in the war against the thinking machines.  This prequel series focuses on the creation of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.  I'm not even going to try to summarize the plot of the first episode, but I'll say Mark Strong played the emperor who is being manipulated on multiple sides, some of which he can clearly see.  Emily Watson plays the leader of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, and she has plans within plans to manipulate the empire, particular through arranged marriages for genetic manipulation.  And Travis Fimmel (Raised by Wolves) pops up, and I'm pretty sure he's the same character he played in Raised by Wolves.  Dude wasn't even trying to do something different.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  This show was essentially "Game of Thrones" mixed with "Raised By Wolves," and "Foundation."  There might have even been some "Dune" thrown into the mix too, but I'm not sure.  Is it worth watching?  To see Travis Fimmel basically reprise his Raised by Wolves character, yes it is.  I also strongly suspect that we are going to see a lot more human vs. thinking machines as a subplot as the series moves forward. If that's the case, then I'm all in.  I really want to see *that* story played out, even if it's after the fact.
Cross (AmazonPrime) - I binged episodes 2 through 5.  It was really bugging me that I sort of recognized the main villain character, but couldn't place him.  But once I heard his name said out loud I was able to figure out the villain is played by Ryan Eggold who was the husband on "The Blacklist."  The blonde dye job was throwing me.