Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-25 (Monday)

On 11/26/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

What did you watch?

After grading and teaching, I finally got to Thanksgiving Break yesterday. So, I "celebrated" by watching a couple of movies, and...:
GH - Ava's trial begins. Not much happens, but Kristina doesn't take the stand until the end of the episode when Ric hits her with "Why are you lying?!" Heh... Meanwhile, Michael gets Drew to admit that he never intended to make Curtis permanent CEO, but secretly records the conversation, and then plays it for Curtis! Dumb Lulu plots her escape from the long-term care facility, and does make it out. (So they want us to believe that she's been secretly working to walk to overcome her atrophy - I don't think you can get over that in a couple of days!! - without anyone catching her?!
MNF football - The Chargers keep it close in the first-half, but then come pretty close to getting blown out by the Ravens in the second half. In the end, the Chargers are lucky they only lost by a touchdown.
Then the movies:
Wild Things 2 (Tubi) - After having watched "Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough" (aka. "Wild Things 3") the other day, I decided to (re-)watch this one. I am pretty sure I watched this once before, but it would have been 2 decades ago, and I didn't remember it.
    Watching "3" and "2" back-to-back like this was interesting. They both have very, very similar plotlines - to the point where it's unclear which movie is ripping off which!
    "3" was "sexier" (Sarah Laine was much more game for this kind of thing than Susan Ward (or Leila Arcieri) were) than "2", and "3" felt like it had more naked nudity (I'm not sure it really did, but it felt like it did). "3" was also more fun, and more over-the-top.
    "2" has arguably the better cast - it's weird to think that Susan Ward did this film *after* "Sunset Beach" (and after "The In-Crowd"); Ward was basically done after "Make It or Break It" less than a decade after "Wild Things 2" - she hasn't worked since 2012. But I was not expecting Isaiah Washington to pop up in this! (the year before "Grey's" premiered!) This one also has Faith Salie in a smallish part!
    Most importantly, this one has Katie Stuart (the American one) playing Susan Ward's "bestie", and she blows Ward off the screen in every scene she's in 'cos she's so lovely! I was always bitterly disappointed that Katie Stuart didn't have a bigger career - she really only recurred on "Titans" (2000-2001), did a stint as Sage Alcazar on GH in 2003 (I had forgotten about that!), and then did this flick and "Tamara" (2005). Stuart's last role was in 2009, and she hasn't worked since. Such a shame.
    "2" is also closer to being a traditional crime mystery - alot of it is Isaiah Washington's insurance investigator figuring out what is going on with Ward and Arcieri.
    So, "2" is the better mystery, but is basically incredibly light on the "naughty bits" (Arcieri uses a body double; Ward and her character never get naked at all!). "3" seems naughtier, and is more fun, with I think a better payoff.
Center Stage: Turn It Up (Tubi) - So, apparently, Tubi has all 3 "Center Stage" films, but is losing them by the end of the month. I've seen the first one multiple times, and I've seen the third one, "Center State: On Pointe" once, but I've never seen the middle one, from 2008 - this one. So I jumped on it, 'cos who knows if it will be available anywhere after Tubi?!!
    "On Pointe" is pretty much a straight up sequel to "Turn It Up" - Nicole Munoz is in both films (as is Kenny Wormald); Peter Gallagher and Ethan Stiefel are in all three films... But Munoz is literally a *child* in "Turn It Up" (they say she's 13, and she was actually 14 at the time, but she honestly looks younger), playing the lead's sister. In "On Pointe", Munoz (who was 22 by 2016) is the lead, trying to get out of her sister's shadow... I'm disappointed to what happened with Munoz - I saw her in something recently (must have been either "Wild Cards" or "Tracker"), and she was all tatted up, and didn't look good at all... FTR, "On Pointe" was the weakest of the films, to my recollection.
    Anyway, the lead in this film is Rachele Brooke Smith, in pretty much her first acting role, ever! and it's clear in 2008 that Smith was still a dancer first, and an actress second. (It'll take Smith another decade before she starts doing Lifetime films!)
    The movie plays a lot more like a "Step Up" ripoff than a "sequel" to "Center Stage" - Smith's character misses the cut into Peter Gallagher's snooty ballet academy, and ends up working in a bar where she does "sexy" dancing rather than ballet. Wormald's character, who is like the most promising male ballet dancer in Gallagher's academy's new class, ends up hitting Smith up for off-the-books "training" in pas de deux.
    You know where this is going...
    I don't know if this was filmed lousy, or if this was a lousy print, but it looked bad on Tubi - maybe even "480p/DVD-rip" bad. I wonder if there's a better print/rip of this out there somewhere...
What did you watch?