Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-12-07 (Saturday)

On 12/8/2024 10:06 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 12/8/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 I took it easy yesterday, so not too much:
 DOOL - Wed's & Thur's ep's. They're moving beyond Doug's memorial, but not in particularly interesting ways - Doug's "grandson" (Disney's Peyton Meyer) shows up, and he's stolen a necklace... Meh. Why should I care about this? And why have they brought him on? - There's almost no one to pair him with - Stephanie? Chanel? Joy, if she sticks around? Meh... Meanwhile, I enjoyed Xander clashing with Stephanie - he kind of has her number!
 Lioness (Pee+) - First two episodes of season #2.
    Ep. #2.1 is a barn-burner - Cartel types enter the El Paso(?) house of a U.S. Congresswoman, kill her husband and child, and kidnap her. Without even her own team (who were not in ep. #2.1 at all), Joe is ordered into Mexico to retrieve the Congresswoman, though she's backed by a team consisting of Max Martini (The Unit) and Taylor Sheridan himself!! They retrieve the Congresswoman with EXTREME PREJUDICE! - I love how they just eliminated the banditos like swatting flies. Then they waste probably about three dozen Mexican federales and Mexican army troops on the way back to the border!
    Ep. #2.2 brings back Joe's team (sans Cruz), along with Martini and Sheridan, and CIA bro Kyle (Thad Luckinbill, who's now main cast in season #2, along with Michael Kelly and Morgan Freeman) for their new mission - plant a new lioness inside the Cartel to track down the Chinese Intelligence operative who organized the original kidnapping. The new lioness? - A U.S. Army(?) captain and chopper pilot who also happens to be the niece of the Cartel's head. But Carrillo, the new lioness, seems even more problematic than Cruz was. And this mission isn't even an assassination mission, but a "trojan horse" operation!
 I otherwise left Christmas TV movies or the Oregon-Penn State game on as background noise, until:
 Sugarplummed (Hallmark) - New X-Mas flick starring Maggie Lawson and Janel Parrish.
    This started out really promisingly, as it was basically a spoof and "meta" examination of Hallmark's own X-Mas movies.

Sounds like the sort of thing I would like.
It started out

turning the formula on its head, but explicitly examining it.
    Unfortunately, the film succumbs to all the very tropes it was originally satirizing in the Third Act.
    Too bad, because Hallmark was coming dangerously close to breaking the formula with this one...
  What did you watch?
 

Another day of vegging out.  I watched:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (4K disc) 1956 sci-fi movie based on the 1954 novel by Jack Finney about alien pods that come to Earth and take over by copying people.  People first start to notice something is off when their loved ones begin to act emotionless.  Kevin McCarthy stars as Dr. Binnell, who tries to stop them.   I watched with a pretty good commentary that talked about the movie, but also tons of gossip about the making of the movie.  Some gossip from 1950s included the wife of the movie's producer was having an affair.  The producer hired a private investigator to track down his wife and the man.  The producer confronted them and shot the guy (very close to his privates) leading to an attempted murder charge.  The producer then hired a celebrity lawyer, who specialized in temporary insanity defense, and got off.  At the time when all of this was very publicly happening, the studio just ignored it and continued to promote some other movie, and the producer, as if nothing was happening.  He was literally in prison at one point the studio named him as producer of their upcoming movie.  But he was already out by the time he produced Body Snatchers.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (4K disc) 1978 sci-fi movie based on the 1954 novel by Jack Finney about alien pods that come to Earth and take over by copying people.  People first start to notice something is off when their loved ones begin to act emotionless.  Donald Sutherland stars as Mr. Binnell, who tries to stop them.  I watched it with a commentary.   The commentary was OK, but didn't talk much about the movie.  I was tempted to turn off the commentary, but decided to leave it on since the movie was going to be background noise anyway.
Seedpeople (Amazon streaming) 1992 direct to video movie written by Charles Band about alien pods that come to Earth and take over by copying people.  People first start to notice something is off when their loved ones begin to act emotionless.  I rented this on VHS back in 92 when the movie first came out.  I liked it then and have been eager to see it again.  It holds up well enough, but I wonder where did Charles Band get such an original idea from?
Body Snatchers (blu-ray) 1993 sci-fi movie based on the 1954 novel by Jack Finney about alien pods that come to Earth and take over by copying people.  This version moves the action to an army base which means there are plenty of weapons and people trained to use them to fight back. This is a very underrated movie with a great cast that includes Meg Tilly, R. Lee Ermey, and Forest Whitaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11aUKrc_b9c
The Invasion (4K disc) 2007 sci-fi movie based on the 1954 novel by Jack Finney about alien virus that come to Earth and take over by, I have no idea what.  Maybe giving people the flu?  People first start to notice something is off when their loved ones begin to act emotionless. Nicole Kidman stars as Dr. Bennell, who tries to stop them.  Pre James Bond, Daniel Craig also stars, along with pre James Bond Jeffrey Wright.   This is a new 4K release with a new commentary track.  I watched with a commentary track in hopes that the commentary could make some sense of this movie.  On the commentary they mentioned the movie went through multiple rewrites and reshoots, unfortunately the people doing the commentary had no idea what was changed.  They couldn't follow the plot either and just kept pointing out all the dropped plot threads and what they assumed were reshoots.  Some of the best bits from the commentary included, "Why is there that giant blood splatter on the wall?" I looked up at the screen and saw a giant blood splatter that took up half the frame.  There is *no* indication of what caused it, and no dead bodies around either.  "Why is the lock of the employee entrance on the outside of the door?  Are they locking the employees in?"  And, "Who is Sally?" They had me wondering that too.  I checked the Wikipedia cast page, and there is no character named "Sally" listed.  They were pretty sure all the Jeffrey Wright scenes where he spouted nonsensical exposition were reshoots. And they said all the action  beats at the end were definitely reshoots.  They did say the original script was thoughtful and scary. Apparently the studio brought in a European (the same guy who directed, "Downfall"), who made a weird complicated film, then after test screenings and showing it to execs they went in and changed everything with reshoots.  The result is the mess of a movie that escaped to the public.  Even the people doing the commentary couldn't make any sense of it.  :-/
The Puppet Masters (1994) sci-fi movie based on the 1951 novel by Robert A. Heinlein about aliens that come to Earth and take over by controlling people.  People first start to notice something is off when their loved ones begin to act emotionless.  Donald Sutherland stars as the head of a government agency hunting the aliens.  Another underrated movie that holds up great.  If I didn't know any better, I might suspect Jack Finney ripped off Heinlein.