Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-21 (Tuesday)

On 1/22/2025 7:41 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

I had a work meeting yesterday, and then had a nice afternoon nap, so I didn't get through as much watching yesterday:
 soaps: DOOL - Mon's ep. Leo confronts Kerry, in front of Javi, about being Lady Whistleblower, and tricks Kerry into confessing - Javi kicks Kerry out, and Leo informs Abe about Kerry. One note: Kerry denies poisoning the cupcakes, so we're back to Hattie as being the most likely suspect for that... Hattie is rehired on the soap, but only on a probationary basis. They convince Chanel to do her exit scene, and Chanel literally slaps Joy during the scene, which means Joy is done feeling guilty. Bonnie accidentally falls down the open elevator shaft on set.
    GH - Tue's ep. Michael agrees to go with Carly's burn clinic in Europe, and then asks to see Sasha; Willow visits Michael first, but the pain becomes too much, and Portia has to resedate Michael, and Carly of course irrationally blames Willow. So Sasha never gets to see Michael. Willow continues to be nothing more than a Drew minion, seeming to have no backbone of her own. Sasha discusses pregnancy with Maxie... The scenes with Jane Elliot (Tracy Q.), Michael E. Knight (Martin Gray), and Fionla Hughes (Anna) bickering were pure gold! - In the end, Drew and Martin Grey convince Anna to have Tracy arrested, essentially for kidnapping Willow's kids - serves Tracy right!
 I watched one movie off Tubi yesterday:
 Little Black Lie (Tubi) - This 2019 flick is heavily, *heavily* "indie" - to be clear, this isn't a complement. IOW, what I am saying is that it was over-directed, with lots of "indie film-esque" sequences (some of which are clearly homages to French films), which has the one definite effect of making the film too long.
    The film is written and directed by one of its stars, Todd Theman.
    It's too bad too, as there's a decent enough premise in here - a woman (attractive redhead Stephanie Lynn) cheats on her fiance (Nick Ballard, a Lifetime regular) and, when caught, lies about it and says she was raped.
    That's bad enough, but then she *keeps* cheating with the guy (Theman, the writer/director) while pulling away from her fiance, continuing to lie about it, causing the fiance to become obsessed with catching, and punishing, the "rapist". All the while, the woman's bestie (Casey O'Keefe, another Lifetime regular) tries to talk her out of this madness.
    This mostly goes where you expect it to go, though taking far too long to get there (it clocks in at a full 2 hours). And the ending is pretty much what you would have expected.
    I wish they'd done more with less here...
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Sanctuary: A Witch's Tale - The entire series is available to stream now on Acorn TV, so I binged episodes 5 through episode 7, which was the season (series?) finale. Mild SPOILERS!
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The series is set in an alternate history Earth where witches are real and they are allowed to practice their magic under strict regulations. In the first episode a popular jock falls to his death during a fire at a party and the local witch's daughter is accused of using magic to cause the jock to fall to his death.
The girl's mother is the town's local witch.  She insists it couldn't be her daughter because the powers skipped a generation.  It doesn't help matters that the girl is in everyone's face telling them off. However, the girl is justifiably upset because the boy raped her, and made a sex tape, then showed it everyone.  The girl doesn't seem to realize this gives her motive.  And even if mom convinces everyone her daughter doesn't have magic, mom herself would have had a motive because of the rape.
The girl's mom constantly uses magic to fix things. Her use of magic without permission is highly illegal, but she keeps doing it anyway.  I don't want to say too much about it, but the mom was doing magic without permission for a long time and that's also going to become a major issue with unforeseen consequences once everything starts to come out.
Over the course of the series the dead boy's mother riles up the locals in an anti-witch sentiment and the by the finale the town is out for blood.  The mother is also motivated to obscure the rape allegation against her son by turning everyone's attention back to witches are bad.
The final main character the show follows is an outside cop sent in to investigate the boy's death.  She starts out by the book and brings in an outside witch to confirm if magic was used to kill the teen or not. Dark magic is confirmed to be in use which sets up an overall mystery for the series as to who used dark magic to kill the boy and why.
Overall, I liked the series.  I thought the finale was pretty good, although it probably should have ended about 5 minutes sooner.  The show had what I felt was a pretty definitive and solid ending, but it kept going with an unnecessary epilogue.