Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-26 (Sunday)

On 1/27/2025 8:31 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 1/27/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 It took all day, but yesterday I actually got some work done - so I didn't even get to a movie yesterday. All I got through was:
 soaps: Y&R - Thur's ep. Jordan gets caught by the Newmans, and then Mariah finds dumb Sharon in the park, so Jordan's leverage is shot - so Jordan takes a swig of the tea that Claire presumably either Mickey Finned or outright poisoned! In the same ep., Mariah discovers Ian talking to dumb Tessa; then Mariah becomes irate when Tessa suggests that Ian might actually be truly remorseful (as if!!) and Mariah storms out on her.
    GH - Fri's ep. Even I enjoyed Willow standing up to Tracy, forcing Tracy to beat a hasty retreat! Willow talks with Nina, but I think she decided to stay on the Quartermaine estate. Curtis turns down Drew's "offer" (really a "beg"!) to get control of the company back from inured Michael. Brook Lynn explains to NuNuLulu what Deception means to Maxie - so Lulu was about to bow out of the new job when Tracy shows up and immediately insists that Lulu be hired as Brook Lynn's assistant anyway, making Brook Lynn jealous. The college football player that I don't care about? - His injury has ended his "career". (Who cares?!) Jack Brennan shows up in Germany(?) to comfort Carly on moving Michael to the clinic there. Laura and Anna confront Jenz(sp?) Sidwell and basically tell him to leave town, but in fact they have nothing on him, and he politely declines to leave town.
 playoff football - I skipped the NFC Championship game (I did not care!), but apparently Philadelphia shellacked Washington, which was my preferred outcome.
    The AFC Championship game was mostly close the whole time, but all the way through the game you got the consistent feeling that Kansas City was just that much better, and was going to win the game. That's exactly what happened when Kansas City stopped Buffalo on a 4th Down and 1, with 2 minutes to go in the game, and then converted on two important first downs to close out the game.
    So the Super Bowl will be Kansas City vs. Phili, with KC going for their third win in a row (which is a Super Bowl record I believe...).
 And that was that. Otherwise, I worked on IMDb cast lists, and then worked on work stuff, all day...
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
Donnie Darko (4K disc) 2001 movie written and directed by Richard Kelly.   Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a teenager who finds himself in a tangent universe where lots of weird stuff happens.  That's about the best summary I can give.  I watched the director's cut with the director's commentary.  He was joined by Kevin Smith on the commentary.  Smith perhaps summed it up best when he said, "I don't know what the F*** is happening."
Southland Tales (blu-ray) 2006 movie written and directed by Richard Kelly.  This movie was clearly made for people who felt "Donnie Darko" was way too easy to follow and wanted more of a challenge.  This movie has an all star cast lead by Dwayne Johnson who plays a movie star who is at the heart of a blackmail scheme by a group of anarchists trying to take down a fascist police state in Texas following a nuclear bomb being detonated a few years earlier.  There is also something to do with time travel, and I guess maybe a parallel universe too.  Who knows!!!  I watched it once before when it came out.  This time I watched the "Cannes cut" which adds more scenes but is apparently unfinished and less comprehensible than the shorter theatrical cut.  The theatrical cut has a commentary track, and I'm also definitely going to watch this again so I can listen to the commentary and hopefully make some sense out of what I just watched.
On the "Donnie Darko" commentary they said the people in the tangent universe were being contacted/manipulated from an alternative future universe.  They really should have tied this movie into "Donnie Darko" and just said the people in the "Southland Tales" universe were the same people contacting Donnie. Just make it a throw away scene Easter egg.
The Twilight Zone (DVD) "Button, Button" Season 1, episode 20 of a 1986 episode of the Twilight Zone.  This episode is based on a short story by Richard Matheson.  A couple living in poverty are handed a box with a button and told if they push the button, someone they don't know will die and afterwards they will receive $200,000 tax free.  They then spend the episode debating if they should push the button or not.
The Box (blu-ray) 2009 movie written and directed by Richard Kelly, based on Richard Matheson's short story, "Button, Button."  Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play a married couple in 1976 who are given a box with a button by Frank Langella, and told if they push the button on the box someone they don't know will die and they will receive $1,000,000, tax free.  The actor who played the guy who gave the box in the original Twilight Zone episode makes an appearance in this movie playing a different character.  You might think the movie is about what happens after they press the button.  But not really.  I'm surprised they even bothered to have a box with a button, and it was pretty quickly forgotten once the button was pressed.  Sure stuff happens after the button is pressed, but you could have pretty much made the same weird sci-fi movie without the button.  This actually reminded me a lot more of "The Forgotten" from 2004, which was about aliens secretly experimenting on people.
I watched with the commentary and from the commentary it seemed pretty clear that Kelly tossed out the original Richard Matheson story and did his own thing.  A lot of the story and characters were based on Kelly's own personal life and family with a sci-fi twist.