Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-04-12 (Saturday)

On 4/13/2025 9:30 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

On 4/13/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
 

What did you watch?

 Yesterday, I did chores and some work, but I played my video game most of the day, and watched soaps, Masters golf, and a couple of Lifetime movies from my DVR backlog!:
 soaps: DOOL - Thur's ep. Sami and Belle mildly get into it and trade barbs. Xander and Philip have gone power-mad - they needlessly confront NuGabi, just because they can!! Alex K. tears a strip off Sarah for the position she's put both Stephanie and himself in - honestly, I hope he drops the dime on Sarah, who is maybe the least sympathetic "good guy" character on any soap. Rex (still played by OldBrady) is back, and he quickly suspects Kate may have shot EJ. In fact, they show flashbacks potentially implicating several people (e.g. Gabi) in EJ's shooting. (Bah! - Ava did it!!)
    GH - Fri's ep. Wow, this episode made me like Diane Miller again!! Alexis goes to Diane with legal advice about Kristina's attempt to kill Ava (which instead nearly killed Ric and Lizzie) - Diane tells Alexis to throw Kristina under the bus and have her involuntarily committed! (YES!! Hopefully they never let her out!!) as the only way to keep Kristina out of jail... Wow! Awful Carly crosses every line there is in confronting Willow - Carly easily makes Willow sympathetic here (which isn't easy!) and Willow actually holds her own against Bitch-Carly. Eventually, Nina has to call Jason in to drag Carly away before physically assaulting Willow. Emma and Anna have a "clearing session" about Emma's criminal past. Joss gets her assignment to get close to a professor (who apparently will be played by former-Y&R player, and former Beastmaster! Daniel Goddard). There was also stuff with Trina & Kai, and Portia, but, meh.
 golf - Day 3 of the Masters was a somewhat exciting one - in the "good news" department, Rory McIlroy seems to have taken a firm lead here, and a betting man would bet on him to win his first(!! seems so improbable that he hasn't won the Masters before now!) green jacket. But, in the "bad news" department, he's being chased by LIV villain Bryson DeChambeau who kept not going away - recovering after stumbling. It's certainly not impossible that DeChambeau can close the gap today on the final day.
 Then I pulled two LMN/Lifetime flicks off the DVR, as it looks like I have to fix their cast listings on IMDb:
 What Would You Kill For? (recorded off LMN in mid-March) - I think this is like the third Lifetime flick with ingenue Laura Provenzano in just a few weeks!... In this one, Rayisa Kondracki plays a restaurateur whose scuzzy ex-husband (James Gilbert) is killed. And, of course, she's the prime suspect and is being framed for it. Meanwhile, her current husband (Steve Byers) who wanted to buy the restaurant building from the ex is also seeming to be sketchy. And there is a subplot with the stepdaughter's (Provenzano) long-lost "birth mother"... Anyway, this was an OK mystery, with a number of suspects and a number of twists, and I didn't see the reveal with the ending coming.
 Playing with Fire (recorded off Lifetime in mid-March) - This one, OTOH, was pretty damn ridiculous - the villainous stalker fireman had more skills up his sleeve than MacGyver!!... A couple (recent Lifetime staple Kirsten Comerford and Brett Geddes) who are struggling in their marriage have their house burn down (I was never clear if the fire really was Geddes' character's fault, or whether the fireman had already targetted them and had caused the fire to happen himself...), where they come across the stalker fireman (Stephen Adekolu) who fixates and becomes obsessed with Comerford's character. Frankly, Comerford's character was so dumb she deserved to die - the fireman is clearly an obsessed stalker type, and she is warned about him multiple times by the husband, but she completely plays dumb the whole time and is mean to the husband about his obviously justified concerns. A more satisfying ending would have been the stalker disposing of her, and then the husband dispatching him! But no such luck!
  What did you watch?
 

I watched:
30 Days of Night (blu-ray) 2007 movie based on a comic book about a small isolated town in Alaska that is overrun by vampires during a month-long period when the sun doesn't rise.  This holds up very well.
30 Days of Night: Dark Days (blu-ray) 2010 sequel which picks up where the first movie ends with a survivor tracking down vampires to get her vengeance on.  This is a pretty solid revenge flick with a vampire twist.
Vampires (4K disc) 1998 movie directed by John Carpenter and starring James Woods as the leader of a team of vampire hunters who work for the Church.  Mostly background noise.  I remember back in 98 watching trailers for this and "Blade" and thinking this would be *the* vampire movie and "Blade" would be meh.  And it turned out to be the exact opposite.
Lifeforce (4K disc) - 1985 movie directed by Tobe Hooper.  So let me get this straight, the space shuttle is on a mission to study Halley's Comet when they come across an alien spaceship.  They dock and board the spaceship, where they find multiple batlike aliens and three aliens that appear to be human.  They then bring the aliens back on the ship.  They wrap one is a fishing net because quarantine, I guess.  Anyway, safely wrapped up in the net they bring them back on board the spaceship and who would have guessed it, but it turns out the aliens they found in space weren't safe after all.  The aliens are brought back to Earth, and I'm sure there's no need to quarantine them or anything because what could go wrong?  Once again one thing leads to another and now there are space vampires in Britain sucking the life force out of everyone.
I guess I should also mention the alien spaceship that parked itself over London and was collecting the lifeforce of the population, but no one seemed to notice or care other than mentioning it was happening. Maybe it's just me, but if I see space vampires sucking the life out of people causing a blue light to stream into space where a spaceship is conveniently parked in orbit collecting the light, I might just think there could be a connection between the two events.  But that's just me.   Did it not occur to *anyone* to blow the thing out of orbit?   I guess not.  Anyway, I'll just end with this has to be the most British vampire movie ever made that doesn't star Christopher Lee.
Doctor Who (Disney+) - "The Robot Revolution" - The new season kicks off with the doctor picking up a new companion.  The Doctor has to save a nurse from robots that have kidnapped her so she can be their new Queen, but there is a Timey-wimey twist.  I picked up on some "Superman 3" and "Timecop" references that probably went over most younger viewers heads.   But as someone who was scarred for life by a certain scene in Superman 3, I couldn't help but notice.  Overall, it was an OK start.  I like the dynamic with the new companion who does *not* want to be a companion.  I liked that she immediately picked up on the Doctor is dangerous and traveling with him can get her killed.  She has no interest in being his next victim, I mean companion, and just wants to go home.  I don't recall a companion like that since maybe Tegan.  If I recall correctly she also started out similarly saying to take her home because she didn't want any of his nonsense.
There were some posts a while back about IMAX and aspect ratios.  For anyone interested in learning more about it, Ryan Coogler just put out a short video also breaking down some of those details and explaining different film formats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Ru62uFM0s