• What Did You Watch? 2025-02-14 (Friday)

    From Ian J. Ball@21:1/5 to All on Sat Feb 15 08:11:48 2025
    I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
    through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.

    Anyway, I watched:

    soaps: GH - Thur's ep. I really dislike the Cody/NuNuNuMolly thing - not
    the concept of a romance between them, but they way they're doing this
    by pure "Hallmark Channel formula" - they keep being jerks to each other
    (esp. Molly to Cody): see, that means they're secretly in love!!1!
    [barf] Anyway, after Cody tries to apologize to Molly (who seemingly
    kind of rebuffs him), Cody and Molly get stuck on GH's roof together out
    in the freezing cold, which means they're forced to interact civilly...
    Sonny catches Jason up on his heart disease saga. Then Jason is called
    into the cop shop by Anna, who questions Jason about his confrontation
    with Cyrus - Anna is going nuts lately! In Wed's ep, she arrested
    Josslyn, and in this ep she arrests Jason for threatening Cyrus!... Nina
    and Ava talk about her failed attempt to confess to Willow. Then Ric
    shows up, so Nina leaves, and Ric and Ava plot and make-out (after Ric
    was sort of brushed off by Elizabeth, whom he is really interested in).
    Nina later has a pointless conversation with Sonny, that didn't seem to accomplish anything. Dante confesses to Alexis and horrible NuKristina
    that he's the reason that Jason's son found out that Cyrus is a suspect
    in killing Sam.

    The Gorge (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k, so you can see the monsters up
    close!!
    SPOILERS,
    at least some,
    come next!
    On that score, this is not what I was expecting - this is seemingly
    being sold as "romance" between two sniper-assassin types (Miles Teller
    Anya Taylor-Joy) who fall in love as "opposites" on a mission. But it's actually as much, if not more... sci-fi? horror?
    Anyway, Teller (who is looking kind of old here!...) and Taylor-Joy
    play two burned out sniper-assassins, he an American and she a Russian -
    He has nothing to live for, and she has a former KGB father (William
    Houston) who is dying from cancer... Teller's character is approached by
    an apparent high-level spook (Sigourney Weaver) to take on a
    high-importance mission that he is told nothing about. He wakes up on a
    plane to... somewhere, and told to parachute out. He ends up near a
    watchtower on a gorge somewhere, manned by Americans or Brits, where he
    is to relieve a British soldier (Sope Dirisu) who has had
    guard(/maintenance) duty on that same watchtower for a year. Teller's
    character relieves the dude, who is helicoptered out (or is he?...).
    Anyway, eventually, Taylor-Joy's character, who is in a Russian
    watchtower on the other on the other side of the gorge, starts flirting with/trying to seduce Teller (duh! of course she does! she's Anya
    Taylor-Joy).
    This part follows what we were expecting from the movie.
    But why they're there, and what's in the gorge, is where this movie
    takes a hard turn. In fact, you expect that, eventually, the two of them
    are going to get stuck in that gorge somehow, and you're not going to be
    wrong. What's in the gorge is not what you're expecting, though the
    explanation for all of the madness pretty much is what you'd expect.
    (Hey, it's Ruta Gedmintas on the old film reel! I didn't know she was
    still around!)
    This is the kind of movie where if Netflix had done it, it would be
    total crap. But because it's done by Apple (TV+), this one is actually
    kind of good.
    And I'll watch Taylor-Joy read a phonebook, so... Thumbs up!

    I then intended to watch "Longlegs", which has finally shown up on one
    of my streamers (Hulu), but started getting too sleepy, and had to stop
    about halfway through - I will finish that one today.


    What did you watch?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From anim8rfsk@21:1/5 to Ian J. Ball on Sat Feb 15 09:51:51 2025
    Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:
    I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
    through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.

    Anyway, I watched:



    What did you watch?

    Hey, thanks for asking!

    WOLF MAN (2025) on the Plex
    I’ll cut to the Chase. This is one of the worst movies ever made. It’s inept at every level. I’m not sure who’s stupider the Director or the writer. It’s full of big stupid and constantly unfurling rancid onion.
    They don’t even know where it was filmed. They claim both New Zealand and Ireland.

    WICKED (2024).
    Well, I watched several hours of this before I realized it’s part one and several more hours will drop the end of this year. And at that point I
    bailed. It’s good looking. Unforgivably for a musical I had to turn on the subtitles to understand what Ariana Grande is singing. I didn’t have any problem with the others. I’ve seen a couple different versions of the play and this is only barely recognizable. It’s great looking, and the money is
    on screen.
    And back to Ariana Grande … In the play, I liked her character. Here she’s just annoying. I’m certainly not rooting for her to get the boy!

    THE DREW CAREY SHOW.
    Turned it on towards midnight and let it run from the beginning; I’ve never seen the early seasons.

    --
    The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From shawn@21:1/5 to All on Sat Feb 15 12:05:18 2025
    On Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:11:48 -0800, "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
    wrote:

    I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
    through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.

    Anyway, I watched:

    The Gorge (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k, so you can see the monsters up >close!!
    SPOILERS,
    at least some,
    come next!
    On that score, this is not what I was expecting - this is seemingly
    being sold as "romance" between two sniper-assassin types (Miles Teller
    Anya Taylor-Joy) who fall in love as "opposites" on a mission. But it's >actually as much, if not more... sci-fi? horror?

    Hmm, maybe I missed the ads but I was expecting the sci-fi/horror
    aspect. Didn't expect the romance aspect though once I saw who the two 'guardians' were it seemed obvious something was going to happen
    there.

    Anyway, Teller (who is looking kind of old here!...) and Taylor-Joy
    play two burned out sniper-assassins, he an American and she a Russian -
    He has nothing to live for, and she has a former KGB father (William
    Houston) who is dying from cancer... Teller's character is approached by
    an apparent high-level spook (Sigourney Weaver) to take on a
    high-importance mission that he is told nothing about. He wakes up on a
    plane to... somewhere, and told to parachute out. He ends up near a >watchtower on a gorge somewhere, manned by Americans or Brits, where he
    is to relieve a British soldier (Sope Dirisu) who has had
    guard(/maintenance) duty on that same watchtower for a year. Teller's >character relieves the dude, who is helicoptered out (or is he?...).

    Well he does get a ride on a helicopter so there's that.

    Anyway, eventually, Taylor-Joy's character, who is in a Russian
    watchtower on the other on the other side of the gorge, starts flirting >with/trying to seduce Teller (duh! of course she does! she's Anya >Taylor-Joy).
    This part follows what we were expecting from the movie.
    But why they're there, and what's in the gorge, is where this movie
    takes a hard turn. In fact, you expect that, eventually, the two of them
    are going to get stuck in that gorge somehow, and you're not going to be >wrong. What's in the gorge is not what you're expecting, though the >explanation for all of the madness pretty much is what you'd expect.
    (Hey, it's Ruta Gedmintas on the old film reel! I didn't know she was
    still around!)
    This is the kind of movie where if Netflix had done it, it would be
    total crap. But because it's done by Apple (TV+), this one is actually
    kind of good.
    And I'll watch Taylor-Joy read a phonebook, so... Thumbs up!

    I definitely enjoyed it.

    I then intended to watch "Longlegs", which has finally shown up on one
    of my streamers (Hulu), but started getting too sleepy, and had to stop
    about halfway through - I will finish that one today.


    What did you watch?


    Just THE GORGE.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From BTR1701@21:1/5 to arthur@alum.calberkeley.org on Sat Feb 15 17:47:07 2025
    On Feb 15, 2025 at 9:21:32 AM PST, "Arthur Lipscomb" <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
    Law & Order: SVU - "Calculated" - Team SVU springs into action when a
    teen at a prep school is caught with naked pictures of a girl from a different prep school on his phone. So let me get this straight, the
    school calls the police on this kid and the head of SVU herself shows up
    to the school. OK. And it seemed pretty clear that this was not a
    picture that the boy himself took, it was a picture that someone (the
    girl) took of herself and sent to him. And now that I think about it,
    at no point did they ever consider prosecuting the girl for making the picture, just the boy for having it sent to him.

    In real life, there have been many instances of teens who were charged with manufacturing child porn for taking pics of themselves. But the victim in a child porn case is the child depicted, so it's a bizarre legal theory indeed that says you are both the victim and the perpetrator of the crime at the same time.

    Under that approach, they could also charge teenagers with felony sexual assault on a minor if they're caught masturbating.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Arthur Lipscomb@21:1/5 to Ian J. Ball on Sat Feb 15 09:21:32 2025
    On 2/15/2025 8:11 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
    I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
    through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.

    Anyway, I watched:

    soaps: GH - Thur's ep. I really dislike the Cody/NuNuNuMolly thing - not
    the concept of a romance between them, but they way they're doing this
    by pure "Hallmark Channel formula" - they keep being jerks to each other (esp. Molly to Cody): see, that means they're secretly in love!!1!
    [barf] Anyway, after Cody tries to apologize to Molly (who seemingly
    kind of rebuffs him), Cody and Molly get stuck on GH's roof together out
    in the freezing cold, which means they're forced to interact civilly...
    Sonny catches Jason up on his heart disease saga. Then Jason is called
    into the cop shop by Anna, who questions Jason about his confrontation
    with Cyrus - Anna is going nuts lately! In Wed's ep, she arrested
    Josslyn, and in this ep she arrests Jason for threatening Cyrus!... Nina
    and Ava talk about her failed attempt to confess to Willow. Then Ric
    shows up, so Nina leaves, and Ric and Ava plot and make-out (after Ric
    was sort of brushed off by Elizabeth, whom he is really interested in).
    Nina later has a pointless conversation with Sonny, that didn't seem to accomplish anything. Dante confesses to Alexis and horrible NuKristina
    that he's the reason that Jason's son found out that Cyrus is a suspect
    in killing Sam.

    The Gorge (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k, so you can see the monsters up close!!
       SPOILERS,
       at least some,
       come next!
       On that score, this is not what I was expecting - this is seemingly being sold as "romance" between two sniper-assassin types (Miles Teller
    Anya Taylor-Joy) who fall in love as "opposites" on a mission. But it's actually as much, if not more... sci-fi? horror?
       Anyway, Teller (who is looking kind of old here!...) and Taylor-Joy play two burned out sniper-assassins, he an American and she a Russian -
    He has nothing to live for, and she has a former KGB father (William
    Houston) who is dying from cancer... Teller's character is approached by
    an apparent high-level spook (Sigourney Weaver) to take on a high-
    importance mission that he is told nothing about. He wakes up on a plane to... somewhere, and told to parachute out. He ends up near a watchtower
    on a gorge somewhere, manned by Americans or Brits, where he is to
    relieve a British soldier (Sope Dirisu) who has had guard(/maintenance)
    duty on that same watchtower for a year. Teller's character relieves the dude, who is helicoptered out (or is he?...).
       Anyway, eventually, Taylor-Joy's character, who is in a Russian watchtower on the other on the other side of the gorge, starts flirting with/trying to seduce Teller (duh! of course she does! she's Anya Taylor-Joy).
       This part follows what we were expecting from the movie.
       But why they're there, and what's in the gorge, is where this movie takes a hard turn. In fact, you expect that, eventually, the two of them
    are going to get stuck in that gorge somehow, and you're not going to be wrong. What's in the gorge is not what you're expecting, though the explanation for all of the madness pretty much is what you'd expect.
    (Hey, it's Ruta Gedmintas on the old film reel! I didn't know she was
    still around!)
       This is the kind of movie where if Netflix had done it, it would be total crap. But because it's done by Apple (TV+), this one is actually
    kind of good.
       And I'll watch Taylor-Joy read a phonebook, so... Thumbs up!

    I then intended to watch "Longlegs", which has finally shown up on one
    of my streamers (Hulu), but started getting too sleepy, and had to stop
    about halfway through - I will finish that one today.


    What did you watch?



    I finally managed to sign up for the AppleTV+/Netflix/Peacock bundle
    from Comcast. At $15 a month it's a lot less than what I had been
    paying individually, but I had to wait for the individual subscriptions
    to expire so I could make the switch. And making the switch was a
    headache! First the website didn't work right. Then I called customer
    service but because they don't want to talk to anyone I was switched to
    texting customer service. That didn't go well, and they were trying to
    up sale me services I didn't need. Then they finally put a human on the
    phone with me so I could sign up.

    With AppleTV+ newly restored, I watched:


    The Gorge (Apple TV+) - Covered above. Yes, definitely worth checking out.


    Severance (Apple TV+) - "Who Is Alive?" - Season 2, episode 3. This was
    a weird one. And that's saying something for this show. A good chunk
    of it took place in the outside world with Mark (seemingly suddenly)
    decided he wants to know "Who is alive." Meanwhile on the inside Mark
    takes a trip searching for his missing wife (although he doesn't know
    she's his wife) and winds up in a department where a bunch of weirdos
    are doing who knows what to goats. There are two more episodes
    available, but by this point I was tired and went to bed.


    Law & Order: SVU - "Calculated" - Team SVU springs into action when a
    teen at a prep school is caught with naked pictures of a girl from a
    different prep school on his phone. So let me get this straight, the
    school calls the police on this kid and the head of SVU herself shows up
    to the school. OK. And it seemed pretty clear that this was not a
    picture that the boy himself took, it was a picture that someone (the
    girl) took of herself and sent to him. And now that I think about it,
    at no point did they ever consider prosecuting the girl for making the
    picture, just the boy for having it sent to him. Anyway, they decide
    they want to throw the book at this kid. One thing leads to another and
    now they've got an international bust. OK. But Benson is at odds with
    Carisi for reasons. That even he has to call out what's your problem.
    Carisi is trying to take down dozens of people but Benson just wants the
    one guy they caught prosecuted because reasons. She keeps saying she's
    for the victim, but I have no idea what that has to do with getting all
    the other guys too. Then in yet another switch up on the plot, they
    entrap this one guy and then decide they want to throw the book at him
    when he is *clearly* innocent. He is cognitively impaired has no idea
    what is happening and everything he did he did because the cop told him
    to do it, even as he was saying he didn't understand what she was
    talking about and she was walking him threw what to do and how to do it.
    So now Benson is once again at odds with Carisi. This episode was all
    over the place. It was like they had three separate scripts that they
    just threw in the air and randomly put together.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Ian J. Ball@21:1/5 to shawn on Sat Feb 15 10:24:47 2025
    On 2/15/25 9:05 AM, shawn wrote:

    On Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:11:48 -0800, "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
    wrote:

    I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
    through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.

    Anyway, I watched:

    The Gorge (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k, so you can see the monsters up
    close!!
    SPOILERS,
    at least some,
    come next!
    On that score, this is not what I was expecting - this is seemingly
    being sold as "romance" between two sniper-assassin types (Miles Teller
    Anya Taylor-Joy) who fall in love as "opposites" on a mission. But it's
    actually as much, if not more... sci-fi? horror?

    Hmm, maybe I missed the ads but I was expecting the sci-fi/horror
    aspect. Didn't expect the romance aspect though once I saw who the two 'guardians' were it seemed obvious something was going to happen
    there.

    Anyway, Teller (who is looking kind of old here!...) and Taylor-Joy
    play two burned out sniper-assassins, he an American and she a Russian -
    He has nothing to live for, and she has a former KGB father (William
    Houston) who is dying from cancer... Teller's character is approached by
    an apparent high-level spook (Sigourney Weaver) to take on a
    high-importance mission that he is told nothing about. He wakes up on a
    plane to... somewhere, and told to parachute out. He ends up near a
    watchtower on a gorge somewhere, manned by Americans or Brits, where he
    is to relieve a British soldier (Sope Dirisu) who has had
    guard(/maintenance) duty on that same watchtower for a year. Teller's
    character relieves the dude, who is helicoptered out (or is he?...).

    Well he does get a ride on a helicopter so there's that.

    Anyway, eventually, Taylor-Joy's character, who is in a Russian
    watchtower on the other on the other side of the gorge, starts flirting
    with/trying to seduce Teller (duh! of course she does! she's Anya
    Taylor-Joy).
    This part follows what we were expecting from the movie.
    But why they're there, and what's in the gorge, is where this movie
    takes a hard turn. In fact, you expect that, eventually, the two of them
    are going to get stuck in that gorge somehow, and you're not going to be
    wrong. What's in the gorge is not what you're expecting, though the
    explanation for all of the madness pretty much is what you'd expect.
    (Hey, it's Ruta Gedmintas on the old film reel! I didn't know she was
    still around!)
    This is the kind of movie where if Netflix had done it, it would be
    total crap. But because it's done by Apple (TV+), this one is actually
    kind of good.
    And I'll watch Taylor-Joy read a phonebook, so... Thumbs up!

    I definitely enjoyed it.

    Fun fact about "The Gorge": Teller's character mentions, onscreen, one
    of the places I (used to?) work at - (San Diego) "Mesa Community College".


    Ian (Yes, there's more than one "Mesa Community College" in the U.S. -
    there's one in Arizona too. But Teller was filmed at a place that was
    either meant to be an L.A. or San Diego beach, and he's later at Camp Pendelton, so there was no doubt in my mind that they meant San Diego
    Mesa College in the movie. I wonder if the film's writer Zach Dean
    attended Mesa College...)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Adam H. Kerman@21:1/5 to atropos@mac.com on Sat Feb 15 19:05:42 2025
    BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

    . . .

    In real life, there have been many instances of teens who were charged with >manufacturing child porn for taking pics of themselves. But the victim in a >child porn case is the child depicted, so it's a bizarre legal theory indeed >that says you are both the victim and the perpetrator of the crime at the same >time.

    Under that approach, they could also charge teenagers with felony sexual >assault on a minor if they're caught masturbating.

    Why stop there? If she were caught masterbating, then sucking the finger
    she rubbed herself with, that's penetration and therefore rape under
    some state criminal codes.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Adam H. Kerman@21:1/5 to Arthur Lipscomb on Sat Feb 15 19:02:18 2025
    Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

    . . .

    Law & Order: SVU - "Calculated" . . .

    Wow. I utterly despised this episode, and all I did was read your
    review.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From shawn@21:1/5 to ahk@chinet.com on Sat Feb 15 15:36:56 2025
    On Sat, 15 Feb 2025 19:05:42 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
    <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

    BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

    . . .

    In real life, there have been many instances of teens who were charged with >>manufacturing child porn for taking pics of themselves. But the victim in a >>child porn case is the child depicted, so it's a bizarre legal theory indeed >>that says you are both the victim and the perpetrator of the crime at the same
    time.

    Under that approach, they could also charge teenagers with felony sexual >>assault on a minor if they're caught masturbating.

    Why stop there? If she were caught masterbating, then sucking the finger
    she rubbed herself with, that's penetration and therefore rape under
    some state criminal codes.

    How have you not realized everyone who has masturbated has committed
    murder of potential new people? Practically everyone above the age of
    puberty has committed murder at one time or another. Some, like Ernest Borgnine, apparently committed it daily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuC3t-d0Zao

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Arthur Lipscomb@21:1/5 to All on Sat Feb 15 16:44:40 2025
    On 2/15/2025 8:51 AM, anim8rfsk wrote:
    Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:
    I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
    through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.

    Anyway, I watched:



    What did you watch?

    Hey, thanks for asking!

    WOLF MAN (2025) on the Plex
    I’ll cut to the Chase. This is one of the worst movies ever made. It’s inept at every level. I’m not sure who’s stupider the Director or the writer. It’s full of big stupid and constantly unfurling rancid onion.
    They don’t even know where it was filmed. They claim both New Zealand and Ireland.


    I saw this in the theater. I did warn people about it. I walked out of
    the theater and was just like, no. LOL

    WICKED (2024).
    Well, I watched several hours of this before I realized it’s part one and several more hours will drop the end of this year. And at that point I bailed. It’s good looking. Unforgivably for a musical I had to turn on the subtitles to understand what Ariana Grande is singing. I didn’t have any problem with the others. I’ve seen a couple different versions of the play

    Same. At it felt like each version was worse than the one I saw before.
    Or I was spoiled by seeing it during an early run when they had the
    flying monkeys climbing around at the start. I haven't seen that in of
    the later productions.

    and this is only barely recognizable. It’s great looking, and the money is on screen.
    And back to Ariana Grande … In the play, I liked her character. Here she’s
    just annoying. I’m certainly not rooting for her to get the boy!


    This on the other hand I did like. I was actually surprised by how much
    I liked it, because I wasn't expecting much out of it.

    THE DREW CAREY SHOW.
    Turned it on towards midnight and let it run from the beginning; I’ve never seen the early seasons.


    I've never seen a single episode. :-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)