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From: Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-03-21 (Thursday)
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2024 08:09:57 -0700
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On 3/22/2024 6:42 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
> On 3/22/24 6:04 AM, shawn wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 05:33:38 -0700, "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> What did you watch?
>>
>> The other thing I watched was a movie called THE EXPATRIATE about a
>> guy who was hired for a temporary job breaking security devices for a
>> company, but it turns out it was all a fake as all of the employees
>> are killed once they break enough devices. The setup was to enable
>> someone to break into a CIA black vault and steal some documents.
>> Documents that it turns out prove a company was shipping military
>> weapons to rebels in Africa when the ship carrying the weapons went
>> down. It was just watchable and not a movie I would seek out.
> 
> There's no movie with that actual title, though apparently this is an 
> "alt title" for the 2012 film "Erased" with Aaron Exkhart – Is that this 
> movie you're talking about?
> 
> If it is, I stumbled across it... let's say about 5 years ago, and it 
> ended up being more engrossing than I was expecting (though I believe I 
> didn't watch the whole movie, having missed the beginning).
> 
> And it co-stars Olga K!!
> 
> 

I founded "Erased" on a few of the streaming services I never use.  I'd 
be more likely to watch this is I could just stick on my DVR at least 
that way I won't have to "remember" the movie exists, it'll just be there.


I watched:


Halo (Paramount+) - "Halo" - Season 2 finale.  Well, something finally 
happened. Big fight between humanity and the aliens with Master Chief 
willing to sacrifice all of humanity for love or whatever nonsense. 
They try to make the military out to be the bad guys for being to 
sacrifice soldiers, even their entire fleet to stop the aliens.  But as 
the top brass repeatedly and expressly say if the aliens get the Halo, 
then it's game over.  No counter attack or second chance all of humanity 
everywhere is just snuffed out. Under those conditions I really don't 
have a problem with the military stopping that from happening by any 
means necessary.


3 Body Problem (Netflix) - "Countdown" - I have been eagerly waiting on 
this.  It's a miniseries based on a Chinese book.  I never read the 
book, and very much intentionally for the last few years I've been 
avoiding any and all plot descriptions/spoilers.  So technically, I 
don't know what it's about.  Just that it involves presumably aliens and 
maybe the end of the world.  Mild spoilers for the first episode.

The first episode which jumps around in time between 1960s China and 
modern day London.  In 60s China the story focuses on a physicist who is 
arrested by the government for being a counter revolutionary, like her 
father, who was publicly executed in front of her.  The science she and 
her father believes in is considered counterrevolutionary because it is 
based on Western ideas. But her position is a fact is a fact and she 
won't say otherwise or rat out other scientists even to save her own 
life.  She is later recruited for a secret government project that needs 
scientist with her level of knowledge, which has basically been outlawed.

The present day story mostly takes place in modern day London. 
Governments all over the world are concerned because science/laws of 
physics don't seem to be behaving properly and no one can explain why 
science seems to be broken.  In addition, scientists have begun to 
mysteriously die or commit suicide.  They all seem to have this vision 
of a countdown clock in their eyes they can't get rid of.  Except for 
those scientists who stop work on their potentially world changing 
projects those scientists stop seeing the countdown and live.  One of 
the main characters in the first episode is a scientist named "Augie" 
(Eiza González) who is seeing the countdown clock and was friends with a 
scientist who also saw the clock until she killed herself.  She meets a 
mysterious woman who seems to know what's going on who tells her to shut 
down her project before the clock hits zero.  To back up her threat she 
also tells Augie to go outside at midnight and look up and she will see 
the universe "blink."  She does and the universe does in fact "blink." 
The whole world sees it too.  Benedict Wong also stars as a British 
government operative assigned to figure out why scientists are seeing 
the countdown and why science isn't working.


Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (theatrical) Latest Ghostbusters movie which 
once again brings back the original cast to bust ghosts with a younger 
generation.  They must stop an evil ghost determined to freeze the world 
if he can first escape from his magical prison.  Overall I liked this 
one.  I went in aware that the movie had been getting some negative 
reviews, but those reviews seem to be complaints about the movie relying 
too much on nostalgia.  I really didn't have a problem with that.  I 
loved all the cameos and callbacks to the earlier movies.  This movie is 
made for fans of Ghostbusters and on that level it worked great.  By the 
end of the movie I had a huge smile on my face.  What more can you ask 
for?  I did have one gripe in that I'm pretty sure a good chunk of the 
movie was edited out, perhaps even a whole subplot.  I can't know for 
sure what I didn't see, but I have definitely been getting that feeling 
a lot lately when I go to moves that huge chunks were filmed then 
removed, and I definitely felt that in this one.  Maybe there will be a 
longer director's cut to look forward to watching.