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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-25 (Monday)
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2024 09:13:59 -0800
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On 11/26/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

> What did you watch?

After grading and teaching, I finally got to Thanksgiving Break 
yesterday. So, I "celebrated" by watching a couple of movies, and...:

GH - Ava's trial begins. Not much happens, but Kristina doesn't take the 
stand until the end of the episode when Ric hits her with "Why are you 
lying?!" Heh... Meanwhile, Michael gets Drew to admit that he never 
intended to make Curtis permanent CEO, but secretly records the 
conversation, and then plays it for Curtis! Dumb Lulu plots her escape 
from the long-term care facility, and does make it out. (So they want us 
to believe that she's been secretly working to walk to overcome her 
atrophy - I don't think you can get over that in a couple of days!! - 
without anyone catching her?!

MNF football - The Chargers keep it close in the first-half, but then 
come pretty close to getting blown out by the Ravens in the second half. 
In the end, the Chargers are lucky they only lost by a touchdown.

Then the movies:

Wild Things 2 (Tubi) - After having watched "Wild Things: Diamonds in 
the Rough" (aka. "Wild Things 3") the other day, I decided to (re-)watch 
this one. I am pretty sure I watched this once before, but it would have 
been 2 decades ago, and I didn't remember it.
    Watching "3" and "2" back-to-back like this was interesting. They 
both have very, very similar plotlines - to the point where it's unclear 
which movie is ripping off which!
    "3" was "sexier" (Sarah Laine was much more game for this kind of 
thing than Susan Ward (or Leila Arcieri) were) than "2", and "3" felt 
like it had more naked nudity (I'm not sure it really did, but it felt 
like it did). "3" was also more fun, and more over-the-top.
    "2" has arguably the better cast - it's weird to think that Susan 
Ward did this film *after* "Sunset Beach" (and after "The In-Crowd"); 
Ward was basically done after "Make It or Break It" less than a decade 
after "Wild Things 2" - she hasn't worked since 2012. But I was not 
expecting Isaiah Washington to pop up in this! (the year before "Grey's" 
premiered!) This one also has Faith Salie in a smallish part!
    Most importantly, this one has Katie Stuart (the American one) 
playing Susan Ward's "bestie", and she blows Ward off the screen in 
every scene she's in 'cos she's so lovely! I was always bitterly 
disappointed that Katie Stuart didn't have a bigger career - she really 
only recurred on "Titans" (2000-2001), did a stint as Sage Alcazar on GH 
in 2003 (I had forgotten about that!), and then did this flick and 
"Tamara" (2005). Stuart's last role was in 2009, and she hasn't worked 
since. Such a shame.
    "2" is also closer to being a traditional crime mystery - alot of it 
is Isaiah Washington's insurance investigator figuring out what is going 
on with Ward and Arcieri.
    So, "2" is the better mystery, but is basically incredibly light on 
the "naughty bits" (Arcieri uses a body double; Ward and her character 
never get naked at all!). "3" seems naughtier, and is more fun, with I 
think a better payoff.

Center Stage: Turn It Up (Tubi) - So, apparently, Tubi has all 3 "Center 
Stage" films, but is losing them by the end of the month. I've seen the 
first one multiple times, and I've seen the third one, "Center State: On 
Pointe" once, but I've never seen the middle one, from 2008 - this one. 
So I jumped on it, 'cos who knows if it will be available anywhere after 
Tubi?!!
    "On Pointe" is pretty much a straight up sequel to "Turn It Up" - 
Nicole Munoz is in both films (as is Kenny Wormald); Peter Gallagher and 
Ethan Stiefel are in all three films... But Munoz is literally a *child* 
in "Turn It Up" (they say she's 13, and she was actually 14 at the time, 
but she honestly looks younger), playing the lead's sister. In "On 
Pointe", Munoz (who was 22 by 2016) is the lead, trying to get out of 
her sister's shadow... I'm disappointed to what happened with Munoz - I 
saw her in something recently (must have been either "Wild Cards" or 
"Tracker"), and she was all tatted up, and didn't look good at all... 
FTR, "On Pointe" was the weakest of the films, to my recollection.
    Anyway, the lead in this film is Rachele Brooke Smith, in pretty 
much her first acting role, ever! and it's clear in 2008 that Smith was 
still a dancer first, and an actress second. (It'll take Smith another 
decade before she starts doing Lifetime films!)
    The movie plays a lot more like a "Step Up" ripoff than a "sequel" 
to "Center Stage" - Smith's character misses the cut into Peter 
Gallagher's snooty ballet academy, and ends up working in a bar where 
she does "sexy" dancing rather than ballet. Wormald's character, who is 
like the most promising male ballet dancer in Gallagher's academy's new 
class, ends up hitting Smith up for off-the-books "training" in pas de deux.
    You know where this is going...
    I don't know if this was filmed lousy, or if this was a lousy print, 
but it looked bad on Tubi - maybe even "480p/DVD-rip" bad. I wonder if 
there's a better print/rip of this out there somewhere...


What did you watch?