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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-26 (Tuesday)
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2024 20:25:12 -0800
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On 11/27/24 2:51 PM, shawn wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Nov 2024 13:19:38 -0800, Arthur Lipscomb
> <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>> On 11/27/2024 8:50 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
> 
>>> I spent most of yesterday (day) cleaning my place for the coming
>>> holiday. I didn't even finish yesterday, but I did make a lot of
>>> progress, enough that my cleaning today will be mostly finishing up...
>>>
>>> But I did get through a couple more movies, and soaps:
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> Then, I picked up where I left off with the flicks on Tubi:
>>>
>>> Sidenote: Once again, both of these flicks looked crappy. The recurring
>>> theme here seems to be that all of the 2000's-era direct-to-video flicks
>>> look lousy (at least on Tubi). I've got to think that's because they're
>>> all DVD-rips, and DVD-rips just look bad on HDTV's, no matter what you
>>> do...
>>>
>>> Cruel Intentions 2 (Tubi) - Like the "Center Stage" flicks, "Cruel
>>> Intentions 2" & "3" are leaving Tubi in a few days. So I decided to
>>> revisit them too.
>>>      This 2000/2001 flick is the one that was originally a Fox TV series,
>>> but Fox cancelled it in the middle of filming episode #2 (due to
>>> controversy), so they turned it into a direct-to-video flick by filming
>>> a few extra scenes and throwing in some naked nudity (but not
>>> enough!! ;p  ).
>>>      Considering this was to be a TV show, the cast for this is kind of
>>> mind-blowing - they had Mimi Rodgers playing Kathryn Merteuil's mom, and
>>> they had Amy-friggin'-Adams playing Kathryn Merteuil!
>>
>> I know!  The last time I watched the movie Amy Adams probably wasn't
>> even on my radar.  But now I was like, she's in this?
>>
>>>      It blows my mind that Amy Adams was almost in a TV series. AFAIR,
>>> Adams never really did TV in her early career, though apparently she did
>>> an episode of "Charmed" very early in her career that I had forgotten
>>> about! (and later did an episode of "Smallville", in a fat suit!!) - so
>>> I must have seen her back then.
>>>      Adams is so young here that she's almost kind of unrecognizable.
> 
> Only around 25 when she did this.

That's a lot older than I would have guessed... [checking] Yeah, wow - I 
didn't realize that Adams is only 3 and 1/2 years younger than I am! So 
she just turned 50 - I figured she was only in her mid-40s.

>>> The
>>> other thing that amazes me is that Amy Adams is a multiple-Academy Award
>>> nominee, but Sarah-Michelle Gellar *blows Adams away* in this role. And
>>> it just can't be chalked up to the writing or "the character is younger"
>>> here - Adams just isn't nearly as good at the role as Gellar.
>>
>> Agreed.

Its not that Adams is "bad" here. It's just that she's playing a brat, 
and doesn't bring anything more to the take than that.

Comparatively, Gellar *owned* this role.

> Interesting take. I looked it up over on Wikipedia and see that some
> reviewer had a very different take on her performance.
> 
> "In Los Angeles, Adams auditioned for whatever parts came her way, but
> she was mostly given roles of "the bitchy girl".[14][19][20] Her first
> assignment came within a week of her relocation in the Fox television
> series Manchester Prep, a spin-off of the film Cruel Intentions, in
> the lead role of Kathryn Merteuil (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in
> the film).[4] Following numerous script revisions and two production
> shutdowns, the series was canceled.[21] Adams later said a
> controversial scene in which her character encourages a girl to
> masturbate on a horse was the primary reason for its cancellation.[19]
> The three filmed episodes were re-edited and released later in 2000 as
> the direct-to-video film Cruel Intentions 2.[4] Despite a negative
> critical reception, Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club wrote that Adams
> plays her "alpha-bitch role with vicious glee largely missing from
> Sarah Michelle Gellar's sterile take on the character".[22][23]"

Well, here's the thing - even in the realm of "internet reviewers", I 
consider A.V. Club to be a *joke*, and have for years.

So, if Variety had said this, I would just have to write it off as a bad 
take.

But if A.V. Club says it, I can just dismissively laugh at them for once 
again getting absolutely everything wrong.

> Wow.. The next paragraph says that she was in PSYCHO BEACH PARTY
> which I watched because of Nicholas Brendon but enjoyed because of
> Lauren Ambrose. Don't remember Amy Adams from that movie so she
> clearly didn't make much of an impression on me back then.

I still have never seen this, IIRC.

>>>      Overall, this is fine, as long as it's tracking what the TV show
>>> filmed. But they must have tacked on the "twist" ending (I hope the TV
>>> series wasn't intending to end up in the same place!), and it doesn't
>>> work at all, IMO. (Movie/TV #1: You need to have somebody to "root for"
>>> - if you don't, you have nothing.)
>>
>> I wouldn't call it a "twist" ending.  Like you said, it was tacked on.
>> Had the series not been cancelled, the younger brother would have been
>> the protagonist.  I'm seeing the same thing play out in the new Amazon
>> series.  The new series has a very similar plot structure as the movie
>> and the cancelled Fox series where the sister orders her step brother to
>> help her in her latest evil scheme.  The brother agrees to do it, but
>> it's all under the sister's thumb.  With the Fox series being cancelled,
>> they had to link it to the movie where at the start of the movie he's
>> going to do her bidding instead of challenging her.

Eh... I still think "Cruel Intention 2's" ending is awful.

>> So is Cruel Intentions 3 worth checking out before it leaves?

I am about to find out - I'm watching this tonight before I go to bed. I 
remembering being incredibly underwhelmed by it when I saw it two 
decades ago... But I enjoyed the "Wild Things" direct-to-video sequels 
more than I was expecting, so I may be surprised.

>>> Wild Things: Foursome (Tubi) - The fourth, and final, "Wild Things"
>>> flick from 2010 (which I had never seen before, and indeed don't even
>>> think I even knew existed until maybe a decade later!).
>>
>> There's a fourth one?!?

Yes - but if you think about it, there wasn't a fifth one. Draw your own 
conclusions!!

Basically, the fourth one really only has Jillian Murray and John 
Schneider to recommend it. (Marnette Patterson is OK in it, but I can't 
say she adds anything special to it.) And the story and especially the 
ending are crappy.