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From: Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-02 (Thursday)
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2025 09:58:34 -0800
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On 1/3/2025 8:32 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
> On 1/3/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> 
>> What did you watch?
> 
> During the day, not much. In the afternoon, I watched some of the Sugar 
> Bowl, where Notre Dame easily beat Georgia, to grab the last College 
> Football Playoff semi-final spot.
> 
> That night, I mostly caught up on "General Hospital" (it turns out I 
> haven't missed many episodes over the holidays as ABC has preempted GH 
> on multiple days over the past couple of weeks).
> 
> GH - NuNuLulu 

I thought this was ROT13 at first.

catches up with Charlotte in Prague, but fails to convince
> Charlotte to come back with her; then Valentin, and then Dante, show up 
> - a sniper is about to take Valentin out... Brook Lynn is still not 
> pregnant, so she and Chase are going to go to the doctor to get checked 
> out... Robin's teen daughter Emma turns out to be a real piece of work - 
> Anna discovers that Emma got herself expelled from college; then Emma 
> seems to goad grieving Josslyn over their teen rivalry over Cameron and 
> over Cameron's new girlfriend. (What a bitch!)... Ava is in desperate 
> financial straits, after the Cassadine estate cancelled her divorce 
> settlement... The hospital seems to be going after Lizzie, after a 
> potential third victim is ID'ed, so Ric Lansing lawyers her up... Nina 
> and Drew encourage Willow to go on the offensive about the custody of 
> the kids, after Lucas irately berates Willow for taking the kids away 
> from Michael.
> 
> 
> What did you watch?
> 
> 

I watched:

Creature Commandos (HBOMax) "Priyatel Skelet" - Episode 6 and I think 
the penultimate episode.  This one has the backstory of  "Doctor 
Phosphorus" while in the present the Suicide Squad, I mean Creature 
Commandos, continue their mission while Frankenstein's monster continues 
to stalk his reluctant bride.  Another good episode.  But I have to 
mention this show is just so violent! One character punched their fist 
through a man's heart pulled out his still beating heart and showed it 
to him.  And what Doctor Phosphorus does to people every week can't even 
be described.  But let's say it involves a lot of screams and melted off 
flesh.


The Phantom of the Opera (4K disc) - I watched the 1943 classic 
Universal Studios version.  When I put the disc in, I was expecting the 
1925 black and white, silent version, and was very pleasantly surprised 
when this version (filmed in color) played instead. I bought a 4K box 
set of the classic Universal horror movies a couple of years ago.  I'm 
finally cracking it open to start to watch some of them.  With the 
exception of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," I've never seen any of the 
classic Universal horror films.

Going into this, I was only familiar with the Andrew Lloyd Webber 
musical version.  In that version the identity of the phantom is 
unknown.  And he's already the Phantom at the start.  In this version 
Claude Rains plays a music composer who believes someone is stealing his 
work and tries to murder the man.  The man's wife throws acid on his 
face to stop him.  So, everyone knows who the Phantom is and his back 
story.  He spends the movie trying to help a young woman in the opera 
become a star. To my surprise, this version is practically a musical too.


The Wolf Man (4K disc) 1943 version of the Universal Studios classic 
about a man who is bitten by a werewolf and turns into one himself.  On 
the commentary they said the movie was a huge success.  I forget the 
names, but when all the money came flowing in, one guy bought his wife a 
diamond ring, another got a $50,000 bonus, and another asked for a $25 
raise, and to the guy who requested the $25 raise, Universal said, no.

When I pulled out the box set, I had a general idea of which movies I 
planned to watch, but not the order.  My first thought was to go to 
Wikipedia, figure out the release order, and watch in that order.  But I 
*wanted* to watch Phantom first, so that's what I went with.  Turns out, 
Claude Rains stars in this movie too.  And he stars in "The Invisible 
Man." Had I known that I would have started with "The Invisible Man" and 
watched in release order.  In addition to Claude Rains this movie stars 
Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi as a different werewolf. 
I was on the fence, but I decided to hold off on watching "The Invisible 
Man" until the reboot's sequel is released. I'm holding off on watching 
"Frankenstein" for similar reasons.


The Wolfman (4K disc) 2010 remake of the 1943 classic starring Bencio 
del Toro as the Wolfman and Anthony Hopkins as his father.  I watched 
with a new commentary.  The guy doing the commentary talked about how 
much of a mess this movie was to make, in particular due to the director 
being replaced along with other behind the scenes fighting. 
Unfortunately there were often long gaps of silence, I suspect because 
much of what he was saying being edited out.  That wouldn't have been 
too bad but for whatever reason, they muted the movie audio, so whenever 
he was speaking there was just dead silence.


The Creature From the Black Lagoon (4K disc) 1954 Universal Studios 
classic about a group of scientists who go on an expedition to find a 
strange fossil and find a living creature instead.  This was just above 
background noise with the commentary, but it did generally hold my 
interest whenever I looked up to watch.  On the commentary they said the 
movie was originally going to be shot in color and 3D, but they crunched 
the numbers and realized that they could save $100,000 if they shot it 
in 3D black and white instead. They also mentioned they weren't going to 
let the elaborate suit they constructed for this movie go to waste, so 
they quickly cranked out a sequel.  My box set only includes the 4K 
version, but a 3D version is also available too.


Abbott Elementary (Hulu) "Ava vs. Superintendent" Season2, episode 12. 
Another "best" episode.  This one picks up with Principal, "Ava" after 
she loses her blackmail leverage over the school superintendent.  She 
has to go to the school board and make a presentation to keep her job 
and funding for the school.  Some of the other teachers come up with a 
scheme where they will do the presentation "with" her.  All she has to 
do is stand there and smile while they do all the actual work.  It was 
OK, I guess.


Silo (AppleTV+) - "The Book of Quinn" - I can't really say what happened 
without getting into spoilers.  But there were some revelations and 
confirmations this episode. The slow pace of this season is killing me, 
but at least we are slowly getting answers and making limited progress.