Biggest weekend since Barbieheimer: Glicked

Can’t tell if you’re serious.

 

Wow . . . . .buncha southern college football fans sitting around discussing musicals.

 

When it comes to Gator football I'm a DVR person. Don't care about watching it "live."

 

I'm the opposite. Except for maybe a few highlights I don't see the point of watching a football game in which the result has already been determined. I guess you can still get the experience of a live game by assiduously avoiding any sports news prior to viewing the game recorded on your DVR.

 

A number of years ago, my son worked in a data center that had to be manned around the clock. He and another guy had to work the early Christmas Day shift.

His boss’ boss came in to thank them for working Christmas Day. He asked my son what he was going to do after he got off work. My son said our family’s tradition is on Christmas evening to go to a movie together. This year we were going to see the musical movie Les Mis.

The boss, a retired marine, didn’t quite know how to handle that, so he turned to the other guy and asked him. The other guy said he was going to go home and watch football, and the boss launched into a lively discussion of football.

My son, an athlete through high school, tried to interject into their conversation that he too likes football. He didn’t want to get labeled by the boss.

The next day in the company cafeteria, he was standing in line behind a VP, who was telling the guy in front of him that he had gone to see Les Mis and how good it was. My son felt vindicated.

 

Yeah, to be clear, I'm ok with musicals. I've played trumpet in a few of them and my cousin graduated with a Musical Theatre degree from Illinois. I'm more of a jazz musician, but can appreciate a good musical. Heck, the library of jazz standards are largely from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway musicals.

 

Anyone seen Gladiator yet? No spoilers, but maybe a



or a

 

I'll go with a Meh.

If you are fanatical about the first one, perhaps you'll enjoy this add-on. There is enough visual spectacle and score-drama to keep it from being a no-go, but IMO it has no other reason to exist. Denzel chews up some scenery, the actual plot has some bizarre connections to the OG, and the production values are generally Ridley Scott quality (there is one outlier of bad CGI but the rest is good.) If this were the first one I suspect it would just come and go like most movies.

If you saw the most recent Alien (Romulus), I feel like this is nearly a carbon-copy concept. I think I am a step short of Alien fanatic, and I found very little in that one to justify the time. Perfectly competent fan-service but nothing that added to the lore. Can't call it "bad", just nothing to really get excited about either.

 

I saw Wicked (the play) years ago, thought it was just ok.

My family saw the movie on Saturday night (nobody sang in our movie theater), and we all really liked it (I liked it much better than the theater). My wife and daughter loved it.

We will be going to Gladiator on either Tuesday or Wednesday night. Looking forward to it.

 

Went to see Gladiator 2 last night. It was pretty good and had some ties to the original that made the story line work. They upped their game on the battles in the Coliseum.

 

Gladiator 2 sucks. Well, it was ok. Not even close to Gladiator. Too much going on, stupid plotlines, too many characters and nothing to remember. Phoenix makes the 2 emperors look like Lloyd and Harry. You learned very quickly to despise Phoenix's portrayal. These 2, not so much. Pascal, to me was the most wasted character in the movie. He was just there for the stamp of approval of a famous actor (other than Denzel). They tried to get cute and failed at making a good film. I think in this case Wicked is the far better of the 2 films. Critical Drinker is better at explaining why G2 sucked. Don't want to give away the plot too much.

 

Wife loves musicals so I asked her if she wanted to see Wicked and to my surprise said no thanks. How about Gladiator and she said if you want, which probably also means no.

Love Cillian Murphy from Peaky Blinders but thought Oppenheimer was just ok. Loved Hamilton fwiw.