On 5/4/2026 5:48 AM, The True Melissa wrote:
Verily, in article <UBI20260503@dont-email.me>, did weberm@polaris.net deliver unto us this message:
I watched:
[snip]
FAMILY GUY:
"Friend's Best Man".
FAMILY GUY
"Man-Fest Destiny".
I don't understand how or why this is still on, but I'll probably end up watching both of them. It counts as "enjoyable" because it's so familiar
and still has a couple of chuckles. I'm part of the problem. :-\
What did you watch?
I rewatched both South Park: Post-Covid and South Park: Post-Covid: The Return of Covid. This is a pair of specials which add up to a very fine movie. It's slightly dated now that the Pandemic is in the rearview
mirror, and no one talks about NFTs any more, but the strength of the
plot and character development still shines through.
I think I might have one more episode of South Park from the current
(last?) season on my DVR. If I ever get around to watching it and want
more, I might track this down too.
What did everyone else watch?
I wrapped up my Tim Burtonathon by watching:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (blu-ray) 2005 movie starring Johnny
Depp as Willy Wonka. As of the last 20 or so years watching a Tim
Burton movie has become a game of spot his girlfriend and in this one
Helena Bonham Carter was cast as Charlie Bucket's (Freddie Highmore)
mother. I honestly was expecting her to have a larger part and would
have been cast as one of the parents who went into the chocolate
factory. Anyway, I went in already not caring much for this movie, so
the plan was to background noise it with the commentary track. To my surprise, I actually like it a lot more than I was expecting too.
Probably because I was focused more on the actors and their
performances, which were excellent, instead of comparing to the 70s
movie, which is still way better than this one.
Alice in Wonderland (blu-ray) 2010 movie directed by Tim Burton and
starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. I think Alice might have been
in this movie too, but that's not important. The focus is on Depp and Burton's then girlfriend Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. I am
not a fan of this movie, but thought I'd give it another chance. I was surprised when the plot finally kicked in to reveal this is not a remake
of Alice in Wonderland, but rather it is a lazy sequel that rehashes the story. If they are going to tell the story anyway, why not just tell
the story? I think I might have liked this movie a lot more if had been
a proper retelling instead of a stealth sequel.
Alice Through the Looking Glass (blu-ray) 2016 sequel directed by James
Bobin (yeah, I never heard of him before either). I didn't know Burton
didn't direct this until someone else's name popped up in the opening
credits. Anyway they decided to switch things up a little and make
Alice the main character this time. Well at least co-lead with Johnny
Depp's Mad Hatter. The plot for this one has Alice traveling through
the looking glass back to wonderland where she has to save the Mad
Hatter by stealing Time's (Sacha Baron Cohen) time machine to change
history. But the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) has other uses
for the ability to change the past. I only saw this once before when it
was first released, and had no memory of it. I was very pleasantly
surprised while watching it. This was much better than I was expecting.
I had assumed going in that it was worse than the first one, but it
turned out to actually a lot better than the first one. Who knew that
making Alice the central character in a Alice movie would make for a
better movie. This actually felt like they were trying to make a Alice
in Wonderland sequel instead of just Johny Depp starring in a Tim Burton movie.
Dumbo (4K disc) 2019 movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael
Keaton, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, and Colin Farrell. I noticed a couple
of things in watching these Tim Burton movies back to back over the last couple of days. I didn't watch them all in release order, but in
looking at the release order I noticed both "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" and "Dumbo" both star Eva Green (Helena Bonham Carter
is nowhere to be found). And now that I'm thinking about it, Eva Green
looks a little like Helena Bonham Carter, except younger. Interesting.
I'm just going to leave at that. On the "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"
commentary track Burton mentioned casting Danny DeVito in that movie
because they are friends. And I thought at the time, DeVito was also in Dumbo. But I somehow completely missed until seeing Michael Keaton in
this movie, that Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton were both in Burton's
"Batman Returns." Oh Yeah, I forgot to mention the plot of this movie.
Small elephant with big ears that flies. There, that's the plot. It's
an OK background noise type of movie. It was interesting seeing DeVito
play the hero with Keaton playing the villain.
That's all for now. I have a few more Burton movies in my collection
but they are all already slated to be watched later.
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