It's very much like the books. The characters, the feeling, everything's how a Nero Wolfe movie should be. I'm not crazy about Wolfe, honestly, but still, I definitely think that this is the best rendition of Stout's stories, no doubt. Of course Archie narrates the story, like in the books.
Archie-Timothy Hutton
Wolfe-Maury Chaykin
Cramer Bill Smitrovich
2001.
1- The doorbell rang
A rich woman comes to hire Wolfe because she's followed by the FBI and also those close to her, and she wants it to stop. She gives him a check but he says no. She doubles it, and it's a huge amount now so he 'asks Archie's opinion' and of course takes the case. The FBI is spying on her because she sent thousands of copies of the book 'The FBI nobody knows' to people in power.
Archie doesn't want the case because he's scared of the FBI, but Wolfe says "I'm not going to return that check because I'm afraid of a bully!" so they officially take the case and now they know they're being followed too. Archie does a lot of going around while Wolfe stays home, of course.
Inspector Cramer tells Archie that FBI men committed a crime in his town, a murder, but he can't prove it.
The scene with the cook, Wolfe's temper, Archie man-handling things and people, all these things feel very much like out-of-the-book :)
"The FBI is untouchable". They actually try to prove that the FBI did not kill the man and they find out that Mrs Bruner's secretary killed him, but they don't reveal it right away, instead they devise a plan. If they revealed it now, Wolfe's plan would be ruined.
They hire actors to impersonate them so to let the FBI think that they left the house, and that very night two FBI men enter their house; Wolfe, Archie and three men are there with guns threatening to call the police on them. Wolfe keeps their credentials as evidence that the FBI committed illegal actions and then he lets them go. One hour later he receives a phone call. A Mr Wragg comes to see him the next day. Wolfe says that he'll keep the credentials but will file no report on them and do nothing about it if they cease all surveillance on him, on Mrs Bruner and everyone connected. He adds that he'll be able to prove that his men did not kill that man. Mrs Rachel Bruner is happy to hear all this and she says "you're an incredible man" and "is there anything you can't do?" - "yes, madam, there is, I couldn't put sense in a fool's brain, I tried".
Cramer can now arrest the girl, and Wolfe can bark at Wragg and Cramer at the same time :p
One thing bothers me in this story:
She killed him with his own gun and then took it away, leaving the bullet behind, then the three G-men, the FBI men, came and found him dead, they took the bullet and went away...
Cramer suspected them exactly because they took the bullet, he thought that they were cleaning after themselves... so why did they take that bullet? If they hadn't fired, why?
Anyway, the story ends with "the big fish himself all the way from Washington to see you", we can safely assume it's Hoover, but they don't answer. The doorbell rang and they let it.
Lon Cohen-Saul Rubinek
Mrs Bruner-Debra Monk
Sara Dacos-Francie Swift
venerdì 30 novembre 2018
domenica 25 novembre 2018
The tenth city by Patrick Carman
"The land of Elyon book 3". It continues exactly where it left in the second book.
It's nice but nothing special. I liked the first one better, but this one is still better than the second.
They all go to save Yipes and defeat Grindall . They are on the ship, direction Lathbury. When the black swarm attacks, Armon hides underwater. Elyon's voice tells Alexa that only Catherine can stop in Lathbury, but they will have to continue their journey. They must turn their ship towards dangerous waters, where no one has gone before... many have tried to go that way looking for the tenth city but nobody has succeeded until now. They try it anyone because Elyon said so, and then when they are still struggling to keep the ship on its way Alexa asks Armon to swim ashore with her and to climb a cliff carrying her along. It's hard even for the giant but when they get to the top they take a look around and go down again. Elyon warns them to tell nobody what they've seen, and now they sail towards Ainsworth, where Armon takes Alexa Murphy and the wolf Odessa to the city, but the ship with the others on board are taken away by the wind. Alexa meets again Pervis and Nicolas, who knew already that Warvold was not dead. They go together to Bridewell where they find her father. Alexa goes alone to rescue Yipes and they escape through the tunnels where she gets stuck but Pervis finds her and helps her. Elyon's voice tells her that unfortunately her father will have to die in two days, and she's very sad but there's nothing she can do but go on. She's outside of Bridewell now. Pervis goes back to look for her father, and Walvold and Armon join her to continue their journey. Together they go to the forest council, where the forest is dying because of Abaddon's dark powers.
They talk to Ander the bear but then Grindall comes, Odessa lead him there. They are all captured and Alexa has to give him her jocasta, the last one. They all leave the forest together, heading towards the tenth city, through the Sly Field, in the big mist where they can find their way only using the jocasta : it casts a light only when pointed in the right direction.
When they get near their destination, Grindall is anxious to reach the tenth city and destroy it. In that mist Grindall can't see anything, while they are able to see just a little thanks to the light cast by the jocasta. Grindall orders his ogres to kill Warvold, so that he won't be able to see the city that he dreamed to see all his life. At this point Armon kills the ogre near him and then the ones that keep Yipes and Alexa prisoners. Grindall can't see him and is not sure of what is going on, but he can feel that he's very near his goal, so he orders his ogres to run towards the tenth city, to run onwards, along with the black swarm, they are all drawn to something ahead of them. They didn't know it but they were tricked by Alexa with Odessa's help. She never betrayed, of course. Alexa and Armon had seen what was there, and now Elyon's plan is fulfilled. Abaddon's little army runs through the mist and falls into the great pit where Abaddon himself is prisoner. Elyon then tells them to reach the tenth city, after the mist has disappeared; she has to give the last jocasta back, unfortunately. They greet again John Christopher, and then Armon goes over there with Warvold's dead body, so that they can say goodbye to him. Alexa learns only now that Warvold is her real father, and Catherine her birth mother, and that she was raised by Catherine's sister.
Now Alexa goes back with Yipes, Murphy Odessa and Squire flying over them. Soon they meet Nicolas and Pervis and James Daley, the man she's always called father. On horses they go back quickly, and in Lathbury she meets the two sisters, her two mothers: "They were worried that I might not love them anymore. Sometimes adults can be silly that way".
Of course she feels the same love towards them.
One years passes, Yipes is still with her, and Roland comes back. He's Warvold's brother, and when he goes away again Alexa and Yipes go with him, looking for new adventures, Alexa and Roland together like true Walvolds.
It's nice but nothing special. I liked the first one better, but this one is still better than the second.
They all go to save Yipes and defeat Grindall . They are on the ship, direction Lathbury. When the black swarm attacks, Armon hides underwater. Elyon's voice tells Alexa that only Catherine can stop in Lathbury, but they will have to continue their journey. They must turn their ship towards dangerous waters, where no one has gone before... many have tried to go that way looking for the tenth city but nobody has succeeded until now. They try it anyone because Elyon said so, and then when they are still struggling to keep the ship on its way Alexa asks Armon to swim ashore with her and to climb a cliff carrying her along. It's hard even for the giant but when they get to the top they take a look around and go down again. Elyon warns them to tell nobody what they've seen, and now they sail towards Ainsworth, where Armon takes Alexa Murphy and the wolf Odessa to the city, but the ship with the others on board are taken away by the wind. Alexa meets again Pervis and Nicolas, who knew already that Warvold was not dead. They go together to Bridewell where they find her father. Alexa goes alone to rescue Yipes and they escape through the tunnels where she gets stuck but Pervis finds her and helps her. Elyon's voice tells her that unfortunately her father will have to die in two days, and she's very sad but there's nothing she can do but go on. She's outside of Bridewell now. Pervis goes back to look for her father, and Walvold and Armon join her to continue their journey. Together they go to the forest council, where the forest is dying because of Abaddon's dark powers.
They talk to Ander the bear but then Grindall comes, Odessa lead him there. They are all captured and Alexa has to give him her jocasta, the last one. They all leave the forest together, heading towards the tenth city, through the Sly Field, in the big mist where they can find their way only using the jocasta : it casts a light only when pointed in the right direction.
When they get near their destination, Grindall is anxious to reach the tenth city and destroy it. In that mist Grindall can't see anything, while they are able to see just a little thanks to the light cast by the jocasta. Grindall orders his ogres to kill Warvold, so that he won't be able to see the city that he dreamed to see all his life. At this point Armon kills the ogre near him and then the ones that keep Yipes and Alexa prisoners. Grindall can't see him and is not sure of what is going on, but he can feel that he's very near his goal, so he orders his ogres to run towards the tenth city, to run onwards, along with the black swarm, they are all drawn to something ahead of them. They didn't know it but they were tricked by Alexa with Odessa's help. She never betrayed, of course. Alexa and Armon had seen what was there, and now Elyon's plan is fulfilled. Abaddon's little army runs through the mist and falls into the great pit where Abaddon himself is prisoner. Elyon then tells them to reach the tenth city, after the mist has disappeared; she has to give the last jocasta back, unfortunately. They greet again John Christopher, and then Armon goes over there with Warvold's dead body, so that they can say goodbye to him. Alexa learns only now that Warvold is her real father, and Catherine her birth mother, and that she was raised by Catherine's sister.
Now Alexa goes back with Yipes, Murphy Odessa and Squire flying over them. Soon they meet Nicolas and Pervis and James Daley, the man she's always called father. On horses they go back quickly, and in Lathbury she meets the two sisters, her two mothers: "They were worried that I might not love them anymore. Sometimes adults can be silly that way".
Of course she feels the same love towards them.
One years passes, Yipes is still with her, and Roland comes back. He's Warvold's brother, and when he goes away again Alexa and Yipes go with him, looking for new adventures, Alexa and Roland together like true Walvolds.
杉杉來了 Boss and Me season 1
It was nice, funny and light love romance. The characters are all adults: Xue Shan Shan comes to Shangai from a small town, and the big boss of her company falls in love with her but because of his status their relationship will have many problems. Her cousin Xue Liu Liu accepted the rich boyfriend her mother found for her to get the chance to come to Shangai herself.
At the beginning it's a bit weird, because she didn't want to spend time with him but he forced her because he's her boss and she has to obey, but then Shan Shan becomes used to his presence and slowly falls in love with him. The first episodes were funny but not really romantic, since she had to obey and he treated her like a servant or a doggy, and it became romantic only when it started to be a real relationship.
1-
Xue Shan Shan is called to the hospital in the middle of the night because the boss' sister Feng Yue is in urgent need of blood transfusion and they share a rare blood type. Shan Shan was actually hired because of her blood type.
2-
Feng Yue thinks that a check might be too impersonal, so she sends Shan Shan a lunchbox everyday. All her co-workers become very curious about this, so she tries to hide when she eats them, not knowing that she can be seen from inside by the boss Feng Teng, who watches her and laughs..
He secretly starts waiting for her arrival to eat his lunchbox with her, and always watches the clock trying to be there on time, and he smiles by himself and thinks of her..
Feng Teng and his friend Zheng Qi play basketball together at a court near Shan Shan's house, but he doesn't want to be seen by her.
3-
Since Feng Teng found out that she's not using their main app, Zheng Qi talks to her about it and she shares with him her thoughts, while Feng Teng secretly hears and laughs. Since Feng Teng won't admit that he likes her, Zheng Qi invites her to a party, but then Feng Teng sits with her instead..
4-
Feng Teng forces her to stay till the end and then later he takes her home and they eat together. At work, the lunchboxes keep coming, but now Feng Teng forces her to eat them together in his office.
He has her pick the vegetables from his plates..
Her roommate Du Shan Yi and her coworker Du Fan discover that they are online friends and start a relationship.
5-
Every day she has lunch with him because he's the big boss and she can't refuse. One day she fakes a cold to avoid it, and he sees her through his window. She tells Feng Yue to stop sending the lunchboxes, and then he tells her to stop coming for lunch.
Some collegues hurt her with their words, when they keep coming at her aggressively demanding what relation she has with the boss, and she cries. He sees her crying and starts to downstairs when he sees that she's now crying on Zheng Qi's shoulder, and now he regrets not admitting that he liked her. When Zheng Qi talks with him later he shows jealousy, and even asks him what is wrong in eating together with him! Well, he's the big boss so everyone gossips about him, and also she cried because she was forced to lunch with him, she has no relationship at all and yet they all gossip about her too.
6-
People bully her to know what kind of relationship she has with him so to help her Du Fan says that he's her boyfriend. Feng Teng is jealous and he asks her about him when they eat again together, and he thinks that people gossip about her and Zheng Qi
7-
Shan Shan tells Zheng Qi that she'll no longer be infatuated with him, and he tells her that he indeed likes her, but like is not love. At New Year's eve, she's alone at work, the boss comes, they watch the countdown together (new year 2014) and then he hugs her... then she runs away but he calls her to drive her home.
She tries to tell him that she wants to study to improve at work, so she can get out of lunch, but instead he has her study in his office, threatening her with a cut in her salary
8-
There's a company vacation trip, she doesn't want to go but the boss paid for her. She feels like a servant, she tries to get out but he says that she either goes or she does a test on what she's studying. She's not ready so she agrees to go, trying to be late so that they'd leave without her, but he saw that coming and changed the hour of departure. During the bike trip she gets lost and hurts her ankle. He finds her and carries her to a hospital. His friend Li Shu, who is in love with him, offers to take care of her.
9-
Her new manager gives blood to Feng Yue when she has a miscarriage. She's happy thinking that she's free now, but she suddenly feels upset about it..
10-
At the company big party, Feng Teng has her stay around him and drink, then he takes her home and kiss her, and asks her 'why did she go daily to lunch with him?' ... The face!
Her friends warn her against a relationship with the big boss, but when she doesn't see him anymore she finds that she misses him.
11-
She's to go home for the Chinese new year, but she's stopped by the police. Her bag got stolen so she has no documents, so she calls his secretary for help. He comes instead. She wants to ask him for some money for a hotel, but he asks her for an answer. She needs the money, so she tells him that she likes him, and he takes her to his home, and she has no choice but go.
He knows things are not going too well, and when Zheng Qi asks him about it he says that things were never good, so how could they have gone wrong..
Feng Yue is always happy and treats her kindly, but Li Shu is jealous about her.
12-
When they go fishing and she doesn't know how, he sends her to pick up vegetables.. but when she complains about it he teaches her how to fish with them. When they eat eve's dinner together he calls her noisy, and when Li Shu proposes to dance he tries to teach her but she doesn't know how to dance and keeps stomping on his feet, feeling very embarrassed and uncomfortable. Zheng Qi tries to teach her too, and then Yue's husband who is really adorable and understands her situation since he was a nobody too when he fell in love with Yue.
When Feng Teng and Shan Shan finally talk, he provokes her and she admits that she's never been in love before but now she likes him, and if only he could look at her as if he liked her... no eh? but then he kisses her and says that they should try dating and they finally have a nice evening together, playing and joking and laughing... then she has to go home for new year. Zheng Qi tells Feng Teng that Li Shu likes him, but he pays no attention to it because he sees her as his little sister since they grew up together.
13-
Shan Shan brings home gifts for everybody. Li Shu's mother dies. Shan Shan comes back and he goes to pick her up. Li Shu is staying at the Feng house, where she grew up.
14-
Zheng Qi is in love with Li Shu and when she gets drunk she kisses him but then she calls him Feng Teng breaking his heart. Feng Teng tells him that if Li Shu really liked him she would have said something in all these years but she never did, but then later he discovers that she had sent him a book with a confession inside. Shan Shan is jealous but she believes in him. Zheng Qi feels broken because he knows that Li Shu likes Feng Teng and not him.
15-
Shan Shan wants to spend Valentine's day with him but then Li Shu tells her that his parents died on that day, so she feels bad and runs to him, causes a client to get hurt.. it was nothing important, but she felt bad that he never talked about it with her.
16-
He tells her that they need to talk and she thinks he will dump her, but he simply tells her that he can't celebrate Valentine's day with her and he wonders if she can accept that since he was dumped once because of it. She does though, and he tells her that he loves her and kisses her.
Li Shu finds a confession behind a picture and runs to Feng Teng thinking that he wrote it, but Zheng Qi wrote that.
17-
After the argument, Zheng Qi apologises to Li Shu and they're friends again ( he's sweet and he doesn't want to lose her so he apologises, but it's not like it was all his fault :-/ )
Feng Teng drives her right up in front of the company's doors, so it's official now. He tells her to get used to it, but everyone treats her differently now. Shan Shan finds a new house, not knowing that it belongs to him.
18-
Li Shu does a good job at mortifying her while appearing nice :-/ Feng Teng gives her a credit card but she only uses it to offer dinner to Yue and Li Shu, not for herself, although she has no money.
She doesn't want to give up her job, but they (meaning Li Shu) convince her that she must improve her image to be with him, so Li Shu picks a dress for her and she uses a lot of make up... and her manager sends her home to change! She shows up at the directors' party dressed so simple that they criticise her now, and some girls badmouth her. When Feng Teng introduces her as his girlfriend, Li Shu says that she's Zheng Qi's girlfriend trying to make him jealous (actually he appears glad about it)
19-
Shan Shan and Feng Teng invite her two friends with their boyfriends at her new house to dine together, and Liu Liu is embarrassed when her on-off boyfriend tries to talk business with him. Then they dine with Zheng Qi and Li Shu. When Feng Teng says they need to go to England, Li Shu says they should go too but Shan Shan has no passport so they three of them go alone. Which is what Li Shu wanted. She uses Zheng Qi to get closer to Feng Teng.
Shan Shan's parents come to Shangai with aunt and grandpa, and Liu Liu doesn't want to tell her mother that she broke up because she might want to force her to go back home..
20-
Liu Liu's mother makes a big fuss over her not being able to keep a man :-/ and then grandfather needs hospitalising. When Feng Teng calls she can't answer, and when she calls he can't. She calls the hotel to leave a message but her English is not good. Li Shu answers as Mrs Feng, and the hotel tells him about it later. The hospital won't let grandpa staying and she's very worried and doesn't know what to do, so she calls Feng Teng crying and he calls his secretary Linda and some doctors. Feng Teng has a fight with Li Shu, because he saw how she treated her..
Yue gives Shan Shan a house for her family to stay in while they're here.
Feng Teng calls her to say that he misses her.
21-
Shan Shan doesn't tell her family about her relationship and he appears to be upset about it.
22-
Shan Shan hasn't talked to Feng Teng in a while and when they see each other she hugs him and they talk; he is a bit cold but they make up.
23-
Shan Shan attends classes and studies hard for her finance test, now no more an excuse to get out of lunch but a real interest to improve herself. He finds her two teachers for lunchtime in office, but when she praises them too much he decides to help her himself :p She studies hard and keeps at it.
Li Shu is now jealous of Zheng Qi. He quits his job because of a problem at work and plans to go back to the US to his parents, and Shan Shan runs to tell Li Shu about it, and takes her to his place.
24-
Li Shu finds a girl there and runs away. He goes after her but she's so proud that instead of saying how hurt she is she says that she doesn't like him and he's angry.
Shan Shan sees Li's old confession while at his house, and when Li Shu tells him she wants to leave his home and kisses him goodbye, Shan Shan sees her kissing him.
It's a big scene, very good. She runs away, they go after her and Li Shu tries to explain everything to her, but she's very hurt that he never told her anything, that they all knew about Li Shu being in love with him; it's a touching scene, she hurts so much so she leaves. He goes after her in his car and stops her, hugs her, but she asks for a few days of break to think things through and walks away. Feng Teng talks to Zheng Qi. Shan Shan wants to quit her job but Zheng Qi and Yan stop her and convince her to stay till the end of the year. She believes that he has no relationship with Li Shu but is hurt that they didn't tell her anything and also she keeps seeing that kiss..
25-
Shan Shan goes back to work. During her period she's in terrible pain like never before, and when she faints on the street and a woman calls the ambulance it is discovered that it's something more serious. At the hospital, the doctors call Feng Teng because his name is in her tag, and he calls everyone to come and donate blood; meaning, he calls Feng Yue and also her manager XiaoWei who has her own demand as payment.
26-
Li Shu apologises to Shan Shan for all her previous mischief and she forgives her. Shan Shan learns that she might never be able to get pregnant. When she goes back home she keeps thinking about it.
XiaoWei is promoted. ZhengQi wants to leave and Feng Teng fights with him. Shan Shan signs up for dance lessons. Zheng Qi leaves and Shan Shan gets Li Shu and run to the airport where she confesses to him and they get together at last, so he stays :-)
XiaoWei tells her that she entered the company due to her rare blood type not only for Feng Yue but also for her.
27-
Shan Shan asks Feng Teng about it and he says that he gets worried, that he loves her and wants her to never change and he shows her how he used to see her eating on the roof outside his office and tells her everything.. and they are back together :) There are good news in the company too so the family celebrates and they dance :) LiuLiu is embarrassed when her boyfriend You Cheng Hao taks business at the table, giving him a job proposal. Later on, Feng Teng says that he likes the proposal but wants LiuLiu to be in charge of that, since after all she wrote it and knows all about it.
28-
Zheng Qi proposes and Li Shu accepts. Shan Shan passes her exam and is a real accountant now. She tells her mother about Feng Teng, and also that he's the big boss. He asks her to move in with him.
When someone with her blood type has an accident, she goes to donate blood and they tell her that she's pregnant so she calls him and he tells her that they should get married... but then a new accurate exam shows that she's not.
29-
The plans for the wedding go on but she's afraid he might not really want to get married now that she's not pregnant.
30-
He formerly proposes to her and then she tells her mother who now has to tell her father. He has doubts because of their status difference, and then makes a suit for him, and then all the Feng family go to her house visiting.
31-
You Cheng Hao stole the big money Feng invested in the proposal, and Liu Liu takes full responsibility, but her mother begs Shan Shan to settle it. Ashamed, her dad cancels the wedding, saying that they will pay the money back but won't sell their daughter for it. When Shan Shan finds out that they investigated her family she's hurt and thinks about cancelling it too, but this is something her father actually understand and finds very reasonable. So now the only issue is to repay the money. Shan Shan quits her job and starts a new activity with Liu Liu, on their own.
32-
They still live together and learn about each other. Shan Shan is very serious about her jewellery business. You Cheng Hao comes back saying that he spent that money and he wants more, threatening Liu Liu. Wang Hong who works for them and likes her, helps her against him and is hurt. You Cheng Hao is arrested but Feng Teng now worries about her and wants her to stop going to the shop. Since she insists, he has guards follow her around.
33-
Shan Shan hires Feng Teng's ex girlfriend, a very famous girl, to advertise their jewels, and then calls him publicly 'her fiancée' in front of her and the journalists :)
She tells Feng Teng that after all she has no interest in continuing her work, she simply wants to be Mrs Feng, but she has to do this now to repay the money so that the Xue family could keep their honour and face them head high. Shan Shan and Liu Liu are finally able to pay off all the debt and her parents are very happy about it. It's hinted that Liu Liu might start a relationship with Wang Hong.
It ends with Shan Shan remembering their story's moments, and then giving him a ring that she bought with his credit card so he uses it to formerly propose again, and she tells him that she finally has a passport and asks him to take her on a trip all around the world for their wedding... and they lived happily ever after...
At the beginning it's a bit weird, because she didn't want to spend time with him but he forced her because he's her boss and she has to obey, but then Shan Shan becomes used to his presence and slowly falls in love with him. The first episodes were funny but not really romantic, since she had to obey and he treated her like a servant or a doggy, and it became romantic only when it started to be a real relationship.
1-
Xue Shan Shan is called to the hospital in the middle of the night because the boss' sister Feng Yue is in urgent need of blood transfusion and they share a rare blood type. Shan Shan was actually hired because of her blood type.
2-
Feng Yue thinks that a check might be too impersonal, so she sends Shan Shan a lunchbox everyday. All her co-workers become very curious about this, so she tries to hide when she eats them, not knowing that she can be seen from inside by the boss Feng Teng, who watches her and laughs..
He secretly starts waiting for her arrival to eat his lunchbox with her, and always watches the clock trying to be there on time, and he smiles by himself and thinks of her..
Feng Teng and his friend Zheng Qi play basketball together at a court near Shan Shan's house, but he doesn't want to be seen by her.
3-
Since Feng Teng found out that she's not using their main app, Zheng Qi talks to her about it and she shares with him her thoughts, while Feng Teng secretly hears and laughs. Since Feng Teng won't admit that he likes her, Zheng Qi invites her to a party, but then Feng Teng sits with her instead..
4-
Feng Teng forces her to stay till the end and then later he takes her home and they eat together. At work, the lunchboxes keep coming, but now Feng Teng forces her to eat them together in his office.
He has her pick the vegetables from his plates..
Her roommate Du Shan Yi and her coworker Du Fan discover that they are online friends and start a relationship.
5-
Every day she has lunch with him because he's the big boss and she can't refuse. One day she fakes a cold to avoid it, and he sees her through his window. She tells Feng Yue to stop sending the lunchboxes, and then he tells her to stop coming for lunch.
Some collegues hurt her with their words, when they keep coming at her aggressively demanding what relation she has with the boss, and she cries. He sees her crying and starts to downstairs when he sees that she's now crying on Zheng Qi's shoulder, and now he regrets not admitting that he liked her. When Zheng Qi talks with him later he shows jealousy, and even asks him what is wrong in eating together with him! Well, he's the big boss so everyone gossips about him, and also she cried because she was forced to lunch with him, she has no relationship at all and yet they all gossip about her too.
6-
People bully her to know what kind of relationship she has with him so to help her Du Fan says that he's her boyfriend. Feng Teng is jealous and he asks her about him when they eat again together, and he thinks that people gossip about her and Zheng Qi
7-
Shan Shan tells Zheng Qi that she'll no longer be infatuated with him, and he tells her that he indeed likes her, but like is not love. At New Year's eve, she's alone at work, the boss comes, they watch the countdown together (new year 2014) and then he hugs her... then she runs away but he calls her to drive her home.
She tries to tell him that she wants to study to improve at work, so she can get out of lunch, but instead he has her study in his office, threatening her with a cut in her salary
8-
There's a company vacation trip, she doesn't want to go but the boss paid for her. She feels like a servant, she tries to get out but he says that she either goes or she does a test on what she's studying. She's not ready so she agrees to go, trying to be late so that they'd leave without her, but he saw that coming and changed the hour of departure. During the bike trip she gets lost and hurts her ankle. He finds her and carries her to a hospital. His friend Li Shu, who is in love with him, offers to take care of her.
9-
Her new manager gives blood to Feng Yue when she has a miscarriage. She's happy thinking that she's free now, but she suddenly feels upset about it..
10-
At the company big party, Feng Teng has her stay around him and drink, then he takes her home and kiss her, and asks her 'why did she go daily to lunch with him?' ... The face!
Her friends warn her against a relationship with the big boss, but when she doesn't see him anymore she finds that she misses him.
11-
She's to go home for the Chinese new year, but she's stopped by the police. Her bag got stolen so she has no documents, so she calls his secretary for help. He comes instead. She wants to ask him for some money for a hotel, but he asks her for an answer. She needs the money, so she tells him that she likes him, and he takes her to his home, and she has no choice but go.
He knows things are not going too well, and when Zheng Qi asks him about it he says that things were never good, so how could they have gone wrong..
Feng Yue is always happy and treats her kindly, but Li Shu is jealous about her.
12-
When they go fishing and she doesn't know how, he sends her to pick up vegetables.. but when she complains about it he teaches her how to fish with them. When they eat eve's dinner together he calls her noisy, and when Li Shu proposes to dance he tries to teach her but she doesn't know how to dance and keeps stomping on his feet, feeling very embarrassed and uncomfortable. Zheng Qi tries to teach her too, and then Yue's husband who is really adorable and understands her situation since he was a nobody too when he fell in love with Yue.
When Feng Teng and Shan Shan finally talk, he provokes her and she admits that she's never been in love before but now she likes him, and if only he could look at her as if he liked her... no eh? but then he kisses her and says that they should try dating and they finally have a nice evening together, playing and joking and laughing... then she has to go home for new year. Zheng Qi tells Feng Teng that Li Shu likes him, but he pays no attention to it because he sees her as his little sister since they grew up together.
13-
Shan Shan brings home gifts for everybody. Li Shu's mother dies. Shan Shan comes back and he goes to pick her up. Li Shu is staying at the Feng house, where she grew up.
14-
Zheng Qi is in love with Li Shu and when she gets drunk she kisses him but then she calls him Feng Teng breaking his heart. Feng Teng tells him that if Li Shu really liked him she would have said something in all these years but she never did, but then later he discovers that she had sent him a book with a confession inside. Shan Shan is jealous but she believes in him. Zheng Qi feels broken because he knows that Li Shu likes Feng Teng and not him.
15-
Shan Shan wants to spend Valentine's day with him but then Li Shu tells her that his parents died on that day, so she feels bad and runs to him, causes a client to get hurt.. it was nothing important, but she felt bad that he never talked about it with her.
16-
He tells her that they need to talk and she thinks he will dump her, but he simply tells her that he can't celebrate Valentine's day with her and he wonders if she can accept that since he was dumped once because of it. She does though, and he tells her that he loves her and kisses her.
Li Shu finds a confession behind a picture and runs to Feng Teng thinking that he wrote it, but Zheng Qi wrote that.
17-
After the argument, Zheng Qi apologises to Li Shu and they're friends again ( he's sweet and he doesn't want to lose her so he apologises, but it's not like it was all his fault :-/ )
Feng Teng drives her right up in front of the company's doors, so it's official now. He tells her to get used to it, but everyone treats her differently now. Shan Shan finds a new house, not knowing that it belongs to him.
18-
Li Shu does a good job at mortifying her while appearing nice :-/ Feng Teng gives her a credit card but she only uses it to offer dinner to Yue and Li Shu, not for herself, although she has no money.
She doesn't want to give up her job, but they (meaning Li Shu) convince her that she must improve her image to be with him, so Li Shu picks a dress for her and she uses a lot of make up... and her manager sends her home to change! She shows up at the directors' party dressed so simple that they criticise her now, and some girls badmouth her. When Feng Teng introduces her as his girlfriend, Li Shu says that she's Zheng Qi's girlfriend trying to make him jealous (actually he appears glad about it)
19-
Shan Shan and Feng Teng invite her two friends with their boyfriends at her new house to dine together, and Liu Liu is embarrassed when her on-off boyfriend tries to talk business with him. Then they dine with Zheng Qi and Li Shu. When Feng Teng says they need to go to England, Li Shu says they should go too but Shan Shan has no passport so they three of them go alone. Which is what Li Shu wanted. She uses Zheng Qi to get closer to Feng Teng.
Shan Shan's parents come to Shangai with aunt and grandpa, and Liu Liu doesn't want to tell her mother that she broke up because she might want to force her to go back home..
20-
Liu Liu's mother makes a big fuss over her not being able to keep a man :-/ and then grandfather needs hospitalising. When Feng Teng calls she can't answer, and when she calls he can't. She calls the hotel to leave a message but her English is not good. Li Shu answers as Mrs Feng, and the hotel tells him about it later. The hospital won't let grandpa staying and she's very worried and doesn't know what to do, so she calls Feng Teng crying and he calls his secretary Linda and some doctors. Feng Teng has a fight with Li Shu, because he saw how she treated her..
Yue gives Shan Shan a house for her family to stay in while they're here.
Feng Teng calls her to say that he misses her.
21-
Shan Shan doesn't tell her family about her relationship and he appears to be upset about it.
22-
Shan Shan hasn't talked to Feng Teng in a while and when they see each other she hugs him and they talk; he is a bit cold but they make up.
23-
Shan Shan attends classes and studies hard for her finance test, now no more an excuse to get out of lunch but a real interest to improve herself. He finds her two teachers for lunchtime in office, but when she praises them too much he decides to help her himself :p She studies hard and keeps at it.
Li Shu is now jealous of Zheng Qi. He quits his job because of a problem at work and plans to go back to the US to his parents, and Shan Shan runs to tell Li Shu about it, and takes her to his place.
24-
Li Shu finds a girl there and runs away. He goes after her but she's so proud that instead of saying how hurt she is she says that she doesn't like him and he's angry.
Shan Shan sees Li's old confession while at his house, and when Li Shu tells him she wants to leave his home and kisses him goodbye, Shan Shan sees her kissing him.
It's a big scene, very good. She runs away, they go after her and Li Shu tries to explain everything to her, but she's very hurt that he never told her anything, that they all knew about Li Shu being in love with him; it's a touching scene, she hurts so much so she leaves. He goes after her in his car and stops her, hugs her, but she asks for a few days of break to think things through and walks away. Feng Teng talks to Zheng Qi. Shan Shan wants to quit her job but Zheng Qi and Yan stop her and convince her to stay till the end of the year. She believes that he has no relationship with Li Shu but is hurt that they didn't tell her anything and also she keeps seeing that kiss..
25-
Shan Shan goes back to work. During her period she's in terrible pain like never before, and when she faints on the street and a woman calls the ambulance it is discovered that it's something more serious. At the hospital, the doctors call Feng Teng because his name is in her tag, and he calls everyone to come and donate blood; meaning, he calls Feng Yue and also her manager XiaoWei who has her own demand as payment.
26-
Li Shu apologises to Shan Shan for all her previous mischief and she forgives her. Shan Shan learns that she might never be able to get pregnant. When she goes back home she keeps thinking about it.
XiaoWei is promoted. ZhengQi wants to leave and Feng Teng fights with him. Shan Shan signs up for dance lessons. Zheng Qi leaves and Shan Shan gets Li Shu and run to the airport where she confesses to him and they get together at last, so he stays :-)
XiaoWei tells her that she entered the company due to her rare blood type not only for Feng Yue but also for her.
27-
Shan Shan asks Feng Teng about it and he says that he gets worried, that he loves her and wants her to never change and he shows her how he used to see her eating on the roof outside his office and tells her everything.. and they are back together :) There are good news in the company too so the family celebrates and they dance :) LiuLiu is embarrassed when her boyfriend You Cheng Hao taks business at the table, giving him a job proposal. Later on, Feng Teng says that he likes the proposal but wants LiuLiu to be in charge of that, since after all she wrote it and knows all about it.
28-
Zheng Qi proposes and Li Shu accepts. Shan Shan passes her exam and is a real accountant now. She tells her mother about Feng Teng, and also that he's the big boss. He asks her to move in with him.
When someone with her blood type has an accident, she goes to donate blood and they tell her that she's pregnant so she calls him and he tells her that they should get married... but then a new accurate exam shows that she's not.
29-
The plans for the wedding go on but she's afraid he might not really want to get married now that she's not pregnant.
30-
He formerly proposes to her and then she tells her mother who now has to tell her father. He has doubts because of their status difference, and then makes a suit for him, and then all the Feng family go to her house visiting.
31-
You Cheng Hao stole the big money Feng invested in the proposal, and Liu Liu takes full responsibility, but her mother begs Shan Shan to settle it. Ashamed, her dad cancels the wedding, saying that they will pay the money back but won't sell their daughter for it. When Shan Shan finds out that they investigated her family she's hurt and thinks about cancelling it too, but this is something her father actually understand and finds very reasonable. So now the only issue is to repay the money. Shan Shan quits her job and starts a new activity with Liu Liu, on their own.
32-
They still live together and learn about each other. Shan Shan is very serious about her jewellery business. You Cheng Hao comes back saying that he spent that money and he wants more, threatening Liu Liu. Wang Hong who works for them and likes her, helps her against him and is hurt. You Cheng Hao is arrested but Feng Teng now worries about her and wants her to stop going to the shop. Since she insists, he has guards follow her around.
33-
Shan Shan hires Feng Teng's ex girlfriend, a very famous girl, to advertise their jewels, and then calls him publicly 'her fiancée' in front of her and the journalists :)
She tells Feng Teng that after all she has no interest in continuing her work, she simply wants to be Mrs Feng, but she has to do this now to repay the money so that the Xue family could keep their honour and face them head high. Shan Shan and Liu Liu are finally able to pay off all the debt and her parents are very happy about it. It's hinted that Liu Liu might start a relationship with Wang Hong.
It ends with Shan Shan remembering their story's moments, and then giving him a ring that she bought with his credit card so he uses it to formerly propose again, and she tells him that she finally has a passport and asks him to take her on a trip all around the world for their wedding... and they lived happily ever after...
domenica 18 novembre 2018
Law & Order: Criminal Intent - season 6
I never really liked Logan, but at least there are a few Goren-episodes, and the new Wheeler character is nice, I liked her enough.
1 - Blind spot
1 - Blind spot
The new captain tells Eames to keep an eye on Goren :p
A girl is killed, and her roommate knows Goren since she was little. When Goren was a sergeant he met Declan Gage, first profiler, and Gage mentored Goren before and after his meltdown.
Gage comes and immediately tries to take over the investigation. Goren hasn’t seen him in ten years, and now Gage thinks that he’s looking for Sebastian, the same man he looked for fifteen years ago.
Eames is attacked at her home. Goren receives a sms “I’ve been with your partner. All night. We’re having a great time. Sebastian”. Goren tells everybody and they go to her house full force. The captain agrees to bring in Declan Gage. They find Eames’ cellphone in Gage’s bag and a girl’s body in Eames car. She’s being held prisoner but manages to free herself, but unfortunately she can’t get out (I’m sorry, but once again I see that she’s wearing high heels. I understand that she’s an actress and not exactly a tall one at that, but she plays a cop, maybe more practical shoes would be more suitable wouldn’t you think? She’s a woman even without heels you know!)
Eames reaches a little window, and a man and his dog find her! While the captain talks to Gage, he says that he always asks the killer he interviews about their lives, and he listens to them. His daughter thinks that “he doesn’t care about me, only about his reputation, about Sebastian”, because he could only talk about serial killers with her, and she grew up with him after her mother committed suicide. Bringing back Sebastian gave them something to talk about, but then Goren was there and Gage had no more interest in her, so she decided to frame him. Now she confesses to Goren and tells him to tell everything to her dad, so he’ll finally talk to her, he’ll be there... how sad, how disturbed. I don’t like Gage, didn’t from the start.
It was a good, intense scene though, she was just talking to someone who could understand her, not confessing to a cop, and yet she knew what she was doing and was okay with it.
2 - Tru love
Anton Yelchin plays 16-year-old Keith
Logan has a new partner, Wheeler; I like her short hairstyle.
Dr Tyler, an ER plastic surgeon, is killed. He was a real jerk, videotaping all his sexual encounters without them knowing it. Keith is his son, and is having an affair with his teacher, who had a fling with the doctor too. Both Keith and Danielle say that they are in love. Dr Tyler found out about it and blackmailed her into sleeping with him. Danielle’s husband is the jealous type.
Danielle says that he bravely stepped up as a man, Keith says that he did something to the bike not thinking that he might get killed. They convince her that he’ll go to jail, so she pleads guilty to rape3, and has to tell Keith that her baby is his father’s baby. The end.. so, who was the real father of the baby? and more importantly, who gets arrested for the murder, nobody?
3 - Siren call
Goren and Eames
She’s in therapy but still wants to work. Ashley, a cop’s stepdaughter, is killed. They suspect the man she worked with. His wife (Brooke Shields) , a model, knew that they had an affair.
Ashley took her younger stepsister to a party and then left her with her drunk ex-boyfriend to take her home - she didn’t look 13 at all, I’d have thought 10 or eleven at most..
The cop has PTSD. Ashley’s behaviour was making her mother, who has cancer, even worse. So he killed her and now he’s afraid his beloved wife will never forgive him. He holds Goren hostage “I wanna kill you, and then me”. Goren”who’s gonna clean up the mess? Your daughter? Her mother?”. Ray gives him a phone: “call your mother, say goodbye” but Goren throws it away. Goren finally grabs his gun and stops him, and arrests him. His young daughter is calling him from outside and Goren says “she needs you”. All the police there, Ray grabs a gun and shoots himself. This was a great scene for Goren, a great performance for the actor , I really like him, he’s good!
4 - Maltese cross
Logan gets beaten up by firefighters. There's a hearing to establish what happened. Wheeler's flashback: a week before, a firefighter was stabbed to death. The guy was a good one, a hero. He had just stopped three kids beating up a drag queen, so they track down the kids, but they didn't stab him. They find out that he was gay, although married to a woman, pregnant. He had an affair and to know more Logan and Wheeler go talk to them and they don't react well. Back to the present, they think that a guy killed him when he broke up with him, like he did before. Logan asks for the biggest firefighter, Charlie, to help them by making the killer believe that Ian and Charlie were in love. He snaps and confesses. No hard feelings between NYPD and FDNY anymore.
5 - Bedfellows
Goren and Eames
The dead man is Adley Copeland. His wife Charlene has an affair with her gardener, but she’s not his only rich woman. Her husband knew and forgave her. After learning of her lover’s other women (well, one for sure) she takes pills to kill herself but is saved. Ted was embezzling money but his brother paid back. Ted is killed too and they suspect Ted’s wife Lina.
Goren watering Charlene’s plants :-)
Lina killed Charlene’s husband and wanted her to kill her own, like in the movie “strangers on a train” but Charlene couldn’t so Lina killed Ted too.
I hated the grandfather, who said “I lost my son”, never caring about Ted, and now favouring one grandchild over the other. Despicable man.
6 - Masquerade
Goren and Eames fly a man back to New York. 14 years ago a young girl was killed, and he's believed to be the killer.
(Her neighbour Royce is played by the same actor as SVU Benson's therapist)
They investigate to make sure he really did it. He claims that she was his girlfriend (wasn't she ten years old?!?!?!?)
The cop that was there at the time thinks that the mother did it but got away with it. Goren goes to her house and she treats it like a date :-p The little girl was an actress in commercials but she wanted to stop.
Nate Royce's son Jaimie confesses to accidentally killing her when he was 12. They put them all together and the truth comes out. Amberleigh was still alive when Jaimie left, then his dad Naate went there and found her and killed her.
7 - Country crossover
Logan and Wheeler
Music producer Curtis is dead. People throw suspicions on Goro, the “big threatening black guy, you’ll need backup” but then he’s all “welcome” :-) Goro then confesses to old murders, because they were drug dealers and were disrespectful to the dancers, and Goro did it for justice, but he did not kill Curtis. A wanna-be-singer who had an affair with Curtis for career confesses to the murder, but so does her husband Zach. She had her husband kill the guy, knowing Curtis was sick and telling Zach where to hit him.
8 - The war at home
Fran Drescher plays Amanda's mom.
Deputy commissioner's daughter, so they are all called in even if they were all off duty.
Goren was with his mother, but there was nobody else available so he had to go.
The girl won a brown star. They find Amanda's clothes scattered all over the woods next to a parking lot. Goren has to go quickly to his mom for an exam, then back on duty, then she calls him crying that she was alone.. They find the girl's body, then Goren's mom calls him again "If you don't come soon I'm walking out". Later Goren loses his patience and throws everything on his desk on the floor. Eames: "what the hell was that?" - Goren:"back off" and walks out, but later comes back.
A soldier killed her because she wasn't happy about a lie of the team during the war. Iraqi soldiers were executed and the report said "insurgents".
Eames' husband died eight years ago.
It ends with the captain talking about paperwork and Goren saying "save it, I'm leaving. If you wanna fire me, fire me" and then he walks out...
9 - Blasters
Logan and Wheeler
The victim is a young actor who played Skater in a child sitcom. Logan and Wheeler think that they can handle it, that it’ll be a ‘piece of cake’, until a car with four men comes shooting - but killing nobody.
Logan says “Goren would have knows” but I have no idea what he was talking about.
Pirate dvds of films not out yet, a fortune for the moment, until they come out. The Albanian mob lost their exclusive because of Skater and took it as betrayal.
Skater’s fellow actor has a bad complex, too attached to his fame and his sitcom character, he was painful to watch, but at the end he’ll go into witness protection, and he says that he’s relieved to let it all go, so maybe there’s still hope for him...
10 - Weeping Willow
Michelle Trachtenberg plays Lisa Willow Tyler.
Two bloggers are transmitting when they are abducted by someone who asks to download certain videos. Nobody knows if it’s real or a hoax, so the kidnappers post a video of them cutting Holden’s ear. It’s an hoax gone bad, that he used a fake gun and hired some guys to make a video about a kidnapping, but one guy took it seriously and shot the other guy and took Willow.
Holden scripted it all. The guy was an actor, he has the script, and Todd was killed by blanks.
The end: Willow leaves Holden and starts her career, probably after taking all the money that they got out of it.
Logan holding a baby :-p
11 - World's fair
A girl is making a documentary on racism, and is killed. She filmed Jewish kids harassing Mexican guys. The girl had an Italian boyfriend, Rudy, but she was supposed to marry a man chosen by her family and move to Pakistan. When Rudy goes to talk to the family, he gets killed.
The guy she was supposed to marry is disgusting, but the truth didn’t surprise me at all. Nothing here was a surprise; her father confessed to killing his daughter but of course he says he did it to protect his son, it was so obvious from the beginning, he says he killed her because he said she was a dishonour to him and his family, the shit.
12 - Privilege
Lady Harrington grand-daughter is killed. Isabel had a little daughter. The lady's son and wife are taking advantage of her bad health. Goren barges in to see her and calls for an ambulance "this is how you treat your mother?" but they blamed everything on her nurse and fired her.
The previous nurse said it all to Isabel and she wanted to go public with it. Lady Harrington is quite well now. Her son Grant says that his first wife committed suicide, but his half-brother killed her and Isabel too.
13 - Albatross
While reinacting a duel, a man dies, shot from far away by a sniper, a pro, with a special weapon. The intended victim was the embezzling husband of a politician. The sniper is found killed too. Eames admires her very much, and her driver likes her too, and confesses that he wanted to free her from a bad marriage. She listened to the tapes, she had her husband under surveillance, so she knew about it but did nothing to stop it.
14 - Flipped
Logan and Wheeler
A famous rapper comes back to his old neighbourhood and gets shot. He sang about stopping the 'omertà', and sure enough now nobody wants to talk to the police. Luckily there's an undercover cop, Williams, who helps them as he can. Everyone's afraid of talking and end up dead.
(I liked that actor playing Gman or Mr Thomas or whatever, the cop-killer one, he did good)
Logan wants to interrogate Carmen but Williams took her to his grandma to keep her safe. He won't tell where she is but Logan guesses and they pick her up. Grandma tells them to protect her because if anything happens to her "her blood is in your hands". Carmen finally speaks to them. Gman killed him, and he accepts a deal: only manslaughter and his word that nothing will happen to Carmen. The end: Williams kills him in prison
15 - Brother's keeper
Goren and Eames
A reverend's wife, Marjorie, is found dead. At a conference she received an envelop and a dvd with "your husband is evil" written on it.
We see again Goren with his mother, it is very hard for him :( she hates chemio, understandably, and also how doctors treat her because she's schizophrenic. While with Eames, Bobby sees his brother who says that he's clean now and the church gives him food. Goren gives him some money and his coat and arranges to go together to their mom on Sunday. The day comes but Frank doesn't show up, and mom keeps talking about him. Her cancer is advanced and Bobby wants her on experimental meds but it'd cost lots of money.
The reverend had been seeing a male prostitute for three years, and Diego taped it and gave the dvd to her but it disappeared. The reverend's tour debate are with a doctor who secretly has a a seventeen-year-old mentally disabled son, Jimmy, who says that there is no God. He had a story with Marjorie but she married reverend Riggins instead of him, and she told her husband about Jimmy to make him understand, and the doctor was so angry that he shook her and threw her down the stairs, and she died. When Eames met Jimmy, he said "I like friends, superfriends, you like them?" and she replied "very much, sometimes I work with Batman" :-)
It ends with Goren being called downstairs because there's a body with his coat and card, but it's not his brother. He probably sold the coat: "everybody needs money right?" he says. Poor Bobby.
16 - 30
A man runs away from the hospital, to the police station: "I want to report a murder: my own"; Radiation poison, polonium. He's a journalist working on a pipeline story, that might involve the US government and the Russian mob. Maybe his friend Rebecca was the real target. Josh helps them track down Rebecca and talk to her. Sarah was killed by Israeli army but there's more to the story. Major case is called off the case...
Sarah was a Israeli mole, shot by Israeli because she was set up and is now a Palestine martyr. A writer dies too, who served Josh. A International hitman is poisoned too, no clear responsible.
17 - Players
Jacob, the youngest son of a judge, is murdered. Eames' dad disappeared when she was ten.
The federal prosecutor's dad is in jail for kidnapping and murder; he also has a son who liked his grandfather more than his father, and liked to play gangster. Wheeler's been looking for news on his father, and it turns out he might have been killed by the mob.
End: a mob disposal field is found, but not his father, so far.
The federal prosecutor's dad is in jail for kidnapping and murder; he also has a son who liked his grandfather more than his father, and liked to play gangster. Wheeler's been looking for news on his father, and it turns out he might have been killed by the mob.
End: a mob disposal field is found, but not his father, so far.
18 - Silencer
A doctor is killed, after he testified against another doctor, who's hated because of implants to restore hearing, and sued for malpractice. The deaf community is involved. A deaf woman is shot too, but not killed. Malia was Mallory's patient, and playing in Larry's play. Goren knows a bit of sign language, but not well.
Larry comes in, but he demands to speak to a deaf cop, to have a deaf judge.. Malia could still alibi him, but he rejects it. Malia wanted a hearing implant, but her boyfriend Tom didn't want it, because she was perfect deaf and didn't want the doctor to ruin her, afraid he'd left him like his sister did.
How selfish of him :-/ When they arrest him, Goren says "cuff him in the front so he can talk", so Goren-like to think of this :-)
A doctor is killed, after he testified against another doctor, who's hated because of implants to restore hearing, and sued for malpractice. The deaf community is involved. A deaf woman is shot too, but not killed. Malia was Mallory's patient, and playing in Larry's play. Goren knows a bit of sign language, but not well.
Larry comes in, but he demands to speak to a deaf cop, to have a deaf judge.. Malia could still alibi him, but he rejects it. Malia wanted a hearing implant, but her boyfriend Tom didn't want it, because she was perfect deaf and didn't want the doctor to ruin her, afraid he'd left him like his sister did.
How selfish of him :-/ When they arrest him, Goren says "cuff him in the front so he can talk", so Goren-like to think of this :-)
19 - Rocket man
Lt Jessica Hart gets murdered, she was to be an astronaut. The suspect Craig is a major whose life dream was to go to space but Jessica was chosen over him. Married commander Luke Nelson had an affair with her, and Sandy was jealous of her and killed her, saying that Luke loves her and sent her emails and gave her earrings and a special lotion which turns out to be full of steroids. Luke denies having given her any of that. His wife Edie knew he had an affair with Jessica, and that Sandy was in love with him, so she drugged her and used her, to get rid of them both.
Lt Jessica Hart gets murdered, she was to be an astronaut. The suspect Craig is a major whose life dream was to go to space but Jessica was chosen over him. Married commander Luke Nelson had an affair with her, and Sandy was jealous of her and killed her, saying that Luke loves her and sent her emails and gave her earrings and a special lotion which turns out to be full of steroids. Luke denies having given her any of that. His wife Edie knew he had an affair with Jessica, and that Sandy was in love with him, so she drugged her and used her, to get rid of them both.
20 - Bombshell
Justin dies, the son of Lorelei Mailer who was a men's magazine's girl-of-the-year before she married a millionaire. He used some drugs sometimes but he died of a bad mix of a lot of drugs. Two women claimed their father, Lorelei's husband, was not Justin's father (two cat-ladies, there are cats around Logan, one even licks him :p), but a test proves that he was. Lorelei dies too. Her sister Jolene worked as her assistant, and now takes care of Lorelei's just born baby Eva. Ronnie is Lorelei's new man, but Eva was conceived using Lorelei's dead rich husband dnd, so she's rich. Jolene always lived in Lorelei's shadow. Jolene holds Eva hostage until Ronnie confesses of killing Justin who was trying to separate them. Lorelei was destroyed after that so Jolene killed her to take care of Eva.
Justin dies, the son of Lorelei Mailer who was a men's magazine's girl-of-the-year before she married a millionaire. He used some drugs sometimes but he died of a bad mix of a lot of drugs. Two women claimed their father, Lorelei's husband, was not Justin's father (two cat-ladies, there are cats around Logan, one even licks him :p), but a test proves that he was. Lorelei dies too. Her sister Jolene worked as her assistant, and now takes care of Lorelei's just born baby Eva. Ronnie is Lorelei's new man, but Eva was conceived using Lorelei's dead rich husband dnd, so she's rich. Jolene always lived in Lorelei's shadow. Jolene holds Eva hostage until Ronnie confesses of killing Justin who was trying to separate them. Lorelei was destroyed after that so Jolene killed her to take care of Eva.
21 - Endgame
Goren's mom doesn't want any more meds.
A man convicted for seven rapes and murders leads Goren to his album of victims, in the 80s. There are 13 or more women in there, one is still alive, she was raped but not killed.
Goren's mom wants to meet Eames, his girlfriend :-p When Bobby visits his mom, Frankie's there, all dressed up, looking clean, but he asks Bobby about her finances.. :-/
Marc leads them to some bodies, and the 60s album! Bobby thinks one of those pictures is of his mother who says she dated him in the 50s, and the captain says "he's toying with you, now you're personally invested, he's got you exactly where he can control you". Goren: "he's not in control of me, I can handle him" - "no detective, you don't need this in your life right now" - "you don't know what I need, and don't tell me who I am, you don't know who I am and don't tell me how I think".. result=he's off the case, but Eames backs him up, talks to the captain :-)
Frankie is the older brother, and he remembers this murderer, that he called "uncle Mark" when he was seven and Bobby was four. Goren's mom dies, leaving him with a doubt, because she said she was never sure.. they get a pad with all Brody's victims, and he'll be executed tonight.
Goren's mom doesn't want any more meds.
A man convicted for seven rapes and murders leads Goren to his album of victims, in the 80s. There are 13 or more women in there, one is still alive, she was raped but not killed.
Goren's mom wants to meet Eames, his girlfriend :-p When Bobby visits his mom, Frankie's there, all dressed up, looking clean, but he asks Bobby about her finances.. :-/
Marc leads them to some bodies, and the 60s album! Bobby thinks one of those pictures is of his mother who says she dated him in the 50s, and the captain says "he's toying with you, now you're personally invested, he's got you exactly where he can control you". Goren: "he's not in control of me, I can handle him" - "no detective, you don't need this in your life right now" - "you don't know what I need, and don't tell me who I am, you don't know who I am and don't tell me how I think".. result=he's off the case, but Eames backs him up, talks to the captain :-)
Frankie is the older brother, and he remembers this murderer, that he called "uncle Mark" when he was seven and Bobby was four. Goren's mom dies, leaving him with a doubt, because she said she was never sure.. they get a pad with all Brody's victims, and he'll be executed tonight.
22 - Renewal
Kenny Li, a recruit who stopped a robbery and was to be awarded for it, gets murdered :( Kenny's girlfriend is a girl who has been missing for six years. She's not really Belle, she's an identity thief, student of forensic psychology, studied the case of Nicole Wallace. Her real name is Patricia Trebay, a dangerous girl. Eames is free so she helps Wheeler with this case while Logan looks into Holly's death.
Logan meets beautiful Holly Lauren, his new neighbour from Minnesota. Holly doesn't show up at their date and he finds her dead later. Holly was actually Kathleen Shaw, and she was running away from her husband. She was desperate, he kept stalking her and now he found her again, he got into her home and raped her, and when he left she cried and maybe jumped off the roof, so desperate, thinking she would never get away and it would never end..
End: Wheeler goes away: Logan"Wheeler, you're coming back right?" - "Logan, I'll see you soon".
Kenny Li, a recruit who stopped a robbery and was to be awarded for it, gets murdered :( Kenny's girlfriend is a girl who has been missing for six years. She's not really Belle, she's an identity thief, student of forensic psychology, studied the case of Nicole Wallace. Her real name is Patricia Trebay, a dangerous girl. Eames is free so she helps Wheeler with this case while Logan looks into Holly's death.
Logan meets beautiful Holly Lauren, his new neighbour from Minnesota. Holly doesn't show up at their date and he finds her dead later. Holly was actually Kathleen Shaw, and she was running away from her husband. She was desperate, he kept stalking her and now he found her again, he got into her home and raped her, and when he left she cried and maybe jumped off the roof, so desperate, thinking she would never get away and it would never end..
End: Wheeler goes away: Logan"Wheeler, you're coming back right?" - "Logan, I'll see you soon".
sabato 17 novembre 2018
The Boxtrolls - 2014
It was nice, I wouldn’t mind watching it again but I’m not exactly looking forward to it. Boxtrolls are basically small trolls that cover themselves up with boxes. A timid race, they like to build things and they steal little objects from the city, things that men have thrown away. For some reason, here “cheese” is what distinguishes the rich, I mean that our ‘let’s drink champagne’ here becomes ‘let’s taste some cheese’.
It starts saying that Boxtrolls are kidnapping babies, and therefore are a threat to people. A sinister man, Snatcher, blackmails Lord Portley-Rind to get a huge reward after he’ll have exterminated all Boxtrolls to keep all children, including the lord’s daughter, safe.
When we see the boxtrolls coming out at night to steal things, they don’t seem threatening at all, but the exterminator keeps catching more and more of them. Those who manage to escape, retreat to their world below, where we see the supposedly-kidnapped baby. A troll brings him gifts, calls him Eggs, they all eat insects, and the baby grows up as one of them, cared for and loved.
When he’s a boy, he is seen at night by Winnie, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, but when she tries to tell others nobody listens to her. All her father seems to care about is his White Hat, a prestigious symbol of his status. There are not many boxtrolls left anymore, most of them have been captured by Snatcher, but when Fish is taken, the trolls that Eggs considers to be his father, he goes out during the day to find him. He hears the story of how ten years ago the boxtrolls took a baby and that’s why now humans fear and hate them, and lock doors at night.
Snatcher likes to eat cheese to emulate the rich people in town, but he’s extremely allergic to it, and the three men with him must always save him before it’s too late. Pickles and Gristle don’t seem evil like Snatcher, they think they’re doing the good and right thing actually, but the third man Trout seems to be enjoying his work a bit too much, I say.
Eggs finds out that all the boxtrolls are still alive, kept as slaves working for Snatcher. Winnie followed Eggs, so she sees everything and says that she’ll tell her father all about it, so of course they take her prisoner.
Eggs saves her and they all escape to the troll-land below. Only now he learns that he’s a boy and not a troll... but he was not stolen. He was given to Fish by a nice man who liked trolls because he was a builder too. When Snatcher killed him and tried to take the baby, he gave his son to Fish and shouted to run, so they took him away and raised him.
Now Eggs asks Winnie’s help, they plan to explain everything to her father. She makes proper boy-clothes for him and takes him home, but her dad never listens. Eggs goes back down below, but Snatcher finds them even there; Eggs shouts for them to run, to do something, but they simply hide, meaning they stop where they are and hide inside their box... so Snatcher catches them all.
We see that the boy’s birth-father is still alive, he’s been a prisoner for ten years, hanging upside-down, but he’s alive. Snatcher doesn’t need them anymore, and intends to kill all boxtrolls. The boy’s father tries to help him, and Eggs makes a good speech but it’s sad when it seems not to be working, because the boxes don’t move. Eggs thinks they’re still ‘hiding’, so when all boxes are crashed he thinks that they all died, and when his father laughs he thinks he’s gone mad after all those years hanging upside down...
Snatcher tells everyone that all boxtrolls have been exterminated, and therefore there’s no more curfew. Now he wants his white hat as promised, and he wants Lord Portley-Rind’s hat!
When Snatcher tries to kill Eggs publicly, Winnie convinces Pickles and Gristle to spare him.
Trout won’t stop though, but here we see that the trolls are indeed not dead, they escaped out of their boxes without being seen by anyone but the boy’s father. That’s why the man laughed.
The trolls, with Eggs and Winnie’s help, destroy Snatcher’s machine, but then he captures Winnie to force the lord to give up his hat for her. He loves her after all, and so he yields to Snatcher.
Finally with the white hat, Snatcher wants to take his place into the cheese-tasting-room, to taste cheese as is the ritual among lords, and Eggs makes a speech to convince him that he doesn’t need white hats and cheese to change who he is, that things don’t make who you are, only you can make you, but in Snatcher’s mind that’s what he’s doing, what he is, he has made himself and thinks that’s who he is, so he eats cheese and his face starts growing in an unnatural, sick way, until he explodes.
This is their happy ending, and now everyone can live happily, people and trolls together, no more hiding, no more curfew, no more fear on both sides.
During the ending credits there’s a son in Italian that names a lot of cheeses saying that they’re the best thing in the world - it can’t name them all but it names quite a few.
ITA Boxtrolls - le scatole magiche
Der Golem, wie er in die welt kam - 1920
I didn’t like it. It was interesting, specially from a scholar’s point of view, but I didn’t like it. I thought it was boring and annoying. Visually there were interesting scenes indeed, specially the house, but I didn’t like the story.
The story in details:
Chapter 1
A rabbi sees in the stars that something terrible is about to hit their community, and soon enough there is the order that every jew must leave their homes, leave the ghetto, the judenstadt, and go away. Rabbi makes a golem, believing that it will save his people.
The emperor, the kaiser, sends a count to deliver the news. He’s incredibly smug, in fancy clothes, white horse, even with a flower in his mouth... the big door is opened for him so he can enter the ghetto, and he flirts with the rabbi’s daughter.
Chapter 2
The golem is made. The count comes with a new message and then flirts some more with the girl - it seemed quite a sensual scene I didn’t expect to see in a silent movie, with the two of them breathing heavily and touching each other’s hearts... but I often forget that they seemed to be more free in the 20s than in the 50s/60s.
The emperor accepts to see the rabbi. The rabbi tells his daughter that she’ll soon have a guard, and then he finishes the golem, putting an amulet on his chest, with a word that gives it life, the shem.
The golem is now alive as long as he wears it. To do that the rabbi read a necromancy book on how to give life to the dead or to inanimate objects: if you know the right spell you can force Astaroth to tell you the right word, when planets are in the right way... so he does the spell, there’s a circle of smoke and a green light, flying flames all around, and he calls Astaroth. A big, smoke-breathing-face appears, only the face, and the demon reveals the word. The rabbi writes Aemaet and puts it inside the amulet and then on the golem, and it finally opens its eyes, and moves.
The golem pushes the assistant on the floor, so the rabbi takes the amulet away for now.
Chapter 3
The golem is working as a servant, they need to explain it what to do and it does it: chopping wood, going shopping making everyone scared... whatever.
The rabbi goes to see the emperor taking the golem with him. The daughter exchanges secret messages with the count, who sneaks out to go meet her while her father is at the court festival.
Everyone’s open-mouthed-scared at seeing the golem, but then a girl gives it a flower. The rabbi shows them images, illusions, for them to better understand his people.
He asks the emperor not to laugh or speak while he’s working his illusions, but he does and with him everyone else. The place starts breaking but the golem won’t let them out, and some of them try to escape jumping off the window. The roof is coming down on them, and the emperor promises to show leniency with his people if he saves him, so the rabbi calls the golem and it holds the roof up over their heads.
Chapter 4
The rabbi goes home, tells the people they are safe now. His daughter wakes up in bed with the count. The golem won’t let the rabbi take away the amulet now, he seems angry, but also slow and the rabbi manages to get it.
Now the rabbi reads more about what he did, and it says to be careful because if you give life to something then one day Astaroth will claim it back and it will bring death and destruction...
His servant goes to call Miriam, and he’s waiting outside her room when he hears a male voice, and he’s so jealous because he wanted her for himself, so he activates the golem again.
The count tries to fight but of course he can’t kill a man made of clay, so he can only run. The golem reaches him and throws him off the tower, killing him.
Miriam faints, the golem sets the house on fire, fighting off the servant who now wants to take the amulet off.
Chapter 5
The golem takes the girl away by the hair; the servant goes to warn the others about the fire.
Everyone’s looking at the rabbi to save them, to do a spell against the fire or else they’ll die... :-/ not one of them actually trying to do anything though :-/
The rabbi does, and then he finds Miriam alive. The servant promises to keep her secret if only she forgives him.
The golem goes out of the ghetto, and all the children run away scared, only a little child stays behind and gives him a gift - an apple?
The golem lifts the child up and the child takes the amulet. The golem falls backwards, now inanimate.
They thank God who saved them for the third time in a day and bring the golem inside.
The end
:-/
I loved the shot of the cat walking on a roof at the beginning, the inside of the house, a few scenes visually interesting.
ITA il golem, come venne al mondo
見鬼 (The eye) - 2002
I liked it enough; it’s not exactly terrifying, though, no, but it’s interesting.
Mun is a blind girl who undergoes an operation to be able to see again; she wakes up with new eyes from an unknown donor. In hospital she meets young YingYing, a sweet child. Mun doesn’t see clearly at first, only vague shapes, but it’s a lot to process for her brain since she’s been blind since the age of two. He lives in Hong Kong and was a violinists in a small orchestra, but she can’t play with them now because she’s not blind anymore..
She starts seeing strange things she doesn’t yet understand, it looks as if she can see ghosts. Mun talks to these visions, and when her grandma sees her talking to herself she calls someone to exorcize the house.
At her neighbour’s house, a child committed suicide; Mun keeps seeing him asking for his report card, and at first she talked to him, trying to help, but then she’s told about his story.
At calligraphy lesson, she is attacked by a ghost and scared. At a diner, she sees a woman and a child licking the meat, and the waitress tells her about them. Out in the street, a running child passes thru her, so they both understand that he just died, hit by a car. Mun sees a black figure taking him away. She tells her therapist that a black shadow comes to take away the dead... and now that she knows what she’s been seeing lately she’s very scared, doesn’t want to see them: a half-face man in the elevator, that same boy jumping off the window... She faints while playing some music, and at the hospital she sees a black shadow taking away YingYing, so it’s no surprise to her when she’s told that the little girl died. Mun starts to deal with it because she has no choice, and at least she can see the people she loves, but when she looks at the picture taken with YingYing, she’s upset more than ever because she realises that when she looks in the mirror she sees someone else’s face. Her therapist is falling for her and wants to help her, so he investigates the identity of the eye-donor, and finds out it was a Chinese woman in Thailand. They go together looking for answers. She already saw that hospital in her visions, but at first the doctor there tries to send them away, until Mun cries out that she has her eyes and therefore she now sees what she saw. He knows what she’s talking about, he knows that the eye-donor, Ling, could see things before time, but because of this everybody hated her, they called her a witch, they threw things at her, didn’t want her around. Ling had tried to warn people of a great fire but they had sent her away. The next day, a fire killed a lot of people. The day after that, Ling hanged herself. Ling’s mother had always tried to protect her and be with her, and has a hard time forgiving what she did, accepting that she gave up and left her, but Ling finally gets the forgiveness she longed for, borrowing Mun’s body.
Now Mun can see her face, and she goes back home. There’s a traffic jam, and she starts seeing many black shadows, really a lot, and she understands that something terrible is about to happen, just as it happened to Ling, and like Ling she also tries to warn people, she starts running and screaming for people to run away, but nobody believes her, everybody thinks she’s crazy and instead of running away they lock the car doors..
There’s a big big explosion, a lot of people die. Her therapist, who saw her running, throws her down. All cars around are in flames, there are many burnt bodies.
She couldn’t save anyone, exactly like Ling.
The epilogue can be seen as a lighter note or a sad one, depending how you look at it. Because of the explosion Mun is blind again, but at least she can’t see death anymore, and she has her loving therapist with her now...
Frankenweenie - 2012
I liked it enough, because it was scarysweet, because the core of the film is the love of a solitary boy for his dog. Also because it shows how ordinary, close-minded people react to what they don’t understand in an aggressive way turning themselves into the real bad guys.
I never find animation scary, so I’ll say that it is ‘scary’ in an entertaining way, not in a scary way. I know what I mean now, I wonder if I’ll still know what I meant in years to come..
Anyway, the details:
Victor’s only real friend is his dog Sparky who stars in all his movies and plays catch with him. He sometimes talk with his neighbour Elsa who also loves her dog Persephone. His father wants him to interact more and play baseball with other children, so he does, but when he hits the ball Sparky breaks free and runs after it. Sparky gets hit by a car and dies. Victor is devastated: “I don’t want him in my heart, I want him here with me”, and truer words were never spoken.
When he learns from the school’s new science teacher that a body responds to electricity even after death, he chooses to try his own science-project :-p he digs out Sparky’s body and revives him in his attic. At first it seems to him that it didn’t work, but then “you’re alive! you’re alive!”, but Victor must keep it a secret so Sparky can’t go out and can’t leave the attic. Sparky does though, he seems to have a habit of breaking free, and Edgar sees him and confronts him “your dog is alive, you did it!” and “show me how or I’ll tell everyone”. Edgar buys a dead fish and wants Victor to show him how he did it. The goldfish swims again now but is also invisible. Edgar promises that he won’t tell anyone but then he goes straight to Toshiaki and Bob. They both want to win the science fair prize, and when Bob falls off the roof troubles start. The mayor says that the new teacher “endangers” the children and is a menace. When given the chance to defend himself, the teacher says “the confusion here is that you are all very ignorant, I mean ‘stupid’, ‘primitive’, ‘unenlightened’, you do not understand science so you are afraid of it”. He gets fired of course, and the gym teacher takes his place :-/
Edgar tells the other kids about Victor bringing back Sparky. Victor’s parents find out too and Sparky runs outside, towards the town’s country-fair. While everyone’s out, Edgar takes the other kids to Victor’s attic to show them how he did it.
Sparky goes to sleep over his grave.
Toshiaki digs up his dead turtle Shelley, Nassor his dead hamster Colossus. Edgar finds a dead rat and Bob uses a whole packet of sea-monsters, while the girl uses a dead bat.. they all want to try Victor’s experiment.
When lightnings hit, the girl’s living-car Mr Whiskers had the dead bat in his mouth so he becomes a half-cat half-bat flying monster, Shelley becomes a gigantic turtle, and there’s a whole army of sea monsters. Bob asks for Victor’s help, and Toshiaki too: “I asked him first” - “My problem bigger” and they all see Shelley walking by.
Victor stops the sea monsters with popcorn and Shelley and the rat with electricity. Mr Whiskers abducts Persephone and Elsa runs after her dog. Victor runs to help, and Sparky calls for help but as they see him, the mayor and everyone else is like “monster!” and they start saying “he killed Elsa!” and “kill it!” . Victor saves Elsa, and Sparky runs in to help him. The windmill is on fire because of the mayor’s torch but Sparky brings Victor out, but then Mr Whiskers brings Sparky back inside.
Mr Whiskers dies then the firemen bring out Sparky’s body. They are all touched at how the undead-dog saved his life, and they attach the body to all the cars’ batteries, and Sparky is ‘recharged’.
venerdì 16 novembre 2018
Snow White (the fairest of them all) - 2001
I didn’t like it. First, it makes no sense, and to have to say this about a fairytale! Second, Snow White is not very likable, and she’s closer to being an extra than to a title-character. They should have called this movie: “Elspeth, the real story of SnowWhite’s stepmother”, and make it all through her point of view. There would still be things that make no sense, but it would have been a good start, and it might explain why Snow looked so cold.
There are many things that are different from the usual depiction of this story: the dwarves have been changed in a foolish attempt to do something new, perhaps: they are now five little man, one little woman, and a tall man, who knows why. I mean, the woman is ok, after all it’s seven dwarves, not seven dwarfmen, but the tall annoying one? Why? To be fair they never refer to themselves as dwarves, it’s not clear who they are. They dress with the rainbow’s colours, and when they are together they can travel long distances by making an actual rainbow. Unfortunately, that seems to be all the extent of their magic. It very much looks like they have been added in because they ‘must’ be , which is a shame, they should have had better defined roles. They are called like the days of the week: Wednesday is the tall yellow one Vincent Schiavelli, Sunday the violet is Michael J. Anderson, Saturday (indigo) was Warwick Davis. There’s also Martin Klebba as Friday, who had a better role as Butcher in Mirror mirror.
There are no fairies here, only a strange-looking man who can grant wishes and is therefore credited as “the granter of wishes”. He’s ok, I kinda liked him and his role, although the movie doesn’t explain why he was trapped in the snow, how he got freed or even who he is.
The evil queen is called Elspeth and is the Granter’s sister. She already has magic but nothing of her is explained: why she has it, why she looks so ill, why she refuses her brother at first as if he was the bad guy here. She’s played by Miranda Richardson, and she does a good job.
The story: Josephine and John are a happy loving couple, but as soon as their first daughter is born Josephine dies. John buries her and then leaves to find milk for the baby. He goes looking for a village, but gets tired and passes out in the snow. He cries, thinking he won’t be able to save the child, and two tears fall on the snow melting it. The granter of wishes emerges from there, saying that he freed him and can now ask for anything in return. John asks for milk for the baby, and seeing how it worked he probably thought ‘might be worth a try’ and asks for his wife back, “my queen”, but of course nobody can raise the dead, but what he can do is to give him ‘a queen’ and therefore a kingdom too. He finds himself on a throne, with people calling him king despite his confusion.
We see that the ‘dwarves’ want to steal garden gnomes, because they were once alive until witch Elsbeth turned them into statues. The granter of wishes chooses his sister to be the man’s queen, and since he won’t love another woman after his wife, the granter makes her break the mirror, and she suffers doing it - why? what’s so important about that specific mirror? she still has magic and she can use other mirrors...
Anyway, she does it, and as soon as a little piece of that glass goes into the king’s eye it’s done!
We move to sixteen years later, they are of course married and Snow White is a teenager. Everybody loves the princess of course, but the queen. Snow calls her ‘madam’, and although nobody really seems to like the queen she still is the queen and the king still has the piece of glass in his eye.
The garden is now full of garden gnomes, including Sunday, Snow’s friend (he’s a statue too but she talks to him as her only friend).
A prince is coming to visit, and the queen likes him and wants to seduce him, but of course the prince likes Snow instead. The mirror still answers the queen’s question by saying that she is indeed the fairest of them all. When the king tries to hug her she fights back and even slaps his face, making the piece of mirror in his eye come out. She doesn’t care, not for it, not for him.
The queen arranges a big party for Prince Alfred, and plans to put the piece of mirror in him, but things go wrong and the mirror goes into someone else, Hector, who becomes instantly devoted to her. Now things get worse when the mirror changes his opinion and appears to her as Snow White because she’s fairer now, so the queen asks Hector to deal with her.
When Prince Alfred runs away from her, Elsbeth turns him into a bear. Who knows why Sunday comes to life again, or at least half of him does, but still he can walk and talk.
Hector can’t kill Snow White, and she runs into the woods. He takes a rabbit’s heart instead, and the queen is very happy to cook it and eat it herself.
The king gets trapped inside the mirror. The bear keeps following Snow so Elsbeth traps him into a snowball. The queen leaves a foulard for Snow to find it, so when she wraps it around her waists and it starts squeezing, she faints (good thing she didn’t put it around the neck, the usual thing to do with a foulard, or she’d been strangled...)
Half-normal Sunday comes back to them and saves her and tells the others who she is. Yesterday makes a big fuss against helping her, but obviously she will win him over too... :-/
They leave her at their home and travel by rainbow to go to the palace to retrieve the king, the prince and the gnomes. The queen poisons half an apple and turns herself to look like Snow’s mom, then she goes to give her the apple. Just one bite and she’s down. Sunday frees the bear, knowing who he is. The put Snow in an ice-casket.
When the queen tries to go back to her appearance, she’s ugly-looking and the mirror stops working. Maybe Sunday could move again because her magic was weakening, for whatever reason...
Her brother appears to tell her that she ruined it all: “I gave you a life that would make anyone happy, but look what you did! She was no threat until you imagined her to be one”.
He tells her that he can’t help her now, not anymore. She throws her mirror at him and it smashes on the wall, and when it breaks, all her spells are broken too. Snow wakes up, the prince is a man again, the king is free and all the gnomes are moving again ( but they don’t become dwarves, they still look like moving statues...)
Snow White goes back to her father with Prince Alfred, and he’s there waiting for her.
The end...finally.
ITA la vera storia di Biancaneve
martedì 13 novembre 2018
Buffy the vampire slayer - season 6
in progress. still to add: episodes 5--22
The saddest season.
I liked this one very much, despite the sadness, because it was the more psychological and complex regarding characters emotions. I love it because there are no cheap tricks, the characters are cared about and made real. The only thing I didn't much liked was the trio of villains, of course :-/ but from now one there's no getting rid of them.
eps 1-2 - Bargaining parts 1 - 2
There's a long recap to reminds us where we left at the end of the last season, which is with Buffy dead... we see her grave: "Buffy Ann Summers, 1981 2001, beloved sister, devoted friend, she saved the world, a lot". It starts with Giles, Spike and Tara chasing a vampire together, while Willow guides them telepathically; Xander and Anya are involved too, although there seems to be less action on their part. 'Buffy' gets knocked out and Spike saves Giles: "oh poor watcher, has your life passed before your eyes? Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost hot shagged, cup of tea.." :lol:
Of course it's not the real Buffy but the Buffy-bot, that they're trying to pass for the real one.
As Giles says "we need the world and the underworld to believe that Buffy is alive and well". Buffy-bot even goes to parent-teacher-day with Dawn..
Giles is about to leave for England and Anya will be left in charge of the shop. Seeing them bickering, Xander says "when I'm marvelling at the immaturity: be scared!" :lol: and then he insists on keeping his engagement to Anya a secret.
Spike babysits Dawn, and even if she says that he doesn't have to, he insists "no, I'm not leaving you to get hurt, again" (feeling guilty about Buffy's death, feeling that had he not failed them she wouldn't have had to jump and die).
Buffy-bot goes on patrol alone but gets broken by a bottle to the head. The vampire she was fighting understands that she's a robot and spreads the news.
Willow, Tara, Anya and Xander finally have all they need to bring Buffy back. They all say that it feels wrong, but Willow's the boss and she's convinced, because Buffy didn't die a natural death. Willow is worried that she might be suffering in hell and wants to save her.
A large group of demons learn about the slayer being a robot, so now that there's no real slayer anymore but just a replacement, they immediately ride towards Sunnydale.
Willow kills a bambi with a knife because she needed its blood for the spell, and she did it alone because the others didn't know about that detail (such a scene, a pretty field, Willow like a fair maiden, a beautiful creature approaching... and then she kills it... )
Giles goes away leaving a note behind, so they rush to the airport to say goodbye.
At midnight the four of them go stand over Buffy's grave and perform the spell. "Here lies the warrior of the people, let her cross over"...
The demons invade the town, and when Buffy-bot shows up they damage her so she runs back to Willow because programmed to do so, and they storm the cemetery interrupting the spell so they run away unsure if it worked or not.
Buffy comes back to life, still in her grave, and has to fight her way out to come out to hell let loose.
The bot is torn to pieces, and Buffy sees that and runs away in confusion. She finds the gang and looking at her bleeding hands Xander finally understands that they left her in the coffin...
Buffy fights some demons. Dawn finds the bot and it says that "the other Buffy" was here and ran away, so Dawn runs off alone. Tara saves Willow because "nobody messes with my girl" :-)
Dawn finds Buffy where she died, and Buffy's first words are "Is this hell?". She's confused but when Dawn is in danger she saves her, then the tower falls down. Dawn hugs her, saying "you're alive and you're home"...
3 - After life
Dawn takes Buffy home, changes her clothes, washes her, and Buffy barely speaks at all. Spike comes home looking for Dawn, and learns about Buffy being back and is speechless. He understands right away why her hands are bloody, he had to do it himself. As the other four arrive, Spike goes out without a word.
He cries, and he's also angry that they didn't tell him, and he says to Xander that he knows why Willow didn't want him to know, because she knew that there was a chance that Buffy came back wrong and that he wouldn't have let her get rid of wrong-Buffy anyway.
Willow says that Giles will come back now that he knows, now that she told him. When alone with Tara in their room, Willow confesses that she expected Buffy to be happier and thankful, which she doesn't seem to be.
Some strange things happen in Buffy's house and then at Xander and Anya's, and Anya says "I bet it's a hitchhiker", that when Buffy came back something else hitchhiked a ride.
They try to figure out what, Buffy says "I miss Giles", and then goes out alone to patrol, and she goes to see Spike..
Willow says that they actually created this demon, as a price for the spell. It's a temporary thing, but it'll become permanent if it kills Buffy. She can't fight it because it has no body, so Anya and Willow make a spell to make it 'kickable', then Willow's eyes change, she says "solid" and Buffy can cut off its head.
The episode ends with Buffy saying "I was in hell"; she thanks them and then she meets Spike outside and tells him the truth: when he asks if he can do anything for her because "I know a thing or two about torment", she says "I was happy, wherever I was I was happy, at peace, I knew that everyone I cared about was alright, I knew it" and "I was warm and I was loved and I was finished" and "I think I was in Heaven, and now I'm not" and "this is hell".
Also "just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost".. then she seems to suddenly realise what she's done, what she's said out loud, and says "they can never know, never" and walks away.
4 - Flooded
Buffy tries to repair the pipes, and floods the basement, and they have already money problems. She discovers that she's broke, another one of the many things she has to take care of.
Anya is still upset because they haven't told anyone about the engagement.
Buffy tries to get a loan but doesn't get it because she has no job, when a monster attacks the band and she says "no job? I wish". She battles the demon while robbers take all the money, and she still doesn't get the loan :-p
Dawn is 15 and not allowed to do research... (which is understandable, right? she's only 15, and not 16 like Buffy was when she met all the gang... )
Giles comes back and it's the most touching moment. He looks at her almost speechless: "you're..." - "a miracle?" and he smiles and says "yes, but then I always thought so" and it's so so sweet!
The demon has been hired by three guys, the ones who robbed the bank and have now all the money:
Jonathan, who was with Buffy since high school and I always remember him well; Warren (I think the jerk who created the Buffy-bot, right?) and Andrew (I didn't remember him, so they say that he's Tucker's brother, he's the one with the flying monkeys..). The demon wants Buffy dead, but Jonathan and Andrew don't much like the idea of killing her, so Warren gives the demon her address and sends him on his way.
Buffy and Giles talk and when she says "I'm glad you're back", he replies that he's glad that she's back too, and this should have been a nice hug-moment, but she just walked away leaving him behind feeling a bit uneasy.
Later he asks Willow about the spell and she's all proud of it and he says "you're a very stupid girl" and when he also said that she got lucky she said "I wasn't lucky, I was amazing". He calls her an arrogant amateur, and she replies "I'm very powerful, maybe it's not such a good idea for you to piss me off" ...
Buffy tries so hard to be ok so they won't worry that she always looks exhausted.
The demon breaks into her house to kill her and she takes him into the flooded basement so not to tear the whole house down.
We hear that Angel learned about her being back and called her, and she leaves to meet him, 'somewhere' between here and LA... and it ends...
5 - Life serial
6 - All the way
7 - Once more, with feeling
8 - Tabula rasa
9 - Smashed
10 - Wrecked
11 - Gone
12 - Doublemeat palace
13 - Dead things
14 - Older and far away
15 - As you were
16 - Hell's bells
17 - Normal again
18 - Entropy
19 - Seeing red
20 - Villains
21 - Two to go
22 - Grave
Cast:
Buffy - Sarah Michelle Gellar
Giles - Anthony Stewart Head
Willow - Alyson Hannigan
Xander - Nicholas Brendon
Spike - James Marsters
Tara - Amber Benson
Anya - Emma Caufield
Dawn - Michelle Trachtenberg
Jonathan - Danny Strong
Andrew - Tom Lenk
Warren - Adam Busch
The saddest season.
I liked this one very much, despite the sadness, because it was the more psychological and complex regarding characters emotions. I love it because there are no cheap tricks, the characters are cared about and made real. The only thing I didn't much liked was the trio of villains, of course :-/ but from now one there's no getting rid of them.
eps 1-2 - Bargaining parts 1 - 2
There's a long recap to reminds us where we left at the end of the last season, which is with Buffy dead... we see her grave: "Buffy Ann Summers, 1981 2001, beloved sister, devoted friend, she saved the world, a lot". It starts with Giles, Spike and Tara chasing a vampire together, while Willow guides them telepathically; Xander and Anya are involved too, although there seems to be less action on their part. 'Buffy' gets knocked out and Spike saves Giles: "oh poor watcher, has your life passed before your eyes? Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost hot shagged, cup of tea.." :lol:
Of course it's not the real Buffy but the Buffy-bot, that they're trying to pass for the real one.
As Giles says "we need the world and the underworld to believe that Buffy is alive and well". Buffy-bot even goes to parent-teacher-day with Dawn..
Giles is about to leave for England and Anya will be left in charge of the shop. Seeing them bickering, Xander says "when I'm marvelling at the immaturity: be scared!" :lol: and then he insists on keeping his engagement to Anya a secret.
Spike babysits Dawn, and even if she says that he doesn't have to, he insists "no, I'm not leaving you to get hurt, again" (feeling guilty about Buffy's death, feeling that had he not failed them she wouldn't have had to jump and die).
Buffy-bot goes on patrol alone but gets broken by a bottle to the head. The vampire she was fighting understands that she's a robot and spreads the news.
Willow, Tara, Anya and Xander finally have all they need to bring Buffy back. They all say that it feels wrong, but Willow's the boss and she's convinced, because Buffy didn't die a natural death. Willow is worried that she might be suffering in hell and wants to save her.
A large group of demons learn about the slayer being a robot, so now that there's no real slayer anymore but just a replacement, they immediately ride towards Sunnydale.
Willow kills a bambi with a knife because she needed its blood for the spell, and she did it alone because the others didn't know about that detail (such a scene, a pretty field, Willow like a fair maiden, a beautiful creature approaching... and then she kills it... )
Giles goes away leaving a note behind, so they rush to the airport to say goodbye.
At midnight the four of them go stand over Buffy's grave and perform the spell. "Here lies the warrior of the people, let her cross over"...
The demons invade the town, and when Buffy-bot shows up they damage her so she runs back to Willow because programmed to do so, and they storm the cemetery interrupting the spell so they run away unsure if it worked or not.
Buffy comes back to life, still in her grave, and has to fight her way out to come out to hell let loose.
The bot is torn to pieces, and Buffy sees that and runs away in confusion. She finds the gang and looking at her bleeding hands Xander finally understands that they left her in the coffin...
Buffy fights some demons. Dawn finds the bot and it says that "the other Buffy" was here and ran away, so Dawn runs off alone. Tara saves Willow because "nobody messes with my girl" :-)
Dawn finds Buffy where she died, and Buffy's first words are "Is this hell?". She's confused but when Dawn is in danger she saves her, then the tower falls down. Dawn hugs her, saying "you're alive and you're home"...
3 - After life
Dawn takes Buffy home, changes her clothes, washes her, and Buffy barely speaks at all. Spike comes home looking for Dawn, and learns about Buffy being back and is speechless. He understands right away why her hands are bloody, he had to do it himself. As the other four arrive, Spike goes out without a word.
He cries, and he's also angry that they didn't tell him, and he says to Xander that he knows why Willow didn't want him to know, because she knew that there was a chance that Buffy came back wrong and that he wouldn't have let her get rid of wrong-Buffy anyway.
Willow says that Giles will come back now that he knows, now that she told him. When alone with Tara in their room, Willow confesses that she expected Buffy to be happier and thankful, which she doesn't seem to be.
Some strange things happen in Buffy's house and then at Xander and Anya's, and Anya says "I bet it's a hitchhiker", that when Buffy came back something else hitchhiked a ride.
They try to figure out what, Buffy says "I miss Giles", and then goes out alone to patrol, and she goes to see Spike..
Willow says that they actually created this demon, as a price for the spell. It's a temporary thing, but it'll become permanent if it kills Buffy. She can't fight it because it has no body, so Anya and Willow make a spell to make it 'kickable', then Willow's eyes change, she says "solid" and Buffy can cut off its head.
The episode ends with Buffy saying "I was in hell"; she thanks them and then she meets Spike outside and tells him the truth: when he asks if he can do anything for her because "I know a thing or two about torment", she says "I was happy, wherever I was I was happy, at peace, I knew that everyone I cared about was alright, I knew it" and "I was warm and I was loved and I was finished" and "I think I was in Heaven, and now I'm not" and "this is hell".
Also "just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost".. then she seems to suddenly realise what she's done, what she's said out loud, and says "they can never know, never" and walks away.
4 - Flooded
Buffy tries to repair the pipes, and floods the basement, and they have already money problems. She discovers that she's broke, another one of the many things she has to take care of.
Anya is still upset because they haven't told anyone about the engagement.
Buffy tries to get a loan but doesn't get it because she has no job, when a monster attacks the band and she says "no job? I wish". She battles the demon while robbers take all the money, and she still doesn't get the loan :-p
Dawn is 15 and not allowed to do research... (which is understandable, right? she's only 15, and not 16 like Buffy was when she met all the gang... )
Giles comes back and it's the most touching moment. He looks at her almost speechless: "you're..." - "a miracle?" and he smiles and says "yes, but then I always thought so" and it's so so sweet!
The demon has been hired by three guys, the ones who robbed the bank and have now all the money:
Jonathan, who was with Buffy since high school and I always remember him well; Warren (I think the jerk who created the Buffy-bot, right?) and Andrew (I didn't remember him, so they say that he's Tucker's brother, he's the one with the flying monkeys..). The demon wants Buffy dead, but Jonathan and Andrew don't much like the idea of killing her, so Warren gives the demon her address and sends him on his way.
Buffy and Giles talk and when she says "I'm glad you're back", he replies that he's glad that she's back too, and this should have been a nice hug-moment, but she just walked away leaving him behind feeling a bit uneasy.
Later he asks Willow about the spell and she's all proud of it and he says "you're a very stupid girl" and when he also said that she got lucky she said "I wasn't lucky, I was amazing". He calls her an arrogant amateur, and she replies "I'm very powerful, maybe it's not such a good idea for you to piss me off" ...
Buffy tries so hard to be ok so they won't worry that she always looks exhausted.
The demon breaks into her house to kill her and she takes him into the flooded basement so not to tear the whole house down.
We hear that Angel learned about her being back and called her, and she leaves to meet him, 'somewhere' between here and LA... and it ends...
5 - Life serial
6 - All the way
7 - Once more, with feeling
8 - Tabula rasa
9 - Smashed
10 - Wrecked
11 - Gone
12 - Doublemeat palace
13 - Dead things
14 - Older and far away
15 - As you were
16 - Hell's bells
17 - Normal again
18 - Entropy
19 - Seeing red
20 - Villains
21 - Two to go
22 - Grave
Cast:
Buffy - Sarah Michelle Gellar
Giles - Anthony Stewart Head
Willow - Alyson Hannigan
Xander - Nicholas Brendon
Spike - James Marsters
Tara - Amber Benson
Anya - Emma Caufield
Dawn - Michelle Trachtenberg
Jonathan - Danny Strong
Andrew - Tom Lenk
Warren - Adam Busch
微微一笑很倾城 (love 020) - 2016
This felt like the younger version of the series, but the movie was nothing compared to it, although it had many bits that were exactly the same. The boys and girls who were the friends of the protagonists have basically no role here, they're just in the background to show that they exist, but they don't really matter.
Since a movie is much shorter than the series, obviously, many things had to be eliminated, so they cut completely the roles of Nana and Zhen.
The actors are all different ( I think, actually the one playing Cao Guang looked like him, but am not sure). The actress playing Bei Wei Wei was not bad, I liked her, but both her and her friends looked so young, maybe this version was based in high school and not in a university? I don't know :-/
The only thing that was better here, is that Xiao Nai approached her when they first met, which makes sense since he knew who she was but she didn't, and is much nicer.
Details:
It starts with Wei Wei playing the game, and when the power goes out she rushes out on her bike to get to the nearest internet café and keep playing there, with lots of others doing exactly the same, although it's dark already outside.
When pictures of her coming out of a BMW get online, she openly confronts him in his class, showing how easy it is to misinterpret things. He's studying journalism apparently, and she exposes his lie and bad views of the world..
Xiao Nai is the school genius. Yiran stops him on the street to tell him that she likes him and invite him to see her performing, but he refuses.
In the game, her partner Zhen Shui Wu Xiang left her to marry Xiaoyu YaoYao, and after the wedding Yi Xiao Nai He asks her to marry him and he plans a big ceremony (which was really too long, it was boring).
Cao Guang asks her out - in a rather annoying way, in my opinion - but she says that she wants someone from her computer science department, and she tells him that she likes Xiao Nai, and he hears her because after hearing that he was asking her out had come straight to see what was happening.
Wei Wei knows Ko from the internet café, who got married in the game but then she disappeared.
Wei Wei is tricked, probably by YaoYao, into now showing up for a big battle, and then she's accused of being a traitor handing their boss over to Nai He's team, so she leaves her guild.
When Nai He hears about it he challenges Zhen Shui, who is Cao Guang in real life, and of course Nai He wins and then courts her.
They schedule a final fight for couples together, but he doesn't show up so they lose, but then his friends tells her that he had an accident but is ok now. Nai He asks her to meet so she goes out to buy a new dress, then runs to meet him on a bridge. He approaches her saying he was waiting for her, then takes her for a ride on his bicycle to go to the basketball game, stopping only to buy some snacks.
Yiran is very rude, but she leaves when Xiao Nai sits beside Wei Wei.
The next day he tells her that he knew all along who she was, when he asked her to partner up in the game, because he was the one she passed when she ran to the internet café that night, and he went in to see her play.
He takes her to visit his company (a bit messy but ok) which is full of games, and they hug.
When the guild leaders get married, there's a guild reunion and she's invited too. Cao sees her with Xiao Nai and YaoYao insults her, so he can say that he doesn't care as long as she wants to be with him...
At a business meeting, Xiao Nai and his friends find out that the big company copied their game.
Wei Wei goes home for the New Year holidays, but when she goes online his friends tell her that they were tricked and that Xiao Nai is all alone at school, so they all go back to spend New Year with him.
He kisses her, and she kisses him back.
There's a very long scene with the fireworks, too long.
They play the game then they decide to simply make another game, just like that, and Ko offers to help. On tv people start talking about the demo release of their new game, which is very popular, and four years later there's the official launch of the complete game, with lots of fans already.
During the ending credits, Hao Mei talks about the game he used to play before, and Ko says that he's the one who partnered up with him...
It was all very rushed and not very involving...
Since a movie is much shorter than the series, obviously, many things had to be eliminated, so they cut completely the roles of Nana and Zhen.
The actors are all different ( I think, actually the one playing Cao Guang looked like him, but am not sure). The actress playing Bei Wei Wei was not bad, I liked her, but both her and her friends looked so young, maybe this version was based in high school and not in a university? I don't know :-/
The only thing that was better here, is that Xiao Nai approached her when they first met, which makes sense since he knew who she was but she didn't, and is much nicer.
Details:
It starts with Wei Wei playing the game, and when the power goes out she rushes out on her bike to get to the nearest internet café and keep playing there, with lots of others doing exactly the same, although it's dark already outside.
When pictures of her coming out of a BMW get online, she openly confronts him in his class, showing how easy it is to misinterpret things. He's studying journalism apparently, and she exposes his lie and bad views of the world..
Xiao Nai is the school genius. Yiran stops him on the street to tell him that she likes him and invite him to see her performing, but he refuses.
In the game, her partner Zhen Shui Wu Xiang left her to marry Xiaoyu YaoYao, and after the wedding Yi Xiao Nai He asks her to marry him and he plans a big ceremony (which was really too long, it was boring).
Cao Guang asks her out - in a rather annoying way, in my opinion - but she says that she wants someone from her computer science department, and she tells him that she likes Xiao Nai, and he hears her because after hearing that he was asking her out had come straight to see what was happening.
Wei Wei knows Ko from the internet café, who got married in the game but then she disappeared.
Wei Wei is tricked, probably by YaoYao, into now showing up for a big battle, and then she's accused of being a traitor handing their boss over to Nai He's team, so she leaves her guild.
When Nai He hears about it he challenges Zhen Shui, who is Cao Guang in real life, and of course Nai He wins and then courts her.
They schedule a final fight for couples together, but he doesn't show up so they lose, but then his friends tells her that he had an accident but is ok now. Nai He asks her to meet so she goes out to buy a new dress, then runs to meet him on a bridge. He approaches her saying he was waiting for her, then takes her for a ride on his bicycle to go to the basketball game, stopping only to buy some snacks.
Yiran is very rude, but she leaves when Xiao Nai sits beside Wei Wei.
The next day he tells her that he knew all along who she was, when he asked her to partner up in the game, because he was the one she passed when she ran to the internet café that night, and he went in to see her play.
He takes her to visit his company (a bit messy but ok) which is full of games, and they hug.
When the guild leaders get married, there's a guild reunion and she's invited too. Cao sees her with Xiao Nai and YaoYao insults her, so he can say that he doesn't care as long as she wants to be with him...
At a business meeting, Xiao Nai and his friends find out that the big company copied their game.
Wei Wei goes home for the New Year holidays, but when she goes online his friends tell her that they were tricked and that Xiao Nai is all alone at school, so they all go back to spend New Year with him.
He kisses her, and she kisses him back.
There's a very long scene with the fireworks, too long.
They play the game then they decide to simply make another game, just like that, and Ko offers to help. On tv people start talking about the demo release of their new game, which is very popular, and four years later there's the official launch of the complete game, with lots of fans already.
During the ending credits, Hao Mei talks about the game he used to play before, and Ko says that he's the one who partnered up with him...
It was all very rushed and not very involving...
venerdì 9 novembre 2018
The day the Earth stood still - 2008
It’s visually interesting and cool in a studied way, but the usual morals are boring and untrue, also predictable and flawed. Even annoying.
The idea is interesting: if Earth dies, humans die, but if humans die first, the Earth can survive. Right, that’s reasonable up to this point, but who gets to decide?
More in details:
In 1928 our Keanu sees a big icy-sphere and is knocked out when he touches it. He wakes up with a scar on his hand.
2008: a lot of scientists are secretly gathered together at a military base. They are told that an object is flying fast on a collision course with Earth, and that it’ll hit and destroy Manhattan in little more than a hour (then why gathering them all if there’s nothing they can do?). At the end of the countdown nothing happens because the object suddenly slowed down and sort of landed. It’s a much larger sphere, and an alien comes out and immediately one of the many military gathered there shoots him, just like that. Just to give him the right idea of what humans are right away, I guess.
Similar but smaller spheres have appeared all over the world. A big cyclope-robot disables all their devices and does something to the alien before turning inactive. Now that it’s still and doing nothing, they take the alien to the doctors to save him, and it turns out that inside it another being is being formed. The alien is assuming a human form (Keanu Reeves), a real human body, that’s why they collected that man’s dna in 1928.
He’s called Klatu and says that he represents a group of alien civilizations and that he wants to talk to all the world leaders. The secretary of defence refuses, insisting that he explains first why he came to ‘our’ planet, and he replies that this world is not ours. She wants to take him to another location but he says that no, he wants to get out since he did nothing wrong, and she says that the robot attacked them - which is a lie, so: great way to start first contact: first you shoot him then you lie to him and keep him prisoner. Wow, great start.
Doctor Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) pretends to help her but instead she wants to help him escape. They ask him more questions and he’s like: I suggest you let me go, then he dresses up and simply walks out. When he feels ill he has people call Helen and he tells her that he’s Earth’s friend - and she doesn’t notice the peculiarity of his words: Earth’s friend yes, humanity’s friend no.
She has something that can cure all his injuries : what is it? I don’t know.
The military try to destroy the robot, without a real reason other that it’s there and they’re a bunch of scare kids? A bit dumb too because it reacts to threats and weapons, so it activates and destroys the planes.
Helen must take care of Jacob, the son of the man she married. His mother died and when his father died too he stayed with her; he’s just a little child so I guess it’s reasonable that he’s an unbearable brat, still one wished they had dealt with the matter sooner so to avoid all the annoying brat-scenes.
Klatu says he came to save Earth, and he meets with a Chinese man: he’s an alien too but he came here 60 years before. He says that humans are a destructive race and they’ll never change, but that after all these years he has affections and wants to stay here to die with the others.
Klatu starts the procedure, and the smaller spheres all around the globe start collecting animals, two by two, just like Noah’s ark, and then they leave, and only the largest remains.
Klatu says that he’s here to save Earth from humans because we’re destroying it, and Helen finally understands and starts saying that we can change, the usual stuff, what could she say: yeah, you’re right, kill us all?
When a cop finds them, Klatu kills him and then revives him, saying that he only wanted to remove an obstacle not to hurt him - well, I’m sorry but his explanation is nonsense because he’s planning to kill us all so to revive him only so that he could die again is nonsense.
Klatu says that he had asked to talk to all world leaders to discuss the matter and that humans refused. Helen says that he hasn’t talked to the right people - well, he has talked to the people who make decisions that affect us all - and she takes him to talk to a good scientist (John Cleese) who has indeed interesting observation (like: every race changes when it’s in danger, at the last moment, like Klatu’s own race did) but to me the fact remains that he’s just one man and if nobody important listens to him the world will not change.
The tv news show that there are riots everywhere, because apparently people think of every emergency as a chance to be bad guilt-free.
While they were talking, Jacob called the number that appeared on the news telling them where they are, because he sees Klatu as the enemy to be destroyed.
Helicopters arrive, they can’t take Klatu but they take Helen away. The secretary tells her that they have everything under control: yeah right, is it the most important thing for a politian, being able to act and lie?
Since they couldn’t destroy it, they took the robot away and tried to study it, and now it dissolves into many many little things that destroy everything they come in contact with. The secretary sees no way out now, I guess, because she lets Helen go - because it’s a movie and even politicians have a conscience. Klatu is moved when he sees Helen and Jacob cry together for the man they lost: Jacob thought she didn’t want him but was stuck with him, thought he had nobody, but she loves him and thinks of him as her son. Klatu says that he now understands that there’s something more in humans (oh really, he says that because he saw that a child is sad after losing his father? big brain, the other alien knew all this too you know, he had a whole family here) and Helen can’t lose this chance to break thru to him and starts saying that humans can change, that now he knows that humans can change (does he know it? how? what could give him this idea?).
Now Klatu has changed his mind and tries to stop the procedure. Those little things enter Jacob and Helen’s bodies, killing them from inside - now, in a scene before we saw a swarm of those things passing through and a whole big truck and his driver disappeared as they went past, but now those things have slowly entered their bodies, starting slowly slowly, giving Klatu all the time he can ask for to do something if he wants to, how kind, well not very kind to the truck-driver but movies don’t care about characters who don’t even have a name right?
When they see that Jacob is dying she asks Klatu to save him, and when it’s clear that she’s dying too she still asks him to save Jacob, like any loving mother would do, and Klatu saves them both, and then he starts walking towards the sphere, and he can barely see anything, so many of those things are flying around.
When he finally manages to reach it and touch it, everything stops. They got the message, I guess.
The sphere goes away, and Earth is left without any kind of power or working machinery. There is no electricity, trains and ships are still, even wristwatches don’t go anymore. Everything is still.
And that’s the end.
ITA ultimatum alla Terra
Jacob-Jaden Smith
Secretary of defense-Kathy Bates
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