Tag Archives: Media

All The Discs

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There’s a meme out there with a picture of Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan saying, “why of course, it’s me…”

I know that’s a hash of a misquote, but you get the idea.

Found it~

Using a physical DVD to watch a film. Yep, I know that guy, because it’s me. I’ve been one of the red envelope people subscribed to the Netflix DVD service for the past 12 years. It was an easy choice for me. Advertising and unreliable connection speeds meant I could watch what I had on hand without any fear of it failing to work or having the feel of a film wrecked by mid scene advertising… almost all the time. Yes, physical media does have issues. Yes, from time to time there would be a problem, but for the most part it was a fantastic albeit slow system. In all those years I can only think of a handful of times when either the disc was broken or didn’t work, and only once in all that time when I got frustrated enough to just digitally rent a movie when the disc failed – and that was because it failed about 60% of the way through a really good movie.

Now that system is gone.

Yesterday, Netflix DVD made their last shipment. After 25 years (for them) they’re done, and I am feeling a bit nostalgic about the whole thing. The discs have been one of a very few constant things over the years. I was able to pull down a PDF file, created by the Netflix folks, that has my history all packaged up and presented in a report. I haven’t crunched numbers for averages or anything like that, but I have looked at the list of more than 250 rentals I’ve had over that time (quick math, 250/12 = about 20 discs a year or just under 2 per month). I looked at the stats they’ve stacked up for me and wandered down the list of discs we’ve watched, remembering the stories and characters from all those movies.

It’s going to be a minute for me to process the whole thing, but I will miss it. That probably sounds weird, but it has been part of my life for more than a decade. It became something that was just there when I needed it. Recently the streaming services available to us, combined with a more stable internet experience and less available time, in general, have made streaming services far more convenient and my rental rate has fallen off. Sometimes it would be weeks before I could put together the time to sit with a friend or a family member to watch whatever it was we ordered up. Sometimes the streaming service would add the movie before we got to the disc. I’d package up the disc and send it back, eagerly waiting for the next one to arrive. It was there, and it happened when I wanted it to. My viewing experience was not subject to some vague streaming contract a studio made, nor allowed to change based on some other, unknown reason.

The best example I can think of to illustrate that off hand is Monsters, Inc. and how it’s shown on Disney+. My daughter and I sat to re-watch it the other day because it had been a very long time since we watched it originally and we were in just the right mood. We pulled it up on Disney+ and let it roll. When we got to the end we wanted to see the extra bit at the end where the company is putting on the play Mike and Sully improvised during the movie… and it wasn’t there. It was just gone. I was a bit sad, but she was downright outraged. “How dare they? This is unacceptable and look it up on YouTube right now so we can watch it!”. I think that encapsulates the whole thing. The nutshell version – streaming decided to revise history a la 1984 and the modern viewer simply slid over to another streaming service and looked up the part they knew should be there (legality of it all be damned).

So the service is gone, but physical media still exist. I’ll still be watching those, and definitely picking up my favorites in physical form so I don’t need to depend on some company deciding if Ponyo should be available or not. Yes, it takes up space on the shelf. Yes, it’s an outdated method for watching things, but it’s mine and I’ll do with it as I please.

Apparently the folks at Netflix were feeling a bit nostalgic as well. They captured the whole feeling in a quick video… now available from a streaming service.

You Should Be Watching – RETRO REVIEW

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This post was originally published in Watch The Skies June 2023 edition.

Andromeda Strain (1971)

I’ve been going back and re-watching some older science fiction films, or in some cases watching them for the first time. I had never seen The Andromeda Strain so I grabbed some popcorn and hit play.

There are a number of things I noticed while viewing this 50+ year old film.

There are aspects of the film style that place it squarely in the era of the late 60s / early 70s. Unavoidable things like changes in film making, the quality of the picture (at least compared to modern, high definition sets), special effects without CGI and updates to sound. There are minor turns of phrase that might raise eyebrows today. Some things the characters say or how they respond to things can be very different than a viewer of today would expect.

Beyond simple style or dated cultural issues there is technology. Some tech you simply can’t avoid seeing changes in. Cars, helicopters and planes are all mechanical items that we have contact with or at least passing familiarity with, so those are easy things to spot. Interestingly, the computer technology has made an unexpected change. In part, the attempts to be ‘futuristic’ have made of the tech in the movie actually look spot on to things we have today. Using a stylus on a computer screen in 1971 was so far in the future as to seem unreachable or at least something movie goers wouldn’t expect. These days we have a stylus for our personal tablets and phones that are so common we barely think twice about losing them. The computers themselves were a surprise to me. The ‘main frame’ driven tech is very old in the way the movie makers were likely thinking of it, but to those outside the computer industry it’s almost passable as an AI or super computer, so it would still fit the bill as ‘science fiction’.

Certain special effects make me wonder if the film makers actually killed lab rats and monkeys to get this movie made. Those scenes were definitely not for the squeamish. Any scene like that today would require disclaimers at the start of the film and would be ruthlessly scrutinized. I didn’t see the note at the end of the credits stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the film. Perhaps I missed it.

The version I watched had an interview with Michael Chriton. I was fascinated to hear about his drive and sense of humor (one of his pseudonyms meant dwarf when he was actually 6′-9” tall). The scope was broad for this movie but still had a tight run time. There’s a more modern (2008) remake that was broken into two 90 minute films, but I suspect it won’t land on my watch list. If there’s such a thing as a spoiler alert for a 50 year old movie, this film is a bit of a downer. The biological space thing escapes into the world at large. It is mutated and non-lethal, but it’s out there and there’s a secret science department in the government working constantly to stop it from mutating and killing people again. That part was a lot less entertaining after living through the pandemic and seeing how people reacted.

In the end, I’m glad I went back and checked out this classic. It’s good to have a sense of where things come from, knowing the roots of thing. If you’ve got the chance, you should watch this version of the film.

Check out the trailer HERE

You Should Be Watching

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Jung_E

This was originally published in Watch The Skies April 2023 edition.

In another dystopian future entry, the Korean film Jung_e presents some very real questions about what developing A.I. means and presents a picture of how that can effect the people most closely related to any project connected to that development.

The earth has warmed, the waters have risen. Humans have moved off the earth to various space platforms. Three of these platforms band together and declare war on the other platforms. In an attempt to create a winning edge, the allied forces take an elite soldier and attempt to clone her brain. This cloning is intended to create a soldier with all the skills, subtlety and loyalty of the original soldier in an easily replicated way. These clones will turn the tide and win the war for the allies. The experiments continue to run into an unknown obstacle, frustrating their attempts to complete this new A.I. soldier.

There are a number of pieces that are drawn into the film. I see a little bit of Robocop in there. I see a little bit of Ex Machina. There’s a touch of Ghost In The Shell. These are the things I see mixing and swirling around the story of the soldier and the doctor working on creating this new brand of soldier. It brings up a number of questions, but doesn’t necessarily answer them. This is a movie worth watching for the discussions it will give you after watching, along with a couple of very exciting action sequences. You should be watching Jung_E.


You should check out the trailer here:

You Should Be Watching

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Hot Skull

This was originally published in Watch The Skies March 2023 edition.

The main character

I didn’t go looking for this show, but then when I found it I was in. I don’t find shows about deadly plagues nearly as interesting these days, but this show managed to bring me in.

Hot Skull is a dystopian story involving a new, terrifying pandemic called ‘Jabber’. It’s called this because the first symptom is the victim speaking gibberish. This pandemic has caused panic and an authoritarian agency has taken control, herding people into various locked communities and using armed troops to enforce curfews and quarantines. The antagonist is a man named Murat who struggles against this agency, as he seems to be immune to the effects of the disease. Everyone wears noise canceling headphones and eye each other with suspicion while out in public.

The story is dark. The characters are very real. There aren’t Hollywood stereotypes at play here… this is a Turkish language series. Yes, subtitles but worth it. Looking at a pandemic from a non-American point of view is just one aspect of this show that makes it worth the effort.


You should check out the trailer here:

You Should Be Watching

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Lockwood & Co.

This was originally published in Watch The Skies February 2023 edition.

The main characters

Lockwood & Co. was a complete surprise. It was not a show that was on my radar, and I knew nothing about it when I started watching. I sat down with the family and we watched almost the whole season in a single sitting. Yes – the show caught us and we binged it.

Lockwood & Co. is a supernatural detective thriller story set in an alternate world where ghosts have come back to this world and can kill those still living. The only ones able to detect the ghosts are the youthful members of society who have some kind of psychic abilities. These kids are lined up at various agencies that investigate and remove ghosts. Lockwood & Co. are one of the newest of these agencies, and we follow psychic Lucy Carlyle as she joins up with this company.

The show has a great, quick pace. The characters are fun and believable as people. The chemistry among the lead actors is fantastic. You like them and you’re rooting for them right away. Through various ups and downs the first season is tight and clean. Be warned – the end of many episodes are the sort of cliff hangers that demand you watch the next episode right away. This is definitely one you should be watching.

Check out the trailer here:

You Should Be Watching

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The Colony

This was originally published in Watch The Skies January 2023 edition.

The film makers captured ‘bleak’ very, very well.

This month is much more in line with what many people traditionally think of as science fiction. The movie The Colony on Netflix is a far future dystopian film. It’s grey and gritty. The action starts right away.

In the distant future, the elite of earth flee a dying planet, making a new home on a distant planet. This new home proves to have road blocks to humans continuing to create more humans, so a mission is sent back to earth to determine if having the colonists return is viable or not. The previous mission has not communicated back. This is the second mission, and it struggles right from the start.

The movie has a little bit of the Mad Max feeling with marauders and technology scrapped together from the past. It also has a little bit of Water World with everything being effected by a sea level that has risen enough to make everything wet and endangered by the tide. The futuristic space technology gives our hero a little bit of an edge, but she is outnumbered and spends a significant part of the movie struggling just to survive.

I think that struggle is the part that wins me over. This is not a macho, blow things up kind of survival. It’s a thought provoking, yet action packed movie with diverse concepts and problems that require the characters thought and reason, rather than simple actions. This is definitely one you should be watching.

Be sure to check out the trailer here.

You Should Be Watching

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Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities

This was originally published in the Watch The Skies November issue.

I’m doing two things with this recommendation that I wouldn’t normally do. First, I’ve not finished all of the episodes of the show in question. Second, it’s a little bit of genre mixing but there’s enough quasi Lovecraft in what I’ve seen to make me thing readers here might be interested. What am I talking about? Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix.

To the first point, having watched the first two of the eight episodes, I feel confident in my recommendation. There is a bit of a Twilight Zone vibe as each story has an introduction at the physical representation of the cabinet. The stories have been well written and paced for a shorter time frame, with episodes averaging around an hour (the shortest being 38 minutes, the longest at 1 hour and 3 minutes). The special effects are well done, in that they don’t detract from the story. I think that says a lot in the day and age where the computer is leaned on so heavily for effects that it can have a negative impact on the story telling. Beyond the actual effects is the aesthetic of it all. This show is appealing on the strictly visual level. The details are not lost in this show.

To the second point, it’s the little details. Giant rats, summoned demons, and statues of great Cthulhu (in a blink and you miss it moment) are among the things that lead me to genre mix here. There is nothing expressly or specifically “science fiction” in this show, but there is a lot of the fantastic and I think that’s worth taking a look at.

I intend to follow through and finish all the episodes. I think you should be watching it too!

You should check out the trailer here

You Should Be Watching

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

Michelle Yeoh is great!

This was originally published in the Watch The Skies July issue.

The multiverse. A certain MCU character has brought this theory to the attention of the public in recent months. Multiple universe theories, quantum physics, philosophy and all the other Schrodinger equations are generally WAY past my understanding. A version of this theory that I understand is that each choice we make during our lives causes some sort of branch to happen. The alternate choice sort of spins off and becomes another world where our other self continues on that other path. It’s more complicated than that, but that basic thought is the core of this film. What if we made that other choice? Where would that other path have taken us? It’s a thought that runs through most peoples’ heads at some point. I recommend this movie to a science fiction / fantasy based group purely on the strength of using this multiverse theory in an absolutely bonkers way.

What if you could access the knowledge, emotions, life experience of those other lives you might have had? In this movie, a middle aged woman who is struggling with many of the same sort of things any of us struggle with is suddenly confronted with this access… and is told she needs to use this knowledge to save the world. She needs to reach out and draw from those lives and the knowledge those other versions of her have gained.

Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan are absolutely fantastic in their roles. They are all believable, earnest and relatable, even when the entire world around them seems to be going mad. There is a randomness to this film that would be hard to ride if they weren’t just so good. There is action, humor and romance. I don’t know that any single genre or category would do this movie justice. Absurdist fits, but isn’t fair to the beauty of the performances and the depth of the feelings that show through. There is another big name movie star in the film. This big name star is so deeply into the role that I didn’t realize that’s who it was while I was watching.

Do yourself a favor, stay away from spoilers – even the trailer honestly – and just check this movie out. It’s only just leaving theaters and headed to DVD or home streaming, but it’s worth the effort. You should be watching this movie.

You Should Be Watching

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Love, Death & Robots

This was originaly published in the June 2022 edition of Watch The Skies.

I don’t think I can overstate how much I am taken with this art.

I went back through the list of shows that I have recommended in the history of these articles and was stunned to see that I had not brought up Love, Death & Robots. I don’t know how this has escaped previously, but no longer.

Love, Death & Robots is an animated series, but this is very specifically aimed at adults. The creators original intent was to have something similar in nature to the animated film Heavy Metal (from 1981). Do not for a moment think this is a children’s cartoon. It is NOT. It is brutal, sexy and mind rattling in varying degrees throughout. Netflix loaded up the first season of LD&R back in March of 2019. There were 18 episodes for the series, each coming in with a viewing length under 20 minutes. The second season of 8 was released in May of 2021, and the most recent season of 9 episodes launched just last month (May of 2022).

The stories for these animations all come from some of the best writers in modern science fiction, fantasy and horror. Names like, Bacigalupi, Asher, Scalzi and Sterling. There’s even an episode showing a story written by Harlan Ellison. These stories carry weight and have real punch in such a short time frame. The set up to the closure, if there is any, come right at you. The first two seasons each won an Emmy. The story telling is only rivaled by the pictures that accompany the stories.

IF you dislike ‘cartoons’ for some reason, I challenge you to watch these and NOT become a fan of animation. The art, the shear beauty of so many of these works will make you question how they were created. Admittedly, they are not all hyper realistic, but even the goofiest stories are well animated. The colors, the smoothness, and the pure vibrancy of even the darkest pieces still amazes me. I have some that I re-watch for the story and many that I re-watch just to see them. Just to experience their beauty again. I don’t believe they needed more marketing, but the third season has actually done something neat to accompany all this art. There were some clues hidden in certain episodes of the third season. If you followed the clues, you’d find your way to some computer art from the show. The hunt, and the clues have continued on various social medial platforms since the third season was released.

I highly recommend this show. You should definitely be watching.

Check out the trailer for season three here:

Amazing work

You Should Be Watching

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The Owl House

Fun animation style too!

This was originally published in Watch The Skies May issue.

I’ve noticed a trend lately toward animated shows. While this show is once again aimed at kids, I have found a number of interesting and fun writing choices being made. The show follows a human girl named Luz who stumbles through a portal into another world. The land known as The Boiling Isles is filled with startling, weird and amazing characters living on the remains of some kind of giant or titan. There she becomes friends with a rouge witch named Eda, also known as the Owl Lady. Luz decides to stay and learn magic from this most powerful witch.

While I have not yet finished the first season, I suspect I will consume the entire series. Yes, each episode is relatively short and contains a ‘lesson of the week’ kind of format, but there are much longer story threads being woven through the background. It’s got some really fun and funny moments that are clearly aimed at the adults watching the show. At one point Eda is relaxing and says (fourth wall breaking style), “Ah, a quiet moment of domesticity… I wonder how long that will last” and in moments she is rewarded with a crash and screams. “Ah, there it is…” and she moves into the story. It was such a small moment, but anyone that has dealt with kids of any age knows that moment, deeply, and would just feel that come right through the screen.

In looking up some information about this show I’ve encountered a few spoilers that I will not share here. Anything beyond an abridged third season seems to be in jeopardy as the comedy / horror vibe (along with a couple of other factors) seem to not fit with the current Disney+ vision. I can say with certainty that I am not the only one believing in the writing for this show. It first aired in 2020 and won a Peabody Award in 2021. Weird, whimsical and believable fun – you should be watching this show.

Check out the trailer here: