Category: movies

On the Stream

Haven’t done a ‘what I’m watching’ update in a few months. I know it’s critically important for others to know what I watch. Actually, I always hope that someone reads it and steers me to something new.

First, a word on Hulu. I don’t think they get the whole ‘cut the cable’ angle. They’re claTiming to be part of that movement but then turn around and do Hulu Live, which is essentially a repackaged cable offering, except it’s streaming. It doesn’t address the element that triggered the cable cutting wave, that you can have a zillion channels and have nothing because — 1, it’s old and you’ve seen it a gajillion times. 2, it’s shite, and does not draw you in. So, Hulu offers Hulu Live for just under $70 a month. Ooh, such a bargain! I don’t watch much Hulu. I have basic. They haven’t enticed me to try more. BTW, Paramount + is following the same pattern. Oh, boy, look at our old NBC stuff. Isn’t it great? No, it isn’t.

  1. One that my wife enjoyed twenty years ago is a show called Third Watch. She was lamenting at the month’s beginning that she wouldn’t mind seeing that show again. She’s a big Bobby Canavale fan. Well, ‘lo, the streaming Gods heard her because the next night, I checked out The Roku Channel, and they had just added a ‘new’ show, Third Watch. So we inhale one of those episodes each night.
  2. Likewise, a current favorite has returned for another season. This is a show called The Expanse. We watched the first five seasons. When the new season showed up on Amazon Prime, we started watching the series over again. Featuring a lot of strong female and minority characters, along with a solid hard science fiction plotting, thrilling action, multiple story lines, and politics, it’s an engrossing experience. I finished Ray Donovan, and will watch the movie when it arrives in Feb. I’m also looking forward to the Jack Reacher series. I never bought into Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. Sorry, but Reacher was supposed to be a lean 250 pounds muscular presence. Cruise was significantly shorter and less muscular. I’d watch Goliath in its initial seasons but it took a strange turn to us in its latest offering, turning us off rather than pulling us in. I’m watching Dexter New Blood, but my wife wants nothing to do with it. Dexter seems off to her, and the villain isn’t villainy enough.
  3. Just finished Amsterdam Undercover on Walter Presents via PBS via Amazon Prime. Just four episodes to it, but I enjoyed the chemistry between the actors and the fast-paced stories.
  4. Over on Apple Plus, we’re treating ourselves to Ted Lasso and Mythic Quest. We finished Invasion, which had potential but dawdled too much for my taste. We tried Foundation, but after watching the first one, I thought, that’s not how I remember it. So I pulled out my copy of the novel and confirmed that they’d made significant ‘updates’. I understand and accept some, but it mostly put me off the series.
  5. On Netflix, we’re watching Bordertown. I’d started it before; when I resumed, my wife expressed interest, so we started it over. We also watched The Unforgiveable because I’d watched the original Sally Wainwright series. Put Sally Wainwright’s name on something, and I’m there.
  6. We tried Disney Plus (Apple Plus, Hulu Plus, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus — I see a ‘me, too’ pattern) to check out some Marvel offerings. Most Marvel offerings don’t move us. Sadly, that’s the case with Hawkeye. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was okay. We did watch and enjoy Jungle Cruise, because it was campy and silly and didn’t take itself seriously. Hard to go wrong with Dwayne Johnson, though. We watched Red Notice because he was in the cast, but it was with a shrug, some interesting moments strewn along long chase and fight scenes.

That’s all that comes to mind. There are probably other shows and movies, but my coffee cup is empty. Cheers

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Floofs Alone

Floof Alone (floofinition) – Comedy film about animals’ floofnanigans when they’re behind at home during a holiday and thwart criminals’ attempts to break into the house.

In use: “One of the highlights in Floofs Alone is the sequence when the burglars are kept from entering the house because of traps set by the home’s cats, dog, and bird through clever use of their toys, litter box, aided by the bird’s ability to mimic noises such as police sirens and guns firing, a skill acquired by observing the children’s video games.”

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright, sunny day, if the opening hours are to judge. Got cold last night — 33 degrees F, so not freezing, but cold — cold enough for the cats to decline their nocturnal outings (“Are you crazy? I’m not going out there.”) — and the sun broke through with a fierce come back at the early time of 5:51 AM. While it’s clear, a cold front cleared out the clouds, so we’ll be seeing a high of only 51 F. Maybe 53. We’ll see. Sunset will take over at 4:58 PM.

h/t to That Oregon Life on Facebook.

Today is Sunday, November 7, 2021. A disco fever song is burning the morning mental music stream. “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees came out in 1978. After that, there was no escapin’ the song, or the Bee Gees. Bee Gee music and this particular song seemed to be everywhere, mostly because the music was from Saturday Night Fever, a movie with tsunami-like cultural impact on the U.S. I thought, given the environmental response to the pandemic — wear a mask, socially distance, stay true to your pod, isolate and quarantine when necessary — that it’s a good song for this era.

Now it’s time for my first coffee of the new time period. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music – Fixed

We’re striding through the week, marching through Tuesday, October 19, 2021. The winds here think it’s March. They’re roaring like a lion. Sunrise arrived sans fanfare at 7:28 AM, with sunset due at 6:23 PM. Temps will reach into the mid sixties from their present point of 56 F before dropping down into the low forties tonight. It’ll be a dry day, with a bit o’ wind. If the wind ceases later, as expected, I’ll head out for a walk.

Was a beautiful walk yesterday afternoon. Two miles burnished by bright sunshine and cool, mild breezes. Colorful trees provided companionship, along with deer, squirrels, jays, and cats. With an AQI of ten, the view across the valley was unhindered and inspiring.

With the cooler temperatures, we have the house heat turned on for the season. We keep the house at 68 F during the day. While that’s the agreed temperature and I find it comfortable, my wife likes it hotter. Not so much a personal request on her part; more a matter of coping with her health conditions. As compromise to the situation, we have a small electric heater employed in the snug. It’s like a little sun in there. She cranked it up to Medium yesterday, or, as I call it, broil. Had the room a toasty 81 degrees F. That inspired the morning mental music stream, of course. I ended up singing lyrics to myself from “Some Like It Hot” by The Power Station, way back in 1985.

Feel the heat pushing you to decide
Feel the heat burning you up, ready or not

Some like it hot, and some sweat when the heat is on
Some feel the heat and decide that they can’t go on
Some like it hot, but you can’t tell how hot till you try
Some like it hot, so let’s turn up the heat till we fry

h/t to AZLyrics.com

The last time I used this song as theme music was June, 2019, when a heat wave was crashing o’er us. Whenever I think of the song’s title, I can’t stop the movie, “Some Like It Hot”, from crashing in. A silly farce from Billy Wilder that won six Academy Awards, it had a helluva cast, with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe headlining. Not PC for these times. A remake would require substantial re-scripting. But it came out in 1959. I saw it on television, of course, a looong time later.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Here’s the music. Time for me to rassle up some coffee. Cheers

Well. Left the link to the video out. Sorry. That’s what I get, trying to post without hot-starting my brain with spot of coffee first.

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A Dream Without Me

I wasn’t in one of my dreams last night. It was about an android. He was a naked killing machine.

There was a woman who he was helping, also naked. She didn’t understand that he was an android. I keep ‘re-writing’ the dream, evolving awareness of who he was and what was going on. He needed to leave without the woman. She was trying to dissuade him by employing sex. She needed help. Protection. People were after her. He had another agenda, though. He knew leaving was required because ‘they’ were coming after him. He was a renegade android.

He’d come in on men attacking the woman. The android killed them — not because they were holding her prisoner, but because they came after the android. Others entered, chasing the android. He killed them, too.

Shocked by the violence, the woman was still grateful to ‘the man’. Although he and the woman screwed, he still departed. He was moving from house to house in a dark suburban neighborhood. He hid in a home where no one was home. Now, though, a small, brown yappy dog was inserted into the dream. This dog was befriending the android. The android didn’t want to the dog’s companionship. The dog kept running around a room the android occupied, barking. Is the dog also an android, my dream writer wondered?

As the scenes progressed, getting re-written but moving on, the android left, stealing away into the night. Planning to steal a car, he settled in bushes down the street to observe the scene. His systems could eavesdrop on electronic devices and he could hear better than humans. Police had arrived. POV was shifted to them, to one officer in particular. He was trying to piece together everything that had happened and managed to arrive at surprising speculation: what if the person they were after wasn’t a person? What if he was a machine? Others mocked his suggestion. He began looking for and finding details to support his theory, like precision of movements, trying to understand the android’s motivation. Considering the people killed, he put together the idea that the android had arrived, helped someone else, and then others arrived. He guessed that the others arriving were after the android. The android had killed them, as well, but then others came along, others who were related to the original killing.

As he was putting this together, he was trying to frame the dog’s presence, too. Why was that sweet little brown dog there? The dog was whining to leave.

Did the dog know where the android went? Could the dog follow the android?

Dream end.

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Obsfloofian

Obsfloofian (floofinition) – An animal who is black as obsidian.

In use: “Obsfloofians such as black cats and dogs are often awarded names like Onyx or Midnight, but seeking a new direction, Karla named her obsfloofian, “T’Challa”, an homage to her favorite movie and her favorite actor.”

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

We come now to the weekly pause, the groan, the hump, the mid-point, the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end. Or is it? Depends on your working hours and routines. For those who worked a lifetime, Wednesday might forever be a mid-point as thoughts go by, my God, Wednesday. Then they laugh, because they no longer care about Wednesdays.

Today is April 28, 2021, another day in semi-lock down, depending upon your status, political views on science, country, county, nation, state, household, needs. The sun made its bold entry at 6:11 AM, and it was a sight, piercing the air after a fanfare of growing light. Sun decline — makes as much sense as down, when you think about what’s going on (how’s that work in the flatworld?) — comes at 8:07 PM. Four more minutes and we’ll make the fourteen hour mark for sunshine.

Temperature’s reflect it, with the sun pushing the highs back into the upper seventies today. Ah, I am enjoying it.

Yet — awakening atb5:56 AM (per Meep’s schedule), I listened and then thought, ah, the heat is on.

Boom. Hello Glenn Frey, with his 1984 single, “The Heat is On” from the fil-lum, Beverly Hills Cop, which was a fun flick.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Another new day has arrive, just twenty-four hours after the last one. I think we’ll call this one…Merlin. If not Merlin, then Wednesday, March 31, 2021.

Sol came creeping over the Ashland hills and mountains at 6:55 AM and is now bathing us with warming sunlight. Watch for Sol to slip away around 7:35 PM. Temps yesterday didn’t get as rosy as promised as we struggled to break 55 degrees F. Claims are out that we’ll strike seventy plus today. We’ll see.

We’ve been watching and enjoying NG’s third season of Genius. This year is all about Aretha Franklin. After finishing the episode about the 1972 two-day recording sessions for her Gospel album, Amazing Grace, we again watched the 2018 documentary about making it, for comparison. Robert Altman was on hand filming it back in the day. Technical difficulties prevented it from being completed. When it was finished, Aretha Franklin would not allow it to be released. It stayed on the shelf until after she passed. Then Spike Lee took it up and brought it the public.

Comparisons between the fictionalized events and the real thing were illuminating. To us, the Genius series attempted to show a larger schism between Aretha and her father, Rev. Franklin, than what existed. Just seems that way but we could be wrong, given the small windows which we use to witness their relationship. It was a treat watching and hearing such a talented person sing. though. What a voice.

That delivers us to today’s theme music. While thinking about Aretha Franklin, I recalled one of her later hits. I realized that her 1985 song, “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” is perfect for this era of Zooming meetings, exercise classes, birthdays, weddings, and the many other gatherings we’ve been stopped from doing in person. I’m not the first to recognize that. The comment section is full of others calling this the Zooming anthem.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, get the vax, and keep on Zoomin’. Cheers

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Netfloof

Netfloof (floofinition) – Video content production company and streaming service operated by and provided to animals headquartered in Los Floofos, Califloofia. Founded in 1997, the company currently provides service to multiple planets and dimensions via quantum electronics.

In use: “Some of the original content that Netfloof offers includes shows such as House of Floofs and Floofless, offerings which mirror original human content.”

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