Movie and TV Reviews - February 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in February. A bit shorter than usual because we watched a lot of winter Olympics.

Movies

• Predator: Badlands. The second half  of the movie was OK but by that point I had lost interest. Prey is still the best of the Predator flicks. (Disney+)
• Mars Express: We haven't watched much anime recently, but I saw a review of this on Gizmodo and it looked interesting, It was one of the best anime films I've ween, on a par with Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Highly recommended. (Amazon Prime rental)

TV Shows

• The Night Manager (season 2): Not as good as the first season, though it did pick up halfway through. It felt like a cookie-cutter thriller without the sublety of the first season. (Amazon Prime)
• Shetland (season 10): The series continues with a typically dark, complex plot set in the barren windswept Scottish islands. One of our favourite shows. (BritBox)
• Antinques Roadshow (season 27): Now that we've worked our way through all 28 seasons of Antiques Road Trip, we're back to the PBS stalwart. 
• Live at Massey Hall: A Celebration of Gordon Lightfoot. An omnibus concert recorded at Toronto's historic Massey Hall to celebrate the life of the late Gordon Lightfoot. I liked that they didn't perform just the hits but dug into his back catalog. Worth watching just for the performance of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". (CBC Gem)
• How to Get to Heaven from Belfast: My sister described this show as "quirky" and that it definittely is. It's also very complicated, occasinally dark, and often funny. You'll need closed captioning for this one. (Netflix)
• McDonald and Dodds (season 4). Another British police procedural that falls somewhere in the middle of the cozy to dark spectrum. I liked this season more than the previous ones. (BritBox)
• Grace (seasons 1-2): Another troubled detective British police  procedural that permiered in 2021 but we're just catching up to now. On the darker side as theyse things go with good writing and acting.
• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: I don't remember much about the original Dunk and Egg stories on which this series is based but no matter, it's quite watchable and better than I expected. We binge watched the whole season in one evening (yay for short episodes). (Crave HBO)

Saturday Sounds - Grateful Dead - A Beginner's Guide: David Lemieux

This week's musical treat is an introduction to the music of the Grateful Dead assembled by David Lemieux, the Dead's archivist. He's picked five songs that offer a glimpse into the varied styles of the Grateful Dead: the powerhouse arena rock of Morning Dew, the out there psychedelic improvisation of Dark Star, the blues rock of Viola Lee Blues, the jazzy improvs of Eyes of the World featuring Branford Marsalis, and the delicate acoustic textures of Bird Song. 

It's a good starting point for those who aren't familiar with the Dead's music and I've enjoyed listening to all of these again. I don't think I could improve on it, though might do a post with my suggestions for a second chapter.

Featured Links - February 25, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The Ultra-Rich Are Different from You and Me. "Only the little people pay taxes, redux." We need to get back to the 1950s model of progressive taxation. 

11 steps to smarter Google account security. "Give yourself some added peace of mind by giving your Google account a thorough set of security reinforcements."

The state of dark mode. From the AskWoody newsletter, the state of dark mode in Windows 11 and some tips for enabling dark mode on some of the remaining features that don't yet support it. 

Some of the cracks had penetrated through': Chinese astronauts reveal new details about spacecraft that 'stranded' them in space last year. "Crew members of China's Shenzhou-20 mission recently detailed their reactions upon finding cracks in their spacecraft's viewport during the nation's first spaceflight emergency." 

'We almost did have a really terrible day.' NASA now says Boeing's 1st Starliner astronaut flight was a 'Type A mishap'. "This was a really challenging event in our recent history."

Lake Erie’s Storm Surges Become More Extreme (gift link). "Officials are designing new ways to protect the shorelines from sudden flooding and longer storm seasons."

The Perfect Storm. "When warnings are everywhere, and still no one moves."

The US versus Canada 11

It's been a while since I wrote on of these posts, though I have been following the news about Canada's relationship with the US pretty closely. In the past couple of weeks, I've seen more discussion about the possibility of a US invasion of Canada, something which I've posted about before  this. It  seems that people, including members of our government, are taking the possiblity more seriously. So I'll start this post with a couple of articles about that. 

How a US Invasion of Canada Would Really Unfold—And How We Fight Back. "American aggression is no longer theoretical." This article looks at lessons learned from Uktaine's response to the Russian invasion and applies them to Canada. 

Preparing for the Worst. Charlie Angus offers some concrete suggestions for fighting back against the US, even before an invasion. 

Donald Trump wants to make an example out of Canada. How will we prepare? (gift link) This article is cited in Charlie Angus's post and is also worth reading (as are most of Andrew Coyne's opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail). 

Saturday Sounds - Joni Mitchell - April 24, 1983, Wembley Arena, London UK

This week's musical treat is a rare video of a Joni Mitchell concert from April 24, 1983 at London's Wembley Arena.  It was filmed and broadcast on the BBC 2 network. Joni is supported by a crackerjack band that included The band for this tour included Michael Landau (guitar), Russell Ferrante (keyboards), Larry Klein (bass), and Vinnie Colaiuta (drums).

The poster didn't include a setlist, but the full concert setlist is included on setlists.fm. The hour-long video includes some of my favourite songs: "Free Man in Paris", "A Case of You" and "Amelia".  It looks like the original 4:3 video has been stretched to 16:9 but the audio is just fine. Enjoy.

The Most Dangerous Politician In Canada

I was going to include this post by Emmett Macfarlane in a Featured Links post next week, but after reading through it a couple of times, I decided it deserved it's own post.

If you've been paying any attention to Canadian politics recently, you'll likely have seen mentions of a growing separatist movement in Alberta (and to a lesser extent in Saskatchewan and British Columbia). That's always been an undercurrent in Western Canadian politics, but its become more prominent since the rise of the UCP in Alberta and the second Trump administration in the US. But what Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith is now proposing is more dangerous than plain separatism. As Macfarlane states in his post, she is now the most dangerous politician in Canada. 

We like to denigrate comparisons to Trump as lazy because Trump is distinct in so many ways. He tells more lies than any other politician. He actively and nakedly seeks unlawful self-enrichment. He is on multiple counts a criminal. He is monumentally stupid. In short, any other politician will always have attributes that distinguishes them from Trump. Smith is no criminal. She’s not stupid. But once we see that Trump is as much a symptom as he is the cause of America’s anti-democratic rot, we should recognize the same holds for people like Danielle Smith. She is the most dangerous politician in Canada, launching an agenda not only of fear and greed, but one that seeks to undermine the country, its federal structure, and its spirit of tolerance and compassion. It is nothing short of evil, and it must be fought on all fronts.

Featured Links - February 18, 2026

Personal Note:  My eyes have improved enough that I can read comfortably (most of the  time) so I'm going to tyry to get back to a bit of blogging. 

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

A foggy February

Medical Fan Fiction, National Consequences, and What Happens When We Lose the Shared Shield. "Measles, declining vaccination rates, and the revival of preventable disease." ... "This is what breaks my heart. We had the answer, we still have the answer, we are watching people try to throw it away and call that freedom. And I simply will not stand by this. I will not be quiet while preventable disease is welcomed back like it deserves a seat at the table. I will make my voice loud and known, and I hope you do the same."

In Cuba, wellies shed light on the island’s hardships as Canada suspends flights. (gift link) It's sad to see what Cuba and Cubans are going through right now, through no fault of their own. "The footwear, it turns out, is a symbol of the island’s hardships. Pandemic-related declines in tourism and six decades of U.S. sanctions – including embargoes tightened by the Trump administration in 2025 – have pushed the island’s economy to collapse. Staples such as clothing are hard to find. These days, rubber boots are cheaper and easier to find than leather shoes or sneakers. Many Cubans pair their wellies with colourful socks, a testament to their resilience and flair."

Is 2026 the year buttons come back to cars? Crash testers say yes.  "The requirements won’t go far enough for many, but it’s a start." It can't come soon enough for me. Putting all controls into a screen interface is a recipe for distracted driving. 

Consumptive Capitalism. "On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein. An essay exposing the similarities between the MAHA movement and the tuberculosis treatments of the early 20th century. ' MAHA depends on the “again,” the fantasy of a better past. But it also depends on the “America,” the notion that we are in some way exceptional. But we are as vulnerable as everyone else without investment in medical science and public health. Valuing profit above life undermines our progress, and doing so under misleading appeals to myth only makes matters worse.'

Your BMI can't tell you much about your health – here's what can (archive link). 'People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures  of fat, and physicians are finally using them.' 

Inside the quest to build the ultimate nonalcoholic beer. "Scientists in Belgium—that celebrated bastion of ancient beer culture—are harnessing genetic breakthroughs and machine learning to reimagine how great booze gets built. Here’s how their revelations in the lab could transform the global beer industry." As a consumer of regular beer, I found this article quite interesting. A quality non-alcoholic beer would definitely get some of my money.