Movie and TV Reviews - August 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in August.

Movies 

• The End of Oak Street: The best dinosaur movie since the first Jurassic Park film. (Cineplex)
• The Tragically Hip: Anniversary of a National Celebration. One of the best concerts I have seen filmed. The original broadcast was watched by 1/3 of the population of Canada. 

TV

• Miriam Margolyes Discovers New Zealand: A midling good 2-part travelogue. The best part is the scenery,. (Knowledge Network)
• Legends: A well done, if somewhat implausible, drama about customs agents in the UK going undercover to take down a major drug ring. (BritBox)
• Prey: Another variation on the widowed detective trying to track down his wife's killers. The first season was OK but I found t he second season unwatchable. (BritBox)
• Sugar (season 2): A combination of LA detective noir and X-Files SF. Enjoyable but not great. (Apple TV)
•  Star City: The Soviet side of the 1970s space program. This was darker and more intense than For All Mankind. Unfortunately, the final two episodes completely neglected any scientific or technical plausibility. (Apple TV)
• House of the Dragon (season 3): I watched a recap of seasons 1 and 2 before starting this season. It made no difference. I enjoyed this season more than the other two though it's still not as good as the original Game of Thrones.  (Crave/HBO))

Movie and TV Reviews - July 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in July. 

Movies

• Remarkably Bright Creatures: A quirky romantic drama featuring Sally Field and octopuses. We liked it a lot. (Netflix)
• Enola Holmes (1 - 3): A wildly implausible but entertaining series of movies featuring a teenage sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Light but well made. (Netflix)
• Afterburn: Half the Earth gets hit by a super solar flare and the bad guys take control. B+ for the production values; B- for everything else. (Amazon Prime)

TV Shows

• Beyond Paradise (season 4): The Death in Paradise spinoff continues. Light but likeable. I like it that not all the plots involve murders. (BritBox)
• Criminal Record (season 2): A gritty British Police procedural. More intense than the first season but not quite as good, though Peter Capaldi is great, as usual. (Apple TV)
• One Piece (seasons 1 & 2): A live action remake of a long-running anime series. Not very deep but fun to watch. (Netflix)
• Widow's Bay: This series starts out as a comedy following the mayor of a small town in Maine trying to get more tourist visits and shifts into a horror mode. I thought the comedy element was more successful.  (Apple TV)
• Blue Lights (season 3): A police procedural set in Belfast. Gripping and intense. One of the best examples of the genre. (BritBox)
• Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed: A comedic drama featuring the wonderful Tatiana Maslany (star of Orphan Black) "as a divorced fact checker who falls into a web of murder, blackmail, and youth soccer." Fast moving, funny, and worth watching just for Maslany's performance. (Apple TV)

Movie and TV Reviews - June 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in June. Now that we're watching the Blue Jays, there won't be as much here.

Movies

• Disclosure Day: It was good, not great. I enjoyed it, but it was overlong and a bit muddled in the final third. Emily Blunt is really good. Overall, it was more X Files than Close Encounters. (IMAX)
• Sheep Dogs: I didn't think I would enjoy this, but it turned out to be bettr than I expected. It's a witty sendup of the murder mystery genre with some sharp and funny writing. (Amazon Prime)

TV Shows

• For All Mankind (season 5): Most of this season focused on the increasing conflict between Earth and Mars over asteroid resources. The best part though was the subplot about the search for life on Titan. t's still a great show but I hope the final season is more SFnal. (Apple TV)
• The Boroughs: The tag line for this could be "Stranger Things for Boomers" A widowers family consign him to a retirement community in the desert and bad things start happening. It's funny, touching, and scary.  I liked it a lot. (Netflix)
• Bon Cop: Bad Cop: This is a limited series based on the excellent Canadian films. I was really looking forward to this one but it was unwatchable. Reflecting the French/English Canadian duality, the dialog is pretty much evenly split between the two languages with subtitles. Unfortunately, the dialog is too fast-paced and neither Nancy or I could keep up with it. We gave up after half an hour. What we could follow was good. (Crave)
• The Gentlemen: This is another series based on a movie. I enjoyed the original film and the series, created by Guy Ritchie, is just as enjoyable. (Netflix)
• Celebrity Antiques Road Trip (season 4): Continuing on with our tour of the antique shops of Britain. (BritBox)
• Death in Paradise (season 15): The cast keeps changing but the murders still keep the cops of Sainte Pierre busy. (BritBox)
• Silent Witness (season 29): The forensic experts at the Bowman Institute continue on in Birmingham. Still the best of the forensic TV shows. (BritBox)

Spielberg's Disclosure Day Disappoints

On Sunday, Nancy and I drove over to Whitby to see Disclosure Day at the IMAX theatre. Even though we could walk up to the local Crappyplex, seeing big movies on the biggest screen available has become our preference. 

Based on the initial reviews, I was looking forward to seeing Spielberg's latest epic, but it didn't live up to my hopes. It was good, but not great. I enjoyed it, but it was overlong and muddled in the final third. On the positive side, Emily Blunt is really good and some of the action scenes were impressive, especially on the IMAX screen. Unfortunately, the big reveal at the end felt contrived and unrealistically optimistic. Overall, it was more like a long X Files episode than Close Encounters. Let's call it "Disappointment Day". 

As The Guardian reports, I'm not the only one to feel this way. 

Yet if early box office has been solid enough, secondary indices – not least a slew of disappointed foyer texts from friends and loved ones – would suggest the film has itself proved distinctly polarising. In the US, market research firm CinemaScore – which polls opening-day cinemagoers to assess a film’s commercial prospects – graded Disclosure Day a B, the joint second-worst for a Spielberg film, ahead of AI: Artificial Intelligence (recipient of a harsh C), dead level with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Headmaster Haneke again shakes his weary head.

Movie and TV Reviews - May 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in May. Now that we're watching the Blue Jays, there won't be as much here.

Movies

• Greenland 2: Migration. I saw a review that suggested that this was better than the first movie. It wasn't. 
• Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War. Yet another Jack Ryan thriller. Lots of action and not a lot of plausibility, as usual. This one was OK until about halfway through, then started to run off the rails. I did enjoy the parts that were set in Dubai.  (Amazon Prime)
• The Mandalorian and Grogu. See my review from last week. (IMAX)

TV Shows

• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (season 2). Lots of big monster battles in the middle of a muddled plot with too many jumps in time. The final episode ended with a setup for the next season, but I don't really care.(Apple TV)
• Dept. Q: This is a police procedural billed as "tartan noir" and it is indeed gloomy and you'll probably want closed captioning on. Unfortunately the plot stretches my "willing suspension of disbelief" past the breaking point and the characters are mostly standard tropes. (Netflix)
• A Taste for Murder: A grieving British detective travels to Italy to restore the relationship with his daughter and gets involved in all sorts of crimes. The best parts are the setting (Naples and Croatia, subbing for Capri) and Patricia Logan, of Downton Abbey fame. (BritBox)
• Good Omens (season 3): A one episode, 97-minute season, largely because Neil Gaiman wasn't involved. And it shows. You can probably skip this one. 
• Law and Order: Criminal Intent: Toronto (season 3). It's very formulaic. We like it for the Toronto settings and the stories that are sometimes taken from local news. (City TV)

Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Nancy and I went to see The Mandalorian and Grogu last night at the IMAX theatre in Whitby. I didn't enjoy it. There was enough plot to fill out an average episode of the TV show, padded into a 2-hour-plus movie with a lot of pointless action scenes. No character development at all. The Mandalorian might as well have been a 2nd-tier Marvel superhero. Even in the IMAX format, much of the movie was dark and hard to follow. 

Wait for it to show up on Disney+ if you want to see it. (That may be a general reaction; the theatre was maybe 10 percent full). 

Modern Movies: The Dark Ages

I've been having a lot of trouble watching movies, and some TV shows, these days. Part of that is due to my eyes lacking enough rods to give me proper vision in dim light, but that's only part. I've talked about this with my family and friends and they agree that a lot of what their watching is darker than it used to be. 

The New York Times has a feature article (gift link) about this. It starts with a reference to the recent movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2. 

“The heartbreaking story of a woman who can no longer afford lamps in her office,” read one viral post, showing Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly of yore alongside a screenshot from the new dimly-lit trailer. “So did we just forget how to light movies?” asked another, above bright images from the 2006 film beside shadowy, shrouded shots from the sequel. Noting that the sequel employs the same director and cinematographer as the original, one poster lamented “that isn’t a skill issue it’s a choice. So why DO new movies insist on looking like that. Absolutely lifeless.”

That's someting I noticed when I saw Project Hail Mary recently; it was dim, even in the IMAX format. But there are other things going on. 

The article goes on to reference a YouTube video titled 'Why Movies Just Don't Feel 'Real' Any More" by Tom van der Linden. It's a bit on the nerdy side but I highly recommended. He talks about the various factors influencing the look of modern movies and makes some very incisive points, including the lack of depth-of-field in many shots. 

 

From the Times: 

For van der Linden, the blurry-background conundrum is exacerbated by “fake-looking C.G.I. elements.” He pointed to 2025’s “Jurassic World Rebirth”: Compared to the technically-jankier but actually-superior “Jurassic Park” (1993), the latest installment’s backgrounds are constantly out of focus. The environments — even in scenes shot on location — are rendered “faker” through digital visual effects that undermine the world-building. “Subconsciously, I’m not registering that landscape as a real place, and that detracts from the reality of the movie as a whole,” he said.

I've watched the video and found it quite illuminating (pun intended). It's definitely worth half and hour of your time, though it may make you a lot more ciritical about what you're seeing on screen.  

 

 

Featured Links - April 22, 2026

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

Boats at the marina waiting for summer

• Game of drones. "As the federal government spends billions on military modernization, Canadian drone innovators are vying to meet the moment in the sky, on land and in the water." Good coverage of a new industry with lots of photos. 
• Power imbalance. "James S.A. Corey on The Captives War, The Book of Daniel, and how the only way to survive an alien invasion might be appeasement." A fascinating interview with the authors of the wonderfu Expanse series. 
• What Discoveries Might Be Hiding in the Artemis 2 Images and Data? "NASA’s Artemis 2 mission produced a wealth of data that experts will be analyzing for years to come."
• They Are Killing Our People. "This past week, the Mikisew Cree First Nation of Alberta released a report on the massive cancer rates in their community. The Alberta government withheld key medical statistics, and the federal government dragged their feet. The Feds promised to fund a study that would take 10 years to complete. And so, the community paid for their own research." This is what happens when you live downstream from the biggest polluter in Canada. 
• 'For All Mankind' alternative timeline vs reality: How Apple TV's sci-fi show diverges from history.. "How do "For All Mankind"'s six decades of space exploration "history" compare with the real thing?" Spoiler warning for those who haven't watched the show,
• Why Medieval Bread Was A Superfood While Your Modern Bread Makes You Sick (YouTube). "There's a significant issue with the bread we consume today. While bread was once a fundamental part of civilizations, sustaining families and armies, modern bread often causes gut issues, blood sugar spikes, and leaves us feeling unsatisfied. This food history explores how the bread industry has changed, contrasting today's offerings with the traditional bread that nourished our ancestors. We conduct a food industry case study, examining how the history of bread, including ancient grains and sourdough, shows a stark difference from what we find on shelves now."
• The Making of Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool".  A long essay on one of the true classics of 20th century music. 
• Facebook and Instagram Tighten Censorship Rules for Saying “Antifa”. 'Meta’s new rules let it ban users or suppress comments that include the word “antifa” alongside “content-level threat signals.”'
• How two mathematicians created an equation that quietly runs the planet. "The Diffie-Hellman key exchange secures everything from your text messages to government secrets." This article has the best explanation I've seen ofhow public key cryptography works. 
• Winner of top Sony World Photography Awards $25,000 prize revealed. "With nearly half a million entries, the judges must have had a tough job choosing the winners of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. The competition is now in its 19th edition, and the overall Photographer of the Year 2026 title has been named as Citlali Fabián with the series ‘Bilha, Stories of My Sisters’."
• Inside the stunning fall of the Maple Leafs: Chaos, dysfunction and AI. For the (probably few) hockey fans reading this blog, a deep dive into the latest pathetic season of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was in high school the last time this team won the Stanley Cup. The way they are playing, I may not live long enough to see them win one.
• How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war. "Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones."

Movie and TV Reviews - March 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in March. 

Movies

• War Machine: I was hoping for a bit more alien tech in this one than what we got: a steampunk version of a Star Wars walker. And I could have done without the jingoistic rah rah stuff. The only reason to watch is Alan Richson doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation. (Netflix)
• Project Hail Mary: A typical Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster with REALLY good special effects, but it's not in the same league as Dune or Arrival.  It's. enjoyable enough if you don't think about it too much. See it on the biggest screen you can, IMAX if at all possible. (IMAX)

TV Shows

• Grace (season 3-5): Another British detective show. I'd rate this as middling; good acting and characterization, but the plots rely too much on big action sequences for resolution. (BritBox)
• Wednesday (season 2): Big production values and quirky, Tim Burton-influenced humour. Not to be taken seriously, but fun. (Netflix)
• Celebrity Antiques Road Trip (seasons 1 and 2): Another take on the original show's tried and true formula. 13 seasons will keep us going for a while. Most of the celebrities are unfamiliar to us. (PBS)
• 3 Body Problem: A solid adaptation of a complex and somewhat difficult book. I think I prefer it to the novel, which I did read but which I didn't like enough to read the next two books in the trilogy. (Netflix)
• Scarpetta (season 1): We were looking forward to this because it is based on a series of novels by Patricia Cornwall that we've read and enjoyed. We couldn't finish watching the first episode. What a disappointment and waste of some good actors. (Amazon Prime)
• Deadloch (season 2): My review of the first season described it as a "seriously twisted dark comedy" and "totally over the top and sometimes very funny". All that applies to the second season, in spades. (BritBox)
• The Puzzle Lady: A cozy mystery with a crowwwrod puzzle creator who helps the police to solve crimes, Light entertainment and not as good as Ludwig, which had a similar idea. (PBS)

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)

Movie and TV Reviews - January 2026

 Short reviews of movies and TV shows that I watched in January. 

Movies

• The Velvet Underground: A so-so documentary. I wish it had focused more on the music and less on how they looked. (Apple TV)
• Galaxy Quest: This is still the best Star Trek parody and better than most of the Trek movies. (Blu Ray)
• Sinners: There was a lot of buzz about his movie and I can see why. It was very well done in every respect and also very unconventional. Buddy Guy at the end sealed it for me. One of  the best movies I've seen in a long time. (Crave)
• Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. This biopic looks at Springsteen's life between the release of The River in 1981 and Born in the USA in 1984, a period of reflection that led to the release of Nebraska. It's well done, reasonably accurate, and quite watchable but marred by a made0-up romance subplot.  (Disney)+)
• The Thursday Murder Club: A cozy mystery about residents of a retirement home solving murders. Light but worth watching for a high-powered cast. (Netflix)
• K-Pop Demon Hunters: We watched this just to see what all the fuss was about and did enjoy it. Not much of a stpru but the animation and music are the point. (Netflix)

TV Shows

• Antiques Road Trips (season 14-15): Our treasure hunt through Britain's villages continues. After these, we will have to find a new comfort watch.. (BritBox)
• Stranger Things (season 5): The final season was about twice as long as it needed to be. I still think the show should have ended after the third season. (Netflix)
• Pluribus: One of the best SF shows that Apple TV has produced. It manages to be both funny and terrifying. (Apple TV)
• Beyond Paradise (Christmas special): Nice to see a plot that didn't revolve around a murder. (BritBox)
• Death in Paradise (Christmas special): Only for fans. (BritBox)
• Unforgotten (season 5): Still one of the best British police procedurals with an especially twisty plot that neither of us figured out. (BritBox)
• Starfleet Academy: If it's intended to be a comedy then it's a disaster. (Paramount+)
• Bookish: A light mystery series about a gay bookseller in post-war London. The best thing about it was the evoication of the period. (PBS)
• Down Cemetery Road: We only got through one eopisode of this. Too contrived and not believable. (Apple TV)
• Seven Dials: Another Agatha Christie mystery. Contrived yes, but we didn't expect any more. (Netflix)
  
• The Night Manager (season 1): A rather good adaptation of a John Le Carre novel. One of the best series we've watched in a while. (Amazon Prime)

Movie and TV Reviews - December 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in November. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. 

Movies

• Jay Kelly: I've enjoyed most of George Clooney's movies in the past, and enjoyed this one, but it didn't quite work. It kept reaching for something more than it was, and falling short. It's quite watchable but just not very deep. Being a shorter and edgier would have helped (Netflix)
• Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The third, and I think the best, in the franchise. The portrayal of the charismatic priest and his congregation was the best part of the movie and very well done.
• The Princess Bride: Our Christmas comfort watch. (Blu Ray)

TV Shows

• The Last Detective (seaons 1-4): DC Davies is a nice guy, which doesn't make his life any easier as a detective. Well written and acted. Light but with an edge to it. (BritBox)
• The Wild Ones: A natrue documentary/reality show about endangered species. The episodes about Caucasian leopards and Atlantic right whales were particularly good. (Apple TV)
• Antiques Road Trip (season 13). Our journey through England in search of treasure continues. (PBS) Episode 4 sets a new record for an auction item on the show. 
• Silent Witness (Season28): The best of the forensic shows returns with a new lab head. I suspect this show was an inspiration for NCIS, though it's much better.  (BritBox)
• Man vs. Bee:  Outright comedy, silly and implausible, but very funny if you like that sort of thing. (I don't). (Netflis)
• Bad Sisters (season 2): A bit darker than the first seaon and not as much humour, but still very watchable. (Apple TV)
• Blue Lights (season 2): A gritty police drama set in Northern Ireland. Best when it stays away from a tendency to soap opera. (Amazon Prime)

Movie and TV Reviews - November 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in November. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. 

Movies

• Goodnight Oppy: A BBC documentary about the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Quite good and gives a sense of just how remarkable this mission was. (Amazon Prime)
• Frankenstein: I enjoyed it though I found it hard to watch (many dark scenes) and some of the changes from the novel confused me. I found it interesting that Del Torro updated the technology in the story (all the electrical stuff, for example) to a late Victorian level, even though the story is set in the 1830s. The gothic tone is faithful to the book even if some of the characters and details vary. (Netflix)
• Deep Cover: A trio of improv actors gets hired by the police to pose a criminals to entrap a drug dealer. Things go spectacularly wrong. A good popcorn movie but not much more. (Prime)
• The Family Plan 1 and 2: Extremely implausible but still somehow watchable. More popcorn movies. (Apple TV)

TV

• The Nature of Things: Implosion. Documentary about the Titan submersible disaster. Should have been longer. 
• Slow Horses (season 5): A bit lighter than some of the earlier seasons but still enjoyable. 
• Trainwreck: Woodstock '99. Three-part documentary about the disastrous Woodstock '99 festival What were they thinking? (Apple TV)
• Only Murders in the Building (season 5): The plots continue to be implausible, but we are enjoying it. Steve Martin is brilliant, as always. (Disney+)
• Antiques Road Trip (seaon 12). Only four more seasons to go and we will have watched all of them, (PBS)
• Beyond Paradise (season 3): The season finally continues after the Christmas episode. I'm enjoying this one more than earlier seasons; not all episodes revolve around murders. (BritBox)
• Lazarus: We had high hopes for this because it was based on a novel by Harlen Coben. But we only got through about 20 minutes of the first episode before giving up. If you like shows about troubled psychiatrists having visions of dead people you will like it; we didn't. (Amazon Prime)
• Code of Silence: BritBox has been heavily promoting this show about a deaf cleaner who gets hired by the police to lip read to help in an investigation. It's a bit implausible but quite watchable. (BritBox)
• Only Murders in the Building (Season 5): The deaths continue at the troubled Arcadia as the intrepid podcasters try to find the killers. (Disney+)
• Murder Is Easy: An adaptation of a story by Agatha Christie. This one turned out better than I expected, though that's not saying much. (BritBox)
• I, Jack Wright: A British brick magnate dies suddenly and his family implodes in spectacular fashion. Grim, twisted, dark, and made with that special brand of dark humour t hat the Brits do so well. But the ending ... there had beter be a second season. (BritBox)

Featured Links - November 11, 2025

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

Model of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Shipwreck Museum in Michigan

A Ghost Fleet of Tankers Is Keeping Russia’s War Machine Afloat. The West Can’t Stop It. "How Putin outsmarted the oil sanctions."

Still Haunted by the Edmund Fitzgerald. "50th Anniversary Tribute". Seems appropriate that we are getting our first winter storm on Sunday. 

 Google Docs Gets Smarter. "Audio narration, AI help, and 40 new templates." Many of the new features require an AI-enabled plan, but there are some, like document tabs, that could be quite useful for longer documents.

The Florentine Diamond Resurfaces After 100 Years in Hiding. "A legendary jewel of the Hapsburg dynasty — not seen since 1919 and thought lost, stolen or recut — has actually been safe in a Canadian bank for decades." This is quite a story. 

‘Frankenstein’: How Close Is Guillermo del Toro’s Film to the Original Novel? A Mary Shelley Expert Answers Our Burning Questions. "So, just how well does del Toro’s version stack up against Mary Shelley’s original novel? We asked Julie Carlson, an English professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an expert on the British Romantic period and the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley family, for her thoughts." I enjoyed the movie, though I did find it hard to watch in places (many very dark scenes). 

Find cancer clinical trials in Canada. "Helping people living with cancer and healthcare professionals navigate cancer trial options." It's good that Canadians have an alternative to looking in the US for information. 

New laser treatment could stop blindness before it starts. "A new laser treatment may halt dry macular degeneration by using controlled warmth to trigger the eye’s self-repair mechanisms." Of course, it will be years before this becomes widespread, assuming it works. 

I’m never going back to Microsoft Word after mastering this open-source self-hosted tool. "Enter HedgeDoc, the open-source web-based collaborative markdown editor that has changed my writing setup. By running it on my server, I achieved true data independence that Word could never offer." Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have jumped on this, but at this point in my life, I just can't be bothered.

Movie and TV Reviews - October 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in October when not watching the Blue Jays march into baseball nirvana. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. 

Movies

• Black Bag: A British spy thriller directed by Stephen Soderbergh. Not a lot of action but very tense. Well acted, well made, and well written. (Amazon Prime)

TV Shows

• Death Valley: A British police procedural set in a small town in Wales. A somewhat ditzy detective connects with a retired actor who played a detective on TV.  This one is pretty light but well writen and acted, and funny. (BritBox)
• The Studio: We only got through two episodes of this before giving up. It was billed as a comedy but it works only if you enjoy stupid people running around yelling at each other. Lots of cameos, but that wasn't enough to keep watching. (Apple TV+)
• Karen Pirie (seasons 1-2): A British police procedural featuring a female detecitve tasked with investigating a 25-year-old cold case. Twisty and well made. (BritBox)
• The Reluctant Traveler (season 3): Eugene Levy heads off on more travels. One of the highlight's is a rour of Windsor Castle conducted by Prince Willam. (Apple TV+)
• Invasion (season 3): I'm not sure why I kept watching this, It was more interesting than the previous seasons but, like too many series these days, far too padded. The one good idea in this season was the religious fanatics worshipping the aliens as the vector for the Rapture. (Apple TV+) 
• Nova: Superfloods. Documentary about the North Carolina, Texas, and Valencia floods. Scary stuff. 
• Nova: Pompeii's Secret Underworld. A look at what daily life was like in Pompeii before the eruption. Some nifty recreations of what the city was like along with some remarkable historical analysis. Could have done wihtout the junky fighting recreations though. 

Movie and TV Reviews - September 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in September. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. Now that it's baseball season, there will probably be fewer items here.

Movies

No movies this month. We were watching too much baseball.

TV Shows

• Countdown: Another slick and expensive-looking thriller from Prime. It would have been better if they simplified the plot a bit and cut it back from thirteen to six or eight episodes. And toned down the American jingoism which really got on my nerves. (Amazon Prime)
• Foundation (season 3): I didn't much enjoy the first two seasons of Foundation, though it had some interesting ideas (not all of which were from Asimov's stories). The third season is quite good though I could have done without silly bits like the speeder chase in the one of the early episodes. Visually, it's absolutely first rate. Coupled with Apple's streaming quality, it's occasionally stunning. (Apple TV+)
• Ballard: A Bosch spinoff about a detective trying to solve cold cases who discovers police corruption. One of the better US police procedurals. (Amazon Prime)
• Alien: Earth. This is probably the best of the Alien stories since the first two movies. They've expanded the story and developed the background elements while maintaining the original 1980s (almost) steampunk aesthetic. It's very dark, both visually and thematically, and the fast-cut action sequences are hard to watch, but overall it's very well done. Like the original movie, it's not for the squeamish. (Disney+)
• Lynley: This is a reboot of Inspector Lynley, a British police procedural about two mismatched detectives that we watched a few years ago. We liked the original and we like the new version. (BritBox)

Featured Links - September 16, 2025

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

Swans on the bay

• COVID-19 infections impair our immune systems for months or even years. "Even mild cases can lead to serious health problems years later."
  
• Alien: Earth—how realistic are the extraterrestrials? Three experts rank them. I haven't watched this show, yet, and after reading this I'm not sure I want to.  Eewww. 
• Building an Octopus Dictionary, One Arm Movement at a Time. "Scientists set out to understand all the ways the animals use their eight appendages. It wasn’t easy." Communicating with octopuses is one of the major story threats in Ray Nayler's excellent SF novel, The Mountain in the Sea.
  
• Rolling Stone Publisher Sues Google Over AI Overview Summaries. Based on my own experience, I think the publisher has a point.  
• Who Are Smith's Best Supporters? "A small but vocal group of true blue God fearing Conservative Alberta First believers called the Petro Paranoids."
• The Dangerous In-Between: Assassination, Fascism and the Fragile State of Democracy. "The exploitation of the Kirk murder fits a disturbing pattern: extremists need martyrs. It is how they keep the coalition of ragers, grifters and conspiracy haters in the same tent. And the people who would point out that Kirk himself drove the politics of hate? They’re being targeted, doxxed, and in some cases fired."
• How Apple has trained its AI to respond to Trump’s nonsense: report. "A new report examines how the Apple Intelligence has evolved since Trump once again became U.S. president."

Movie and TV Reviews - August 2025

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in August. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. Now that it's baseball season, there will probably be fewer items here.

Movies

• Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. Somewhere in this bloated hulk of a movie, there's a really good 45-minute-long episode of the original TV show screaming to get out. (Paramount+)
• Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. Again, an almost 3-hour-long movie that could have, and should have, been no more than 90 minutes. Even then, it would have been a total waste of time. 
• Jurassic World: Rebirth. The parts with big dinosaurs doing nasty things were good,. The rest of it was pretty meh. Out of the four movies we watched this month, this was the best, which is also a comment on the sad state of big Hollywood blockbusters these days. 
• Superman: Another wasted 2 hours. There was nothing in this movie that was better than the Christopher Reeve Superman. 

TV Shows

• Antiques Road Trip (season 10): Our journey though the gewgaw cluttered antique shops of Great Britain continues.
• Ridley (season 1): A police procedural set in the gloomy lake district in England. I found it rather slow. Main reason for watching is that it stars Adrian Dunbar (Line of Duty). (PBS)
• The Good Ship Murder (seaons 1-2): A murder mystery about a lounge singer on a cruise ship who doubles as a private detective. Light entertainment set in various ports around the Mediterranean. (BritBox)
• Ludwig; A puzzle creator becomes a detective by impersonating his missing twin brother. It's an implausible idea, as all such impersonation plots are, but we enjoyed it. Funny and more than a little twisted. (BritBox)
• The Liverpool Murders: Ashleigh and Olivia. A documentary-style show about two murders in Liverpool. Not the best example of this type of show. (Amazon Prime)

Featured Links - August 5, 2025

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

A farm north of Oshawa

• The 10 apps I can't live or work without - on Windows, Mac, and mobile. I've been reading Ed Bott's articles and listening to him on podcasts for years. You can trust his research and his opinions. You might also want to read this article he wrote about the comments section for the article. 
• Midcentury Dreams. "Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley's The Conquest of Space". I remember that book fondly, and the movie that was based on it.
• Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches. Life at 9 km. deep in the ocean. This might bode well for the prospect of life in the outer icy moons of the solar system. 
• A perfect storm (gift link). "As wildfires and storms fuel climate worries, the rise of weather content on social media shows there's a fine line between preparation and obsession."
• I Trusted Gemini With a Web Search and It Sent Me Straight to a Scam. "AI is creeping into more parts of the internet, answering search queries, recommending downloads, and even deciding what emails deserve your attention. But just because it sounds helpful doesn’t mean it always knows what it’s doing."
• Dennis McNally’s Last Great Dream: Memories of Working with the Grateful Dead, Tracking Kerouac and Exploring How Bohemians Became Hippies. I definitely want to read this.
• De-Google Project Update. "I introduced this family project in the spring of 2024. I won’t reproduce those arguments for why we’re working on this, but in the current climate I feel like I hardly need to. Since that post, our aversion to Google dependency has only grown stronger. Progress has been non-zero but not fast."

Review: The Lion King

Nancy and I went to see The Lion King in Toronto last night at the Princess of Wales Theatre. I am not a big fan of the original cartoon and I haven't seen the live action remake, but the stage musical is wonderful. The story line is standard Disney, warmed over fairy tale, with African elements but the staging and production raises it to another level. It's by far the most complex show I've ever seen staged and it's beautifully done.

Our seats were up in the balcony so it wasn't be best experience for me as far as seeing the details of the costumes and sets, but it was good for appreciating the staging. The actors, the music, and the sound were all first rate and the costuming and puppetry were exceptional.

It's showing until the end of August and tickets are still available. The lady sitting next to us got same day rush seating. I suspect most of the floor seats are taken by now, but the theatre isn't that big and balcony seats are fine.

The Lion King curtain call