Personally, I don't care, but it'll be more pleasant hereabouts for the next couple weeks if people are celebrating and anticipating, so, Go, Birds!
Also not something I've traditionally paid much active attention to, the nominees for this year's Academy Awards were announced early this week, and drew some attention in part because so many of the nominees were in commercially-successful films, and very much unlike the previous two years, no women were nominated for Best Director.
The shift in viewing environments in an era of streaming content - accelerated and reinforced especially in the habits forged during the 2020-21pandemic waves - is affecting the process. It's all much more than I'd want to casually get into here, but it'll be interesting to note how many of the nominated films and performances already are or will be casually available at home well before the awards show in March.
Each year, though in somewhat different contexts, I note how two entertainment events - the Academy Awards (since 1999) and the Superbowl (always) - are Sunday evening/night events, which has always struck me as rotten time for it since the next day is not a day off for the vast majority. Make Oscar or Superbowl Monday national holidays, and I'll perhaps reconsider the Sunday parties for each. Until then, I expect to stay true to every year so far, and ignore the broadcast for each -- highlights and key commercials will be easily found online the next day.
I've watched the first two of the four episodes they dropped this debut Thursday, and was very pleased. It's an effective blend of Columbo, and Rockford Files, with episodic and life on the run elements of Incredible Hulk, and even Quantum Leap - all influences Johnson noted in the run-up to the series. It's even shot and lettered in a fashion that from the opening seconds immediately took me back to watching the Sunday NBC mystery shows of the early '70s. Yet, in aggregate, it's very much distinctly its own thing.
As mentioned, this is on Peacock, and is yet another reason to give the streamer a try. Those of you with Comcast/Xfinity should already have access to it.
A fun item I missed mentioning last week - and it would have fit in well with the hyping I was trying to do for the Peacock streaming platform - was the arrival there of this past December's slaying Santa romp Violent Night. An action comedy that lives up to its title, David Harbour is a well-lubricated Santa in a rut, with a bloody history deeply buried in his past, who finds himself in a Die Hard scenario. He's rescuing the family of a good little girl who are being menaced by people who are decidedly on the naughty list. It's Violent Night (R 112m)
Curiously, watching this in the back half of January did more to put me in a Christmas spirit than anything in December did.
Arriving today on Netflix is an 8-episode, British supernatural detective thriller series, adapting Jonathan Stroud's children's/young adult series Lockwood & Co. Set in a world where supernatural threats have become common enough to be big business, the series focuses on a trio of teens and their titular start-up company.
The trailer has me feeling my years, perhaps thinking this is too clearly targeted at someone less than one third my age, but I remind myself that there have been plenty of teen-focused adventure items that have managed to have broader appeal. This just, at first look, seems to be on the simpler side. Not necessarily a bad thing, just maybe meant for younger, less jaded eyes. I'll likely at least give the first episode a look, though.
Landing today on Disney+ are some National Geographic items that may interest you.
In the speculative American Blackout, they examine the ins and outs of what would likely happen if a cyberattack were to create a national power failure here in the U.S. Spanning a 10-day period, it aims to look at what preparations would be most effective, and give some idea of what will and won't be standing when the power comes back. This is from 2013, btw, so if you were a National Geographic watcher I expect this would be old news to you. I haven't seen it, though, and it's a set of potential challenges that's only become more pressing with the years.
With the (unbelievable!) 37th anniversary of the January 28, 1986 event looming, a documentary on the space shuttle Challenger and its final crew, has been added to Disney+. It's Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes (2016 48m). It's neither narrated nor includes post-disaster interviews, it's instead made up of various journalist's records leading up to the flight.
Next Wednesday, February 1st, a 12-part series from Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner will begin on Syfy. Set a century from now, a colonization ship for a distant planet meets a catastrophe, as a sleeper crew of engineers and specialists, originally meant to only be awakened once they reach their destination, are awakened to find the ship still a year out from their destination, and the crew that operates the ship dead. Damage to the ship, and a supply situation that was never intended to sustain this many people, present them with a series of critical challenges. It's The Ark. As part of the streamer-aggregation pipeline, it'll also be over on Peacock.
Meanwhile - again, February 1st - Disney+ will finally add the last big part of the MCU's Phase 4 to their streaming mix, with the arrival of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. While I did get out to see it in the theater on opening weekend (a nice quiet, drastically under-attended showing early Saturday morning - in a theater that, unfortunately, is now slated to be closed) I only saw it the one time. I'm looking forward to being able to give it another, more leisurely look.
I
generally enjoyed the arc of it, though I still lament the decision to
kill off T'Challa rather than recast him in the wake of the tragic and
untimely death of Chadwick Boseman. The script rewrite that followed not
only burdened this film with some rushed, and thematically-repetitive
character developments, but with no insubstantial amount of mourning and
remembrance. Doing all that, while introducing several new characters
(principally the MCU's version of Namor, the Sub-mariner - along with
his his race, and versions of Namora and Attuma, and of the young
inventor Riri Williams who will be next reprising the role in the
Disney+ series Ironheart later this year) created some drag.
Screenwriter/Director Ryan Coogler was generally up to the challenge,
but some part of me can't quite let go of the fact that it wasn't a
necessary stretch of resources. Still, the decision was made, and it's
best to be at peace with it.
I'm going to wrap this with a free-to-all item -- one that I know I recommended somewhere back in the past several years of these Friday posts. It's free to all, and even if you might not believe at first that it would be of interest, I'm inclined to think it speaks to nearly anyone. It's a one-man, autobiographical show that the late Charles Nelson Reilly put together a little before the turn of this century. It's on YouTube, and busted up into 28, brief (most around 2-3 minutes) pieces, it's The Life of Reilly. Whether you watch that here or over on YouTube, it should queue up and roll from one segment into the next, aside from the commercial breaks. (Keep an eye open for opportunities to skip out of the second ad in a set after the first 5 seconds.)
It's a touching, funny and heartbreaking, reminiscence.
As with every week, I'm sure that after sending this up to the blog I'll remember multiple items I meant to mention -- and some of those may be folded in during the day. The others will likely wait another week... or longer if I forget them all over again.
For the moment, this is all that I have for this week. It's been a moderately expensive one for me (car repairs/inspection, and the Libertarian paradise of the Pennsylvania electrical power generator marketplace), along with some other pressures, and I still have one more day to make it through to reach the illusion of two days of safety.
When we next get together it'll be three days into February -- presuming we don't get caught in a Groundhog Day loop. (I see that AMC will be showing that back to back for a little more than half the day on the 2nd, btw.) Until then, stay warm and keep safe. - Mike
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