Van Helsing: Season 1 — a review

Here’s how I started watching this one. Netflix uses an algorithm that learns the viewer’s taste in television shows and movies, based on previous selections and ratings, then begins to make recommendations for entertainment choices based upon this history. When I was a business college student way back in the Pleistocene Epoch, targeted advertisements based […]

The Flash: Season 8 — a review

The CW has announced that Season 9 of The Flash will be the final season. I will watch it as it airs. It’s that completist pathology—the collector’s curse—that drives me to watch all of something. If you share even a portion of the genome sequence that causes this, you understand what I mean. The first […]

10-List: First Seasons Watched (Since April 2022)

While it remains true that I’m a throwback, a curmudgeonly oldster who lives a disturbing amount of his time in the past, adverse to change and seriously un-hip to the latest trends in fashion, music and technology, I still surprise myself, on occasion, by moving away from my comfort zone to try out a new […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 1, Episode 6: “The Pack” (airdate: Monday, April 7, 1997): Part 2 of 3

15:01 – 30:00 The last time you and I got together to talk about this episode of BTVS, I mentioned that it wasn’t one of my favorite episodes. And, it’s not. But, as I watched it this time, with what I think is more clinical detachment, I began to wonder why this was the case. […]

Ozark: Season 4 (Netflix) — a review of the final season

I’ve been sitting on this review for a while. Allow me to explain. Like you, I am a complex person. I have certain mission statements, philosophies, operating systems—whatever names you want to give to whatever it is in my brain that governs what I do, think and write. On one hand, I’ve always considered myself […]

Cognitive Dissonance (or: a brief digression about God, the Scientific Method, a family history with alcoholism, and a belated requiem for The Cars’ Benjamin Orr)

According to Psychology Today, the term cognitive dissonance is defined thusly: Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way. I’ve been aware of the […]

Agent Carter: Seasons 1 & 2 — a review

I just watched the Marvel Studios series Agent Carter on Disney +. No, this wasn’t my first time watching it. I watched it the first time it aired, way back in 2015 and 2016, and was sad that it was cancelled. It has joined that list of television series that were cancelled too soon, in […]

10-List: My Favorite Iron Maiden Songs

I listen to all kinds of music. Jazz, country, blues, rap, surf rock, New Wave, punk . . . you name it. However, as you can tell by reading my Looking Forward quadmonthly reports, the music I return to time and again is hard rock and heavy metal. This was the music I was listening […]

\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 1, Episode 6: “The Pack” (airdate: Monday, April 7, 1997): Part 1 of 3

00:00 – 15:00 On this date in history, Georgi Shonin, a Russian cosmonaut who flew on Soyuz 6, passed away. As did Tomoyuki Tanaka, the Japanese movie producer and creator of the Godzilla franchise. Puff Daddy remains at the top of the US recording charts, with “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down,” which is just bad […]

Cinematic Perspective (Or, a digression about sensory engagement in movies, writing dialogue and narrative POV)

You like movies? I like movies. Some movies, anyway. Stories told through the medium of motion pictures tend to be memorable because they engage the senses of the person watching them. Sight and sound, certainly. These are the two obvious senses engaged. But, I think I can make a case for the other senses as […]

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