geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Internet Outage Movie Catchup

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We’ve had two internet outages in the past week, one for most of Tuesday, the second for 36 hours from 2 a.m. Saturday to 2 p.m. Sunday.

During the Tuesday outage, I realized (once again) that Plex, home media server software that allows you to stream media over your home network, doesn’t do that if there isn’t an active internet connection. Having home media server software that doesn’t work as a home media server in a situation where you’re quite likely to want to use it because you can’t stream from external sources is more than a little frustrating, and finally pushed me over the edge into looking into alternatives.

So, I started getting Jellyfin set up as my media server, and when the internet went out again, it quite happily and easily let us watch a couple movies over the weekend. I’m still figuring out some of the ins and outs (Jellyfin doesn’t have its own native macOS or tvOS app, and the Infuse app that I’m using isn’t showing movie special features, but I don’t yet know if that’s a limitation or user error), but it was easy to set up, read my existing media files as originally set up for Plex just fine, and is doing what I wanted it to, which Plex doesn’t seem to be prioritizing anymore as they pivot more towards building their own streaming service.

All that said: Even when Plex was being a snit, we still have a DVD player, so between that and getting Jellyfin set up, we did manage to get three spooky-season movies watched:

Sleepy Hollow (1999): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Tim Burton during his peak years still holds up. I’d forgotten just how strong the cast was in this one. Still a lot of fun.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: This one doesn’t hold up so well. I still mostly enjoy it, but between the constantly varying stylization and Reeves’ and Ryder’s flatness, it drags on more than I remembered. Also, I’d totally forgotten just how horny this film is (not necessarily a bad thing, just didn’t remember that).

Young Frankenstein (1974): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Still and always a classic.

A Contest of Principles by Greg Cox

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67/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one was a particularly interesting and on-the-nose bit of “exploring today’s issues through SF”. Published in 2020 (and so, assumedly, written in 2019), the Enterprise is called into to observe the voting process for a planet having its first democratic elections. The contest is between a hardline conservative near-fascist military general whose followers use intimidation and assault, and a liberal reformist challenger who (minor spoiler) eventually steps down after a controversy and turns their candidacy over to a younger candidate. There’s a separate, more standard Trek adventure where Spock has to try to rescue McCoy and Chapel from other planets in the system, but reading the primary political plot just over a week before our election (between a hardline conservative fascist and a more liberal challenger who took over from the prior candidate) was an interesting experience. I can only hope we handle our election as successfully as this fictional planet does.

Me holding A Contest of Principles

📚 No Man’s Land by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson

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64/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Somehow I missed the bit in the blurb telling me this was a script for an audio play, so that was a bit of a surprise, though not a bad one. Short and quick, this follows Seven and Raffi just after season one of Picard as they deal with saving artifacts and a senile historian from a Romulan…though it’s really more about the first steps of their relationship. Fun to read, and I’m somewhat tempted to find the audio production to see how some of the more visual elements of the script translate.

Me holding No Man’s Land

🎥 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I wanted to like this more than I did. I wasn’t bad, but — and here’s a big surprise for a sequel appearing thirty years on — it wasn’t nearly as good as the original, either.

The good: The story is fairly self-contained and is explained as it goes along, so you could, in theory, watch this one cold without knowing the original and not be totally lost (however, lots of settings, situations, and gags are callbacks, so it would be pretty obvious that you’d be missing jokes or setup). The use of lots of practical effects kept the look very much in line with the original. Each of the cast, individually, did perfectly acceptable work, and I do enjoy watching Keaton chew the scenery.

The bad: It’s jumbled and unfocused, with too many underdeveloped antagonists, none of whom really get terribly satisfying resolutions.

In the end, I was entertained enough in the moment, but would have gotten much more bang for my buck if I’d waited for video rather than seeing it in the theater, and likely won’t be adding this one to my physical media collection.

📚 Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures edited by Kel McDonald

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62/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Really good anthology of short comics about historical moments, ideas, and efforts that were unsuccessful. I’d forgotten the premise between the time I ordered this one and when it arrived, so it was a peasant surprise to discover it was all non-fiction, and while a couple of the stories I’d heard of before, much of these little tidbits of history were new to me.

Me holding Failure to Launch