Category: Sci-Fi

Netflix Watch Now

Fahrenheit 451

My friend Bismo reports that he finally has the Netflix Watch Now service. I’ve had some trouble with it. Every so often it insists I don’t have enough available hard drive space, and that’s annoying. My 20 gigabyte C: drive is, I admit, tight but my 200 gigabyte D: drive is wide open.

The movie selection is still rather limited, but the service is a free add-on to the subscription. When the player isn’t telling me I don’t have enough hard drive space, and the connection speed measures high, the picture is DVD quality, as seen in this reduced frame from Fahrenheit 451.

Monsters and Madmen DVD

Monsters and Madmen

My appreciation of Criterion Collection home video goes back to its beginning, when Citizen Kane and King Kong were released on the old Laserdisc format. The discs included a commentary audio track, and extras such as trailers and production stills. These features are now taken for granted, but 20+ years ago they were exciting and ground-breaking.

Criterion specializes in releasing high-quality specialty videos for titles that are hard-to-find and/or haven’t been presented properly. Mike Dobbs has posted some interesting background on a new Criterion set of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, including a couple that feature Bill Pratt, aka Boris Karloff. I’ll be looking for these cheesy classics on Netflix, but when will there be a Queen of Outer Space DVD?

Star Wars – Missing Minutes

Biggs and Luke

A long time ago, seeing bloopers and deleted scenes from movies was a rarity. But along came DVDs and it started to seem that scenes were being shot solely for the purpose of padding out supplementary material.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/FEB07/SW.flv 400 175]

This post will be nothing new to die-hard Star Wars fans, but here are a couple of scenes that didn’t make it into the release of the first movie, which is coming up fast on its 30th anniversary.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/FEB07/Anchorhead.flv 400 185]

Star Trek New Voyages

New Voyages

If you don’t yet know about Star Trek New Voyages, click here. My buddy Bismo introduced us to New Voyages, which is but one of several amateur re-creations of the various Trek TV series. I think it’s by far the best.

For more background on the amazing phenomenon of fan-produced Trek TV, click here. While you’re reading that, you can listen to an NPR feature on New Voyages. Here’s the link.

New Voyages banner

Even More Netflix Instant Viewing

Mohr

It’s Bogart! Wait. Nope. It’s not Bogie, it’s Gerald Mohr. I cropped this from a photo taken of my Sony 32XBR100 screen, while Netflix Watch Now was running, thanks to the 25-ft. S-Video and audio cables running between the computer and the TV. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Add-on Note: I’m taking a break from playing with Netflix, and I’m doing my usual Web browsing. I see that Mark Evanier has Watch Now, too. Maybe everybody does. Click here to read Evanier’s comment.