A quick note: Our old friend and long-time Bits columnist and reviewer Adam Jahnke has just kicked off his continuing Disney Plus-Or-Minus effort on Substack! All of his old installments are there along with his latest, which features The Barefoot Executive (1971). So be sure to click here and give it a look.
In release news this afternoon, retail sources are telling us to expect the DC Universe animated movie Green Lantern: Beware My Power to arrive on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD on 7/26.
European retail sources are also reporting that Paramount is preparing a 4K Ultra HD release of Event Horizon (1997) for the coming months. We’ll post more as we learn it.
And our friend James Mockoski, who you may know as the Film Archivist and Post Production & Restoration Supervisor for American Zoetrope, has just shared on Twitter that he’s beginning a new restoration project for release in 4K: Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982). That film should look terrific with HDR, and we can’t wait to see it.
In other news today, Ars Technica has a new article up that looks at the differences between physical media and streaming in terms of which is better for the environment (less energy-intensive, produces less carbon pollution, etc). It’s pretty interesting, so do give it a look.
Finally today, many of you will be aware that I’ve been a life-long Star Trek fan, though not much since 2016. I have decidedly not been a fan of modern Star Trek (meaning Discovery, Picard, the later Abrams films, etc). With that in mind, I’ve now seen the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the Captain Pike series that officially dropped this morning on Paramount+ in 4K with HDR. So here is my quick take on it:
It’s annoyingly on the nose. The writing is frequently lazy and glib, and the writers lean far too heavily and often on technology as a magic storytelling shortcut. The crew is 85% flying by the seat of their pants and 15% acting like trained professionals (and that ratio should be reversed). And Jeff Russo’s theme music is… sodden.
But… it does feel more like Star Trek. In fact, it feels exactly like what I expected more of after seeing Star Trek (2009). (It remains hard to believe that it took Bad Robot/Secret Hideout 13 years to figure out the right direction to go with this franchise, but here we are.) It’s easier to digest if you (as do I) assume this isn’t Prime canon but some alter-verse canon reboot. Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck are terrific, and adding Babs Olusanmokun to the cast (from Dune) was a coup—love that guy. I liked Adrian Holmes as Robert April as well. The show is visually glossy, but that actually works in a soft-focus/1960s homage kind of way.
God help me, I kinda liked it. More, at least, than I hated it and certainly enough to keep watching. My first episode grade: A C+ that’s trying really hard to become a B- but can’t quite get there yet. We’ll see.
That’s it for today! Back tomorrow. Stay tuned...
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