Musings & Thoughts for Monday, February 27, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part III – Sunday Night Viewing

In case you’re wondering, I did not watch The Fabelmans or any movies that I own on Blu-ray, DVD, or digital copy. Instead, I read for a while from my copy of Paul Duncan’s The Star Wars Archives: Episodes I-III, 1999-2005, which is the second volume in Duncan’s behind-the-scenes history of how George Lucas created the first six films of the Star Wars saga.

I have both volumes, and even though I’ve browsed through them just enough to review at least one volume, I have not sat down to read them from cover to cover. I’ve gotten into a routine in which I stay at my desk pretty much all day and don’t read, listen to music, or watch TV in the same way that I used to in Miami. Thus, where once it used to take me a short time – usually one to two weeks, depending on the author, genre, or heftiness of a volume – to read a book, it now takes me longer than that.  

I did not, of course, spend most of my time yesterday reading Duncan’s book about how the Star Wars prequel trilogy was made. I wrote yesterday’s blog post, and played Regiments for about an hour – I set the Skirmish up with a 40-minute time limit, but since (unlike in real life) players can pause the simulation at any time for any reason, be it game related or to get up and grab a snack, the session ran longer than 40 minutes even though I beat the Red Force before time ran out – and ate dinner (a slice of Pizza Hut’s Big New Yorker pizza that was left over from a delivery order I made on Friday night).

I did, eventually, watch something so I could fall asleep: an episode of How the Nazis Lost the War, a six-part documentary made for Australian TV in 2021. Amazon’s Freevee streaming service is running it as part of its ad-supported lineup, and I’m a sucker for World War II documentaries, so after another night of indecision as to what to watch (movie-wise), I settled on it, even though I deplore how badly-timed the ads are on Freevee. (It’s sort of like what happens when you watch a long video on YouTube’s basic free-to-watch site; you get ads every once in a while, but since most of the content on YouTube is not written or edited in such a way as to allow commercials to play organically like they do on broadcast or cable TV, they cut into a scene where someone is talking in midsentence and roll over the content without pausing.

This. Is. So. Annoying,

I did get through most of the documentary – I still have one episode to go with How the Nazis Lost the War – without getting so irked at Freevee’s haphazard insertion of adverts, but I much prefer to watch documentaries on PBS, cable networks where they still know how to incorporate commercial breaks properly, or on home media. Henceforth, I will avoid Freevee unless I am truly desperate to watch something on nights when I can’t pick something from my own home media library.

I was still not sleepy when I decided to save the sixth episode of How the Nazis Lost the War for another time, so I grabbed my Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection box set from its shelf and watched some of the behind-the-scenes stuff on the Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Cut bonus disc.

I watched the entire first featurette – A Bold New Enterprise – in which Star Trek’s rebirth after a decade of post-cancellation syndication is discussed, starting with how Paramount sought to start a fourth TV network in the late 1970s with Star Trek: Phase II as its flagship show, and ending with the studio’s decision to cash in on the post-Star Wars boom of science fiction and re-invent Star Trek as a big budget feature film.

I then started watching the featurette devoted to the making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but it was already past 11 and I was sleepy, so I turned off my TV set and the Blu-ray player with my remote and went to bed. This time, unlike what happened on Saturday night, I slept well and woke up – a bit more rested – a little after 7 AM.

Aside from that, I don’t have much to tell, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe and healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.