A Bridge, a Bomb, and a Birthday Treat

Sunday, March 22, 2026, Orlando, Florida

Hi there.

It’s another warm early‑spring day here in my corner of Orange County. As I write this, it’s 80°F (26°C) under sunny skies. With a west wind at 5 mph (7 km/h) and humidity at 33%, it feels closer to 86°F (30°C). Today’s forecast calls for a high of 85°F (29°C) later this afternoon.

I don’t have much in the way of personal news, except to say that March is my birthday month, so I treated myself to two 4K UHD Blu‑ray titles. One of them, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, isn’t a new release—Sony issued this remastered edition back in 2021. I already own the original early‑2000s DVD and the Criterion Blu‑ray (currently buried in one of my moving boxes), but I wanted the 4K upgrade. This edition includes a digital copy as well, which I’m hoping I can redeem through Movies Anywhere.

The other title I’m waiting for is Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD release of A Bridge Too Far (1977). It uses Imprint Films’ 2024 4K restoration of Richard Attenborough’s epic about Operation Market‑Garden—the ill‑fated Allied attempt to seize a bridgehead over the Lower Rhine in Nazi‑occupied Holland in September 1944. This is a fresh release for the U.S. market and includes both a region‑free 4K disc and a Region A Blu‑ray sourced from the same restoration.

Even though A Bridge Too Far, based on Cornelius Ryan’s bestselling book, chronicles the Allies’ only major defeat in the 1944–45 northwest Europe campaign, it remains one of my favorite films. When it premiered nearly 50 years ago, I couldn’t wait to see it at the old Dadeland Twin in Miami—this, while a little space‑fantasy film called Star Wars was beginning to catch my friends’ attention. Ironically, considering how big a fan of George Lucas’s blockbuster I eventually became, A Bridge Too Far was the first movie I ever saw more than once in theaters. Much to my mother’s chagrin, of course—she not only had to fund my ticket but also drive me there, since at 14 I didn’t have any friends old enough to play chauffeur.

The new reissue of A Bridge Too Far drops on Tuesday, so I scheduled the delivery of Dr. Strangelove for the same day. That way, both titles arrive in a single shipment, and Amazon doesn’t burn extra fuel making separate deliveries. Spring always puts me in a reflective mood, and this year is no exception. These two films—one a razor‑sharp Cold War satire, the other a sweeping chronicle of ambition and miscalculation—bookend so many of the themes I return to as a writer and a lifelong student of history. Upgrading them feels less like collecting and more like tending to the stories that shaped me. With any luck, Tuesday’s Amazon Prime delivery will bring not just new discs, but a small reminder of why certain films stay with us long after the lights come