Author: Alex Diaz-Granados
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Musings & Thoughts for Friday, October 8, 2021, or: When Preordering New Blu-ray Releases Becomes a Game of ‘Hurry Up & Wait’
Hi, there. Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon here in New Hometown, Florida on Friday, October 8, 2021. It’s a hot, muggy “autumn” day in west-central Florida. The current temperature is 85˚F (30˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 72% and the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 3 MPH (5 KM/H), the heat index…
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Book Review: ‘Apollo Explorations of the Moon: The NASA History – 50th Anniversary Edition’
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well…
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On Blu-ray Collecting: The ‘Pre-Order Gremlins’ Strike Again!
Well, it seems as though the Amazon pre-order gremlins have struck again. In June, an Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection box set of 4K UHD Blu-rays that I pre-ordered a few months earlier and was scheduled for a June 12 “street date” by Paramount Home Media Distribution was delivered almost two weeks later. More recently, Paramount’s…
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Remembering My ‘Papi’: My Dad Died a Hero, But He Shouldn’t Have…..
Yesterday – Monday, October 4, 2021 – was my father’s 102nd birthday. I never had a chance to say “Happy birthday, Papi” to Jeronimo Diaz-Granados before he died. At least, not at an age in which I could say it uncoached by my mother Beatriz. I was less than seven months old when he celebrated…
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Papi, I Hardly Knew Ye….
Today would have been my father’s 102nd birthday. Had Jeronimo Diaz-Granados not been killed in a plane crash on the morning of February 13, 1965, who knows how many birthdays he would have celebrated with Mom, my older half-sister Vicky, and me. Would Dad – or Papi – have lived to be 102? I doubt…
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A Writer’s Tale: Truth or Fiction?
“Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.” ― Dean Wesley Smith Where do you get your ideas from? All writers of fiction, from Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Jules Verne, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Harris,…
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On Books: My TBR Pile Keeps On Growing, and Growing, and Growing
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in Alternative History (Alt History), And the Last Trump Shall Sound: A Future History of America, Books, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Harry Turtledove, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year, Ian Doescher, Jack Mitchell, MacTrump: A Shakespearean Tragicomedy of the Trump Administration, Part I, On Writing Well: 30th Anniversary Edition, Star Wars Books, The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War, The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic PoemHi, there, Dear Reader. If you’re a regular visitor to this space, you know that I’m an avid reader. It’s a trait that runs in my family, at least on my mom’s side; most of my relatives, including both of my grandparents, Mom, and even my half-sister Vicky are/were readers, and family legend has it…
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Adventures in Good Reading, or: Awaiting the Arrival of ‘The Odyssey of Star Wars’
One of the cool things about Star Wars is the universality of its story, especially when it concerns the Original Trilogy of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. I mean, even though the movies were conceived by a (then) young American filmmaker named George Lucas and featured an Anglo-American…
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Movie Review: ‘Star Trek’ (2009)
Star Trek (2009) Written by: Alex Kurtzman (credited), Roberto Orci (credited), Damon Lindelof (uncredited), and J.J. Abrams (uncredited) Directed by: J.J. Abrams Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana, Winona Ryder, Ben Cross, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Morrison, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy James T. Kirk: [upon…
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4K UHD Blu-ray Box Set Review: ‘Star Trek Trilogy: The Kelvin Timeline’ (2020)
On Tuesday, May 12, 2020, Paramount Home Media Distribution released Star Trek Trilogy: The Kelvin Timeline, a six-disc (three 4K UHD, three 2K Blu-ray discs) box set which rounds up the three Star Trek films set in a version of Star Trek: The Original Series’ universe in which the 23rd timeline in which James T.…
