“Free Solo” is a National Geographic Documentary Film about professional climber Alex Honnold’s efforts to scale El Capitan free solo.  It was directed by Elizabeth Chai Vaserhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who is also a climber.

Honnold was apparently the first to make the ascent on this particular rockface without ropes and harnesses.  El Capitan is about 3,000 feet tall in Yosemite National Park and is probably one of the best known and challenging climbs worldwide.  At least, that;s the impression I got.

I am not a climber of any sort, but I still found myself drawn in by Honnold’s journey to accomplish his dream.  The film does a good job of keeping its audience engaged through explanations that are neither boring or condescending.

Honnold himself is an interesting guy. There was some effort to explore the psychology behind his compulsion to make such a dangerous ascent.  He apparently has had some difficulty with romantic relationships related to his death-defying pastime.  He does have a girlfriend in this film who struggles to wrap her head around the compulsion, but it is evident that they are good together.  I have no idea of that relationship is still a go for them.  I hope so.  Honnold has a memoir called “Alone on the Wall” which was written with David Roberts.

The interaction between Honnold and his fellow climbers, such as Tommy Caldwell and Jimmy Chin was also quite fascinating, even if I didn’t quite comprehend all of the jargon.  The concerns over Honnold finding the filming process a lethal distraction was an interesting piece to be included.

As expected, there is some breathtaking scenery that is worth the endurance of some of the slower moments of this film.  There was a wide range of subtle issues explored as well from romantic tension and the mental preparation it took for him to finally gain the experience he wanted from such a feat.

I am a bit too old, creaky, and rotund to take up some a practice.  I may not have been motivated to take up the practice of rock climbing after enjoying this film, but I am very interested in hiking around Yosemite someday.  I can certainly look at El Capitan and appreciate the majesty of the mighty monolith.

I am not a frequent documentary viewer, but I did enjoy this one quite a bit.  Even if one isn’t a climbing enthusiast, there is plenty of reason to check this out.  I believe it has been nominated for an Academy Award, and I am rooting for it.

“Beyond the Ultimate Adventure” is a Doctor Who audio play from Big Finish Productions.  This episode is part of the Companion Chronicles and is a sequel to an adaptation of an old stage play entitled “The Ultimate Adventure”  Terrance Dicks once again provides the story as Claire Huckle and Noel Sullivan reprise their roles as Crystal and Jason, respectively.  Colin Baker fills the part of the guest actor as the Sixth Doctor. Typically the Companions Chronicles will have an actor who played the companion in the television series take center stage with another actor to play one of the other characters in the story.  The man himself returns as the Doctor, as he will hopefully do for years to come for Big Finish.

The Doctor and his friends are lured to a cosmic treasure hunt in which some old enemies appear along with a new adversary.  It actually has a more interesting story than its predecessors.  There isn’t much that really hits the bullseye as far as blowing me away, but it’s not a bad episode.  Colin Baker being there does help considerably, which is often the case if the script is lacking.  Huckle and Sullivan work well enough, but they would likely be more of an acquired taste if more adventures featured them.

Basically, my enjoyment of this one was pretty mild on the first run. I may appreciate it better when I queue this one up again.

“Day of the Dove” is a collection of adaptations by James Blish from a few of the original Star Trek television episodes. I found this little volume in a used bookstore in Denton, TX and thought it was an original novel until I actually got a closer look.  “What Are Little Girls Made Of” starts this off followed by “The Squire of Gothos” and then “Wink of an Eye”.  The final trio of stories are “Bread and Circuses”, “Day of the Dove”, and “Plato’s Stepchildren”.

This particular volume was first published in 1973 and is probably only of real interest to the more devoted of “Star Trek” fans.  Blish is a decent enough writer, but not a whole lot really stands out here.  I think Kirk and the other crewmembers come off better in the more original novels that have been published by Pocket Books for years.

Hopefully I have not read the next one before.  I don’t think I did, but next up is “The Silent Speaker” by Rex Stout.

“Brother Orchid” is a crime film released in 1940 and it also has some comedic elements to it.  The film was written by Richard Connell, Earl Baldwin, Jerry Wald, and Richard Macauley and directed by Lloyd Bacon.  Edward G. Robinson is in the leading role with a cast that includes Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sothern, Donald Crisp, and Ralph Bellamy.

Robinson plays a crime boss who decides to leave his crew for a bit in a world-wide search for what he thinks his class.  Little John Sarto leaves the gang in the hands of Bogart’s character, Jack Buck.  Jack Buck….now that’s a great name!  When Sarto returns from his travels after going broke, he finds that resuming his position as the boss is met with some surprising resistance.  Surprising to him anyway.   Sarto is able to raise another gang to rival the one now under the leadership of his former lieutenant. When Sarto is lured into a meeting that ends up becoming an ambush, he soon finds himself having to recover from gunshot wounds at a monastery.  The time with the monks starts to awaken whatever sense of decency Sarto may have once had.

This is a mildly interesting movie.  This is a pretty familiar performance from Robinson, so he does well with it unsurprisingly.  Bogart is in more of a supporting role here, but he seems to make the most of it.  I wouldn’t call it the most memorable of classic films in my eyes, but it was not one I minded taking the time to see.  The monks did not come off as caricatures, which was a telling accomplishment.  The gangsters were a little hammy, but that was typical for this era of filmmaking.

This movie is a bit flawed but there is some enjoyment to be found here.

“The Tenth Doctor Chronicles” is a Doctor Who audio boxset from Big Finish Productions. There are four stories in this collection featuring the Doctor’s tenth incarnation, however David Tennant is not in this one.  Tennant has done some Big Finish released, but not this one.  Instead, a young actor named Jacob Dudman takes on the role and the narration. Dudman is joined by just one other actor in each of these tales.  I might as well just say this was quite well done overall.

The director, Helen Goldwyn, is also the writer of the first entry, “The Taste of Death” in which the Doctor and Rose Tyler land on a resort planet where they encounter a familiar foe who have concocted a deadly recipe for the guests.  Arinze Kene is the guest actor who plays one of those unexpected allies of the Doctor’s and is looking for his lost brother. He was pretty good as well playing off Dudman’s version of the Tenth Doctor. This was a pretty decent story, although the familiar foe isn’t necessarily one of my personal favorites.

“Backtrack” is the second story presented by Matthew J. Elliot in which the Doctor and Martha Jones find a time ship that is doing more damage to Time than was intended. Big Finish voice veteran Jon Culshaw is on deck for this one.  I liked this one as well.  I don’t recall any performance from Culshaw hitting a sour note, and this one is no exception.

The one story that didn’t grab my attention was “Wild Pastures” by James Goss.  Jacqueline King reprises her role of Sylvia Noble as an alien presence invades the supposed serenity of a retirement community.  Goss is a pretty frequent contributor to the franchise with novels and audio dramas.  He is usually pretty good, but this one didn’t quite grab me as much as I would have liked.  There is nothing really awful about this story, but there was not much that stood out for me other than some occasional amusing banter between the Doctor and Sylvia.

“Last Chance” is the final story in this set.  Guy Adams brings back aristocratic thief, Lady Christina de Souza, back into the Tenth Doctor’s orbit as an alien hunter tries to collect the last of various species.  Michelle Ryan steps back into the role of Lady Christina with expected ease even after her debut in “Planet of the Dead” nine years ago.  This one was pretty interesting because there seemed to be a lot more exposition than I remember usually in these releases.  There is a pretty good whimsical tone struck here that is well played by Dudman’s delivery.  I liked that this would be placed toward the end of the Tenth Doctor’s life, however that aspect was mentioned only a couple of times briefly.

Dudman’s impression of David Tennant’s version of the Doctor is actually startlingly good.  He apparently is going to do the same with Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor.  Dudman also happens to be a very compelling narrator.  Tennant has already been on board the Big Finish train, however Smith has yet to be convinced.  Both of those actors have been quite busy since leaving the television series, however Dudman’s voice talents will serve as an acceptable substitute until both actors find the time and will to reprise their Doctors.  My enjoyment of the individual stories varied a bit, however the set as a whole is one not to overlook.

“Serenity” is labeled as a neo-noir thriller and is written and directed by Steven Knight, however the big reveal or twist sort of makes me reconsider that genre.  Lots of big Hollywood powerhouses populate the isolated Plymouth Island.  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, and Jason Clarke head up the cast.

The basic premise is that an embittered fishing boat captain is strangely obsessed with a supersized tuna lurking off the shores of this island.  He is having some strange affair with some local, rich widow played by Diane Lane.  His ex-wife, in the shape of a now blonde Anne Hathaway, turns up and tries to hire him to kill her current abusive husband.  Baker Dill, played by McConaughey, has some strange mental connection to his son, Patrick, who is apparently is a genius gamer who creates a virtual world that resembles the island.  Jason Clarke is pretty convincing as the abusive, drunken husband with more money than sense.

The scenery is beautifully captured on film, so it had that going for it.  The major twist or reveal is actually somewhat evident pretty early in the unfolding in this story and was just clumsily handled.

Some of the basic ideas were mildly interesting.  The cast was just talented to keep me from leaving too terribly exasperated, but I the script was just silly enough to keep from being too terribly impressed.

“The Open House” is a Netflix film that was written and directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote.  It stars Dylan Minnette and Piercy Dalton.  A widow and her teen-age son leave their home and piling debts behind to spend some time in a mountain house that her sister put on the market.  The two of them have to leave the house during the open house sessions.  Anyway, there are the usual spooky happenings such as water heater issues, cell phones missing and then turning back up, strange sounds from the basement. The kid is upset understandably about his father’s recent death.  There is a strange neighbor turning up suddenly.  There’s a flirtatious man who may or may not be as nice as he appears.  There isn’t much that hasn’t been explored in other films of this genre.

Look, this is a B film. I know that expectations need to be set low, however there was a lot left unexplained when it comes to why these two people were terrorized.  There were some decent jump scares.  The acting could have been worse.

There were some interesting concepts and moments, but I was not too satisfied with it when the end credits rolled up.  I should be more annoyed that I wasted my time with this, but I know this happens when one’s tastes can be as macabre as mine.

“The Fourth Doctor Adventures Series 7: Volume 2” is a Doctor Who audio boxset from Big Finish Productions.  This is the second half of the seventh series of Fourth Doctor Adventures where Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are reunited in their reprised roles of the Doctor and Leela, respectively.

Justin Richards is the author of “The Shadow of London” which has a small guest cast with Darren Boyd, Timothy Speyer, and Catherine Bailey.  The Doctor and Leela apparently arrive in a curiously sparsely populated London in the late 1940’s and find the ferocious results of an unholy experiment stalking the streets.  There were some pretty good twists in this one. This turned out to be a pretty engaging story.

Dan Starkey delivers “The Bad Penny” in which he also performs alongside a guest cast that includes Greg Haiste. Keith Barron, and Laura Rees. The Doctor and Leela arrive at a hotel with disappearing guests and a very malevolent resident in the VIP suite.

Guy Adams finishes off the collection with “Kill the Doctor!” and “The Age of Sutekh” where the Doctor find a very powerful and very evil adversary who only lives to destroy. Gabriel Woolf reprises his role of the fanatically destructive sole surviving Osiran which was introduced in the 1975 television serial “Pyramids of Mars”.  Sutekh has arrived on a human colony world known as Drummond in the far future where he wants to change it in his image before obliterating it.  Woolf still sounds fantastic as does Tom Baker.

There really isn’t a bad story in this set.  I am not usually a fan of bringing back villains who only had one appearance of the television series, but Sutekh was kind of fun to have back to go against the Fourth Doctor again.

This collection also showcases why The Fourth Doctor and Leela enjoy such popularity among the fans and leaves us hoping that not too much time goes by before their next pairing.

“Night Moves” is the most recent Alex Delaware novel written by Jonathan Kellerman.  A family goes out to dinner and returns home to find a mutilated corpse dropped in the den.  Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis enlists the assistance of psychologist Alex Delaware for his insight.

Kellerman is still an intriguing author, however there is not much I found terribly unique here.  Some of the side characters seemed to be somewhat caricatured.  The family at the center of the story were quite dysfunctional, which is nothing unusual for a Kellerman novel.  Certainly nothing unusual for a thriller, however I was not finding the Corvin family all that compelling.  It was another family with bratty kids, an overbearing, obnoxious husband who doesn’t take much of what is going on all that seriously, and the panicky, overprotective mother.  It just all seems familiar, particularly in a Kellerman novel.

There also seemed to be a lot hinging on some pretty far-fetched coincidences.  I guess most of Kellerman’s works is pretty far out there, but this one just hit me more noticeably.

I am still a fan of this particular series, and this did have some scenes which I appreciate.  I often say that I really enjoy the scenes when Delaware and Milo get together and discuss their case over a sandwich or something.  I am not sure why I like those moments so much, but I look forward to those scenes when I read a Delaware thriller.

It appears that Kellerman seems to really try to outdo himself when it comes to bizarre murders, and he often seems to try a little too hard.

This novel is fine.  It’s not bad, but there was not much to make it stand out for me.

Next up, will be a literary journey into the final frontier with an anthology of adapted stories from the original “Star Trek” series.  “Day of the Dove” was first published in 1973 and has a small collection of episodes adapted to prose form by James Blish.

“On the Basis of Sex” is a film about the early legal career of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  It is directed by Mimi Leder and stars Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justn Theroux, Sam Waterston, and Kathy Bates.

It begins when Justice Ginsburg is already married with a child and starting her first year at Harvard Law School in 1956.  Her husband, Martin Ginsburg, is stricken with cancer, however not much is spoiled by revealing that he survived since it is known they were married for over fifty years before his death.  The big case at the climax of the film is about a man who was refused a tax deduction usually given to caregivers due to him being a bachelor caring for his ailing mother.  The movie deals a lot with the challenges women faced in the mid-twentieth century when they had aspirations such as practicing law or other more lucrative careers.

It was a film I appreciated a bit more than I expected.  The performances were strong. I did also like that Martin Ginsburg was portrayed as having a formidable legal expertise as well.  I may not agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her political leanings these days, but if this film was at all accurate in the depiction of her early struggles to practice law, I can easily respect her intelligence and tenacity.

All of the cast did well ,even the young actors who played the Ginsburg children. The legalese could get a little dry at times.  I had a little trouble at times following the legal terminology, but I got the gist of what was going on.

The movie is certainly one of the stronger releases to kick off 2019.