Starship Troopers 25th Anniversary Edition [4K] (2022)

I’ve owned almost every edition of Starship Troopers that’s been released since 1997.  I just got the 25th Anniversary Steelbook case edition as I only recently bought a 4K television.

Apparently the scan to 4K was done from the original print in 2017 for the 20th Anniversary and this new anniversary edition has a latest kind of Dolby soundtrack.  All I know is: it looks absolutely gorgeous.  The sound was good enough that it unfortunately bothered the dog and I had to keep lowering it.

I admit I have not rewatched this film in many years.  It’s a ‘third-rail’ for fans of Robert A. Heinlein and it deviates from Heinlein’s plot and world-building in several significant ways.  I think that it’s a very good “B-movie” as long as you forget about Heinlein’s source material while watching.  The CGI/special effects are better than I remembered.

There’s always much talk about director Paul Verhoeven’s intent with the film, but there are really two views within the film.  The first is  the close telling of the characters. Watching this is the closest you get to Heinlein’s source, even though there are many deviations.  The second view is the one that I think many people misread.  The FedNet broadcasts/Menu choices are a filtered/propaganda view that reads like a fascist society trying to control its population.  Sadly, by not having the Powered Armor of the MI, Verhoeven doomed the movie to overwhelmingly be about a bunch of amazingly stupid military tactics that don’t make any sense and I think that weights the propaganda side more than it should.

It’s OK to enjoy this amazing-looking edition. Just go and read Heinlein’s book, too.

 

Live at the Roxy Theatre (25th Anniversary) by Brian Wilson (2025)

This is one of the few recent releases that I have played on vinyl LP, streaming, and most recently as a Christmas-present CD.

I was lucky enough to have won the 3 LP version last month from a chat with Endless Summer Quarterly magazine and Oglio Records!  Besides the LPJT with winnings I also won a 2000-era autographed promo picture of Brian, which is so precious in the year that Brian passed.  I haven’t bought a vinyl album in a long time–the best part is that the art and liner notes are just amazing to look at in the larger form factor!  The 2 CD set has the same notes, but they are definitely harder to read.  Streaming, of course, gives you NO notes.

The other thing to remark upon is the number of tracks. One of the reasons I wanted the CD set is that it has the most number of tracks. Vinyl, of course, can’t fit as many minutes of audio on six sides as you can in 2 CDs. I think a savvy decision was made to limit the songs on the streaming album, which makes sense for the record company.

I wanted the extra songs–they are from other non-Roxy live performances  and for a “Brianista,” must haves.

If you’re a casual fan of the Beach Boys, listen to this set and marvel at how Brian could perform so well after all he had lived through.  I was blessed to see him live several times and this set is a good reminder about what those early tours were like.

 

Judith’s Journey by Susan Jo Lewis (Amazon, 2025)

I am not normally one for historical fiction, but the author is a friend who has been working on this story for a long time, and I am proud of her that she made it to publication.  As you can tell by the full subtitle of “Book One: Born with Wings”, Judith’s Journey is only the start of what may end up being the full life of a proto-English Queen who packs a lot of experiences in what stops here with her late teen years.

If there are anachronisms in the book I am not learned enough to have picked them out; I just went along with the story.  I will say that the amount of sex in the book surprised me, but it is logically placed if you’re telling the story of a woman ‘coming of age’.  In its own way it’s probably just as informative to a teen as Judy Blume’s Forever.

My main complaint with the Kindle edition I read  is that there were too many typos/errant punctuation.  I hope those can be fixed in a future edition.

I am looking forward to Book Two in this tale and hope it doesn’t take too long to be published.