The Small Screen Diaries: 05/28/26
Tomorrow, I’ll have more to say on the AI voice currently doing the second season of Deli Boys. TV Shows Watched: Spider-Noir: S1E2 (Amazon) with audio description, Legends: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, For All Mankind: S5E6 (Apple) with audio description, Top Chef: Top 8 (Peacock) with audio description, The Beauty: S1E8 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Love Story: S1E6 (Disney Plus) with audio description, and The Four Seasons: S2E1 (Netflix) with audio description Spider-Nor- I believe this is Zambie Page doing the audio description. I think there might have been some color in reference to Cat’s outfit, but I’m … Continue reading The Small Screen Diaries: 05/28/26
Saw 3
And now we’ve come to Saw III, which had so much promise to it, but also starts to show the cracks that would eventually split the Saw franchise wide open. Weirdly enough, this is the only one of the first seven films not done by Descriptive Video Works, so even the narrator changes. It’s strange how noticeable that is once you’ve settled into a rhythm with these movies. I’m not sure the writing itself suffered because of it, but the film definitely feels heavier. More cluttered. Like the franchise is starting to collapse under the weight of its own mythology. … Continue reading Saw 3
The Testaments: Season 1
When I first caught wind of The Testaments, it was a bag of mixed emotions. Part of me was excited that The Handmaid’s Tale would continue in some form, but the other part knew it couldn’t possibly hope to live up to the original. Then I got to the series finale of The Handmaid’s Tale, where they had the audacity not to reunite June with Hannah, and suddenly this sequel series became less of an option and more of a necessity. What a casting boon it turned out to be when someone picked Chase Infinity to play Agnes MacKenzie, aka … Continue reading The Testaments: Season 1
Shelter
Jason Statham is starting to become like a Street Fighter character brought to life, with Hollywood directors just smashing buttons to get the right combinations of punch, kick, shoot, repeat. Amazingly, he’s still regularly getting films into theaters, which is more than most actors can claim these days. Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg, an Oscar nominee, seems trapped under the streaming curse, while Statham’s increasingly generic action movies almost always get theatrical releases. Thinking about two of his recent films, The Beekeeper and A Working Man, Shelter lands somewhere in the middle. It’s not nearly as fun or creative as The Beekeeper, … Continue reading Shelter
The Small Screen Diaries: 05/27/26 TV Shows Watched: With Hat Atelier: S1E8 (CrunchyRoll) with audio description, The Testaments: S1E10 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Spider-Nor: S1E1 (MGM Plus?) with audio description, Strip Law: S1E4 (Netflix) with audio description, Stumble: S1E11 (Peacock) with audio description, Breaking Bad: S4E1 (Netflix) with audio description Witch Hat Atelier- Kefi keeps Coco safe. The Knights have some unexplored beef with the Witches, and Kefi realizes there’s something wrong with Coco’s ink. The writing for the AD is exceptional, I’m enjoying the dub cast, and the AI voice isn’t that bad. Human narrators start working on … Continue reading
Wuthering Heights (2026)
Heading into Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell was one of the most promising young women I could think of behind the camera. Promising Young Woman and Saltburn were both top 10 films in their respective years for me, if memory serves me correctly. Yes, I was one of the few, the bold, who actually enjoyed the audacity of Saltburn. Fennell also has a terrific ear for music, and one of the best things about Wuthering Heights is the original soundtrack from Charli XCX. It’s the kind of thing that years ago would have been a bigger talking point, but no one … Continue reading Wuthering Heights (2026)
The Small Screen Diaries: 05/26/26
TV Shows Watched: Man On Fire: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, Scarpetta: S1E1 (Amazon) with audio description, Sunny Nihgts: S1E3 (Disney Plus) with audio description, St Dennis Medical: S2E8 (Peacock) with audio description, DMV: S1 E Christmas (Paramount) with audio description, SNL: Harry Styles (Peacock) with audio description, and Abbott Elementary: S5E17 (Disney Plus) with audio description Man On Fire- Really like this audio description. The action scenes are well described and it compliments the tension of the show. Like the piranha juice sequence, where we are waiting to see if it reaches the eye, it keeps the tension going. … Continue reading The Small Screen Diaries: 05/26/26
Saw 2
How do you make a sequel to something that wasn’t intended to have a sequel? Gaslight the hell out of your audience. That’s basically what the Saw franchise does. It makes it seem like the patchwork was always there, you just weren’t paying attention. The first Saw was indie glory, made for just 1.2 million, and obviously turning a profit.The sequel, coming from a studio, had more than double the budget. It also had a larger cast, instead of focusing on two men in a room, it had a bunch of strangers waking up together, learning they really need to … Continue reading Saw 2
Scream 7
Apologies in advance, but this is full of spoilers. I admit my faults all the time. I got into film criticism, primarily out of a love for film, and wanting to discuss and explore what I liked, what other people liked, and find those gems. I’m also deeply nostalgic, and I become attached to franchises. This can lead to me being entertained quite easily by anything regarding a franchise I enjoy. Even if I don’t actually think it’s a good film, or TV series, I get pulled into revisiting the worst more than I would a film of equal measure … Continue reading Scream 7
The Small Screen Diaries: 05/25/26
I hope you had a lovely Memorial Day. This is how I spent part of it. TV Shows Watched: The Boroughs: S1E5 (Netflix) with audio description, The Night Agent: S3E87 (Netflix) with audio description, Rooster: S1E4 (HBO MAX) with audio description, Tracker: S3E13 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, Ted: S2E3 (Peacock) with audio description, The Murdocks: S1E4 (Netflix) with audio description, and Elzabeth: S3E14 (Paramount Plus) with audio description The Boroughs-I’m still super high on this show, even if it is slow walking through a bit of predictability. I can see a bit of what’s coming, because I watch too … Continue reading The Small Screen Diaries: 05/25/26
Saw
In case you were unaware, the origin of the crudely labeled torture pron genre now has its entire franchise on Netflix with audio description for the first time apparently ever. I was not really excited, but Alex Howard, of the Dark Room Podcast certainly was. He urged me to jump into the series. Prior to losing my sight, I did technically watch the first two films, but that was it. The original Saw was actually a low budget indie hit at Sundance, which was picked up, and distributed. its most. Marketable stars at the time were Danny Glover and Cary … Continue reading Saw
Ladies First
This is the rough part. If you had asked me at the beginning of the year if I’d be disliking a film with Sacha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, Charles Dance, Richard E Grant, Emily Mortimer, and Fiona Shaw, I would have probably thought no way in hell. Worst case scenario, that gang tried to make an Oscar bait film that the pacing is a bit rough in, and moves at a glacial pace. But to see them in a comedy, a high concept comedy based on a French Netflix title, we are living in some weird reality. I don’t know … Continue reading Ladies First
The Small Screen Diaries- 05/24/26
TV Shows Watched: The Boroughs: S1E4 (Netflix) with audio description, Witch hat Atelier: S1E7 (CrunchyRoll) with audio description, Criminal Record: S2E4 (Apple) with audio description, Kevin: S1E2 (Amazon) with audio description, Malcolm In The Middle: Life’s Still Unfair: S1E1 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Virgin River: S7E4 (Netflix) with audio description, and Celebrity Jeopardy: Finals (Disney Plus) with audio description The Boroughs- Again, trying to keep it light, but this is so up my alley. Even though it is headed exactly where I thought it would (anyone see Pete Davidson’s horror movie from last year?) I’m hoping there’s a little … Continue reading The Small Screen Diaries- 05/24/26
Arco
I’m a little late to the game on reviewing Arco, a film I first screened for awards consideration back in November of 2025, but I waited until I finally had the chance to hear the audio description track before sitting down to write this. So, shoutout to Audio Eyes and Sean Boggs, the one man assembly line who wrote and narrated Arco. Sean proves, if nothing else, that it is indeed possible for Neon to commission audio description for a title they picked up at Cannes that originally existed in another language, while apparently keeping costs at whatever Sean earns. … Continue reading Arco
Going In Blind: A Mosquito In The Ear
A Mosquito In The Ear sounds like one of those indie titles where you think, that’s original, that’s memorable, whoever came up with that should get a raise. Considering how many films we have named after super basic things, like Memory, brand identity right off the bat is a win.. Yet within the context of the film itself, the meaning lands with surprising weight. Adapted from Andrea Ferraris’ graphic novel Una Zanzara nell’Orecchio and directed by Nicola Rinciari, the film finds surprising depth in a deceptively simple premise. A little Indian girl explains to a nun at her orphanage what … Continue reading Going In Blind: A Mosquito In The Ear