Ford Raptor R – R stands for Reality-challenging!
- Thursday, August 10, 2023
Jim publishes TechnoFile Magazine. Jim is an affiliate with the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada and his careers have included journalist, technology retailer, video store pioneer, and syndicated columnist; he does a biweekly column on CBC Radio One's The Business Network.
One of the great westerns of all time, Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, has made the transition to 4K disc, and it was worth the wait.
Ditto for "East of Eden," Elia Kazan's take on John Steinbeck, a movie I didn't like very much but which many others seem to think is equally classic to Rio Bravo. Those people are wrong, of course, but at least fans of the film now have a much more state-of-the-art version to be bored by.
Is Mazda's all-new CX-90 three row SUV another "Mazdapiece" from the Japanese manufacturer?
I'd say yes, having just spent two weeks in two different versions of the vehicle. Now, I'm a Mazda fan anyway, thanks to their Japanese reliability and Mazda's famous "Zoom-Zoom" fun to drive quotient. Even a big SUV like this – formerly called the CX-9 – was more fun to drive than it had any right to be. They don't use that little kid's Zoomy utterance any more, alas, but the vehicles still embody the concept well.
Now that summer is here and many folks are preparing for their vacation road trips, it might make sense to ensure your vehicle will get you where you want to go.
This might seem like a "duh" moment, but it's easy to forget to take a few seconds to give your vehicle the once over – twice, if necessary – to see that it's up to snuff and the chances are minimized that you won't get to your destination, let alone back again.
Director Harold Ramis unleashed Chevy Chase and his family's first cinematic vacation on an unsuspecting public back in 1983 and now Warner Brothers, as part of its 100th anniversary celebration, is unleashing it again, this time on 4K disc.
Honda's Accord has been a winning choice for car consumers for decades, and this new, 11th generation promises that great ride in the marketplace of life will continue for at least a few more years.
That's a good thing, especially in an environment where some companies are phasing out their cars completely, moving to the SUV market alone. I think this trend is stupid – some companies are abandoning the car vehicle market to the competition, which seems like a pretty lame marketing idea considering pendulums tend to swing both ways and once people are buying cars again some manufacturers will be forced to play catch up.
Honda's Ridgeline is a very interesting pickup truck; it's really a mid-sized, two row SUV whose rear cargo area has been replaced by a pickup truck bed/trunk combo that Honda undoubtedly believes makes it the best of both SUV and small truck worlds.
Shazam! The Fury of the Gods is the interminable sequel to the mostly watchable and kind of fun original, but it ups the ante substantially and unnecessarily to become a fairly incoherent mishmash that had us checking our watches repeatedly to see if the ordeal was coming to an end yet.
While the "Big Three" North American carmakers have owned the full-sized pickup truck market since there really was such a market, Toyota has been working hard at getting a major slice. And they seem to be making progress, though it's still an uphill battle for the Japanese automotive giant.
Talk about a "hit" movie!
Deep Impact was one of two "When Worlds Collide-type" movies released in 1998, the other being the Michael Bay/Bruce Willis action/adventure flick "Armageddon." The latter did better at the box office, but pales Deep Impact, in my never humble opinion, in its status as a good science fiction movie. Or even as a good disaster movie.
Subaru's largest vehicle, the Ascent, has received some tweaks and upgrades for the 2023 model year, undoubtedly to help it compete better with such vehicles as Mazda's terrific CX-9, the Honda Pilot, Toyota Highlander, VW Atlas, etc. with which it goes head-to-head.
Do you like to have your sore or tight muscles massaged, but don't like having to trek down to the local masseur/masseuse/masswhatever all the time?
Well, there is a number of massage tools available for such folks, from products dedicated to a particular body part (such as your feet or neck) to hand held massager "guns" that bring their own calibre of performance and flexibility to the task.
I looked at such a hand-held beast a couple of years back, the Theragun Elite, and though I don't use such things very much, my dear wife liked it a lot, and in fact uses it to this day. She likes the concept because she now has a machine that rubs her the right way, unlike her husband.
Paramount Pictures has finally released the quartet of Star Trek: The Next Generation movies, and it's about time.
Now, TNG movies have been pilloried for years as not being up to Trek snuff – and I generally agreed with the pillorying over the years. Now, however, having not seen any of these films for at least a decade, my revisiting the collection has given me a, perhaps, more mellow feel toward them.
The bad news? It's true that you can no longer get a V6-powered Toyota Highlander. The not as bad news is that the turbo four that replaces it puts out plenty of poop, such that you may find yourself not missing the oomph and smoothness of the old 3.5 litre V6.
I have to admit, I missed it, but not nearly as much as I thought I would. The new turbo does a very good job.
Paramount Studios has finally released the epic fantasy Dragonslayer
on high definition disc and it's a very nice transfer, and you even
get some pretty substantial extras in the Blu-ray box.
Dragonslayer
is, as I noted in my original review of the DVD about 20 years ago,
one of the best fantasy films I've seen – perhaps not counting Peter
Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy.
It's a classic man vs. monster story featuring a great screenplay that
tells the tale intelligently and with humour. It also features top
notch performances and terrific special effects (for the pre-CG era)
that were nominated for an Academy Award when the film came out.
Honda's CR-V has been around for ages and continues to evolve nicely. In fact, this new version is the nicest I've driven in at least a couple of generations. Honda has, indeed, really gotten it together with this new model.
It's also the first generation of CR-V in which Honda makes a hybrid version available, a version I got to drive over the Christmas season and which – other than its extreme weather performance (which is definitely not a uniquely Honda issue) actually appealed to me more than the non-hybrid "Sport" version that's the subject of this particular rant. And I may be risking a lightning strike on my head by admitting that I preferred a hybrid to a "regular" vehicle.
Cord cutters interested in expanding their viewing choices for free have a wide variety of potential outlets from which to choose, a dizzying array in fact.
I'm a big fan of the Roku streaming devices, which are an affordable way to up your content ante substantially – including premium services such as Netflix, Amazon and the rest of the usual suspects. But if you don't want to pay for those services, a quick surf through the menus of available apps will bring you face to face with an amazing number of apps/channels that stream stuff for free. And you may be amazed at what you find.
Subaru's historic legacy is a long string of interesting, all-wheel-drive vehicles, and its current automotive Legacy continues that trend by offering a nice-to-drive sedan that'll handle all four seasons of weather with aplomb.
Alas, Subaru has chosen to follow the "nannie herd" by making the vehicle so annoying that I, for one, would hesitate to visit a dealership to purchase one.
It's too bad, because I really liked driving Subaru Canada's
Legacy GT through some very wintry Calgary roads this past January. It has plenty of pickup, from its turbo "boxer" four cylinder engine, a cat-like independent suspension and Subaru's famous symmetrical all-wheel drive. I couldn't even bring myself to hate its CVT, continuously variable transmission, the way I do usually when I drive a car that's saddled with one.
Honda fans who've been pining for a hybrid version of the venerable CR-V SUV/Crossover can now breathe more easily, as the Japanese carmaker has introduced such a beast with the new, sixth generation version.
And it's a peach, a lovely vehicle to drive and to live with, and my complaints can only amount to nit picks against this terrific ride – something I've been loathe to say about recent Honda generations with their annoying "safety" nannies that beat you over the head with themselves.
No more! Well, more about this later…
A special TechnoFile rant.
Everyone knows that electric vehicles are a wonderful panacea and that anyone who embraces them are forward thinking, wonderful people who only have the best interests of the universe in mind.
Right?
I mean, aren't electric vehicles going to singlehandedly eliminate the need for that awful black gold stuff that keeps cropping up underground – and sometimes right on the surface – while making us al happier and more productive? Etc., etc., etc.