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.
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.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is back in the home theatre, this time in what appears to be at least partly a vanity project that brings some of the more obscure DC Comics characters to the forefront.
Black Adam, not to be confused with Black Adder (God forbid!), is a "super anti-hero", a God-like being from ancient history who's awakened in our modern day and called upon to defend his descendant countryfolk from whatever band of robbers and thugs happens to be running the show there at the time.
Honda's smallest SUV/Crossover thingy is back with an all-new set of clothes and other new features, and while its new look may be a tad generic, it's a very nice vehicle that should compete well in its market niche.
Honda says the new HR-V features "aspirational qualities beyond its segment," whatever the heck that means, appealing to "young, active buyers" thanks to its "stylish, sporty exterior and roomy, feature-rich interior." Perhaps, though I think its new "stylish, sporty exterior" is less Honda-like (I liked the outgoing version's exterior styling better, because it was less generic and more "Honda-like" than the new one, which at a quick glance could almost be mistaken for a Ford Escape).
Looking for a mid-sized SUV/Crossover thingy that boasts Honda quality and reliability, yet can still take you off the road if you want?
Perhaps you should check out the 2023 Passport, which Honda slots between the three row Pilot (a supposedly all-new version of which is coming as well) and the "compact SUV" CR-V. There's also the even smaller HR-V, for those who something even more diminutive, and I reviewed it recently here, liking it quite a bit despite its continuously variable transmission.
Here with the Passport, however, we get a more traditional vehicle – a V6-powered model that uses an honest to goodness automatic transmission, in this case a nine-speed one.
Roku, the streaming device company that's becoming a real power in the streaming services department as well, has a new top of the line player that ups the ante over its predecessor. It also has raised the stakes on its own streaming services, including offering its first "made for Roku" productions.
I'm a fan of Roku stuff and recommend it often to my friends and family when they're looking for a way to cut ever more out of their cable bills. You can get into a Roku for well under a hundred dollars, depending on sales, etc.; their entry level Streaming Stick 4K is on sale right now, according to the Roku home page on the device, for a paltry 50 dollars. I've reviewed this device in the past and found it an excellent performer at a great price even when it sold for $70CAD.
Paramount studios continues to enhance nerdom with a slate of 4K releases culled from classic and near classic franchise films. And in the process, they've given Star Trek fans a healthy dose of new 4K versions of the original series-related movies.
The ones I wanted to see the most were the original George Pal War of the Worlds, and the supposed Director's Cut of Star Trek the Motion Picture. Fortunately, I also got to take a look at the 4K versions of Star Trek V – the Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI – the Undiscovered Country.
Oh, and because Paramount kindly bundled a Blu-ray of George Pal's great When Worlds Collide in the War of the Worlds package, we finally get to see a good hi definition (not Ultra, alas) of this earlier classic.
Whether you like your SUV and/or crossover to be big and luxurious, or small and sporty, there's an abundance of models from which to choose. And two carmakers famed for either sportiness or utility are offering brand new iterations of the old SUV/Crossover theme.
They are Mazda, with the CX-50 and Jeep, with its new Wagoneer. The first is a sporty little beauty whose existence I don't understand while the second is a huge and hedonistic land barge whose existence I don't understand, either. I'm sure profitability enters the discussion somewhere with either company, however, and that's fine.
This past summer's theatrical blockbuster is now available on a 4K disc, and if you're a fan of the Top Gun franchise, aviation in general, and/or Tom Cruise movies, this one is a must have for the 4K home theatre.
More than 30 years after the late Tony Scott put the original Top Gun into service, Cruise and a group of producers, friends and, I assume, acquaintances revisited the concept. It would have been easy to rehash the original film – just look to such sequels as Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens, for a fairly recent example – but instead Cruise and the producers went for an all new, kind of, story that takes into account the star's age and the changing geopolitical and technological scene.
It's big and it's brawny and its downsized power plants mean it's supposed to offer better gas mileage than before. But is the 2022 Toyota Tundra half ton pickup a big enough step forward to snag sales from a Big Three dominated by Ford's F-150?
Time will tell, obviously, but after my initial week in the all-new Tundra I was left feeling as if it's doubtful.
Now, full disclosure – I've said many times that I'm not a truck guy and this vehicle illustrates why: for a little guy like me, it's hard to get into and out of, and it drives more like a truck than a car or SUV (well, duh!). Not necessarily truck-related are issues such as the trouble I have seeing around its gigantic side-mounted rear-view mirrors, and the Tundra's new LCD screen interface nearly drove me nuts, a testament to today's trend toward eschewing user-friendly simplicity in favour of ever more complex and confusing interfaces that emulate smart phones.
Everyone's heard of spaghetti westerns, but did you know there was also a genre of Italian sci-fi flicks as well?
If not, I point your attention to Battle of the Worlds, a 1961 entry by Antonio Margheriti that stars the late great Claude Rains, star of such legitimate classics as Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and so many others. Rains, near the end of his long career, is said in the essay notes that accompany The Film Detective's new Blu-ray, to have taken this role on the financial advice of his wife and, though he does tend to chew the scenery more than a tad in his portrayal of a somewhat mad (or at least antisocial) scientist, he definitely does not phone in the performance.
Ford has long been the "king of trucks'", at least when it comes to overall sales of its long-time top seller F-150. But the company is heading in a new direction with its brand-new Maverick, a pickup truck that isn't built like most other pickups.
The Maverick is more like Honda's Ridgeline than the F-150, or its smaller sibling the Ranger. This means that, rather than being built "body on frame" the way most pickup trucks are, it's a more car-like unibody arrangement that may not be as robust as the "dedicated" pickup trucks, but which brings its own delights to the equation – for instance, in overall driveability.