Next Week – Best Movie! (2016)

I have a schedule worked out and will get it posted hopefully later today once I pretty it up some. We will start on May 9 with 2016 Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) since:

• I would be astounded if those finalists were included in the voter packet,
• most of us are probably already familiar with the finalists, and should be able to access them easily if not,
• I don’t see a problem discussing these on their merits alone,
• it’s an exciting category with some really fun finalists, and
• I didn’t get to it during nomination season.

The plan is every weekday to open a thread on each of the finalists in order listed on the Hugo site. Then just comment away and discuss them!! I will leave all comment threads open for the duration of the voting period. So, even though we will focus on particular categories each week, you can comment on them from that point on.

My main restriction is that on this site, we will only discuss the finalists on their merits as award worthy or not. Discussions of how they were nominated, larger cultural issues, etc. are all very important, but, those discussions are taking place in dozens upon dozens of other locations. Here we will only talk about the finalist works themselves.

Then on May 16, we will move on to:

• 1941 Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) to give some time for people to watch them since many of us haven’t seen most of these
• 2016 Best Related Work & John W. Campbell Award for New Writer since we need to double up some, and with something like the Campbell where there is the possibility of a body of multiple works, it would be useful to early on discuss what might be most award worthy (by those who are familiar with the writer) and then those of us who aren’t can have time to become familiar.

 

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I managed to track down general availability of the movies and listed that below. If anyone has other commonly available sources, let me know.

2016 Finalist	Thread opens	Netflix	Hulu	iTunes	Amazon	YouTube
Avengers: Age of Ultron	May 9	no	no	Yes	Yes (no rent?, free with Starz sub)	Purchase
Ex Machina	May 10	no	no	Yes	Yes, free rent with Amazon Prime	Rent or purchase
Mad Max: Fury Road	May 11	no	no	Yes, no rent	Yes, no rent	Purchase
The Martian	May 12	no	no	Yes	Yes	Rent or purchase
Star Wars: The Force Awakens	May 13	no	no	Yes	Yes	Rent or purchase

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And for the following wee, here is what I could find for the 1941 Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form). When looking for these, make sure to watch out for other versions from different years. Look for the 1940 version.

1941 Finalist	Thread opens	Netflix	Hulu	iTunes	Amazon	YouTube
Dr. Cyclops	May 16	No	no	no	DVD/VHS	Yes
Fantasia	May 17	Yes	Yes	no	DVD/Blu-Ray	no
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe	May 18	no	no	no	Rent, Free with CONtv? (free trial), DVD	Yes
One Million B.C.	May 19	no	no	no	used VHS	Yes
The Thief of Bagdad	May 20	no	Yes	no	DVD/Blu-Ray	no