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.
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 |
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 |
Hopefully it will be readable, but here is my overall plan for the schedule. Might shifts some stuff around week 8 since that’s the most packed, but we will see.
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For those signed up for HBOGo/HBONow, Fury Road is available there.
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I added a STARZ sub to my Amazon Prime membership to watch Age of Ultron. It started with a 7-day free trial which I can easily cancel before I’m charged. (I may keep it since it’s $3 less per month than my cable company would charge.)
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