Rental Recommendations: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

 Hey everyone, happy Saturday! Or Caturday if you're a cat person apparently. I dunno. I can't keep up with everything the internet claims is a holiday or day of celebration or anything like that. It's time for another Rental Recommendation. This week I'm taking a look at Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country on VHS. The POV for this post is a Star Trek magazine looking at the VHS release in the summer of 1993. Let's get into it!

After being available only in a box set with the other five Star Trek movies, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is finally available on home video on its own. Which means that it's finally available to rent. This is the final mission of the Enterprise under the command of Captain Kirk and the entire crew from the original series. It does not disappoint. It has nods to The Next Generation, as well as to 25 years of Star Trek history. 

I'm not sure how well the box set it was originally part of has been selling, nor why Paramount chose to release it that way first. Especially because they waited a year and a half to release it rather than releasing the movie on home video last year following the end of its theatrical release. The movie is really good though and worth renting at any video store in your area. Is it the best Star Trek movie to date? Maybe not, but it's the best Star Trek movie since The Wrath of Khan came out back in 1982.

While this movie is the last one to star the entire original cast, we have learned that the next movie, which will be the first to star the cast of The Next Generation, which is about to start its final season, will feature some members of the original cast and is due to release in theaters next year, following the show's series finale. 

Definitely check out Star Trek VI on video this weekend. Even if you saw it in theaters back in 1991. If you own the box set that includes this video in it, you're good to go. There are scenes in the movie that weren't seen in theaters, which makes it doubly worth watching again and again.

Here in 2026, I watched this tape a lot. My dad had that original box set of all six movies when I was growing up, and that's how I watched it. I also had a taped off TV version that one of the nurses at the hospital gave to me during one of my stays during that period. I think it aired on TV sometime in 1992 and the nurse taped it for me whenever it aired, and then brought the tape in for me when she worked next while I was still in the hospital. I have the individual release in my VHS collection currently, and I'm gonna watch it in the very near future.

That is it for me for today my friends. I'll be back next week with more nostalgic goodness. Until then have a great rest of the weekend and I will see you all soon. Peace out!

Encino Man (1992) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a rainy Thursday. I'm back for a nostalgic movie review today. I watched Encino Man this morning as it's on Disney+ and my friends are reviewing it on the VHS Club Podcast tonight. Not to mention I'd never seen it before. So, I thought I'd write a quick review of it on here. No period specific POV for this review, just me writing about a movie from 1992 that I enjoyed. Let's get into it.

Encino Man is such a stupid movie, and I love it. This is sort of the kind of thing that I would've rented as a teenager in the early to mid 2000s, but it never came to my attention for some reason. I definitely wouldn't've been allowed to watch it before 1999, even though it's nowhere near as raunchy as I thought it would be. Which actually surprised me. It feels like a Disney movie, which makes sense since Disney did release this movie through its Hollywood Pictures label. But that's what interests me so much. It wasn't raunchy compared to something like American Pie.

I love the cast. This is Brendan Fraser at his peak. Going into the movie, I was afraid it was going to feel too similar to George of the Jungle except with Pauly Shore and Sean Astin instead of Leslie Mann and Thomas Haden Church, but, no, it did not feel that way at all. Although I'm sure when George of the Jungle came out people compared it to Encino Man, because of course they did. Brendan and Sean are the only two actors in this movie that I'm super familiar with their work, having seen them in tons of movies and shows. Megan Ward, who plays Robyn Sweeney in this movie, appeared on Friends, NCIS, Boston Legal, and 7th Heaven, all in episodes that I saw when they aired, or in reruns in the case of Friends. Mariette Hartley, who plays Sean Astin's mom in this movie, actually appeared in the Star Trek episode, "All Our Yesterdays" in the third season, and I think I saw her in an episode of NCIS as well back in the 2000s. 

Of course I know Pauly Shore as the voice of Bobby, Max and PJ's friend in A Goofy Movie, Ke Huy Quan from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, and Robin Tunney from Empire Records. Everyone else I've seen in an episode of a show or in another movie. So that was pretty cool.

My favourite scene in the movie is during the prom when Matt, played by Michael DeLuise, tries to expose Link as a Caveman, but the entire school just accepts him as such, completely humiliating Matt in the process. I love that scene because I love it when a bully gets his or her comeuppence at the end of a movie. I also loved the dynamic between Dave (Astin) and Stoney (Shore). You can tell they're best friends and that Stoney is doing his best to keep Dave grounded, understanding that neither of them will be popular at their school. The part I don't understand is when Dave and Stoney are having their argument near the end of the movie and Dave accuses Stoney of making Dave do all the work in helping Link acclimate to the 20th Century. We barely saw Dave do anything to help Link. That was Stoney for the vast majority of the movie.

I like Stoney. He's a great character. He's chill, fun, and understands things that Dave never gives him credit for understanding. I also like Robyn. She doesn't do a whole lot in the movie, but, I think she would've made a great love interest for Stoney. Don't get me wrong, Sean Astin is great in this movie, but, his character is too desperate to be popular and to have his classmates like him. In a way he's like Matt in that regard. Matt's even worse though.

I think what endears me to this movie more is the fact that, even though critics hated it, the audience loved it, and it ended up being a box office success. Which is impressive considering this was the same year that Batman Returns, Aladdin, Home Alone 2, Kuffs, A League of Their Own, My Cousin Vinny, Beethoven, Rock-a-Doodle, FernGully, Alien 3, Sister Act and Wayne's World came out. Six of those movies made it into the top 10 highest grossing films of 1992. According to the movie's Wikipedia article, the producer of the movie credited Wayne's World for proving that a movie like Encino Man could be successful. Wayne's World came out three months before Encino Man. So that's cool.

Like I said earlier, this was my first time watching this movie. I was five and a half years old when it came out in theaters, and so even if they'd known about it, I highly doubt my parents would've let me watch it at almost 6 years old. Of course, because they'd never heard of it, and nobody else I knew ever talked about it, I didn't know this movie even existed. But then, a few months ago, when Brendan Fraser was doing press for Rental Family, I watched a video where he went through some of his favourite roles, and Encino Man came up and I thought it looked intriguing. So, I looked up where it might be streaming, and I saw that it's on Disney+ and decided I would watch it at some point. Well, then, when the VHS Club posted what they were going to be covering on the show this week, I double checked to make sure it was still on Disney+ and it is, so I decided that now was a good time to watch it.

I really did not know what to expect with this movie. Comedies are hit or miss with me, and knowing that this is a comedy, I was afraid I wouldn't like it. Thank goodness I did like it, because it is a great movie. 

Overall this was a fun movie. It isn't the greatest movie of all time, but it's fun. I also appreciated the movie's runtime too. It clocks in at 88 minutes (1 hour, 28 minutes). It's definitely Rental Recommendations worthy, so keep your eye out for that sometime in the future. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Saturday for this week's Rental Recommendations post. Until then, have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Peace out! 

Rental Recommendations: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today's Rental Recommendation is for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The POV for this is it's 1994 and the movie just got released on VHS for the very first time, launching the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. Let's get into it.

We never thought this would happen, because Disney has been slow to release their classic animated films on home video, but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is finally available on home video! Relive the magic and excitement of Walt Disney's first full length animated feature film in your own home!

Aside from being a masterpiece of technical achievement, Snow White is a fun film for the entire family. Kids will love it, teenagers will be reminded of seeing it in theaters when they were kids, and adults will fall in love with the characters all over again. I hope your family will enjoy it again and again.

This tape has an introduction by Walt Disney's nephew, Roy, and it was released by Walt Disney Home Video on October 28th as part of their new Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection line. It's definitely a must to rent this weekend.

In the real 1994, my grandparents got this for my siblings and I when it first came out. They kept it at their place though we did borrow it from them from time to time until my sister got the Platinum Edition DVD in 2002. When I went through the remaining VHS tapes that Nana had in the basement of her and Grandpa's old house, I actually grabbed that tape along with the VHS of The Great Mouse Detective that she'd bought for me when it first came out back in 1992, and a few other VHS tapes from the '80s and early to mid '90s that were of interest to me.

Alright my friends, I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back next week for some more awesome blog posts. Thanks for coming back to the '90s with me this week to talk about my elementary school years, and the original VHS release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I have an idea or two of what I want to cover next week, but we'll see which one I wanna tackle next week. Until then, have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Peace out!

Elementary School in the mid to late 90s

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well for a hot Friday afternoon. Today we're going back to the '90s, when I was in elementary school. Specifically to when I was going to school at Greely Elementary School from 1994 to 1999, with emphasis on when I was between the ages of 9 and 12, which are the ages the main character of a book I reviewed over on Josh's Geek Cave called The Weight of Everything. For my review of the book, go on over there to check it out. I wanted to reminisce about when I was that age and what my experience at that school was like. Let's get into it!

So the reason I started going to Greely Elementary School in the first place is because the school I'd gone to at the Ottawa Children's Treatment Center only went up to grade 1. And because my family had moved out of the city in the summer of 1993, Greely was the school closest to me that was accessible, and had a facility where I could refill my feeding pump, use an accessible washroom, and do my physio excercises with my school nurse. Plus it was the only elementary school in the area that wasn't a catholic school or a French Immersion school.

Of course I started going to the school in the fall of 1994, being the new kid surrounded by kids who had already known each other for three or four years by then. But, because I was the only kid in the school who used a wheelchair, everybody knew who I was. Which kinda made making friends a bit easier, but at the same time also made it harder because everyone had their established friend groups already, regardless of whether their friends were in the same class as they were or not. I did make a few friends in grade 2, but grade 3 is where I started to make the friends that would last into middle school and high school.

Oddly enough I actually stayed in the same two classrooms and had the same four teachers all through my time at Greely Elementary School. I actually even had a lot of the same kids in my class every year too. Of course we had new kids come to us every year, sometimes showing up in the middle of the school year, but for the most part, I had a few of the same kids in my class every year I was at that school. It was pretty neat, because even my brother and sister didn't have that experience at the same school.

We had the same three recess schedule structure that I remembered from the Treatment Center, with lunch recess being the longest of the three. Morning recess and afternoon recess were only fifteen minutes long but lunch recess was forty minutes long with twenty minutes for us to eat our lunches. The school also wasn't big enough to have a cafeteria, so we ate lunch in our classrooms. 

I loved the schoolyard. We had a huge field for football and soccer, and it was turned into a skating rink in the wintertime. At least, in the first two or three years that I was there. The teacher who supervised the construction of the skating rink ended up retiring at the end of the 1995-1996 school year as he'd been there since my mom was growing up in Greely. Because we had the skating rink and lots of snow on the ground in the wintertime, I was confined to the paved areas of the schoolyard during those months. But in the spring and fall months, I whipped around the playground pretty easily, except on the grass. So, my friend, Chad, and I would play Dukes of Hazzard. He was always Bo and I was Luke and my wheelchair was their 1969 Dodge Charger, the General Lee. The schoolyard was different places in Hazzard County, the main setting of the show. We even had a spot for Cooter's garage. 

In later years though, I often found myself picking a spot under a tree or near the portables and parking myself there to talk Star Wars with my friends and playing with the Micro Machines Star Wars ships, whenever my buddy Garrett brought them to school. At this point I was in grade six and Garrett had started lending me the Star Wars novels. On top of that it was during the 1998-1999 school year that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out theatrically, so Garrett, Meagan, and I would have conversations about what the movie might be about. 

I remember one conversation where we were sitting behind the portables in the spring, watching the field I mentioned earlier. It was probably only two or three weeks before the movie came out, and Garrett told Meagan and I about "The Duel" and how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. I don't know where he'd heard that information from as this was six years before Revenge of the Sith came out, and those events would not have been told in a novel or comic book. It's possible that Garrett read it in an interview with George Lucas in Starlog or Star Wars Insider because he didn't have internet yet. But, it's also possible that he read it in the Return of the Jedi novelization, and just never lent it to me because I got the omnibus book, The Star Wars Trilogy, which contained that novelization, not too long after I saw The Phantom Menace in June, just a few weeks after the movie had come out.

However Garrett knew about The Duel, he was the one who told me about it during those last few months that I was at Greely Elementary School. I also remember just wheeling around the schoolyard with nobody in particular for many recesses. Back then I had a lot of friends, so I could easily play with different people each recess. Most of the time they were from my class though. Just because one of my friends would push my wheelchair outside and then we'd meet up with our friends from other classes.

Life felt a lot simpler back then. I knew who my friends were, and which people weren't my friends. There was maybe one or two times where someone would try to bully me, but, between my nurse being out there with me, the supervising teacher on duty, and my friends and I keeping each other safe, the bullying didn't last long. Unlike in middle school and high school, but that's a story for another time.

During my first year at the school two things happened that were big in pop culture. Season 2 of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers started airing, which was huge because suddenly there were new Zords, new Rangers, and Tommy would go from being the Green Ranger to being the White Ranger. The second thing happened during the summer between grade 2 and grade 3, the theatrical release of Batman Forever. A couple of classmates had stuff from the movie, including the same backpack as I did, and the commercials for it were everywhere. So it was exciting, because it was the first Batman movie I experienced where I was old enough to see it. While I had to wait until I got the movie on VHS for my 9th birthday, I was still really excited for it.

This was also the period where I became interested in listening to the radio. For my 11th birthday I got a boombox that had a CD player, a tape player, and an AM/FM radio in one system. So I no longer had to wait until my dad put on a tape, a CD, or the radio to listen to music. I taped hours and hours of airtime from MAJIC 100 (CJMJ FM) onto blank cassette tapes. Including a full two hour episode of Leeza Gibbons's Top 20 Countdown (different from the American Top 20, a spin off of American Top 40) that MAGIC 100 broadcast on Saturday afternoons, before it was replaced with the MAJIC 100 Top 20 Countdown in the early 2000s. I also taped a full hour and a half of The MAGIC Morning Show from MAGIC 100 before school one morning. From that time on, I knew I wanted to go into Radio Broadcasting. I didn't want to do anything else. Look at me now, I'm occasionally on a podcast.

The Greely Elementary School Library was probably my favourite place in the whole school. Not only was it where the Scholastic Book Fair was held twice a year, but my class went once a week to that library. I borrowed Babar books, Magic School Bus books, Little Critter books, Gordon Korman books, Hardy Boys books, Goosebumps books, and Animorphs books. Hell, it's where I read my first Animorphs book from after my friend, Jessica, recommended the series to me, and I'd seen the TV show. Occasionally I was allowed to go to the school library during lunch recesses in the winter when it was just too cold for me to be outside, even without being connected to my feeding pump. They had comfortable chairs, so I'd sit in one of them under the supervision of the librarians (we had two during my time at the school, Mrs. Halsell, who was there for grade 6, and the first one whose name I don't remember). I remember even borrowing The Bionic Bunny Show by Laurene Krasny Brown and Marc Brown. If that book title sounds familiar, it was the feature book in the season 6 premiere of Reading Rainbow that aired in 1988, where host LeVar Burton visited the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation on which he played Geordi La Forge. I think that's the only book that I read that was featured on Reading Rainbow.

I could go on and on about my time at Greely Elementary School. Basketball games in the school gym with my special education teacher, Mr. Burke, lunch recesses with friend and busmate, Faith, indoor recesses with my classes, reading to my brother's kindergarten class when I was in grade 3, and many many other episodes. The crazy thing is, all this happened within a span of five years. Almost five years, since I finished my time at Greely Elementary School in June 1999 and started at Metcalfe Public School for middle school in September 1999. 

Reading The Weight of Everything by Steven L. Morgan only partially sparked my memories of Greely Elementary School. Two other factors contributed to my desire to do this blog post. Yesterday, my mom and I went to a used bookstore in Manotick. While there I found five books. The House on the Cliff (book 2 in the The Hardy Boys Mystery Series), The Short-Wave Mystery (book 24 in the The Hardy Boys Mystery Series), Spying Eyes (book 14 in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch tie-in book series), the original hardcover edition of the 1995 Star Wars novel, Darksaber, and Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. All nostalgic books for me (they're all from the '90s or earlier), but the copy of Shiloh I picked up yesterday was the exact same movie cover edition that I had a copy of when I was in grade 6, during my time at Greely Elementary School.

The second reason I've had September 1994 to June 1999 on my mind lately is I was looking at my class pictures from 1995 to 2000 (grades 3 through 8) this morning, and as I looked at the four from Greely Elementary School I could name every single one of my classmates in each picture. Some I remembered their first name and last name, others I only remembered their first name. Most I remembered as soon as I saw them, others came to me after a few minutes. Which is incredible as many of them I haven't seen in 20 to 27 years ago (depending on who came with me to Metcalfe Public and then Osgoode Township High, and who went to different schools after leaving Greely Elementary).

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for this week's Rental Recommendation. So, until then have a wonderful evening and I will see you all soon. Peace out! 

Rental Recommendations: Batman

 Hey everyone! Happy Saturday. I hope you all had a good week. It's time for another Rental Recommendation. Today, I'll be talking about Batman from 1989 on VHS. The POV for this post is that it's 1989 and the movie just came out on VHS, after taking the world by storm that summer. Let's go!

The summer sensation of 1989 arrives on home video! Batman is one of those movies that you just wanna watch over and over again. Now you can as it's out on home video. If you somehow missed this movie in theaters over the summer because you were deemed too young to watch it and your birthday wasn't until September, you can rent it now.

Michael Keaton plays Batman, who has sworn vengeance on the murderer of his parents, who just happens to look like the new clown prince of crime, the Joker, who is played by Jack Nicholson. At the same time Batman falls in love with photographer, Vicki Vale, played by Kim Bassinger and must decide if he should reveal his true identity as millionaire Bruce Wayne or focus on catching the Joker, who has taken over the crimelords of an already corrupt Gotham City.

Batman is the best movie to put on this weekend as you wind down from a busy week at work, or taking care of the kids at home. It's available at all video rental stores, including Blockbuster, West Coast Video, and Rogers Video. 

That's it for me for this week folks. I've got some fun posts coming your way next week. Always remember, no matter when you visit My Nostalgia Blog, it's always 1980 something, 1990 something, or somewhere between 2000 and 2005. So, whenever you need a break from the real world, c'mon down here and hang out for a while. Have a great rest of the weekend everyone. Peace out!