Today’s sonf of the day is Public Service Broadcasting’s inspiring tribute to space exploration, The Other Side!
Yes, those are the voices of actual NASA engineers and astronauts, experiencing the dark side of the moon for the very first time.
This is from PSB’s classic album, Race for Space.
Enjoy!
Apollo 13 (1995, dir by Ron Howard, DP: Dean Cundey)
Today we have an absolutely beautiful scene from 1995’s Apollo 13. In this scene, astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) takes a look at the moon and, for a minute, thinks about what could have been, if only a malfunction hadn’t scuttled Apollo 13’s moon landing and left Lovell and his two crewmates apparently stranded in space. Though Lovell may dream of walking on the moon, he knows it won’t happen and that his only concern now is getting both himself and his crew back home.
Some critics have a tendency to dismiss Ron Howard as just being a director who makes middlebrow films but this scene shows him to be a director who instinctively understands not only what it’s like to dream but also what it’s like when reality intrudes on those dreams. This scene features both Howard and Tom Hanks at their best.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, we pay tribute to the moon! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 “Moon” Films
A Trip to the Moon (1902, dir by Georges Melies)
Moonraker (1979, dir by Lewis Gilbert)
Moon (2009, dir by Duncan Jones)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012, dir by Wes Anderson)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 2013’s The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box!
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube and hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The watch party community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
See you soon!
The latest “AMV of the Day” is one of those pairings that just clicks immediately. Short Change Hero by The Heavy brings a smoky, blues-soaked sense of grit that feels tailor-made for Spike Spiegel, whose cool detachment always carries a hint of melancholy beneath the surface.
What makes the edit work is how naturally the song’s mood settles into the world of Cowboy Bebop. Spike has always been a character defined by style, but his appeal is just as much about weariness, regret, and motion without resolution, and this track leans into all of that without forcing the connection.
The result is an AMV that feels less like a simple montage and more like a character study. It captures why Spike remains one of Shinichiro Watanabe’s most iconic creations: a figure who can look effortlessly untouchable while still feeling deeply haunted.
Song: Short Change Hero by The Heavy
Anime: Cowboy Bebop
Creator: Dr. Wolf
Past AMVs of the Day
by Erin Nicole
Happy Moon Day!
Back in the 1980s, you never knew when a glam metal band might suddenly drive by your home or your office, inviting you to rock out to the thundering beat of the band and the vibrato-laden lyrical stylings of a lead singer like Don Dokken.
This video for Dokken’s It’s Not Love has everything:
An opening shot of a hot blonde getting into a truck? Check!
A dancing homeliness man? Check!
The band rocking out as they’re driven through Los Angeles? Check!
Groupies? Check!
A shout-out to pioneering underground radio station KMET 94.7? Double check!
Thank you, Dokken, for doing it the 80s way!
Enjoy!
“Men always seem to think about their past before they die, as though they were frantically searching for proof that they truly lived.” — Spike Spiegel
There are certain works of art that transcend their medium to become cultural landmarks, and Cowboy Bebop is one of them. Shinichirō Watanabe’s magnum opus isn’t just a great anime; it’s the classic for many, the show that gets brought up in the same breath as Akira and Ghost in the Shell when people talk about anime as an art form. Even now, decades after its initial run, it absolutely earns that reputation, which is why it non-negotiably belongs on any new anime fan’s must-see list. If someone tells me they want to get into anime but don’t know where to start, this is the first title I throw at them, because it serves as the ultimate gateway, a perfect primer on what the medium is capable of.
At its core, Cowboy Bebop is a space western noir, a genre mash-up that sounds chaotic on paper but plays out with such effortless cool that you never question it. You’ve got Spike Spiegel, a former syndicate hitman with a killer right hook and a death wish; Jet Black, a grizzled ex-cop with a cybernetic arm and a heart of gold; Faye Valentine, a femme fatale with amnesia and a gambling problem; Radical Edward, a chaos-gremlin child hacker; and Ein, a data-dog who is frankly way smarter than everyone else. They’re bounty hunters in the year 2071, just scraping by in a solar system that’s still recovering from a major accident that made Earth largely uninhabitable, and they’re not saving the world—they’re just trying to make enough woolongs to afford their next meal of bell peppers and beef, which, as Jet will remind you, never actually has any beef.
The episodic structure is a huge part of the show’s charm, as you never really know what you’re going to get from one episode to the next. One week, it’s a high-octane action romp; the next, it’s a somber, almost silent meditation on loss; and then it might pivot to a bizarre, almost comedic episode about a fridge floating through space. This variety keeps things endlessly fresh, but it’s the overarching narrative, the slow burn of Spike’s past with the Red Dragon Syndicate, that gives the whole thing its devastating emotional weight. The show rewards multiple viewings because you pick up on new little details, new visual cues, and new emotional resonances every time, and the animation by Sunrise, even by today’s standards, is fluid and expressive with a cinematic flair that often feels like watching a classic film.
If you talk about Cowboy Bebop and don’t immediately mention the music, you’ve missed the entire point. The influence of the soundtrack is so profound that it’s essentially another main character, as Watanabe has always had a brilliant, intuitive understanding of music’s power in storytelling. With composer Yoko Kanno at the helm, he created something that transcends a typical score; the music isn’t just there to heighten the mood, it shapes the mood, defines the narrative, and creates the show’s entire identity. “Tank!” is perhaps the most iconic anime opening of all time, a roaring, brassy jazz piece that screams “style and energy” before you’ve even seen a single frame, but Kanno’s genius is in her range, shifting seamlessly from the bluesy harmonica of “Rain” to the ethereal, Celtic-tinged vocals of “Adieu” to the frantic rock of “What Planet is This?” during a chaotic fight, all of which makes the space-faring adventure feel gritty and lived-in but also achingly beautiful.
This masterful use of sound creates the overall mood of the series, which is one of profound, melancholy cool, steeped in a pervasive sense of loneliness and existential drift. Each of the main characters is running from something—a past they can’t escape, a memory they can’t forget, or a future they can’t imagine—and Spike lives by a philosophy that a man only dies when he’s forgotten, with his entire arc about confronting a past he’s been trying to outrun. They are a found family, but they’re a family of loners, each so wrapped up in their own personal baggage that they can never truly connect on a deeper level; they share meals, they bicker, they fight together, but they rarely share their deepest fears or true feelings, creating a bittersweet undercurrent to all their interactions. This juxtaposition—the cool, action-packed surface and the lonely, emotional depth—is what makes Cowboy Bebop so unforgettable.
For a newcomer, that blend is exactly why the show serves as a perfect gateway, as you don’t need to be steeped in anime tropes or have a tolerance for over-the-top melodrama to appreciate it. The storytelling is grounded, character-driven, and deeply human, with a cinematic sensibility that feels instantly familiar to anyone who loves Western films, noir, or sci-fi, sidestepping the more esoteric quirks that can sometimes be a barrier for new fans and delivering pure, universal storytelling. It shows that anime can be mature, thoughtful, and emotionally complex without being dark and miserable for the sake of it, setting the bar incredibly high and giving newcomers a clear benchmark for quality.
So, is it as good as everyone says it is? Yes, it’s a masterclass in visual storytelling, world-building, and character development, managing to be mature without being gratuitous, philosophical without being pretentious, and deeply sad without being depressing. It’s a singular work of art where every single element—the animation, the story, the characters, and most importantly, the music—aligns perfectly to create something that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Honestly, if you watch Cowboy Bebop and don’t find something to love, anime might just not be your thing, but for the vast majority, it’s the beginning of a beautiful, lifelong obsession. It’s the show you’ll recommend to your friends, rewatch years later, and still find yourself tearing up at the finale—essential viewing, plain and simple. It’s a perfect, beautiful, jazz-infused tragedy, and you’re gonna carry that weight, whether you want to or not.
Anime You Should Be Watching
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.
This week, both Munch and Pembleton go on an inner journey.
Episode 5.17 “Kaddish”
(Dir by Jean de Segonzac, originally aired on February 21st, 1997)
When Munch and Kellerman investigate a crime scene in which a woman has been found murdered, Munch is stunned when the woman is revealed to be Helen Rosenthal, his high school crush. In between flashbacks to Munch’s awkward teen years, Munch and Kellerman investigate the crime. At first, it seems like the murderer might be one of two former classmates, one of whom was Helen’s ex-husband. Ultimately, the truth turns to be much simpler. As if so often the case, Helen was the victim of stranger. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
During the investigation, Munch bonds with Helen’s daughter, Sarah (Jean Louisa Kelly). Per Jewish law, Helen is buried within 24 hours and Munch and Kellerman later attend her shiva, where Munch begs out of being a part of the minyan. Because Kellerman has apparently never met a Jewish person in his life, Munch has to explain to him the concept of sitting shiva and reciting the Kaddish. On the one hand, I wish this episode didn’t resort to making Kellerman into a total doofus. (At one point, he even asks what a “shiksa” is,) but, on the other hand, I did appreciate that it dealt with a side of Munch that we really haven’t seen before. As a viewer, I’m so used to seeing Munch as just being the squad’s resident cynic that it was interesting to see him dealing with issues of faith.
Speaking of faith, Pembleton is continually to struggle with his. He even goes to Mass in this episode and remember a debate he once had with a nun about whether or not any signs of God can be found while working as a homicide detective. Pembleton does find a sign towards the end of the episode. Called in when a woman dies in home hospice care, Bayliss and Pembleton discover that no murder occurred. Instead, the woman has passed with a look of peace on her face and a crucifix on her nightstand. Having lost his family and nearly his life, Pembleton finally seems to have found his faith. And I’m glad about that because Pembleton the Heretic was getting to be a bit of a slog.
This was a good episode, one that used death as a way to shine a light on life. Richard Belzer gave one of his better performances in the role of John Munch and, as always, Andre Braugher was outstanding as Pembleton. I’m also happy to say that Pembleton and Bayliss are once again partners. That’s the way it should be.
I have about a 35-minute commute to work every day, so I often listen to various podcasts as I’m driving in. There are several that I really enjoy, with “Fanacek” being one of my very favorites. I pretty much always listen to his new episodes on the same day they come out. He’s been talking about the book he’s been working on for quite a while, and it’s finally come out. The name of the book is BOXED IN – TRAPPED IN 80’s TELEVISION, and it’s a monster, coming in at 750 pages. One of the best things I can say is that he’s captured the fun of the podcast in the book, with it being both incredibly funny and informative. I laughed out loud frequently while I was reading it. I also made quite a few notes as the book reminded me of shows I wanted to revisit or shows I may not have ever even heard of. I recommend the book to any person who grew up in the 80’s. There’s a lot of nostalgia here. I also recommend the book to everyone else who just enjoys the history of TV. There’s so much to learn, and Fanacek’s exhaustive research is a great start!
If any of that sounds good to you, just search for BOXED IN – TRAPPED IN 80’s TELEVISION on Amazon. I don’t think there’s any way you’ll be disappointed!
Through the Shattered Lens 