Graham Sedam Writes

Last week, my family and I watched Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children , and we all loved it. We had time to watch a movie that night, maybe not a 2+ hour movie, but none of us were up too late. My wife didn't know anything about the movie, but I was at least somewhat familiar with the premise. My daughter had suggested that we watch it, and then insisted on it, as she has watched the trailer "thousands of times." This was news to my wife and me, but we believe it. We have Apple TV and one of the apps that comes standard is a Trailers app. It's quite nice to have, actually. I think the movie is appropriate for children, dependent upon the children and their age. It's much darker and more scary than my wife and I had anticipated, and we kept asking them throughout the movie if it was going to be a problem, if they were going to have nightmares. We were continually reassured that everything was fine, that it was scary, and that they were really enjoyi

Earlier this year, my wife and I watched an HBO show called The Young Pope . At first, I liked it because of its oddness and frankness, but overtime, the story started to grow on me in a way that I never expected. The first two episodes were interesting, but it wasn't until about halfway through the season that I realized how much I looked forward to watching it and not just because it was the series we were currently watching. I was expecting it to be different than it was. My thinking going into it was that the young pope would be hip and with the times and buck tradition, giving the old guys heartburn just worrying about what he'll change. And while there is a certain amount of "giving old guys heartburn," it's not what you'd think. It shouldn't be a surprise that religious topics are a big focus of the show, but I personally didn't feel there was any grandstanding. To me, the show approached these in more of a cerebral acknowledgement o

Well, it's been one year since we cancelled cable. There's  a post that I published last year around this time that goes into our thinking and experience with doing so. You should read it because I think it's good and to have some background on this post. Considering we actually made a trip out to the Xfinity store two days ago, ironically a day before the anniversary of the cancellation, it made me think about doing a post like this. Where are we now one year later? For starters, we don't miss cable. We've done a pretty good job figuring out how to watch the shows we knew would be more difficult to pull off. The only show we've had trouble with, and it didn't happen until this spring, is Better Call Saul , the Breaking Bad prequel spin-off. There's no way around logging into the app or website to watch without a cable provider login. However, we can watch it on Netflix when it is available. We will have to wait a while but not quite a year. W

I'm not going to say that two people in a relationship have to like all of the same movies and TV shows, but preferences can say a lot about a person without actually saying much. A picture is worth a thousand words, I've heard. Well, do moving pictures equal more? There's obviously a lot more that goes into any one relationship and that was certainly the case with us. The first two shows my wife and I watched together when we started "dating" were Psych and Alias . I say "dating" with quotes because we never dated as much as we were just not married yet. I didn't know anything about the TV show Psych , and I knew very little about Alias going into it. What those shows ultimately showed me was that I could sit on the couch each night watching TV with this person and have a great time. And, somewhat oddly, it helped us to get to know each other better. Events and dialogue in a show or movie can spur dialogue amongst its viewers. And more

About half-way through last year, I decided to start tracking the TV shows and movies I watched for the year. I thought it might make for an interesting post, maybe not. In the least, I thought it was something that could be interesting for myself to see. Starting it half-way through the year means I might have forgotten about some of what I had watched. I believe I captured most of it, if not all. Around September, I started thinking about how dull a list of things I've watched probably was. Perhaps, it was my brain trying to ask me if I really wanted to know. A person can't always justify everything they watch. It won't all be the best that screens have to offer. And that's when I decided that a better route might be a post consisting of what I thought were the best things I watched through the year, the most noteworthy. But, then I looked at my list at year-end and thought that there was not very much at all on it. I'm pretty sure that of all of my TV

I won't be giving any spoilers, and I'm going to be as vague as I can and still share my thoughts. If you've seen the series, Breaking Bad , you'll understand what I'm talking about. Have you heard the news? I haven't heard a lot about it. I've read one article about it. Apparently, Vince Gilligan , the show's creator, says that what we thought happened in the last episode didn't quite end how we thought it did. I suppose there was no absolute proof, only an assumption that the path we were lead down had an obvious conclusion. As far as I know, every fan was okay with that. It was fitting. It felt right. I would put Breaking Bad in my very undefined top ten favorite shows of all time. (LOST being number one. Peace be upon it.) The show had a very clear focus on what it was about and what it aimed to do, and it was still unpredictable and edgy. There is a lot of praise out there for this show and for Bryan Cranston, so I'll spare the ch

On May 18th, a day that forever changed our lives, my wife, my youngest son, and I drove to an Xfinity store to cancel our cable subscription. We are keeping our internet, of course, but we're definitely keeping our minds open about Century Link. We've talked about it for months. We've had a Netflix subscription for over a year. We agreed that once HBO had a stand alone service that we would get that, and then we would be fully prepared ( Come on, buddy, mostly prepared. ) to look the evil beast in the eye and conquer it. Although I was excited to make this change, it really was hard to pull the trigger. There's a sense of security with having cable, and I don't mean the "triple play" home security Comcast pushes so hard. With a middle tier cable plan, you have access to a wide array of channels that will certainly have something for everyone. But along with more variety than any one household realistically needs comes a big bill. I'd be wrong to