A couple hiccups in Remembering Rob Reiner

If you've been following my bi-monthly Remembering Rob Reiner series -- yes there are two of them in alternating months, one concentrating on favorites and one on unseen movies -- you'll know that I've continued to shuffle the order of the favorites version due to things like availability, recency of viewings and themes like the month of Halloween. Thus far, the unseen Reiner movies have proceeded exactly as I expected them to.

Well that all ends now.

September is when Albert Brooks: Defending My Life was due up. This is the finally Reiner movie I hadn't seen that's already been released. 

A documentary about a guy I love, made by a guy I love, the two being lifelong friends? I can't believe I didn't watch it in the year of its release, 2023. 

I felt sure it was available on one of my streamers, because I remember seeing it advertised at the time. Or at least thought I did. But I checked AppleTV -- nope. I checked Amazon Prime -- nope. I checked Disney+ -- nope. And I knew it wasn't Netflix or Stan. 

As you'll note from the poster above, it turns out it was an HBO original, which means it would have streamed on Binge here. My wife actually has a subscription to Binge, but it only works on her computer, it doesn't work through our TV. I won't get into trying to explain why.

But that hardly matters anyway because the internet tells me it is not currently streaming on Binge here either. In fact, AI tells me the following:

"While it briefly appeared on Australian subscription services around its late 2023 release, current streaming aggregators like Flicks Australia show that there are no active streaming providers offering the documentary in the country."

Darn. 

Not only was I not going to watch it last night, as I had envisioned doing, I might not be able to watch it at all. 

If I want to keep this series from going off the rails, there may be a hail Mary option. It's possible it is available on DVD or BluRay, and although we don't have an active DVD or BluRay player going on our TV, I do have an external drive that I can attach to my computer. They'd be selling it for some outrageous price like $29.99 because that, it seems, is what they have decided the market will pay for DVDs these days. But I just don't know if I can do it.

Besides, this series might be irrevocably off the rails anyway.

The sixth and final entry in this series in November is supposed to be a movie that has yet to be released: Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale.

When I was first scouting for this series back in late December/early January, and determined I would have exactly the right number of unseen Reiner movies for a bi-monthly series, that determination relied on the availability of this now definitively final Spinal Tap project. It was envisioned as the final Tap project even before Reiner died, and his loss as a creative spark has certainly scuttled any notion of blowing past that resolve to do other final Final FINAL Tap movies. 

At that time, it seemed as though the project had already been completed and was just waiting for someone to fix on a release date. Well, that release date has not been announced yet. IMDB still lists it as completed and expected in 2026. But 2026 has less than four months remaining, and if they haven't chosen a release date by now, it raises the question of whether this movie will materialize at all. It's possible it is not actually completed, or it's possible everyone just thought it was too sad after Reiner died. (Reiner is not actually listed as an actor in this film, so maybe that makes it less sad and gives it a little bit more of a chance of eventually debuting.)

If this movie might not come out at all, is it even worth trying to track down some version of the Albert Brooks movie? Just a reminder that I am opposed to piracy in all but the most desperate and unavoidable circumstances, and really, there's no viewing of any movie that is that direly needed. 

I guess I'll have to think about this one. And I'll certainly check my local JB HiFi to see if they even have the movie as a DVD, whether it's even a possibility.

If this series had to finish two movies shy of its expected completion, I guess that would be appropriate. After all, the loss of Reiner was equally sudden. No he wasn't cut down in the prime of his life, but he probably would have made more films, whether they would have been any good or not. We lost him before we were ready, so maybe a series that finishes prematurely is a fitting way to honor that, however inadvertently.