12 Films

A bit convoluted, but my version of the 12 Days of Christmas is to watch 12 films over the Christmas period before I go back to work.  I've done 3 films so far.  Ford vs Ferrari - a good old-fashioned, if somewhat one-dimensional, film - 3.5 stars.  Doctor Sleep - a perfectly okay film for what it was, but loses a star because it is sacrilegious to make a sequel to The Shining 40 years later - 2.5 stars.  And yesterday I watched Wonder Woman 1984 on the day of it's premiere - a perfect example of the serviceable but ultimately vacuous and unmemorable film from one of the cinematic universes we have today - 2 stars.  I wanted to watch it in 4K and with Dolby Atmos sound - because I have the telly and soundbar that play these formats.  But after much faffing around, it doesn't appear I have the actual combination of equipment that enable me to do so.  Which is extremely disappointing.  And then I got trapped down a rabbit hole of playing around with all my settings to see what my set up can and can't do.  And I have come to the sad conclusion that my TV isn't even compatible with my soundbar for playing any sort of Dolby Atmos sound.  Worse, I don't seem to be able to play audio from any of my streaming apps without the sound cutting out intermittently every 10 seconds or so.  Which is devastating.  I've been having a lot of doubts about my telly already - despite not having had it that long - and I think this might be the final straw.  This is undoubtedly going to consume so much of my time over the next week, as I am convinced it is fixable - though it is just as likely to be a bug in the firmware somewhere.  I might refine this - but I think I'm going to make it a new year's resolution to combine all of the following next year: cut the cord, get a PS5, get a better telly and get a better soundbar.  Let's hope I get a decent annual bonus to pay for all this (unlikely).