Forbidden Planet (1956) is the movie for this Sunday's "monsterdon" watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, May 25, 2025 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 1am Monday UTC
- and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something.
How to watch the movie:
- tubi (US, England, Canada, Australia, NZ?): https://tubitv.com/movies/100012215/forbidden-planet
- uBlock Origin adblocker should work, at least on Firefox, on youtube and tubi links
- peertube (the fediverse option!): https://peertube.wtf/w/ehQReF6uWnXNmCLZwsEhV3
- archive (4 minutes shorter?): https://archive.org/details/ForbiddenPlanet1956_201707
- someone plans to stream it on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/forbidden-planet
this landmark film is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s,[4] a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema.
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Forbidden Planet's effects team was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Special Effects at the 29th Academy Awards. Tony Magistrale describes it as one of the best examples of early techno-horror.[10] In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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At the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 94% based on 51 reviews from critics, averaging 8.20/10.[25] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that everyone who worked on the film certainly "had a barrel of fun with it. And, if you've got an ounce of taste for crazy humor, you'll have a barrel of fun, too."[26] Variety wrote: "Imaginative gadgets galore, plus plenty of suspense and thrills, make the Nicholas Nayfack production a top offering in the space travel category."
Watched it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, great movie and great spooky all-electronic score (the first ever, apparently).
Posted about it on c/RaygunGothic, also posted the watch party too.
Watched it on Peertube free of adverts, if anyone wants a Fediverse option.
O yeah thanks about the note regarding the peertube link, I added it to the options. I gotta figure out how that works one of these days.
Re how it works, as far as I can tell, a viewer doesn't have to do anything special. Just go to the link and press play, just like YouTube. (You don't even need to have an account or be logged in.)
Also, you can download without any special tools or tricks: just click on the three-dot menu below the video and choose "Download".
The real difference (I think, I'm not an expert) is behind the scenes. Instead of the video data coming just from a single instance, it can also comes from other instances and even from other viewers (so if multiple people are viewing the same video at the same time, they are sharing the work of serving the file, like a Bittorrent P2P swarm).
awesome, thanks for the info.