One night before bed two weeks ago, I was watching a bit of the oddball 1989 film, The January Man, streaming from Tubi on our television. It didn’t play long, but long enough for not one, but two scenes featuring Rod Steiger as “The Mayor”. As you might guess, he’s doing another one of his overacting freakouts, but this is just something else! (You don’t have to take my word for it. Check it out on Tubi, or simply punch in “rod steiger january man” over on YouTube!)
Anyway, the Tubi app decided it couldn’t take it anymore. Right after the second “Steiger freakout” scene, it cut to a commercial and the image froze. I had no choice but to exit the application and watch normal TV instead. Any subsequent attempts to launch Tubi on the television set were met with an error message! Rod Steiger broke Tubi!
Granted, I could always just watch Tubi on a computer, but I was spoiled by the convenience of seeing it stream right on our television, even without the need of Chromecasting from a computer. Anyway, after much trial and error (resetting the television in different ways, such as powering down the box, or playing with settings on the remote), Tubi finally managed to relaunch. But from now on, just no more January Man.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.