I was just chatting with Matt Pulzer, who is the illustrious publisher of the UK’s premier electronics, computer, and maker hobbyist magazine, Practical Electronics. I pen a monthly Cool Beans column for the magazine, and we were touching base on forthcoming topics.

I mentioned the plans that I, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) and our son (Joseph the Commonsense Challenged) have for Christmas Eve. We are each going to select three Christmas movies, drop them into a hat, and — when Christmas Eve arrives — randomly draw two of them to curl up and watch that evening.

Matt responded by telling me that he and his beloved are planning on watching the movie Don’t Look Up, which will be available on Netflix on December 24th. Matt also pointed me to this trailer on YouTube.

I’m sure you saw the science fiction disaster movies, Deep Impact and Armageddon, both of which debuted in 1998 (was it really more than two decades ago — OMG). Well, Don’t Look Up is a satirical take on the possibility of the same sort of extinction level event (ELE).

The timing of this movie is all the more apposite considering that fact that — just a couple of weeks ago at the time of this writing — NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. This mission is aimed at evaluating a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs). In September 2022, the DART space probe is set to deliberately crash into the minor-planet moon Dimorphos of the double asteroid Didymos to assess the future potential of a spacecraft impact to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth through a transference of momentum.

I attended a live presentation by one of the DART team members on this topic quite a few years ago (in the before times prior to COVID-19 when live presentations were a thing), so it’s awesome to see this project come to fruition. But we digress…

Considering the topic, Don’t Look Up looks like it could be a blast (no pun intended), not least that it boasts an ensemble cast — Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep — need I say more?

So, I’m definitely going to be watching this movie on Christmas Day — what say you?