I really intended to spend the rest of my blogging life, such as it is, on self-hosted WordPress. It satisfies my basic needs: I control my own data and I can type words into it from pretty much anywhere. (I’m using Obsidian right now, in fact.) It is not a perfectly resilient platform in that it’s dynamically served, so I need the developers to continue to patch and update it or it’ll wind up as a security flaw, but WordPress.org always looked pretty stable and has been fine for a long, long time. ...

This is in part an experiment to figure out if I can keep to a monthly posting cadence on a particular topic. Unsurprisingly, it’s about movies – specifically, what’s coming to the Criterion Channel next month? Criterion themes their months around collections, which typically stick around for several months thereafter; any given collection is usually a mix of new to the channel movies and existing faves. Here’s a rundown of October’s collections and some specifics which caught my eye.

The Dear Brother letters are my in character record of the terrifyingly cool Unknown Armies game run by the mysterious Canadian Rob (original). I’ve been writing ‘em for a while but never thought to put them on the Web until now. Thus, six in quick succession. Sorry ‘bout that. In this entry, Reese and the gang fight Mickey Mouse.

Being prone to collector disease, I have bought some Blu-rays during the last few years of obsessive movie watching. I’ve been more restrained than I used to be – I focus on movies I’m pretty sure I’ll like. I got the Criterion Ingmar Bergman boxed set after watching a handful of his movies, and I’m working through it slowly but happily. I picked up both Arrow Shawscope sets and S. and I are watching our way through those. Restraint. ...

No, bigger than that. We’re moving to Dublin! Long story short, my illustrious employer needs someone with my skill set in the Dublin office, and both S. and I think living in Dublin sounds like an interesting adventure, so we’re doing it. Estimated move date is sometime in September, pending the excitement of getting a visa (in process) and all the other logistics details. The plan is to keep us there for three years, after which we’ll return to the Seattle area and carry on with our lives. ...

Aw, that’s cute, I thought I wasn’t going to watch as many movies as I did in 2022. Instead I went from 423 watched to 508 watched. Remember when I said “I want to spend more time following my whims”? That worked out really well. In 2022, I did a weekly challenge plus a weekly movie watching club plus another weekly movie watching club – it got to be a grind. In 2023 I was more varied about my tastes and I had more fun. ...

The second jury found the defendant guilty on all counts. As I said earlier this year, I’m at ease with my decision. Now that the case is over, I am comfortable saying that I think the defendant probably did it – I just didn’t think the evidence at hand proved it beyond a reasonable doubt. There were no eyewitnesses who could identify the defendant as the shooter, although the shooter was inside a car which was clearly the defendant’s. He and his girlfriend certainly acted like people who wanted to hide their car after the murder. If I knew my car has been used to commit a crime, and I was living the life this guy was leading, I don’t think I’d be too optimistic about telling the police that it was my car but it wasn’t me. ...

Movies reviewed this week: Hour of the Wolf, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Spiral, New Nightmare, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Flu, The Fury, Mimic, and Battleship Potemkin.

Movies reviewed this week: Possession, Something in the Dirt, Light the Fuse… Sartana Is Coming, Wild Strawberries, Anatomy of a Murder, The Endless, Resolution, Night of the Living Dead, and Mangrove.

Movies reviewed this week: Blue Ruin, Once Upon a Time in Uganda, Nightbreed, Elemental, The Day of the Beast, The Exorcist III, The Novice, and Dracula.