Okay, so “the system” is not something people are generally groovy about, now that I think about it, but I came across this article by James Clear from December 2013 that I shared more than a decade ago, pre-blog. What with the new year approaching, he was counseling against setting goals and instead establishing systems that would become habits. If this sounds familiar, or in fact he does, that’s because five years later, he published…
I think I’m going to need to expand my list of usual suspects for 2026, because there’s two more public domain pieces I want to share beyond the resources shared yesterday. First is an article, with plenty of audiovisual samples, by Ellen Wexler for Smithsonian Magazine. As you might imagine, the Smithsonian is very into collections, culture, and curating. Here, Wexler relies in part on Jennifer Jenkins, and the Center for the Study of the…
Happy New Year! One of my favorite new traditions since 2019 has been noting all the creative works that enter the public domain here in the United States every January 1st. For this year, 2025, that means creative works first published in the U.S. in 1929 as well as sound recordings from 1924. There’s a host of caveats and, of course, U.S. copyright is different from other parts of the world, often markedly so. That’s…
Now, in this no-man’s time between Christmas and New Year’s, I’ve finally had a chance to read a bunch of articles saved to my “to read” list and Tony Moss’ exploration of the mysterious demise of Blue Seas Recording Studios stood out, not only because it happened around this time of year, but also because it’s relatively local.
Denizens of the Internet rank things all day every day and I too must do my part. And so, since it’s an even year I go through the many films I’ve seen and rank my fifty favorites. I’ve done some version of this sorting for about 35 years, but since much of that has been offline, it does nothing for the algorithm. And so, in honor of Georges Méliès, possible patron saint of films fantastical,…
Everyone appears to have a favorite movie to watch on Christmas, whether or not it’s a Christmas movie (like, say, Die Hard). But what if you wanted a Christmas movie by a well-known director? Fourgrounds Media Inc. and Suitcase in Point Theatre Company have your back:
It’s time once again for TCM’s annual remembrance of film folk we’ve lost over the past year. I’ve taken to posting this every year, though there’s always the question of whether to wait until the new year or no (they generally release a first edition right around Yule and often tweak it early in January). In any case, there’s plenty of faces you’ll recognize. Like last year, here’s an annotated with links in case you…
I’m still not sure what movies I’ll be able to see in theaters in the last two weeks of the year, but as for selections next summer, DC is clearly bringing a Gunn to a superhero knife fight: Come on. You thought “oh yeah, this is Gunn” the moment you saw Supes whistle… because you knew Krypto was going to appear. So yeah, it looks promising enough to check out in theaters… something I can’t…
Looking at my film history posts, I evidently only remember to talk about the National Film Registry when I’m working on my biennial Favorite Films post. However, the Library of Congress designates 25 films every year deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Over 900 films are on the registry now, even if you go through the whole list, you’ll think of more that could be added (and which you can nominate). So it’s always nice…
Last weekend, in between calculated periods of doing nothing and Thanksgiving leftovers, I started work on my biennial Favorite Films sort. I’m a lifelong movie buff and have watched literally thousands of movies. Not all of them are good. Some of the good films are, nonetheless, not my favorite films. Behold the “Cine-Venn” diagram! The entire stack of films I sort through every few years numbers around 500 films or so. There’s usually something of a lag…