This one is going to be indulgent, but I have a lot of thoughts that I need to get down that I think will be helpful going forward.
First, the post count has been creeping up because I've had more time to write, and I'll probably hit 180 posts this year. However, going forward I'm not sure this is going to be sustainable.
I've had to abandon many of my usual features because of the continuing pandemic. I didn't have a "Most Anticipated" list in March, a "Summer Box Office" prediction post in May, and I don't expect there will be any kind of summer wrap-up feature either. Pretty much all of my forward-looking posts have been in limbo because the release schedules have been so tenuous. I might do some kind of broader box office post for the entire year, but not for a while.
The plans I had for television and web series blogging are mostly working out, except that the planned post for trailers hasn't panned out. While the television and web trailers themselves are pretty prolific and getting more high profile, they tend to be released way too close to the time of the release of what they're promoting for me to do much real speculation. It doesn't help that Comic-Con, which is usually a goldmine for these promos, has been a wasteland in COVID times.
Speaking of television, as content continues to atomize over the myriad streaming and web services, my coverage of traditional network television has diminished to practically nil. The big story out of the upfronts this year was that NBC, former home of "Must See TV," had no half-hour sitcoms on the fall schedule at all. I watch late night online. I watch the news online. I've given up watching almost all live events because I find the format so irksome now. The Olympics came and went, and I didn't bother with anything except Youtube clips. I'm literally two award shows away from full cord cutting.
My yearly "Top Ten" posts for classic cinema will be ending for now with 1950, the last year where I've watched enough films for the feature. Though I'm currently watching 30s and 40s films, it's much slower going. However, as a replacement, I'll be doing a series on Best Picture winners and nominees, though I'm not sure what form this will take. I finally finished watching all the Best Picture winners last year, and I'm making good progress with the remaining nominees I haven't seen - though I'll never see all of them because at least one of the early silents is now considered a lost film.
"Great Directors" is going strong. I think I got a little carried away with the week of posts in August, where I was literally posting every day. I cleared out a lot of my backlog, but I still have an awful lot of directors left. Sergio Leone is up next, because I've finally watched "Duck, You Sucker!" I really want to do a documentarian next year, but I'm having trouble getting my hands on some directors' films - except for Frederick Wiseman, because all of his films are on Kanopy. Unfortunately, Wiseman doesn't seem to want to make films under three hours anymore. "At Berkeley" nearly did me in. Stay tuned.
Elsewhere on the movie front, I can feel my tastes changing, when it comes to newer films. I'm a lot less inclined to watch mediocre sci-fi, action, and animated films than I used to be, and more inclined toward documentaries and dramas. Maybe it's just the mood I've been in lately. Maybe it's because last year's award season felt so sparse, and I'm dying to see a lot of these delayed films. I'm honestly looking forward to things like "Titane" more than the new "Matrix" film, and it's weird.
Finally, I want to acknowledge that I've hit an interesting milestone, which is that for the first time in forever, there's really no major film in the works that I have serious hype for. "Dune" was the last one. There are plenty of projects that I'm looking forward to, but not the way I used to. That's probably not a bad thing.
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