So excited for this! I just backed Apocalypse World: Burned Over on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

Don’t really care who wins, I just hope they don’t come THIS close to being the longest world series ever only to fall one inning short!

Halloween Movie 31: Ninth Gate (1999, Rewatch) I still have a few more of these to write up, starting with goth Indiana Jones here. boxd.it/bzpM5h

Halloween Movie 30: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) Some point in the 2010s Detroit became a sort of cinematic symbol for decay. Not entirely fair, but it did make for a number of solid horror movies... if something this elegiac counts as horror? letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween movie 29 It follows (2014, second viewing) About as Freudian a horror movie as you can get without actually invoking Oedipus. boxd.it/bwWVMX

Halloween Movie 28: Oddity (2024, first viewing) Well-shot low-budget Irish horror film that pulls in more directions at once than it can sustain. boxd.it/bwUCsb

What is the state of the art for live-streaming movies with a group? Watch Party? Teleparty? W2G? Twitch? Youtube? Hypothetically, if I wanted to end my Halloween movie marathon streaming a shared viewing of the Exorcist, at midnight on Halloween, what would be the best way to do that?

Halloween Movie 27: Ghostbusters (1984) Four decades on, I still ain't afraid of no ghost-- but much more concerned with repetition. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 26: Weapons (2025, first viewing) This movie rips. It's a nonlinear series of vignettes where the mystery is clearly supernatural nonsense, but it takes a little while to identify which set of weirdness would add up to this set of facts. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 25: Wicker Man (1973, First viewing) Iconic folk-horror masterpiece best watched unspoiled if possible (unlikely) as it has a lot of fun subverting the cop thriller genre. Lee is always great. Could maybe use more bees? letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

That new AI game clip looks awful, but aside from "can AI make games? Can it make real art? Should it?" -- there's just a really special feeling you get when you see the richest, most powerful people in the world dedicating nigh-limitless resources to totally eliminating your job in particular.

Halloween Movie 24: Oculus (2013, first viewing) A nice cursed object flick that reminds us of what Mike Flanagan can do when he's on his game. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movies 23: John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) There are better action-vampire movies out there, you should watch one of them instead. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Under the Shadow (2016) Light on overt supernatural elements until late in its run, the greater terror comes from forces much harder to escape than any malign spirit. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 21: The House on Haunted Hill (1959, First Viewing) A pleasant romp that keeps you guessing but doesn't play fair-- a little *too* in love with its twist-reverse-double-twist-triple-reverse setup! letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 20: Firestarter (1984, First Viewing) Seriously, what was with psychics in the 70s and 80s? letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 19: Dracula (1979, First viewing) There are better Dracula movies out there to watch. But are there better Dracula movies out there to *listen* to? letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 18: Host (2020) The ghost is coming from inside the Zoom. A gimmicky film, but packed with plenty of scares in its short runtime. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 17: Insidious (2010, First Viewing) For something so over-familiar, Insidious works far, far better than it has any right to. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 16: The Descent (2005, First Viewing) Almost strange for what is so clearly a horror movie to run with the constant-tension vibes of a thriller. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie #15: Society (1989) This kinked-out 80s body horror fever dream isn't actually good by what you might call conventional metrics-- I'm not sure if, for me, it is able to wrap around into something that's actually kinda ... fun? letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 14: Hereditary (2018, First Viewing) It's a real slow burn, almost two movies stuck together, but once it gets rolling I think it might be the scariest movie I've watched all year. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie Lucky Number 13: The Cat and the Canary (1927) I honestly don't know what to make of this 1927 episode of Scooby Doo. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie #12 The Substance (2024, First Viewing) Wow, they were really not kidding about the body horror on this sucker. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 11: Werewolf of London (1935, first veiwing) This appears to be the first 'talky' werewolf movie, and the oldest one not lost. But there's a reason The Wolf Man (1941) became the trope definer--- sadly, Werewolf fails to deliver on its potential. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie Marathon #10: Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943, first viewing) Well. This is some delightful nonsense. No score given because while it's not actually *good*, it absolutely delivers the Avengers action-figure mashup it promises on the tin. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie 9: The Host (2006) A movie I wish I liked more than I did, and have the creeping suspicion that I *ought* to, if I could just step outside myself enough to enjoy it. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movies Day 8! Gather round, kids-- John Carpenter's going to tell you a ghost story around the campfire... letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Day 7: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) For my personal preference (and with much respect to the Lugosi and Lee versions), I feel like this might be the definitive adaptation of the Dracula story-- even if it isn't, in some key respects, the most faithful. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movies Day 6: A classic monster movie that brings the age of atomic horror movies to Japan, and still holds up as a reflection of their very specific historical experience. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Day 5: Psycho (1960, First Watch) I am a pretty spoiler-tolerant guy, and I think this film illustrates why-- it's set up to run on pure shock value with twist after twist, but even coming in knowing them well in advance... it absolutely still works. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Day 4: Carrie (1976, First Watch) I can definitely see why it's a classic, but the intensity of its climax has to make up for a film that is less than it could be. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie Marathon Movie 3: 28 Years Later (2025, First Watch) 28 Years Later was very much not what I expected, and probably all the better for it. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie Marathon Movie 2: M3GAN 2.0 (Unrated Cut) Not a great movie, not a terrible movie, but also very much not the horror thriller it was marketed as. letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Halloween Movie Marathon 2025 Movie 1: The Babadook (2014) letterboxd.com/adamianix/fi...

Hey. So. This is my second year doing a Halloween 31-days-of-horror-movies marathon. It kind of evolved into doing a real short reaction essay about each movie I watch. I hope folks who have followed me for other reasons won't be too upset if l post them on Letterboxd and crosslink them here?

Based on Israel's own data: "Between March and June, Israel allowed just 56,000 tonnes of food to enter... less than a quarter of Gaza’s minimum needs for that period. Even if every bag of UN flour had been... handed out... starvation was inevitable. Palestinians did not have enough to eat."

What a strange delight this has been. Having told the story of a number of real revolutions in ultra-longform podcast format for ten seasons, Mike Duncan synthesizes the elements and style into a new, fictional revolution. It’s tremendously good, and worth your time if you like sci-fi and history.

Man. Last time it took three and a half years to get to mass street protests in standoffs with law enforcement. Really speed-running this one.

Can someone explain why today is Bluesky-is-dying sackcloth-and-ashes day around here?

Sitting here trying to figure out if I have an obligation to avoid purchasing Stellaris expansions because of their AI use, or if their stated use (mood board ideation, deliberately-artificial-sounding voices with compensation for the voice actors) is sufficiently minimal to merely be mad about it.

One of the marks of a good installment in a long-running franchise is that it somehow makes better the things that inspired it. Andor makes Rogue One, and the broader Star Wars saga, better by giving us a glimpse at the struggle beyond the laser swords and space magic.

Wait. Are you telling me that in the last two weeks, anti-Trump backlash has swayed elections in Canada, Australia, and the *Vatican*?

I had been kinda bummed about them burning off 12 episodes of Andor over 4 weeks, but in seeing the first batch it becomes like a tv miniseries— an exciting, limited duration event. I really hope it works; I’d like more genre sci-fi for grown ups.

Trumpcession begins.

Is he going to hit the record of the (fictional) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?

One down. 1,460 to go.

So, it's the day. And, yeah, it's going to be a tragedy. And I could go on at length about the horror. But instead I want to pay attention to the clock. He's a lame duck. 1,461 days and he's gone. And the sooner more people focus on that, the weaker he'll be and the faster it will go. 1,461.

May the sorrows of this new year be minimal for you.