New Year, New...You Get the Idea

 

Ah, New Years. A time of new starts, resolutions, and settling the matters of the previous year.

Which means I should probably start with addressing the elephant in the room of what the Hell happened in October.

There's no polite way to say it – the back half of 2025 was a mess for me. Some good moments, but also a whole lotta crap. I won't divulge too much in the details because hey, that's not what you come here for.

At least, I hope that's not what you come here for, because otherwise I've really gotta re-evaluate who I'm writing for.

But yes, the back half of last year was a mix of being just busy enough and having enough other personal issues going on that I will just say it – for my initial enthusiasm with the Night Shift idea, ultimately my heart wasn't really in it to the extent I had hoped for.

For the record, two other things I will give from what I did do for viewing on that project:

-Having now seen the made for TV version of Trucks, I can honestly say that movie will give you a whole new appreciation for Maximum Overdrive's cocaine-fueled momentum and batcrap lunacy

-Having put it off for decades now, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the made for TV movie of Sometimes They Come Back. It lightens up the tone a little, but in general, it made a welcome surprise from this kind of lackluster experiment.

Perhaps I'll come back to King country somewhere down the line, but not just now.

In the meantime, I do admit, this did make me realize part of the problem here is I keep going for sprints rather than just trying to commit to consistent work.

And so, with the new year, I'm announcing a new attempt to get my arse back in gear.

I have compiled a list of movies that have, to one extent or another, been hovering on my to do list – be they films I have not seen at all, or only seen partially. I will be selecting films from this list at random and each week will offer up some writing on what I have seen. These may not all be carefully researched or thought out, they may not all be deep dives. Ultimately, my main goal is to get writing - keeping to general first impressions and seeing where that takes me.

In short, I'm trying to stop overthinking these ideas and just let them go.

So, here we are.

The first entry has been viewed and is being slated to go live for this Wednesday, as I hope to God I didn't just accidentally set the tone for this year by drawing Luchino Visconti's The Damned.

We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Till then!