In fact, I started writing one last Friday, which, if I'd finished, would have been my fifth straight day with a post and my tenth in 11 days. Yes, it's generally been a fertile period for my movie thoughts on this blog.
Amazing how a weekend trip to Sydney will derail you.
We went up to see my younger son's favorite team, Chelsea, play another EPL team, Tottenham, at Accor Stadium, which was built for the Sydney Olympics. Tottenham beat Chelsea with a goal with about 30 seconds remaining. A thrilling way for a soccer game to end -- unless you're the losing team.
I expected to have time to continue writing that post at some point in Sydney, but it didn't work out that way. I was sharing a hotel room with my wife, who sleeps later than I do and who doesn't like the clacketty clacking of my typing even if she's awake. (It distracts from her morning reading, which I get.)
And then there was the fact that that post required some research to produce some additional movie titles, so it felt easy to procrastinate on it.
Since I've returned, I've had to watch two films for a MIFF preview (Mile End Kicks and Dead Man's Wire), write the MIFF preview, watch a screener for another movie I'm reviewing (Young Washington), write that review, and then attend another advanced screening at the theater (Ice Cream Man). That was just last night so I haven't written that review yet.
In fact, I've been so busy that I haven't even updated Letterboxd with my new viewings, nor my Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, and I only just updated the most recently reviewed section of this blog prior to posting this.
But I don't like to go very long without updating the blog, certainly not six days. When Glen Hansard died last week and I wrote about it, you might have thought I died along with him.
So this post does not contain much of substance, but it does serve as an unofficial MIFF preview.
Yes MIFF begins tonight with the gala opening night screening of Wicker across a number of venues, or maybe just a number of screens in one venue. I'm not attending that. But I do get into the full swing of things in this first weekend, seeing two movies apiece on Friday and Saturday, before then taking another six days to get back at it again next Friday. The following Tuesday, the following Friday and the following Sunday will round out my expected 11 screenings.
I say "expected" because some things do tend to change once MIFF actually begins. Sometimes I have to exchange for another viewing, and sometimes I even lose a viewing, though I can't remember any actual examples of that last happening -- I just have a vague sense that it's happened.
In any case, I've already done one switcheroo in 2026, since Mile End Kicks was one of the movies I was planning to watch at the festival. As I was going through the giant list of titles (384! though some of those are shorts and VR experiences), this was one of the few I found that I knew might already be available on U.S. iTunes, meaning I could watch it as part of my two-movie MIFF preview along with Dead Man's Wire. So I cancelled my Mile End Kicks screening on Tuesday the 18th and exchanged it for a screening in the final time slot of the festival on Sunday the 23rd.
I won't preview the specific movies I'm planning to see, because my tradition is to write about all of them in some form or another. That should start as soon as Saturday.
And will I finally get to finish the draft I started last Friday, possibly for tomorrow's slot on this blog?
It's not seeming likely at the moment, but let's see how the rest of today goes.
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