Hello!

It was a good holiday . . . no calamities in the house, nobody sick, complete Peace in the Valley. I even liked most of the new movies we saw this holiday season, the ones bucking for awards. That’s very optimistic. Now if we can just get the rest of the world back into reasonable shape.

All I have today are some personal notes. For CineSavant 2018 arrives as a busy time reviewing and happily answering reader mail. I still feel awkward posting on Facebook, and marvel at the dexterity of some of my fellow writers on that forum. I prefer old-fashioned emails for conversing with new friends as it leaves a record of what’s been said so I won’t get lost. Being able to search through archived mail has been a blessing. When I think, ‘who wrote me about that movie way back when,’ most of the time I can find the email from as far back as 2000, and reconnect.

I’m getting lots of suggestions about what the CineSavant page needs, and I agree with all of them. I barely know how to make WordPress function, and haven’t yet mastered simple footnotes that work in the new text. I’ve got a functioning Review Archive happening now, although some of its interior links don’t work. I’m not ready to invest the effort in a newsletter of my own, although some readers liked that as a reminder, and keep asking me where it went. The best I’m doing at the moment are bi-weekly Facebook blurbs, which I hope aren’t too annoying. To cover social media decently is a full time job, yes?

But I do have a plan or two. The next step is to put together a secondary menu page that links to new versions of older Savant pages — lists of reviews by year, archives, the old non-review articles. Etc. I consider that a New Year’s resolution, because finding the time isn’t going to be easy.

That said, I’m having more fun than ever writing here, and plan to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. The circulation boost from Trailers from Hell has made things a lot easier, as have the experts that help check my facts (and help curb my opinions), and reader correspondents that help me get the word out — and keep me current on what’s happening out there on the disc-collecting grapevine.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson