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A Year of Going to the Movies 2025 (Best and Worst)

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  It's been another great year for engaging with art. I attended 76 films in theaters, double that and you have the amount of 2025 released films I have seen in all. Cinemas are struggling, but many of the films I viewed I viewed in packed houses. I was also lucky enough to see 7 concerts including Garrison Keillor who told a great story about being one of the last people to see Babe Ruth play, The Temptations, Dracula Annotated, David Spade (doing an exactly one hour set) and two touring drag shows.  I will save the best concert I attended for later in this write up because it has a great deal to do with cinema. My best and worst of the year will be discussed, as ever, month by month. It was a good year personally.  We added a bearded dragon (Sinatra) and two kittens (Jane and Bug) to the family.  January     films watched in theaters The Damned, Rope (1948), The Room Next Door, Shockma (1990), One of Them Days, Hard Truths My wife and I attended a sc...

Screen Drafts (Home Version) 17: The Science of Scares

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It was my wife's turn to pick the next screen draft home version topic.  Screen Drafts is a competitive game where players (in this case Dennis, me, Vanessa and two of our friends Scott and Nick) work to make a top 18 list on a given topic where vetoes and veto overrides can be deployed (and incidentally carried over: My wife starts the next game with one of each, Nick and I start with an override and Scott starts with a veto). My wife became very taken with this study called The Science of Scare. It is a 250 participant study where horror movies are watched with concern towards heart rate. The film that most elevates the heart rate is scariest to them, for details on how they pick what films to watch, the order of the films and how the study is conducted seek out their website. It is hard to navigate but interesting. I submit below the 2025 top 50 list that we had to pick from in alphabetical order. 28 Days Later,  The Autopsy of Jane Doe,  A Nightmare on Elm S...

Screen Drafts (Home Version) Random Stats

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  A Hall of Fame Film is one that has been picked more than once. No film has been picked 3 times, yet. The first Hall of Fame entry was John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987). It was selected in game 4 (the Satan draft) and game 5 (the John Carpenter draft).  The biggest leap for a Hall of Fame Film is from game 2 (the found footage draft) to game 17 (the science of scares draft) and that happened with The Blair Witch Project (1999). The film to rank best when played in both games was Wes Craven's My Soul to Take (2010) which ranked 5th in the Wes Craven draft and first in the school horror draft. Below are the hall of fame films. Random facts from these games: The most represented decade is the 1990's (at lot of that is because we played Raimi, Craven and Carpenter filmography drafts along with film series like Friday the 13th, The Crow and Hellraiser). However, the most impressive decade is the 1930's because only 3 drafts feature 30's films but a 1930's ...

Screen Drafts (Home Version) XVI: Hellraiser and Exorcist Films

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Screen Drafts (based on the popular podcast) is a draft between players (I, my wife Vanessa and our friends Nick and Scott) to rank a list of films. Scott chose this topic. There were 17 total options: 6 Exorcist films and 11 Hellraiser films. We each had four numbered picks, determined by trivia provided by our friend Mario and the person who had two also picked number one. Everyone had the same amount of arsenal: 2 vetoes and one override of a veto. The next game will be a top 18 and will have a pool of fifty films based on the scariest movies, as decided by the folks at The Science of Scream. Nick brought his big puppy Sheba. She was awesome.    17. The Exorcist Believer (2023) I came in second during trivia and wanted the very bottom pick. My picks were (17, 13,9 and 5). I wanted it because my favorite Hellraiser film was Judgement and I knew some cruel person would play that low, and I could not live with Hellraiser (2022) being above Judgement. I found the Hulu productio...