Here was a TIFF. Nine for me — apparently I am logging, and am able to log, VR experiences on Letterboxd now! — and out.
Tangles — an animated adaptation of a graphic novel about a queer woman dealing with her mother’s early-50s Alzheimer’s diagnosis — was the best I saw. Children Untold — about a young girl in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Japan, who styles herself a boy to gain the acceptance and protection of a gang of like-circumstanced orphans — came close. Both were sweeping emotional epics that felt earned, landed their big-cry moments, and didn’t skimp on the cinema.
While we’re here: that VR experience, Lesbian Simulator, made my week. It’s bright and silly and surprisingly involved, and it was the first (and potentially) last time I’ve had VR goggles on my head, but neither the first nor (potentially) the last I’ve thought to myself, I’m a lesbian in the wrong body. Much to work through there, later.
On a more quotidian level: working for the festival (well, the Market) cost me a lot of movies over the summer. I’m hoping to catch up with some of them soon (maybe even in theatres!). The dinosaur one! The Matthew McConnaughey one! The one about the coyote!
And I’m looking forward to just, like, getting back to life, generally. Filling the coffers cost me a writing project (Zombie Survival Camp still uncompleted and, maybe, dead in the water) and any forward momentum on two short films I want to make this year. So maybe they’re a next year thing now; and maybe, that’s that question answered re: creative life. Jobs are so silly.
Decisions, decisions
Here’s a thread from bluesky that got my attention. I swear I’m not sub-bleating anyone here, it’s just something I’ve spent a lot of the last decade (woof, my forties are over) thinking about. I’m going to embed and annotate but who knows how these things are ever gonna work on Ghost, so if your email looks funny, just refer to to the link above.
Don’t worry, the author himself will avow that this isn’t just about game dev, shortly.
Related/unrelated: I got the word “Decide” tattooed on my ankle (admittedly, in Dwarvish) about a dozen years ago. I thought that was a pretty badass thing to do; I thought it was a lesson I had learned at great pain. But any hope that my tattoo so would inscribe the premise of itself any more deeply than “thing I continue to struggle with basically every single day of my life,” well, that evaporated almost as soon as the blood dried up.
Honey, we are so fucked.
This sidles up to something I’ve been saying since the pandemic era, which is: sometimes you have to make a choice between two bad options. Two directions which both have unpleasant consequences, but which are the only two approachable directions.
Understanding this fairly clearly at the time (still do), I was also pretty quick to understand that there are folk who simply cannot do it. They can’t chose a sub-optimal path, even if sub-optimal paths are the only options. This might get to larger cultural things than just decisionmaking, but boy, there sure are a lot of people — and they generally fall into one category, but I’ll leave that aside for the time being — who think there must be an optimal solution, no matter what. There must be a way to win.
I feel so bad for those people, when I’m not busy being furious with them.
Committing blindly (which I also sometimes do, just to move things along) has a lot of risk and is pretty silly in the long term. But I also want to highlight the “make decisions and put them behind” you part, because that, right there, is what I struggle with. It’s not hard for me to identify the choice and to make it. But to take every subsequent step away from that choice point? When each step feels as, or more so, uncertain than the last? That shit is very difficult.
These two were the ones that really got my attention. The “returning to a old decision is time travel” idea, like there’s a great big CMD-Z in the space-time continuum, is… cuckoo bananapants. The linear progression of time doesn’t have an Undo button! Jesus Christ!
Back to those torturous, uncertain steps. Now that one is feeling the cost of one’s decision, there is literally nothing more alluring than the idea of going back to the choice point and switching the track. In my experience, this always ignores the cost of returning to the choice point, along with the lost time to walk the new track.
Like, sure, change your mind: happens all the time. We can’t be rigid and inflexible. But before doing so, at least tot up the actual reality of managing the change, rather than living in the fantasy of just “getting a do-over.” This ain’t a video game, man, even in gamedev. People got shit to do.
The Harry Potter Shit List
Updated September 22, 2026
- Lenny Rush
- Billy Barratt
- Rupert Grint
- Kit Harrington
- Nicholas Hoult
- Bel Powley
- Tim Horton’s
- Peter Serafinowicz
- Warwick Davis
- Lambert Wilson
- Anton Lesser
- Andy Greenwalt
- John Lithgow
- Janet McTeer
- Nick Frost
- Paapa Essiedu
- Simon Pegg
- Johnny Flynn
- Daniel Rigby
- Bertie Carvel
- Hugh Laurie
- Tom Felton
- Matthew McFadyen
- Riz Ahmed
- Mark Addy
- Michelle Gomez
- Keira Knightley
- Alex Hassell
- Iwan Rheon
- James McAvoy
- Ruth Wilson
- Bill Nighy
- Cush Jumbo
- The New York Times
- Francesca Gardiner
- Jon Brown
- Mark Mylod
- Casey Bloys
- David Zaslav
- J.K. Rowling
On a related note, this is extremely funny (given the subject matter).
Links and recommendations
- Speaking of things that are funny given the subject matter, how about kicking the head off an artwork during the cleanup after 9/11? (Vulture)
- Incredible free resource I was recently alerted to: Solidarity Cinema.
- Triple shot, oat milk flat white in a medium cup. Can’t thank the Daily Dose enough for their service these past few weeks. (Instagram)
- Did you know John Morton’s done another Ian Fletcher comedy series (following Twenty Twelve and W1A), this time with him taking on the Head of Integrity role for the 2026 World Cup?? I don’t know how he’s doing this. Does he just wander into some corporate nonprofit mess every five years, listen to all the nonsense everyone says, and come out and write something? Related: does Morton, or actor Hugh Skinner, know the stupidest man alive, as the basis for Will? (Tubi)