MOVIES

On my own, I don't find myself going out of my way to watch movies. The act of doing so feels like a chore and the inertia to get started is heavy given how much of a commitment it can feel like to dedicate up to 3 hours to watch a movie. The irony being that the alternative is doing nothing, yet doing nothing feels like a better activity than doing something. In 2024, I had found that I had a little beelink computer lying around in my closet and decided that I'd do something good with it. My brother runs a plex server out of his house that I had access to and while it had a nice selection that was well curated and managed, not having control about what goes on it was frustrating. So I set up the beelink in my basement with plex on it and have slowly accumulated an excellent collection of films with more being added weekly. I started off adding things manually and after deciding that not duplicating effort is a virtue I try to uphold, got around to adding the *arr stack of programs to it along with configuring usenet as well. The whole process is now fully automated and I can now spend time that would've been spent fiddling with the server, watching movies instead.

Which brings us to movie night, colloquially known as sunday screening in my circle of friends. Every week, a movie that is picked in advance in a round robin fashion amongst me and my friends, is screened. The general rules are pick whatever you want to with a sub 4 hour time limit (Zack Snyder's Justice League is to thank for this). It start's at 8:00pm my time and ends when the movie is over. I believe we started in september of 2024 but it may have been earlier. The below is a repository for sunday screening and what we have watched so far. The order of viewing is right to left, bottom to top. That is from earliest to most recent. So our first screening was Conan the Barbarian. The system has been a resounding success so far, there are typically 5 attendees per film and always at least 3 including myself. People are excited to pick movies and I'm happy to provide an enviroment that we can watch them together. My friend Jack made an excellent observation that part of its' success is that you don't have control of what's being watched most sundays. That means there's no pressure to pick every week, there's no "everyone has to agree on a movie" mentality and you get to see something that you'd normally never have picked. The lack of control and the no holds barred picks means that there's a variance of films that are chosen. Some are more blockbuster and super heroee while others are more artsy and everything else inbetween. Even better is everyone of them has been thorughly enjoyed and made better through unity and group experience.

I wish to continue sunday screening for a long time. I've had the oppurtunity to see so many wonderful movies and enjoy my friends company. I think I've seen more movies in the last year than I've in the 5 before it. We rung in our 1 year with Strange Days, and I take that as a sign of more good movies to come.

This Sunday

Upcoming Sunday Screenings.

Previously on Sunday Screening.

Personal favorites if you're interested