If The Stop Button has a theme, it’s killing your darlings. It’s a lot easier to shit on a childhood favorite than to expound on Fellini. At its best, it’s curated nostalgia. At its worst, it’s assassinated nostalgia. Except I haven’t been watching and reading about many old favorites. I made a 2022 watch list, and most of it’s repeats of old movies, a handful of suggestions, and the not new but newly released Edward Burns. What’s novel about the watch list is it’s doable. It’s not 370 movies or even a hundred. It shouldn’t be hard to get through at all.
I may keep track of how many previously beloved darlings get the chopping block for a future Selected Declaration. I also may not. Early days here with the Selected Declarations. Early days.
I’m not sure how I’m going to structure these posts—I haven’t really gotten to the planned topic, how at the same time I’m disappointed in Tom Holland Spider-Man, I’m thrilled with The Matrix, as well as disinterested in the Star Wars franchise more than ever (really, “Boba Fett”?), and, I don’t know, finally finished the Scream movies. Just in time for the fifth one, only it’d take a miracle for it to be worth seeing in the theater, if at all. But would I have said the same thing about The Matrix? I say the same thing about The Batman. But that’s a long-dead darling.
While this year’s film programming is set and the comics catalog reading is set–Love and Rockets Volume 1.5 through Two (starting with Beto doing a porno, it turns out)—I’m staying loose with the TV. No extensive schedule, just a few titles scrawled in no order. What’s funny about the TV posts is they’re the most popular. I mean, somehow, the Spider-Man 3 post got confused for a bootleg link, but otherwise, the TV and streaming posts get the most eyes. Not, however, the TV or streaming posts for shows I’m interested in. It was a big deal for me to get to watch “Michael Hayes,” but it was not a big deal for the blog.
On the other hand—although the second season is good, actually—I’ve got no investment in “The Witcher: Season Two” posts getting hits.
Though I suppose I don’t invest in any posts getting hits. It’s my darlings I’m lopping off at the neck, not anyone else’s. Well, mostly. Sometimes it’s fun to shit on bad movies in general, not ones I used to like specifically.
I watched Scream 4 to balance out Spider-Man and Matrix, but it’s too bland; it confirmed what I already knew—media nostalgia isn’t the best investment.
So the year’s watch list will partially survey such investments. Just not as a purpose, but because it’s how I blog.
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