Dobes Zone

      Without intending to, I had a tweet about physical media collecting and file collecting go a bit viral (sigh) and I've decided to make a little introductory post on how to start collecting both physical media and digital media- including making back-ups, digitizing things in your collection, and organizing. It won't be fully comprehensive and some aspects of collecting requires spending some money and having space for things- do what's reasonable for you and your goals . I definitely don't expect everyone to be able to spend money, but if you can pay for several streaming services per month you can probably afford to cut back on those and instead invest in some real media or some digital downloads. Someone's gotta own these movies, might as well be me.      This post will be focusing mostly on movies/TV and music, since those are the things we rely on streaming the most for. I'm also working on the assumption that you have a computer- a desktop ...

 2021 was a bad year in a lot of ways but it was a stellar year for me in terms of watching new films (or at least films that were new to me). I spent a lot more time doing solo watches as well as hosting movie streams over discord with a fun and friendly group of folks who share my passion for weirdo cinema. I'll admit that this year was not particularly one where I watched a ton of current releases but I'm hoping to catch up soon- still need to see Titane, Benedetta, tons of other stuff. So here in no particular ranking or order are a bunch of my faves from this year. I'm also listing at the end the movies I didn't enjoy. I'm not including short films on this list either but might consider making another post about favorite shorts by theme. You can also check out my letterboxd to see all the stuff I watched in 2021 and years prior. My Faves viewed in 2021 1) Shirley (2020) I started my year off strong by catching a digital screening of Shirley (paired with Leigh...

 Science fiction is a genre where anything is possible- human beings travel the stars, we create artificial life, we transcend the binary notions of gender, achieve equality, cure all illness, cheat death, find alien life in the universe, unravel the very fabric of being, traverse dimensions, read minds, and if we're not wise we destroy ourselves. When anything is possible, why do so many stories seem to only focus on war, weapons, soldiers and war machines?   When I think about stories and authors that have stuck around my brain for years, I am not thinking about war for the most part- I am thinking about the worlds created by Ursula K Le Guin, Ted Sturgeon, Bradbury, Clarke, Vonnegut, Andre Norton, Sam Delany, etc. I don't mean those stories which act as commentaries on war or on human nature. One of the best contemporary sci-fi stories I read to date is Isabel Fall's I Identify As An Attack Helicopter, which is an incisive and controversial commentary of the military ind...