For birthday / Christmas / great justice / etc, Noah and I have decided to double down on movies for the next year or so:

1) The kickstarter to preserve Movie Madness hit its goal, ensuring that insanely-great movie resource remains within walking distance of our home.

1a) Our kickstarter donation means we get free rentals for quite a while in 2018.

2) In comparison to Movie Madness, Netflix's DVD selection sucks. We're dropping it and putting those funds into use locally. We should have done that ages ago.

3) We ponied up for Producer memberships at the Hollywood Theatre (which we ALSO should have done ages ago). That means our tickets to everything except 70mm screenings are comped. I would've waited, except Halloween is Noah's favorite holiday. Seeing Nosferatu, Phantom of the Opera, and Night of the Living Dead in quick succession means we'll get our money's worth for the first month.

As a result, we're dropping Netflix DVDs, putting our money to good use locally, and starting round two of the Oscar Project (screenplay awards) as part of our Kickstarter rewards. In round one of the Oscar Project, we watched every winner of Best Picture in order, regardless of whether or not we'd seen it before. Round two will be less stringent; if we've seen the movie before, rewatching it will be optional. My tally says we have the following to watch:

• 23 "Best Story" winners
• 35 "Best Original Screenplay" winners
• 31 "Best Adapted Screenplay" winners

We're considering leaving Best Adapted for another round, as adapting an existing work for screen isn't quite the same as the craft of writing a screenplay from scratch.