Anyway, dames. This movie's got 'em, and it's even a bit wholesome in a comedically sexist 1958 way, since Tony Curtis is lusting after his real-life wife. But even as the actors on screen went through their shenanigans and mixups that could have been avoided with some basic communication, I couldn't stop thinking about the Arctic research station and the stir-crazy flyboys we see in the first part of the movie. Even if you don't go full The Thing, there's got to be a more interesting movie there.
In my original #💯🦫 review I complained that the first 30 minutes of the film are "an aimless mess of laughs" and that's true if you haven't seen the movie before—i.e. it's still basically true. But this time I can see the aim: the first 30 minutes are the movie's tutorial. Sort of like in What's Up, Doc? the first act is there to show you that this movie operates by Looney Tunes cartoon logic. That's why you have rabbits at the start of the movie even though they don't play a big role later on: rabbits are the tutorial animal.
I'm pointing today's Television Spotlight on Pluribus, the beautiful and depressing show where they give Vince Gilligan Apple TV money. I recommend Pluribus, but having completed the first season, I think you can wait a while to get into it. It goes at its own rate, and the two-year-or-longer wait while they write and film the second season is really messing up the pacing.
This month Sumana and I also watched the 2002 PBS reality miniseries Frontier House, and had a good time watching people put up log cabins and mow hay. Pretty interesting to watch people from the dial-up era talk about getting away from the distractions of modern life. It was ever thus, I guess.
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Thu Jan 01 2026 19:29 December Film Roundup:
Paperhouse isn't the kind of film I usually watch, but it was so creative and such a pleasant surprise that I had to give it the nod.
Games
The Crummy.com Game of the year is my new anti-doomscrolling game, Lost For Swords. It's a real hidden gem of tactical positioning. Apart from that I haven't spent much time playing new games. I'm glad Caves of Qud made it to 1.0 though.
Literature
The Crummy.com Book of the Year is Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe. I'm not wild about the plot but the worldbuilding is amazing and he's so damn good at putting sentences together. I've had the tetralogy on my shelf for a while and will probably read the other two books this year.
Runners-up:
My accomplishments
I dunno, not a lot, it feels like. I kept the lights on. I sold a Ravy Uvana story, "People of the Consortium of Worlds v. Rax, God of Misery", to Analog, and it was published in the final issue of the year. A number of already published Ravy Uvana stories ("Stress Response", "Meat", and "Expert Witness") appeared in Chinese translation in Science Fiction World.
My procedural work appeared in Output, edited by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort.
I now work full-time at Bookshop.org and in 2025 I worked on a couple big projects, primarily the ebook store and reading system.
Thanks to the deadlines of my writing group I finished three new stories: "The Spare", "The Arcade, The Marble, The Door", and "We're From The Help and We're Here to Government". The Constellation Speedrun is still sitting around waiting for me to get an agent. I've got two new novel ideas but it's a struggle to get anything on the page.
Mon Jan 19 2026 11:30 The Crummy.com Review Of Things 2025:
Review of Things 2025? Yeah, I'll review some things 2025: generally speaking, 2025 sucked. And 2026 doesn't look much better. At least we have art. In 2025 I watched 40 films for the first time and almost half of them were good enough to be recommended on Film Roundup Roundup. Here's my top ten for the year:
