Blue by you. (Patreon)

I usually conclude the random-drawing post with a general thank-you, but this week has seen the largest influx of new subscribers since I launched over three years ago. So let me instead kick off with my gratitude, to newcomers (welcome!) and long-timers alike. Many of the former were no doubt inspired by the news that I've resigned in protest (inasmuch as that's possible for a freelancer) from the A.V. Club, due to the assholes at G/O Media making the AVC's entire remaining Chicago-based staff an offer they couldn't accept. My editor there, Alex Dowd, will still be employed through the end of February, and I'll be writing a few final reviews for him over the next few weeks (at his explicit request). Once he's gone, though, so am I. And I very much appreciate every single one of you for making that principled decision remotely feasible. Once Omicron eases up, I'm gonna have to look into finding an additional source of income, as what I make from Patreon just baaaaarely pays my bills (and I live very frugally). But I'd be utterly screwed without y'all, so thanks. It means a lot, and I always try to give you your $'s worth. 

So just to recap for the new arrivals: Every week (excepting major holidays and when I'm attending film festivals), the folks in the $10+ tiers suggest films for me to watch/review, and then everyone in the $5+ tiers votes. There are way too many requests for one poll (25 options maximum), so I split it long ago into films that I've seen and films that I've never seen; the winner of each then duke it out head-to-head. This week it was Betty Blue (never seen) vs. Crumb (last saw it in 1996), with Beineix's introduction to Béatrice Dalle winning 60%-39% (with some rounding, I guess). This is one of those films that I've known about for decades but just somehow never gotten around to until now; not really sure how I missed its original U.S. release, which occurred at a time when I was seeing virtually every movie released in San Jose, CA. It's streaming on the Criterion Channel. (But first I need to watch last week's winner, They All Laughed, which only just arrived in the mail from Netflix today.)

Because some requests are highly unlikely to ever win a popularity contest, I also randomly select two titles each month from the pool of those that haven't yet won. (On top of which, I now automatically watch any film that sticks around in the poll for 52 weeks.) You can see how random.org sorted it out this month in the image above. French Connection II bounced around on and off for 20 weeks a while back (it's available to Starz subscribers and can readily be digitally rented), while Between the Lines (Criterion Channel, Kanopy from some libraries) had a 10-week stint. The way it works is that each week = an additional entry—that's what the parenthetical numbers represent. So in theory, the longer a film has been around, the better its chance of being randomly drawn. Though there are over 2200 entries at this point, so the odds for any given film are pretty low. But I plan to get to them all eventually, or die trying!