Hello again

Hello there. It has certainly been a while and I’m excited to finally be sending out my first post of 2022.

This week is going to be admittedly light on the data side and devoted more to some updates, plans for this newsletter going forward, and of course a new menu. 

The first few months of sending this out were exhilarating as I was able to learn more about what works, what doesn't, and most importantly, what is valuable to people for the discovery of new films. After all, that is the fundamental mission of this whole thing. 

While taking some time to evaluate all of that, I also set a personal goal to improve and add to my own knowledge as it relates to data collection, analysis, and the storytelling that can come from those things. This lead me to dive into the realm of writing my own code to gain a much deeper level of interaction with the information I’m looking at. While I missed sending my weekly updates, taking the time to really learn this was invaluable and I think will lead to a substantial upgrade of insights and discovery that I hope people can take from this newsletter. 

The exercise also leads to several new areas of exploration I’m looking forward to taking together and has already opened my eyes to new film discoveries I’m eager to share. 

While the structure of A.L.O.T.T. will remain mostly the same, I will be making a few principal changes.

First, whereas before each piece was a “one-off” theme from week to week, going forward we are going to do deeper dives into topics that will likely comprise multiple posts over several weeks. This approach will allow me to pack less into each update while also giving us the opportunity to focus on a more specific set of films. 

This leads me to the second primary update. While utilizing the app-style menu system was fun, my goal is to reduce the number of films we spotlight in each post. Also, I believe having yet another thing to scroll through is not really helpful for most people. 

From now on, every menu will be embedded within the post itself for maximum usability. I think this will simplify the discovery experience all around. 

As a preview of what this will look like, below is the menu for this week. Within it are the twenty-five Oscar Nominated films available to stream right now. Note that these are the films that have been nominated in any category so you’ll probably see some fun unexpected ones, as well as other lesser discussed titles. 

While the menu is focused entirely on what’s available on streaming services, the following films are also available to rent or buy. 

House of Gucci

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

Spencer

Belfast

No Time to Die

I’ll be back next week with a kick-off of our latest deep dive. Thank you again for your support in subscribing and I’m looking forward to continuing our exploration together.