My plans changed at the last minute and I don’t have a review this week. But here are some movies I’ve been meaning to rewatch lately:

• Blazing Saddles
• The Producers
• History of the World, Part I
• Young Frankenstein (Yeah, I’ve been having a taste for Mel Brooks lately)
• Moana
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Anastasia
• After Death

Some movies I’ve been wanting to watch for the first time and haven’t gotten to yet:

• Kubo and the Two Strings
• The Lovers and the Despot
• For the Love of Spock
• No Ordinary Hero
• Mystery Team
• Doctor Strange
• The Big Sick

Finally, one of the best short films I’ve ever watched is available for everyone to see on Vimeo from the filmmakers, La Premiere. I’ve heard that they’re trying to turn it into something bigger, and I hope to see that sometime.

It’s a holiday weekend. People are regaining consciousness from sleeping off big meals, people are wrestling each other for ten dollars off a low-grade tv, people are staying home pointedly not buying anything, people are watching movies in theaters. Reading blogs doesn’t happen much.

But if you would like some leftovers, here’s some suggested reading and viewing:

• Fitzwilly
• Planes Trains and Automobiles
• Simon Birch
• Mixed Nuts
• Camelot
• Broadcast News
• The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• After The Fox
• Flash Gordon
• The World Is Not Enough

I had a post planned for today, but things stopped happening many, many hours after I expected them to, so it will have to be postponed until next week.

Here are some things I’ve been working recently with that I can speak publicly about:

Produced as Intramural, won acclaim as Intramural, distributed and marketed by MGM/Orion as Balls Out. Releases next week.

Lord Montagu, a documentary about the first English Lord to open his estate to tourism. Releases next week.

Dealt, profiling one of the world’s best card magicians/honest cheats, who works his wonders completely blind. Scheduled for release next year.

Oops, is it that time again already? This week snuck up on me, and I just don’t have the time to get a post up as usual. However don’t worry. Things will slow down again for me in a day, so instead of skipping a week (already done that once this year anyway), I’ll do it late. Expect a new review Friday afternoon or Saturday morning at the latest.

It’s been tempting to do this every week for the last two months I’ve had rehearsals on review nights, but as this week has had a rehearsal every night in preparation for the show this weekend, I’m afraid I won’t be able to post a review this week.

Instead, here is the schedule for the upcoming Heartland Film Festival. I’ve heard that many people believe film festivals are for film snobs, but my experience with Heartland has been one of a festival specifically intended to bring good films to everybody.

In order to give you more time to bolster the economy and get a jump start on all your Christmas movies and specials, Yesterday’s Movies is not updating this week. Of course it has nothing to do with me needing time to catch up on other projects and having to work at the time of the week that I normally do reviews, because that could have been planned around.

When you’ve finished brawling over the purple Furby and the $30 60-inch television, if you find that there’s still a Yesterday’s Movies-shaped hole in your day, why not consider watching some episodes of Black Books, Castle,  Archer, or WKRP in Cincinnati?

Regular Yesterday’s Movies will return next week, but now, a look back.

This blog started on the first Friday in December 2009, and has been running for over two years. It went from a biweekly schedule to weekly two months later in February 2010.

How has it changed since then? Hopefully my writing has improved. I’ve polished my format into something more regular, and there are many weeks I impress myself with a turn of phrase.

My initial reason for doing this was mostly for myself. I wanted to have some internet-based project to begin to establish a brand, I wanted to prove to myself I could keep to a regular blogging schedule, and I wanted an outlet for my opinions as I caught up on films I missed out on.

How well have I succeeded? My readership is small by internet standards. I rarely get more than a hundred hits in one day, and I don’t know how many of them are repeat visitors and spambots (if you’re a regular human reader, say hi in the comments!). I never expected to become a nationally known blogger out of this, because goodness knows there are enough critics out there. I have only had three or four updates go by without posting a review (including this one), and I always had some kind of content to publish. Lastly, several films I reviewed were ones I missed out on, and several more are ones I never knew I missed out on.

As to the future of Yesterday’s Movies, I’m unsure. I’ve often thought about how to end it, but I don’t want to do so without having a new project to replace it, filling the hole both for myself and my readers. In the meantime, I’m not sure if there’s room to evolve this blog in some way that’s true to the meaning. I try to keep to first-time viewings and out of the past decade because I feel the brand is “fresh perspective on movies you may have forgotten about.” At the same time, I want to keep it from becoming stale, especially for myself.

In the meantime, what’s a non-review post without links?

• So I Married an Axe Murderer, one of the first posts where I was starting to get the rhythm.
• L.A. Story, still one of my favorite reviews and reviewed movies.
• Batman and Robin, not a great movie, but a (horribly) fun one that gave me a lot of material.
• Superman IV, the first movie I honestly could not find a reason to recommend.
• The first rule about Fight Club is don’t link to Fight Club.
• I almost said Die Hard was the most Christmas-appropriate movie I’ve reviewed…
• Until I remembered Fitzwilly.

I was about to link to a Christmas video I did years ago, but it’s not good enough to promote. Instead, I’ll wish everyone a happy and restful holiday with some festive plant immolation.