Alan & Jono's Watching/Reading List: September 2026 (Patreon)

Alan:

Hello Heroes!

Whoa kids. It’s been a whole time. Like, we have gone through all of time this month. SO MUCH HAPPENED, but the biggest thing was a HUGE crowdfunding campaign for The Vessel! Thank you all so much!

What I’m reading!

The Big Goodbye by Sam Wasson. An in-depth telling of the making of Chinatown, the classic Neo-noir film. Including tons of biographical detail of the major players, and the ongoing fallout from the film, and everyone involved with it. Fascinating book about a fascinating film.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. A hilarious, scathing takedown of trad-wife influencers, the culture that breeds them, and everyone (on all sides) who are fascinated by them. Basically, nobody comes out of this book cleanly. If you read this book and feel self-righteous at the end, you missed the point, and missed an opportunity to laugh at yourself. I loved this book!

What I’m watching!

Mean Streets: I’m gonna be honest. I don’t get it. I have a lot of movie holes, and I’m trying to fill them. Possibly my biggest is Martin Scorcese. I’ve only seen a handful of his films. I’m going to be watching through a lot of them over the coming months. I didn’t love this movie. Or even really like it. Like, I was bored, but not so bored I fell asleep, the entire time until the last 5 minutes. I don’t get it. I do see the influence it had. But I don’t get it.

Masters of the Universe: Huh. I mean, it was definitely a movie. But did it, you know, move me? No. No it did not.

Resident Evil: This was right up my alley. I had more fun at this movie than I’ve had at the movies in a long long time. What a (gory, stupid, crass, blood-soaked) ride!

Coyote vs. Acme: Cannot recommend this film highly enough. Funny, silly, surprisingly thoughtful. It’s exactly what you want from a Looney Tunes/live-action blending movie about suing a giant corporation to get justice as a little guy (or little coyote). Also, please see it in theaters to stick it to Warner Bros (and their villain CEO) for trying to bury it.

Ted Lasso S4: Honestly, just as shaggy as S3. So not peak Ted. But you know what? Not-peak-Ted is still Ted. I love that man. More please. 

What I’m playing!

Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag Resync: One of my favorite games of all time remade with ray-tracing and super-improved graphics? Sign me up! I’ll be playing this a lot for… Awhile.

Watch Movies! (And television, and read books, and play video games)

Jono:

Hello everyone! I'm so excited to be entering spooky season and fill my month with scary delights.

To kick off the season, I started reading Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to our kids at night. This is a hardback compilation of all three books that I loved so much as a child. My family is LOVING it. The stories are great and the illustrations are so creepy!

In theaters this month I saw Dreamworks' new film Forgotten Island (or rather, we did as a Patreon meetup in Salt Lake City). SO much fun. Much better than I expected, with a lot of heart and truly bizarre dark humor. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

I also caught Coyote vs. Acme, which may have been slightly over-hyped in my opinion, but it was still very funny and very smart and surprisingly moving when it wanted to be. By a wide mile the best Looney Tunes movie. Yes, that includes Space Jam.

I took my wife to a double-feature of Alien and The Thing, which was maybe the best double-feature I've ever been to!

What about you all? What have you been reading or watching?