Last year I managed to publish very little to the blog in general because life.
This year I hope I made up for it with *…counting…* 14 posts across three months and more than 70,00 words of analysis, neologisms, and celebration. It was a rich collection of movies. I’m not done. I already have more posts and analysis scheduled for later this year.
While I did all of that, I got caught up in making some improvements to the site.
I fixed a lot of special-character typ0z and missing images. (n.b. Many, but not all.)
I got rid of a lot of “update” posts—as opposed to that aren’t really relevant now. (Even this one may get chopped in time.)
Claude helped me write some WordPress shortcode for forward-looking links that announce in text when a post is scheduled, and that automatically convert to a link once it goes live. This saves me from having to remember to go back and update links.
I also switched to a service to let readers know where a given show can be watched, and it is true as of the moment a page loads, so no *womp womp* links that raise false hope. (Sadly I couldn’t filter out awful billionaire sites from their lists, but you can’t win them all.) Look at any of the Report Card pages to see these in action. They’re usually right at the bottom.
I created a Glossary page of all the nerd terms related to the ongoing discussion.
I hope those improvements make using the site better.
Oh, and we now have final awards tally for the 2026 Fritzes! It and the others are linked on the main Fritzes page should you want to go back to any prior years’.
2026 is looking to have a number of interesting interfaces already, but of course if you see something that you don’t want me to miss, hit me up. You know where to find me.
The Fritzes award honors the best interfaces in a full-length motion picture in the past year. Interfaces play a special role in our movie-going experience, and are a craft all their own that does not otherwise receive focused recognition.
Today we’ll be covering Best Believable. These movies’ interfaces adhere to solid computer-human-interaction principles and believable interactions. They engage us in the story world by being convincing.
The 2026 Award goes to: The Running Man
This second adaptation of Stephen King’s novel knocks it out of the park for the plot-central interfaces: The runner cuff and R-Cam box, the hideous sousveillance phone app for “fans”, the service design of the “free-v” show, and the in-home snitch interfaces. They lean towards narrative (missing a few things real-world counterparts would need), but all help articulate this dystopian world and the circumstances that drive the action. Moreover, I feel quite certain not making good real-world models of these horrible things is the right thing to do, especially given *gestures vaguely at the kakistocracy*.
On top of that it also has lots of awesome everyday interfaces, and it takes a level of commitment on the part of the filmmakers to go that deep in the worldbuilding. There’s a videophone interface with shades of Blade Runner. There’s a mailbox that signals its readiness and lifts off immediately after receiving a letter. (Though I would have flipped those red and green colors, so red meant “don’t put mail in here” and green meant “ready to receive”, but my invitation was lost in the mail.) The fare interfaces in the taxi. The self-driving interface of the citizen car. The piloting interfaces aboard the network plane. It’s all uncluttered, straightforward, and believable. Really well done, really well presented, and that’s hard to do in intense-action movies.
Also check out: War of the Worlds (2025)
It got universally panned. Fair enough, neither ubiquitous government surveillance nor the current DHS bears valorization. (Also the virus-but-its-digital twist was already done), but I am impressed that this take on the classic Wells story is told almost entirely through interfaces, and each of them is detailed and mostly-realistic. The editing around the interface can be dizzying, and I wondered why William Radford had to do so much digital hunting at the beginning when an assistant should have been guiding his attention. But it’s impressive to bring that tale to life mostly through this unsung medium.
Also check out: Companion
With soft echoes of the interfaces in Westworld (2016), the interfaces in Companion control android and gynoid companions. (Yes, that term is deliberately coy.) They are clean and simple, which underscores the robots’ horror that they are under that much control by their owners.
My hackles are raised from “Intelligence” being a single slider. Intelligence is much more complicated than that, and this notion that it’s a single scalar variable has done a lot of damage over time. Even if they’d had a little expando control, it would have pointed at the idea that we’re looking at a simplification. Also I wish they’d provided a live preview of the eye color, because even with its intended use—of an owner controlling their companion’s eye color—this control has them glancing up to see the effect and then back down again to adjust, which is not a satisfying feedback loop. I use this very control as an example of a “plan” assistant in my new book. Hey, all of Hollywood: Buy it!
