Happy New Year to you all, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a good first few days of 2024. For my part, I’ve been thinking about the best way to plan this newsletter in light of the upcoming change, as mentioned a few weeks ago. Still, it bears repeating.
I will start implementing a paywall for my posts. That was always part of the plan, and I hope most of you will stick around with this new feature. The current subscription plan is 7$ per month or 70 per year. There’s also a Founding Members option, where you get to choose to pay a yearly amount that is above the aforementioned 70, up to 210$ (for non-US readers, the prices are adjusted to local currency when you access Substack). This comes with additional perks: paid subscriptions give you access to the full archive and allow you to post comments on the Talking Pictures page; Founding Members also get to suggest topics for newsletter entries, should that interest them.
I had initially said that, starting now, only one post per month would be free. After some consideration, I’ve decided to experiment a little in January, with two posts per week: one freebie, and one for paid subscribers. This one’s available to everyone, and the second one, going out at the same time, is paywalled. Do let me know what you think of the topic I’ve chosen.
Next week will also have two posts, both connected to the 25th anniversary of my all-time favorite TV series (The Sopranos), as will the week after that, due to the tenth anniversary of the documentary Life Itself, about the late, great critic Roger Ebert. January 26 will most likely be devoted to the Solothurn Film Festival (shoutout to my friend and loyal reader Pierre Monnard, who is premiering his new film Bisons at the event). February will have at least one post about the Berlinale, and by the end of March I hope to finally be able to launch the Critical Thinking series, where I interview my fellow film critics about the craft.
As for the rest of next month, that’s where you come in: as mentioned above, Founding Members get to use the chat to suggest topics for upcoming posts (just a little bit of housekeeping: festivals and major anniversaries are already on the agenda; any other suggestions are more than welcome).
That’s it for now. Have a great weekend, and see you soon.
P.S. For those interested in my festival stuff specifically, I’m also the Feature Writer over at The Film Verdict, where you can read all things related to world cinema (next up for the TFV team: Rotterdam). Registration – to receive our Dailies directly in your inbox – is free of charge.