is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
In spite of how good television has become, I still find it’s rare to find a show where every episode is a truly worthwhile chunk of time spent. If one season is ten or twenty episodes, at least three to five hours of it will be duds, in my experience. With those odds, and given I’m now past the age where time seems unlimited, I’d rather take my chances with movies instead. There are so many to watch. Beyond even all the great films that I haven’t seen yet—and all the great ones I’d like to re-watch—there are countless movies that I’m just curious about, that I’d like to discover for myself.
So I made a New Year’s resolution to cut out my television viewing and spend that time watching movies instead. So far, I’ve done pretty well. I went a little nuts in the beginning of January, but overall, when I look back on how I spent my time, I feel like I gained so much from watching these movies, much more than I would have had I binge-watched “The Walking Dead.” Here is a rundown.
January
“Sicario” Rewatched at home after seeing it in theaters last year.
“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Really had a hard time finishing this one. Completely inessential.
“The Double” I was skeptical at first because it seemed very arch, but it’s full of inventive stuff.
“The Keep” Finally got to watch this rare early Michael Mann movie, transferred from a terrible print, via Amazon. Pretty flimsy, but still has some vintage Mann elements.
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