Bryant Durrell

Bryant Durrell

@innocence.com

I like movies a lot. I worry about right-wing extremism. I play and sometimes write tabletop RPGs. I used to be an SRE but I got better. I grew up in New England and live with my wife in St. Paul (as of August 2026). He/his. https://innocence.com/~durrell

1K followers 725 following5.6K posts

Spoiler-laden review of You Can See Everything, sort of. I didn’t say this explicitly but I don’t believe that Holmes invited Nathan Fielder into her house without knowing who he was; I think she was betting that she could turn him into a human shield, and the movie is about that dynamic.

Bryant Durrell@innocence.com

Population: One: Deception, Bullies, and the Woman Who (RSS crosspost)

popone.innocence.comPopulation: One: Deception, Bullies, and the Woman Who (RSS crosspost)Reposted from Letterboxd because I wound up writing a thousand words on this sucker and I figured that was worth a blog post. This is not a review of the movie because it’s impossible to just talk about what’s going on up on the screen. Like all of Nathan Fielder’s work, it exists in conversation with our cultural moment. It’s not a movie about Elizabeth Holmes, it’s a movie about how we have reacted to Elizabeth Holmes over the course of the last decade. We will always be reacting to Elizabeth Holmes, I guess. A thousand years from now historians will be talking about the strange fertility goddess/demoness Holm, and her relationships with a series of violent war gods.

Somehow, during the movie, “Oh, yeah, I saw your gas station bit” got transmuted into “This highly image-conscious person completely failed to research Nathan Fielder despite the fact that she explicitly said she’d seen some of his work, gosh she’s such a naïf.”

Population: One: Deception, Bullies, and the Woman Who (RSS crosspost)

popone.innocence.comPopulation: One: Deception, Bullies, and the Woman Who (RSS crosspost)Reposted from Letterboxd because I wound up writing a thousand words on this sucker and I figured that was worth a blog post. This is not a review of the movie because it’s impossible to just talk about what’s going on up on the screen. Like all of Nathan Fielder’s work, it exists in conversation with our cultural moment. It’s not a movie about Elizabeth Holmes, it’s a movie about how we have reacted to Elizabeth Holmes over the course of the last decade. We will always be reacting to Elizabeth Holmes, I guess. A thousand years from now historians will be talking about the strange fertility goddess/demoness Holm, and her relationships with a series of violent war gods.

Just came out of You Can See Everything (which proves to be a deliberately ironic title) and for no particular reason I’m wondering about the exact eligibility rules for acting Oscars.

The answer is yes, and A24 is going to campaign for an acting nomination for one person in the movie. Spoilers in the link. www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

yahoo.com‘You Can See Everything’ Sets Oscar Campaigns for Best Picture, Supporting Actress and More CategoriesSPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “You Can See Everything,” now playing in theaters. “You Can See Everything” may rewrite the rules of the Oscar season. Nathan Fielder and Lance ...

Hey newsletter parasocial pals — please put your name somewhere prominent in your newsletter so absent-minded people like me who are happy to hit subscribe but don’t remember the title of your newsletter remember who you are two weeks later when they get your newsletter.

Making corporate structure diagrams isn't totally in the spirit of Feng Shui but it's mostly for my own amusement anyhow.

Part of what’s going on here is that my players are wary that my NPCs will betray them. This is a minor flaw in my GMing style. So I wanted to produce an artifact that clarifies where everyone’s loyalty is and where the potential betrayal lines are. Willoughby Booth is Ascended; that’s a problem.

As I flail around a bit... Is there anyone out there who would really value a fairly decent set of original Vampire: the Requiem books? I have not cracked the covers of these things in years, and my packrat instincts are problematic, and it'd help if I could sell them to someone who'll love them.

There's also a copy of Ghouls spilling over into another shelf. If someone just wanted the supplements but not the two core books, sure. No particular price in mind.

I can’t believe Obama said that nobody who eats at the Cheesecake Factory could ever win a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal.

Well shit, that’s good news. So I sort of assume Lulu now has four years to figure out the next anti-fascist candidate, and 100% has to avoid corruption issues in the process? I feel like we’ve seen the potential issues with the aging President who doesn’t think hard enough about succession.

Great Feng Shui session. I’ve discovered how to challenge the PCs: roll lots of exploding 6s for the bad guys. @smichele.bsky.social’s PC went down twice, another almost went down, but ultimately they won the Battle of the Pinball Hall against the New Simian Army.

Somewhere far away, a bunch of cybernetic apes watch an entire bank of jury-rigged monitors go dark as the PCs unplug arcade machines. A gravelly voice speaks. “Move the Hong Kong upstarts to S tier problems.” Three grainy PC photos are shifted up to the top rank of the Problem Board.

Man, Jay White is a main event talent by any standards and I’d love to see the White/Ospreay feud run back. Not as much as I’d like to see ZSJ spend six months in AEW on a mission to show who’s the best Briton, but one can’t have everything.

Found our Halloween fun! moonpalacebooks.com/events/64708...

moonpalacebooks.comBookstore Horror Day | Moon Palace BooksYour neighborhood independent bookstore located in south Minneapolis. Selling new and used books since 2012.

Late night #LastFourWatched, in which I ignore the three Hitchcock movies I just watched because I like to show a range or something. 🎥

This is making me think way more than any of them deserve about Becky vs. Sisu and the dramatic drop in quality in the third Becky movie.

I’m gonna think about the way Cary Grant wedges an entire character arc into North by Northwest using nothing but his comic timing and his physicality.

Here for Hitchcock (and my Eva Saint Marie memorial watch). It’s larger inside than it looks in the photo. 🎥

Eva Marie Saint, of course.

There is no way Vermont likes New Hampshire. Except that New Hampshire allows Vermont to feel superior, mostly right at the border where Vermonters can look at all the billboards just across the state line and be happy about the lack of visual pollution in Vermont.

Brilliant Maps@brilliantmaps.bsky.social

Every US State’s Favorite State Besides Their Own (With Arrows) Credit: Matt Shirley It's surprising how few states reciprocally like each other. Full list: brilliantmaps.com/fav-us-st...

Ladies, gentlemen, and enbies, I give you the party of limited government. Today the Republicans are brought to you by a gubernatorial candidate indulging a grandparent who wants a federal law forcing parents to allow grandparents to visit their grandkids.

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social

Republicans increasingly pandering to the Missing Missing Reasons Voter

You may have heard something about parental rights from them once but nah. Grandparental rights are more important.

The grandparent here sounds legitimately distressed and perhaps the parents are being petty. But the only real answer to this is “that sounds awful, and I’m sympathetic, but I am not sure it’s the government’s job to get involved in family disputes.” Maybe offer to facilitate mediation?

The Beacon continues to nail it with their programming. 🎥 thebeacon.film/programs/lov...

thebeacon.filmLOVE IS A COUNTRY OF TWO AND TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT! — The BeaconPopulation: YOU AND ME, BABY. No laws, no extradition treaties, no age of consent for declaring war on the world. Just a couple of heartsick degenerates making…

Bryant Durrell reposted

Willow Catelyn Maclay

@willowcatelyn.bsky.social

Criterion's 4k edition of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is out today, and it was a great honor and privilege that I was asked to contribute to the booklet. Pick it up during their flash sale 💙 www.criterion.com/films/528-th...

We are geared up for the Big Noirvember! Thanks to @smichele.bsky.social for building the list. boxd.it/XDb7M

boxd.itThe Big Noirvember 2026Original challenge list here! Bryant and I are diving into the noir side of things this year, with an attempt at one film each day. See the above link for categories, as well as other participants!

Brief Encounter immediately takes its rightful place on my top 100 list thanks to a stunning Celia Johnson performance. Plus, of course, the brilliance of David Lean and Noel Coward. If someone could program a double feature of this movie and In The Mood for Love I’d be ever so grateful.

Bryant Durrell reposted

@bilgeebiri.bsky.social

RIP Tom Skerritt. A great actor who had an uncanny ability to show up in the most iconic movies, even if it was with the briefest part. I did a wide-ranging talk with him a few years ago that's still one of my favorite interviews [Gift link]: www.vulture.com/2021/10/tom-...

vulture.comTom Skerritt Has a Story to TellOn Orson Welles, his own regrets, and what makes a heart keep beating.

I’m not usually all that snide about product updates but… buttons? Is this deeply important in a way I don’t understand? Like I’ve had a link in my profile already forever; is it that the bare links are intimidating so the buttons are better?

Bluesky@bsky.app

v1.136 is live! Introducing: Profile links We want independent writers, artists, developers, and creators to be able to build and fund sustainable projects on Bluesky. Help your followers know how to support you by adding buttons for Patreon, Ko-fi, your newsletter or website, and more.

Population: One: Little Wars (RSS crosspost)

popone.innocence.comPopulation: One: Little Wars (RSS crosspost)People reading this via my blog know I’m a tabletop roleplaying fan; for the LinkedIn crowd, here’s a piece of me that you probably didn’t hear a lot about at work. Unless you worked with me at a video gaming company. I have spent a lot of my life playing tabletop roleplaying games: Dungeons & Dragons and the thousands of games of roughly that style. I was introduced to the hobby by a disreputable dude a couple years older than me in high school, who showed me this game called Tunnels & Trolls, which notably supported solitaire play in the style of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, except with dice. I spent endless hours as a solitary kid randomly generating new dwarves, elves, humans, and so on and sending them into dungeons to live or die as the dice demanded. I still have many of the books I bought back then, sitting a couple of yards from me on my shelves.

Population: One: November 2026 Criterion Channel Lineup (RSS crosspost)

popone.innocence.comPopulation: One: November 2026 Criterion Channel Lineup (RSS crosspost)Man, I should really go back and tag all of these posts with relevant directors and so on. But who has time when you’re busy lobbying the Criterion Channel for a Boston Crime collection? And here we are, almost at Halloween, with November’s lineup to discover. I hope you and yours had an October filled with all the horror movies you felt like watching. November is traditionally Noirvember in our household and sometimes Criterion feels the same way. Not as much this month, with the partial exception of a Starring Gene Tierney collection introduced by the always-awesome Imogen Sara Smith. Tierney was just generally great but Criterion’s correct to say she made her greatest impact in noir; I’ve seen all the noirs here but you should absolutely check out Laura and Leave Her to Heaven if you haven’t. I’m putting Rings on Her Fingers on the top of my month’s watchlist, sight unseen, just because I’m a sucker for con artist movies.

All roleplaying in our Draw Steel session today, which was neither particularly supported or hindered by the system. Boy does Broadhurst have a lot of problems. My guy Crows is writing back home and asking his old regiment to send a trainer because this place needs a real militia asap.

View full thread

I have a sneaking suspicion that the argument regarding broken contracts and the price of stone is gonna need the negotiation subsystem to resolve it. Crows is avoiding that one.

“What if we just go kill more things?” “Crows, you can’t kill the dwarven stone merchants.” “What if we kill some monsters?” “That’s not going to change anyone’s mind about who promised to pay what for the stupid stone blocks.” “What if we ignore this whole problem and kill bandits?” “Sure.”

All roleplaying in our Draw Steel session today, which was neither particularly supported or hindered by the system. Boy does Broadhurst have a lot of problems. My guy Crows is writing back home and asking his old regiment to send a trainer because this place needs a real militia asap.

We also encountered the downtime system, which forces some hard choices about how you spend your time. More so than Blades in the Dark! I have learned a meta game lesson about evaluating choices before committing to, say, making a healing potion when you really need to be researching a local tomb.

Now that's acapella.

This post is unavailable.

Our new cat tree from Purrniture has arrived and disturbed the balance of the apartment: Jacques, for perhaps the first time in his idiotic fuzzy life, has figured out how to climb and Agnes is fairly disturbed that he won’t let her be up on the top with him. This’ll be fun to watch.

Aw fuck.

Jason Schreier@jasonschreier.bsky.social

BREAKING: Electronic Arts is cutting 400 jobs and shutting down BioWare, the legendary development studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

bloomberg.comElectronic Arts to Cut 400 Jobs, Shut Down BioWareThe next ‘Mass Effect’ will be canceled as part of the layoffs

Unsurprisingly, the Minnesota Star-Tribune comment section is just as plagued with pro-sweeps idiots as the Seattle Times was, using the same stupid “why don’t you take one into your home” arguments. Generally fewer right-wing trolls here but this topic brings out the centrist NIMBYs.

Letterboxd film challenges but for TTRPGs. Hm. For practicality reasons this should be month by month rather than week by week and I’m not sure there are enough game groups with the right flexibility for this, but…

View full thread

Then you can create cross-group play: Month 3: play a round of map building game X. Month 6: pick someone else’s month 3 and run a session on their map.

I think it would be hard to create a new community with this but I think an existing publisher who’s put effort into community could do something really cool. Call me if you like this, I wanna help. Or just steal the idea. ;)

Letterboxd film challenges but for TTRPGs. Hm. For practicality reasons this should be month by month rather than week by week and I’m not sure there are enough game groups with the right flexibility for this, but…

Month 1: play a scenario with androids in it. Month 2: play a scenario written by a woman or enby. (Your own could count.)

You want a Discord where people are talking about their sessions, to create community, which is one of the useful goals here. I’m thinking about the common ground you got when, for example, a lot of Mothership players started with Another Bug Hunt.