Happy 25th Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa, The Love of My Life! Yes, this is a Big One – our twenty-fifth. One of our very successful early movie date nights featured Being John Malkovich in December, 1999.
We started out 2025 by binge-watching Shetland and ended, as is our beloved Holiday tradition, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. And we remembered her father with the very last episode of Vera.
In January, she joined me in Oakland for the Noir City film festival, where it was a real treat to see 99 River Street on the big screen, especially because she had allowed the movie’s poster to hang in her house without having seen the movie before.
We ended April together at the SLO Film Fest, attending personal appearances by Jay Duplass and Bob Mackie, and especially enjoying the Irish thriller Aontas, the short film Motorcycle Mary, and Duplass’ wonderful holiday rom com The Baltimorons.
I really enjoyed introducing her to my favorite French film noir, Touchez pas au grisbi, featuring the seasoned, cool magnetism of Jean Gabin. Together, we revisited Rob Reiner’s Princess Bride and – with the family at Thanksgiving – Love, Actually and Plans, Trains and Automobiles. And we continued watching episodic television: Ludwig, The Studio, Department Q, Shrinking, The Tower, The Tourist, Entrapped, Hostage, The House of Guinness (having just returned from Ireland) and Karen Pirie. (We watch the Scottish shows with subtitles.)
Once again, she tolerated my spending huge chunks of time covering Noir City and the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in person and Cinequest, Slamdance, Frameline, San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), Nashville Film Festival and San Francisco Jewish Film Festival virtually. She was also OK with my helping out Cinequest and SLO Film Fest by screening about 80 film submissions. I’m getting ready now to again cover Noir City in person and Slamdance virtually in January.
She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog DURING ALL OF ITS FIFTEEN YEARS, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!
