Moving On to a New Year
Rick Retro’s Realm, The Realm Report #10: Looking back and looking forward.
The Realm Report #10: Looking back and looking forward.
Goodbye, 2025!
2025 was a good year in Rick Retro’s Realm. Retro Movie Reviews began the year as a text group with eleven participants, and after debuting on Substack in February, now has 55 subscribers. We added 34 new Retro Reviews, while also re-reviewing and debuting on Substack 35 of the 43 Retro Reviews previously only published to the text group. The remaining eight will be re-reviewed and make their Substack debuts in the next couple of weeks, if all goes as planned!
Hello, 2026!
And speaking of plans for 2026, after finishing up the Christmas Leftovers project that begins tomorrow and runs through January 12, I will be taking a week or two to work on behind-the-scenes construction in The Realm.
First up is cleaning up all the posts and links, making sure that everything that was initially posted to the text group is all transferred correctly over to Substack, so that the archives are one continuous story from the beginning. I will be making sure formatting is correct, links work, etc.
That will complete the foundational era of Rick Retro’s Realm. Next up is structural stuff. I will introduce a couple new “Sections” that I plan to use. While working on finishing up the structure of The Realm, we will return to the Retro Reviews of 51 Dark Whimsy Favorites that we were visiting. 32 were posted in 2025, so there are 19 to go in 2026.
When the structural work is done, hopefully by the end of January, we will celebrate with a Realm-wide Grand Opening Party. The target date is February 10, the one-year anniversary of our Substack debut, but that may be optimistic. We’ll see. I haven’t marketed Retro Movie Reviews much, even to friends and relatives, because I have been focusing on the foundations and structure of this website/realm. But that changes soon and we will grow our community population in 2026!
OK, that concludes the “front page” of The Realm Report #10.
Feel free to read on if you wish, or stop here if the important news was enough for you today!
Be safe in your celebrations tonight, and we will see you in 2026!
Behind the Scenes, Part 1
I promised that in this Realm Report I would share a little about the process of re-reviewing and debuting on Substack all the Retro Reviews previously posted only to the text group. It’s pretty much the same process I now use for all of my reviews, except for the first step when I’m experiencing a work for the first time. So if you are interested in how the sausage is made, read on. If not, feel free to skip this!
My initial experience of a work. (I skip this step if I have already experienced the work before.) This is when I watch that movie or read that book for the first time.
My initial notes on the work. Some of this may have happened a long time ago, since I’ve been entering grades for movies I’ve watched in a handheld database for a couple of decades now, and for books, several years too. If I’ve just recently experienced a work, I take down more notes right after reading/watching. If it was a long time ago, I may add some notes before step 3.
My supplemental research. I check outside sources and add to my notes from Step 2, so that I know what to expect and look for in Step 4.
My analysis experience of a work. I read or watch again, working from my notes taken in Steps 2 and 3. Here I go slowly through the work, adding, confirming, and changing observations in my notes. I’m looking to solidify and document several grades and ratings by the end of this analysis: Overall grade, Entertainment Quality grades, Family Suitability and Alignment with Judeo/Christian Values ratings and the Dark and Whimsy scale readings. For a feature film, this analysis typically takes four to six hours!
My Retro Review first draft. (I was able to skip this step with the reviews previously posted to the text group, using those posts as a new “first draft”.) Depending on the review, and how hard I work on it, this generally takes two to four hours.
My Substack formatting. This includes such nuisances as getting all the fonts correct, and adding tags to posts that you don’t see, but help the post to be found and give me some structural options to use later. This step also includes fun chores like picking out still photos from films that illustrate the review well. This is when I also review the review and often make changes to the first draft. I also document the post in a spreadsheet to make sure nothing has been missed and for future reference, since sometimes future connections with the review are planned. It usually takes me about two hours for this entire step.
My final review and publication. I make sure that the spreadsheet entry and review itself look complete and then I schedule the publication to Substack. After that a few details need to be checked, such as adding links to previous reviews that referenced this new reviewed work. This step just takes a few minutes, and then I’m done and a new Retro Review soon is posted for your pleasure or displeasure!
As you can see, it’s a lot of work. The great thing for me, being disabled, and unable to spend too many hours working at my desktop, is that I can complete Steps 1-4 almost entirely from my couch!
I prefer to do Step 5 at my desktop, where I can type at full speed, but if I’m not feeling well enough, I’m able to do Step 5 from my couch as well. Steps 6 and 7 really require me to be at my desk, so they sometimes can be a bottleneck, if I’m not feeling well. But overall I really enjoy the entire process, even the desktop part, so I feel blessed to be able to build a website/realm and work on populating it with content, all for you to enjoy.
Looking Back on the 2025 Christmas Tour
I also promised to share lessons learned on the 2025 Christmas Tour. Really it comes down to one significant lesson: from now on, I will strive to avoid announcing release dates of posts I haven’t written yet!
This will mainly impact Rick Retro’s Realm in terms of announced projects that are happening. Instead of one project always following another, there may be multiple projects going forward at once. Some will not have schedules, just a summary page that lists new posts after they have appeared. Other projects will have an order so that you know what is coming next, but not an itinerary, so you won’t know when the next post is coming. But there will still be the occasional project with an itinerary, and when that itinerary first goes up, all posts will be already complete and ready to appear on schedule!
Behind the Scenes, Part 2
While working on reviews posted during the 2025 Christmas Tour, I tweaked a few things that have slightly changed some of the Dark Whimsy scores and Content Details ratings.
First, I changed the deduction methodology in Whimsy points, because the Whimsy scale wasn’t delivering scores that always felt right, especially with highly penalized works. The new methodology raised a handful of scores, although a couple of scores were lowered slightly. For the tiny fraction of you interested in the details, the full Whimsy scale methodology is here.
These previously published Retro Reviews now have Dark Whimsy scores that have been updated to reflect the improved methodology:
RR#23 Trading Places (1983) from 🚫0.4| 🌚8 🌝0 to 🚫3.4| 🌚8 🌝3
RR#26 Die Hard (1988) from 🚫6.6 | 🌚12 🌝6 to 🚫5.6 | 🌚12 🌝5
RR#51 The Sting (1973) from 😎8.4 | 🌚11 🌝8 to 😎7.5 | 🌚11 🌝7
RR#54 Being There (1979) from 😎8.1 | 🌚9 🌝8 to 😎9.0 | 🌚9 🌝9
RR#57 The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
from 😎😎10.4 | 🌚10 🌝11 to 😎😎10.5 | 🌚10 🌝11
RR#59 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1983)
from 😎😎10.0 | 🌚10 🌝10 to 😎😎10.4 | 🌚10 🌝11
RR#63 The Natural (1952 novel) from 🚫0.5 | 🌚10 🌝0 to 🚫1.6 | 🌚10 🌝1
RR#70 Raising Arizona (1987)
from 😎😎11.0 | 🌚11 🌝11 to 😎😎11.7 | 🌚11 🌝12
In addition I changed the Violence/Scariness grading in the Content Details Line that help form the Family Suitability rating.
Previously the top four Violence/Scariness grades were defined as follows:
😡+4 = No violence or scariness.
😡+3 = No violence or just cartoonish violence, possibly scary for younger kids.
😡+2 = Cartoonish violence, including superhero or sci-fi, standard TV violence, injury with a little blood, or bloodless deaths.
😡+1 = Standard TV violence, death with little or no blood.
Now I am better recognizing the truth that beginning around kindergarten most children can usually handle some cartoonish violence. The top four grades are now defined as follows:
😡+4 = At most, a light or moderate amount of cartoonish violence, possibly too scary for preschoolers.
😡+3 = A moderate or heavy amount of cartoonish violence, possibly too scary for younger kids.
😡+2 = Less realistic fantasy violence, including superhero or sci-fi. Light to moderate standard TV violence, including injuries with a little blood, or bloodless deaths.
😡+1 = Moderate standard TV violence, including bloody injuries and deaths with little or no blood.
This change meant that the first item in the Family Suitability Detail/Content Detail Line in several reviews changed from: 😡+3^ to 😡+4.
The Retro Reviews affected:
RR#2 “Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost” (1901)
RR#3 “A Christmas Carol” (1910)
RR#4 “Scrooge” (1913) (aka “Old Scrooge”)
RR#8 “Scrooge” (1928) (audio recording)
RR#16 “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (1964)
RR#17 “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965)
RR#18 “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (1966)
RR#19 “The Little Drummer Boy” (1968)
RR#21 “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (1970)
RR#44 The Wizard of Oz (1939)
This completes the “back pages” of The Realm Report #10.
See you in 2026!
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Thanks for your support.
Keep the comments coming!
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