Bryant Durrell

@innocence.com

950 Followers 708 Following

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 Seattle. He/his. https://innocence.com/~durrell

An elderly guy (that’s me) wearing a purple “Keep It Crowing” Scarecrow Video T-shirt with a yellow cartoon of a happy scarecrow. I’m next to this year’s 30th anniversary Fantasia poster, featuring a Pegasus rising from a cauldron.
Bruce holding up a black statue of a pegasus in front of a movie screen.
Theater full of people standing and cheering. The filmmakers are barely visible on the stage far below, in front of the Fantasia splash screen.
Four movie posters, with ratings: Kung Fu: 3 stars Saturday Fiction: 3.5 stars Habit: 4 stars The Night of the Iguana: 4 stars
Rue Crescent in Montreal, from a balcony about ten floors up, looking north. The street is lined with bars and restaurants. You can see the plateau between a couple of buildings to the north.
Statue of a humanoid frog, maybe five feet tall, playing a saxophone. He has a sign hung around the bell of the saxophone, on which is written the Washington State criminal code pertaining to intimidating a civil servant.
Four movie posters, with ratings: We're No Angels: 3.5 stars Razzia: 3.5 stars Carolina Caroline: 3 stars Wet Hot American Summer: 3.5 stars
An image of a line of dumplings on a skewer with a tub of thousand island dressing next to it. There’s illustrative text: O'Gara's at the Fair Sligo Slider Bites On-A-Stick Handmade dumplings stuffed with a cheeseburger blend made of beef, cheddar, pickle and onion. Skewered on-a-stick and deep-fried. Served with homemade Thousand Island dressing.
Screenshot of text: ATTENTION: A few minutes after 11 a.m. we received a bomb threat and we are evacuating the zoo. We are in contact with the Seattle Police Department and are prioritizing the safety of our staff, guests and animals. In recent weeks, numerous zoos and aquariums have received threats that were later determined to be false swatting attempts. Regardless of this, we are treating this threat as a real emergency. We will provide additional details as they become available.
A sheet with everything a GM needs to run a Feng Shui encounter. At the top are two blocks for mook stats, followed by a total of six blocks for Bosses and Featured Foes. There are boxes for attack, defense, and all other relevant stats. Wounds and mook count are small checkboxes. There's useful information about what happens when an NPC runs out of health down at the bottom.
Text: Name Orangutan Mooks count 6 attack 8 defense 13 weapon Raw monkey muscle damage 10
Text: Lok Tsang Slob looking for something to believe in, featured foe Attack: 13 (Martial Arts) Defense: 13 Toughness: 5 Speed: 8 Weapon: Chunk of electified rebar (10) No skills listed. No schticks listed. Buzz Smite-Yer Cyborg fanatic, featured foe Attack: 13 (Martial Arts) Defense: 12 Toughness: 6 Speed: 5 Weapon: Buzzsaw hand (10) Guns 13 Buzzsaw: As an interrupt after a successful close-combat attack fails to do more than 4 Wound Points to an opponent, roll a die. On an even result, target of your attack takes 10 Wound Points. On an odd result, you take 5 Wound Points.
Text: the top is the NPC name, Buzz Smite-Yer, formatted as a table. Following that there's a table of properties: title: Cyborg fanatic attack: 13 attack_skill: Martial Arts defense: 12 And so on. It has space for freeform lists of schticks. Then at the bottom there are a couple of lines of freeform text: A local SLA nut who set aside his original identity of Min Dai to fully embrace his new cyborg status. Now he's glad he got his hand ripped off during a raid on a drug lord's boat!
Four movie posters, with ratings: The Order: 3.5 stars Blue Heron: 4.5 stars Becky: 3 stars Stories We Tell: 4 stars
A Le Video membership card from the now defunct SF video rental store, with the old address: 1232 9th Ave.
A furry black cat resting his head on my tummy, photographed from my POV. His eyes are open.
Four movie posters, with ratings: Bloody Sunday: 4 stars Lust of the Vampire: 3 stars Spirited Away: 4.5 stars The Battle of Chile: Part III: 4.5 stars
An array of movie zines on display, with Crossroads: Folk Horror in the United States in the center between a copy of Cinema of Actuality and Cashiers du Cinema.
Screenshot of text: "the John H. Stevens House, built in 1849 and moved to the park from its original location in 1896, utilizing horses and 10,000 school children;"
The storefront of Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore. Red brick with the name of the store on an awning above the windows, typeset in sort of 70s computer typefaces.
Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis: 50+ feet high waterfall surrounded by lovely trees.
An action shot of a roller coaster in the middle of the Mall of America. The car is revolving horizontally while moving down the track.
A small spinner rack labeled “RPG Zine Club.” Visible are games called Lichcraft and Time Force.
Comment reading only “Phuk the Times.”
Two zines, issues 1 and 2 of Apache Revolver (cinema crime journal). Issue 1 is a bright yellow cover with a photo of an Apache revolver (weird combo brass knuckles/revolver item). Issue 2 is a white cover, red lettering and a sketch of a Japanese woman in a kimono with a gun, also in red.
Three Criterion Blu-ray boxes, arranged attractively side by side on my lap: Point Blank, the Zatoichi box set, and Rififi.
The 2022 Criterion postcard booklet, half open to the Deep Cover movie poster postcard.
A sign: “The Criterion Closet. Your estimated wait time is 2 hours.”
A gentleman in a Criterion sweatshirt and ball cap speaking to the line.
A large step van with the Criterion logo and the words “The Criterion Closet” on the side. There’s a small tent set up behind it with a few Criterion employees milling around.
Me, smiling, in the front passenger seat of a car. I’m wearing a white There Will Be Blood T-shirt.
The Feathered Page book bus, with a banner showing the name of the store and a QR code leading to their website.
Me lying on a couch, with a cool King in Yellow T-shirt and my furry cat Jaqcues curled up on my arm staring at me wondering why I’m not scratching under his chin.
The marquee for SIFF Uptown, advertising the 52nd Seattle International Film Festival, May 7-17. It’s twilight, and the neon purples of the marquee are lovely.
Selfie of an older dude wearing a button on his lanyard: SIFF Cinema Workers Union surrounding the upraised fist.
A muddy Hungarian farm yard, with a dilapidated white building at the back. There is a herd of cows near the building.
A translucent plaque with an irregular top edge, like it’s a slice out of a boulder. There’s a Turbine logo on the left, and on the right it says: 2003 Bryant Durrell MVP of the Year
Me (short cropped white hair, glasses, awkward smile) standing in front of the Mary Malone statue in Dublin.
Me and my sweetie posed in front of a big block of polished rock a few feet on a side — the Seattle stone, located in Galway.
Selfie — short grey hair, glasses, I’m smiling, and behind me is Lake Washington. I’m on a bridge!
Screenshot showing the user Lo Phat with a “goldbug” tag and the snarky comment “I had to give him the goldbug tag. Easily the worst poster on the site.”
Silvia Moreno Garcia and a guy whose name I can’t recall discussing Mexican cinema post-showing. They are seated.
An advance uncorrected proof of Silvia Moreno Garcia’s The Intrigue, on sale 7/14/2026. The cover is a man smoking a cigarette in darkness, with a woman’s silhouette in a doorway shaped to look like a match flame. The title is script slanted along the downward line of the cigarette.
The VIFF poster for the Mexico Noir series, in the lobby. There’s a woman in the bottom left corner looking up and to the right, tinted in red, and smaller figures occupying the rest of the frame.
On an electrical pole, from top to bottom: A handwritten sign saying “The Poll Pole” A laminated sheet of paper titled “Warning: Touchy topic. Which AI tool?” It’s divided into four quadrants, ChatGPT, Claude, Other, and Absolutely no AI. That last one is winning by a landslide. Other has no checks but a lot of commentary — “useful but unethical,” “No AI art ❤️,” “open evidence,” and “use it but be smart about it.” Claude has about fifteen tallies and one note: “Claude code.” ChatGPT has ten tallies and a note sharing that it’s getting worse, with one agreement to that sentiment.
Jonathan Coulton performing, with Aimee Mann singing backup and playing electric bass. Neptune Theater, Seattle, March 15th 2026.
Four movie posters, with ratings: Chungking Express: 4 stars Days of Being Wild: 5 stars Chloe: 3 stars Mala Noche: 3 stars
A hex map titled "The Netherworld" (in yellow text, somewhat demonic looking). It shows a Thunder King Outpost in the middle, a Portal to Hong Kong 2026 at the bottom, and the Boundless Wave Monastery at the top left, with tunnels connecting them. The Thunder King Outpost is the hub of this region, more or less. Oh, and there's a third tunnel reaching off towards the top right.
Six actors listed in two columns of three, with round headshots for each and the count of movies I’ve seen with each of them so far this year. Maggie Cheung: 3 films René Auberjonois: 3 films Tony Leung Chiu-Wai: 2 films Lily Gladstone: 2 films Klaus Kinski: 2 films Marisa Mell: 3 films
The big screen, showing SIFF’s advertisement for their World of Wong Kar Wai series — see https://www.siff.net/programs-and-events/world-of-wong-kar-wai
Three envelopes with stickers designating the characters who they belong to — a pair of demon dice, a spirit fox, and a sorceror’s hand casting a force spell.
Screenshot of text, as follows: Kai You've been waking up to discover that your demon tattoo has silpped off your skin and is spooning you in your sleep, recently. More than once. There's like this moment of warm comfort before you realize what's going on, and then it's just icky. The demon has scales. Roll a Sorcery check. If the Outcome is: Under 14: Bryant chooses one of the following options, and may add a twist 14-16: choose one of the following options 16+: choose two of the following options 1. You can make the demon go back inside your skin; tell us how that works! 2. You know who can make the demon stop behaving like this for good -- Bryant will answer this one. 3. You know what the demon wants; tell us what that is! 4. You know the demon's True Name; with the right sorcery you could completely control it.
Four movie posters, with ratings: The Store: 4 stars A Star Is Born: 3 stars High School: 4.5 stars McCabe & Mrs. Miller: 5 stars
Receipt for a $100 donation to Out Spot KC, with a $100 match from the company.
An inside spread from the Exorcismo Blu-ray set. The left page is purple, with “Poppers” in a sort of cyberpunk angular typeface, a cut out image of a guy in a white shirt at the bottom, and the upper half is a pink/purple shaded pair of people in Lou Reed Berlin-era garb. The right page is reds and yellows, two photos without a lot of detail visible, a jagged line bisecting it diagonally, and the words “after… part two. Tied up and tied up well.”
Four movie posters with ratings: A Star Is Born (3.5 stars) Sirāt (4 stars) Sentimental Value (4.5 stars) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (4 stars)
Four movie posters: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: 4 stars Send Help: 2 stars Nouvelle Vague: 3.5 stars Sovereign: 2.5 stars
A black cross set low to the stony ground, with a stone wall directly behind it. It is the location where James Connolly was executed for the crime of fighting for freedom. He was too ill to stand, so they tied him to a chair.
Photo of the Four Courts building in Dublin from across the River Liffey, with its distinctive dome and Corinthian colonnade.
Four movie posters with ratings: A New Leaf: 4.0 stars Bend of the River: 4.5 stars Dead Eyes of London: 3.5 stars A Star Is Born: 3.5 stars