Hello, Death Racers 👋
I’ll start with a proper thank you. I honestly wasn’t expecting the reaction to last month’s newsletter. Donations came in, new subscribers signed up, and lots of you got in touch to say what you’d love to see next. I’m genuinely grateful. It’s a side project I build in the evenings, and seeing people actually use it (and chip in to keep it running) means a huge amount.
It also gave me a real kick to make the site as useful as it can possibly be. So this month I went through almost every pixel of it. The aim was to make it feel less like a list of posters and more like a tool you plan your season with, and somewhere you race alongside your friends. But first, the thing I’m most excited to announce…
🌳 New: the Green Death Race
Watching films shouldn’t cost the earth. Last month I said I’d look at ways to offset the site’s impact, and this is the result. For the 2027 season there are two parts:
- A tree for finishers. Supporters (ie, donators & subscribers) who finish the BAFTA, Spirits or Oscars Death Race before ceremony night get a tree planted in their name with Ecologi, the morning after the ceremony. That’s up to three trees a season. Finished on a free account? Become a supporter before ceremony night and the tree is still yours.
- A free monthly draw (January, February and March). Every film in this season’s races that you’ve watched and rated is a ticket, and tickets carry over from one month to the next. The winner chooses either a cinema ticket (up to £15) or 10 trees plus £10 to the AoDR Deathies.
The season opens on 1 January. Until then, every film you get through now is one fewer to cram in before ceremony night. If you’d like to show it off, your trees can appear on your public profile too.
👉 How it works: deathracetracking.com/green
🎨 A new look, page by page
The race page has had the biggest rethink:
- The race track. Your progress is now drawn as a track, one notch per film, ending in a chequered flag. It leads with the one number that matters: how many films you have left. Your friends are on the track too, so you can see who’s ahead (and who’s not doing quite so well).
- The facts that matter: how much watching time you have left, the pace you need to finish before the ceremony, how many categories you’ve completed, your rank, and a live countdown to the night.
- A new Stats tab with a pace chart. It plots your running total against the pace you need, plus a projection based on your last two weeks, so you can see early if you’re falling behind (I may or may not have built this for myself).
- A new About tab that gives you a quick brief on the race and its shape.
- Picks are now a proper ballot sheet. Predict the winners, share your ballot and see how you did on the night.
- Film cards now carry your library and notes, alongside watched. You can filter a race by them too, e.g. “winners to watch in your library”.
There are also new-look public profiles, a Friends page that’s much easier to manage, and leaderboards that show the gap between you and the people around you (“+3 films ahead”). I've been finding that they’re a lot more fun to check than they should be.
👯 More social
- Notifications: there’s a bell in the header for friend requests, accepted requests and new badges. You can accept or decline a request right there.
- Email digest: a round-up of anything you’ve missed, hourly, daily, weekly or off. Your choice, in profile settings.
📼 Welcome to the 1990s
We hit the Historic Race Data (1990+) roadmap goal, so the Mega Death Race now goes back to 1990. That covers the Oscars, BAFTAs, and Spirits for every year from 1990 to 1999, about 890 more films to add to your watchlist. I also fixed how the John Cassavetes Award is handled. It’s now part of the main Spirits race every year, which has added another 58 films to the Spirits and Mega races between 2001 and 2019.
🏁 Just 2 subscribers away from the 1980s
There are currently 68 subscribers, and the next roadmap goal is 70. When we hit it, I’ll fill in the Mega races back to 1980. The Spirits will start at their first ceremony in 1986.
After that, the next goal (75) brings the Golden Globes and Razzies back to 1980, so the Mecha and Mecha+ races catch up with the Mega. That covers every Razzies ceremony ever held, for those of you who like to suffer.
Straight talk: roadmap goals count yearly subscribers, so a one-off donation (which I’m hugely thankful for!) doesn’t move this particular number. If you’ve been on the fence, £12 a year gets you ad-free browsing and all the supporter perks, and it gets the whole site to the 1980s. It also means a tree for each of the individual Mega Death Races you finish this season 🌳
👉 See the roadmap: deathracetracking.com/roadmap
👉 Subscribe: deathracetracking.com/subscription
📱 Wanted: Android testers
Yes, as hinted for over a year, I've been working on an app! The Death Race Tracking Android app is nearly ready, and before it goes out to everyone I need a handful of you to put it through its paces. It covers your races, your watch list, logging films, friends and notifications, all in your pocket.
To volunteer, please drop me a message with the email address of the Google account you use on your Android phone. Send this to me via Discord, Reddit, or email (hello@deathracetracking.com). I’ll add you to the test group and send you a link to install it from the Play Store. All I ask is that you use it like you normally would and tell me what breaks, what’s confusing and what you’d change. Honest feedback very much welcome.
(Android only for now, sorry iPhone folks.)
✨ Everything else
- Letterboxd import, rebuilt as a diary. You see what matched, month by month, before anything is saved. You can skip a film or a whole month, and choose whose entry wins where you’ve logged the same film in both places. You can also save your Letterboxd username so it stops asking.
- Search is smarter: there’s a new “Best match” sort, so “godfather” finds The Godfather first.
- New sorts: “Most watched” (showing “Watched by N racers”) and “Date watched”.
- Arrange your top-rated films when several share a rating (supporters).
- The footer counts down to the next key date of awards season.
- The changelog remembers where you got to and shows you only what’s new since your last visit.
- The Help page opens with a labelled drawing of the race page, so you can find out what each bit does.
- The newsletter invite is now a small note in the corner instead of a pop-up over the page. Sorry to everyone who got ambushed by the old one.
- Plus a big batch of fixes, security and reliability work behind the scenes.
🌱 Still A+
All of that redesign, and the homepage still scores A+ on Digital Beacon, at about 0.08 g of CO₂ for a first visit and under 0.01 g when you come back. It’s still on hosting recognised as renewable. Keeping it light matters to me just as much as adding features, and the Green Death Race is just another step on ensuring that the fun activity of watching and tracking films doesn't cost the earth.
📅 Dates for your diary
November
- 12 Nov: Oscars final general submission deadline
- 15 Nov: Governors Awards
- 16 Nov: Golden Globes nomination voting opens
December
- 2 Dec: 🎬 Film Independent Spirits nominations
- 7 Dec: 🎬 Golden Globes nominations
- 15 Dec: 🎬 Oscars shortlists announced. The Death Race warm-up officially begins!
- 31 Dec: Oscars eligibility period ends
January 2027
- 1 Jan: 🌳 Green Death Race season opens, and the January draw begins
- 7 Jan: 🎬 BAFTA longlists
- 10 Jan: 🏆 Golden Globes ceremony
- 19 Jan: 🎬 BAFTA nominations
- 21 Jan: 🎬 Oscar nominations. The Oscars Death Race starts here! 🏁
- 31 Jan: 🌳 January draw closes
February–March 2027
- 21 Feb: 🏆 BAFTA Film Awards (🌳 BAFTA trees planted the morning after)
- 28 Feb: 🌳 February draw closes
- 6 Mar: 🏆 Film Independent Spirits (🌳 Spirits trees planted the morning after)
- 14 Mar: 🏆 The 99th Academy Awards. The chequered flag! (🌳 Oscars trees planted the morning after)
- 31 Mar: 🌳 March draw closes
See you next month
Until then: have a play with the new race pages, add your friends, start logging films from the 90s, and if you’re on Android or have feedback or comments, please get in touch. Plenty of this month’s changes came straight from people reaching out.
And if you’ve subscribed or donated, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. And if you’re thinking of subscribing, it’s just 2 to go to unlock races back to 1980.
Happy watching 🍿
Ian (aka SlightAstro), DeathRaceTracking
