Dr. Frank raising a toast for my blog’s one-year.

I’m extremely happy to say that my blog has officially reached its one-year mark. Hooray!

This is by far the longest I’ve ever sustained a blog and kept it at least semi-active. I created this blog with the intention of, well, writing about movies of course. But I also wanted to keep something that would give me more opportunities to always be writing about what’s been on my mind lately. With this process, not only do I steadily improve my writing (as the saying goes, practice makes tolerable), but I also sustain a pretty neat spot on the ‘net centered around me and devoted particularly around the movies I love, movies I hate, and everything in between.

Of course (and unfortunately), this basic goal of always having something to write about has had its ebbs and flows over time.  These past couple of months have been especially rough, since I am now trying to juggle my last semester of college, two jobs, and an internship. While I’ve certainly had no problem fitting movie-watching in with the rest of my daily duties, most evenings I’m just completely, mentally burnt-out to the point where even thinking about updating this blog is an utmost impossibility. I will admit (shamefully) that I’ve often fallen in the laziness trap a tad more often than I’d prefer – where I’m completely capable of working on something for the blog, but decide to watch or read something instead. Hopefully I can work on that in the future.

More toasts from Mr. Fox and friends!

Anyway, the real purpose of this post is to sorta give recognition to the blog posts that I considered to be the best I’ve written here. This post marks my 53rd I’ve published on this site; that’s just over one blog post per week, which I’d say is a fairly impressive average. Granted, there were times where I’d go for quite a long time without posting anything, but I think it’s made up for the fact that what I do post is usually quite lengthy, at least 1,000 words in length. Anyway, here are some of what I’m most proud of:

• One of my early reviews for the blog was for 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi. Generally my reviews of a single movie tend to run between 500-800 words. I don’t always push myself to go to much depth, as much of what I write here is rather stream-of-consciousness in the first place. But every once in a while, I do write something that is, miraculously, actually enjoyable to hark back to and reread. I think this is one of the earliest reviews I can pull out where there’s a discernible amount of character to it – a review that is distinctively mine – and I’m awfully happy about it.
• My sampling of ten great Russian animated shorts remains one of my absolute favorite things I’ve ever written, for this blog or for anything else. I haven’t seen many new shorts since I wrote the post, but having written it at a time when I was obsessed with Soviet art, culture, and film was absolutely perfect. I still link people to that post from time to time, in efforts to try to get them to broaden their horizons with animation. The shorts are all really fun and incredible, and I think I did a pretty good job at summing them up through my own little interpretations.
• Two more reviews of mine I’m pretty proud of: Cannibal Holocaust and Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. Obvious to those who have seen both, the common thread that binds these two otherwise very different films is their similar voyeuristic experiences. These two flicks are not very easy to watch, and I’d probably detract particularly squeamish viewers from checking it out. This kind of cinemasochist, weirdly enough, is just my cup of tea. Therefore, it’s not surprising that these two reviews were particularly fun for me to write about. Both of those reviews are pretty overwhelmingly positive, and I think illustrate just how cool I found them pretty decently.
• An especially notable part of my blog is my failed effort at writing short reviews for my top ten of every year in the 60s. Ashamedly, this task proved to be more daunting than I intended it on being; this is due to my sudden busyness with work and school, as well as the fact that I just tend to write too damn much about movies I like/love. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed writing on my top ten of 1962, particularly since I really enjoyed quite a lot from that year. I’ve come to find out that I’m usually better at articulating my thoughts on films I love more than films I dislike; thus, this post shows off some of my better examples of this.
• Starting in December of 2013, I started doing weekly write-ups of what I had watched that previously week. It was a great way of getting my blog updated on a consistent basis, and it also upped my views on the site by quite a lot! Unfortunately, I’ve had to compress this to a single post covering what I had watched in the previous month since – once again – I became bombarded with much more “important” “real life” tasks. Anyway, why I generally rank them at about the same in quality, this one probably best exemplifies the kind of variety I’d watch throughout the week. As is apparent, I looove variety.
• At the end of last year, I was inspired by another blogger to make a top twenty new-to-me films of 2013 post – as in, a ranking of the best twenty films I watched last year, regardless of what year they each were released. Essentially, it’s a post entirely devoted to great films, and I write very briefly about each great film and why I love it. It was a really awesome post to write and it brings me great joy upon revisiting.
• One of my favorite reviews that I’ve ever written was for Spike Jonze’s Her, which was my absolute favorite film of last year. I didn’t make a separate post for this review, but rather included it alongside others in my weekly recap post. Looking back, however, I kind of wish that I had made it a separate post. It is probably one of the most personal, mature pieces I’ve ever done. However, the credit can’t be completely mine, as the review is less of a display of my writing skills and more of an example of how a wonderful, tremendous film can reach deep down into each of us and pull out thoughts, emotions, and words that we never knew were there in the first place. As of now I’ve yet to give the film a rewatch, but I’m greatly looking forward to when I can.
• I’m kind of cheating with this one, but my review for the Czech classic Daisies is another one of my very favorite pieces. It’s one of those rare films that is almost impossible for me to fully, accurately describe why I love so much. It just hit me on so many levels; I love it more with each rewatch and it has become one of my all-time favorites. Not coincidentally, it is also one of those films that was just so fun to pull apart and examine on a thematic level, so writing this analysis was (almost) as fun as watching the film itself.
• Finally, I think my top 20 of 2013 post is one of my more fun posts. For one thing, it took me forever, since I wanted to put down an accurate expenditure of my feelings of each film, which usually requires me writing a little too much. Moreover, it’s fun because the style of the post is really casual and non-pretentious. The overall mood of my blog had gotten more and more casual over time, which I think is a good thing since it demonstrates just how comfortable I’ve gotten with writing. Finally, 2013 proved itself to be a particularly great year in movies, and I watched more from that year that I have in any other. And since I write better with movies I love – everyone wins!

Steve Buscemi has lots of feels about my blog’s anniversary.

Once again, it seems that I’m writing more on this post than I had originally intended on. This always happens… but I’ll keep powering forward.

I’m really happy that I’ve managed to keep this blog going for as long as I have, and I really I hope I keep it as consistently active in the future. I still plan on making my monthly recaps of what I watch, but I’m also considering adding some new features that would make the site more distinct. For one thing, I want to give my future reviews of select films a slightly more feminist perspective, particularly with the presentation of a female and LGBTQ perspective in art. Perhaps I’d like to do something honoring female filmmakers from all around the world, or perhaps even just honoring films that have awesome female representation. Moreover, since I’ve been watching more TV shows, I think I want to start writing more reviews about shows, rather than making this blog solely about movies. Who knows – maybe I’ll one day make music a major component of the blog as well, and it’ll just be a wonderful hodgepodge of fun modern art that I can relish over.

Either way, I really just want to continue to make this a space of my own where I continue to exercise my ability to write whatever the hell I want. I’m excited for the future improvements and cycles that are bound to occur through the upcoming months and years. I hope you’re all willing to take this journey with me; I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun.