100 Posts and Counting...

We’re congratulating ourselves! You should, too!

Yikes! 100 Posts! And we’ve only been at this since last March. Credit our three-times a week update schedule. But it’s still fun. Actually, it’s more fun now that our traffic numbers are rising and we’re getting more feedback.

When we got to the 50-post mark we ran down a list of ten things we’d learned from the experience up to that date. They’re still true, but there are a few other new things we picked up since.

Fitzgerald actually wrote several fantasy stories as a way to make some quick cash.

1. We’re more certain of our mission statement now than we were seven months ago, in no small part because lately the fall season’s ad campaigns are staring once again to piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining champagne. The three big prestige pictures this year, from what we can tell, are Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, David Fincer’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and future Bravo Network staple Australia, directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Of the three, we’re least leary of Benjamin Button, mostly because Fincher’s coming off his masterful Zodiac and Pitt is actually often at his best when playing more restrained, downbeat roles. We just hope the “I do de-clay-yah!” New Orleans grotesques aren’t as pervasive in the film as in the trailer.

9. Social networking tools like Digg and Twitter are great, and we welcome traffic from them, but there’s no substitute for good word of mouth. We’re getting less bitch mail than we used to, too, so we must be doing something right or anyway better than we were before. That being said, we wish there were more comments coming across our threshold.

The Man

8. Google works in mysterious ways. When we ran a pic of actor Skeet Ulrich on our 50th milestone post, the image somehow topped Google’s search rankings. So far we’ve had more than 300 visitors looking for that one pic.  To Mr. Ulrich’s fans, especially those coming over from Capturing Skeet.com, welcome and thank you. To Skeet himself, we probably owe you a steak dinner or something.

7. Our most popular post is still the “Six Forgotten Sci-Fi Films of the 1970s” retrospective from last May. It’s also the one that’s provoked the most griping, so if you check it out remember that one fan’s “forgotten” film is another fan’s cherished memory.

6. We don’t know if anyone else is laughing at our picture captions, but we’re cracking ourselves up. Editor Michael Kabel grew up reading Creem magazine, and it’s just too much fun paying some homage to that late, lamented mag by following their brilliant example here.

5. One post we wish got more traffic showcased a gorgeous montage of Homicide: Life On The Street images set to Coldplay’s “Don’t Panic.” Really, it’s a profoundly haunting couple of minutes. Here it is again:

Thanks again to easilyjaded2 for creating it.

Hello, I'm Shia LaBouef. I'm an actor.

4. Our worst review remains Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but Eagle Eye only narrowly missed taking that dubious distinction for itself. And in either film’s case, their appalling failure had nothing necessarily to do with mutual participant Shia LaBouef. It’s the films themselves that are godawful, virtually from the ground up.

3. Our posts are getting longer, but there’s more to be said about most films than will fit into a 500- or 600-word essay. Maybe the single greatest advantage of the Internet over print, to quote Walt Disney out of context, is the “blessing of space.” Now, that’s no excuse not to be succinct. But in reviewing some films and analyzing others it’s important to attempt comprehensiveness. Failing that, we’ll try to be funny if not smart.

Running down a dream: The Flash

2. We’ve tried several different types of features, from hypothetical sequels to rewriting underwhelming blockbusters to armchair casting films we know are getting made but don’t trust Hollywood to make the right personnel decisions. Our rewrites of the Star Wars prequels have been the most popular, though we’re not kidding ourselves that poeple are looking for info about the actual films. The post about how to make The Flash movie is a sentimental favorite.

1. Now that the blog’s growing bigger, it’s probably time for some big people clothes. Specifically, we’re looking for someone to create our new header. If you’ve got the design skills and think you can help, please contact us at the email shown back up and to the right there.

To wrap things up, and by way of crossing our fingers for the next 100 posts, the clip below is the famous “cuckoo clock” segment from The Third Man, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten.

Wednesday we’ll have a review of the new DVD edition of L.A. Confidential. Thanks again for reading.

-Michael Kabel

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