Monday, February 5, 2007

Looking at Film From Another Persepective

While searching through some other blogs I came upon Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema. This is another blogger who has been writing about film for sometime and blogging about it since 2003. It is interesting to view another blog so similar to mine in topic, but to be able to see the progression of the site and also the more advanced analysis and organization. What I really like about Reel Times is the organization, and how he separates the film reviews into their own archiving spot. The grading system for his reviews is also very effective, being done by letters instead of stars (not like I could figure out how to create stars for mine anyway, being new to blogging and Internet codes). One of his more recent posts is about the best movies of 2006, which every respectable blogger seems to be doing in the past few weeks. I guess I'll just have to go with the flow and create my own top films list as my next post. However, I can't say I agree with his choices, for example "Charlotte's Web" makes his top 10, but not "Babel" or "The Queen." But then again I guess this is why we have many critics...to gather many opinions to see if the majority thought it was great, mediocre or just lame.

1 comment:

Mark Pfeiffer said...

Thanks for the nice things you've said about my site. It has evolved quite a bit from my initial plans for it. The current state of it is how I envision it staying for awhile. I didn't see an e-mail address for you here, so if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me. Maybe I can explain the method to the madness of the letter grades.

FWIW, The Queen made my honorable mentions. While I can admire Babel's performances, direction, and formal design, I didn't care for the screenplay. I see around 300 new films in theaters each year, so paring it down to ten (or twenty or thirty with honorable mentions) can be difficult.

I know there are a few quirky choices on my list, primarily Charlotte's Web and the Neil Young concert doc, but in no way is it meant to prognosticate the Oscars or anything like that. It's a personal list of what films I liked the most and thought had the greatest artistic merit.

I do not consider the writing for the top ten, honorable mentions, and worst to be my best work. It was strictly utilitarian--get it done for the two half-hour shows we needed to tape--so if it seems vague or half-reasoned, that's why.

Looks like you're doing a nice job with your site. Keep it up.