Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Renewed Call for Submissions (w/explanation)

You may recall that I recently published a column in which I invited regular readers to submit their own movie reviews for inclusion in these pages. Well, it turns out that the e-mail address I was using for that purpose was set to forward to my old domain-name at the account I regularly use, and accordingly any such reviews have neither bounced nor showed up on my end. (I guess they go to Bermuda when that happens, or something.)


The problem has now been corrected and so I'd like to take this opportunity to once again invite regular readers to submit their own reviews, via e-mail, typing the words MOVIE REVIEW in the subject line and making sure to include whatever by-line they'd like me to use, at the top of the body of the message. Please type all reviews in the body of the message (no attachments), and please accept my apologies if you've already done all of this work once already.

Cheers.
-The Key Grip.

4 comments:

A. Gordon said...

I'm surprised no one left comments Dave. It seems that people like you for your political savviness (sp?) instead of your cinematic Ebertness.

That said, I'm surprised you tackled such a topic because it's a REALLY hard one to do. How do you compare movies made in different decades? How do you compare two movies with completely different genres?

Example: while Clerks or The Breakfast Club didn't make your list, I'd argue they're cult classics. But how do you compare them to say, The Lord of the Rings series, which I'd also have to argue was brilliantly done (I mean each movie grossing over $1B, yes, billion, worldwide, can't be coincidence). People don't see bad movies, remember Gigli? It was in theaters for a day at most before it was dumped.

Anyway, this isn't a criticism - you obviously put a ton of time and effort into your list, which contains movies I've not even heard of, so that alone is respectable.

Dave O'Gorman said...

Most of the virtue of the exercise was that it was just plain fun. I got to think about my entire collection all over again, watch more than a few fence-sitters, and the heuristic (always tricky for the very reasons you describe) led to more than a few surprises.

Multiple off-site irons in the fire have prevented much follow-up, but in the days and weeks to come you can anticipate a (return to) more mixed content. A site re-design is in the offing, too, so that those who wish only to see the political commentary can select that "tab," etc.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, where's your review? :)

A. Gordon said...

My reviews would be worthless. I'm an action/adventure & romantic comedy movie type of guy that occasionally enjoys a Love Actually type of movie.

I've never seen any of the Godfathers (I can hear the gasps now...) and frankly have no desire to.

So, my list probably wouldn't be very interesting.

Dave O'Gorman said...

Every list is interesting.

By the way, have you seen "Defending Your Life," with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep? You'd like it. Ditto, "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill." Both right up your street, taste-wise.

One of the many ideas I haven't had time to pursue is that of a "movie picker" on this blog: A short survey that ends with a recommendation of a specific title. At least that would distinguish these pages from those of all (?) the other movie-bloggers out there.