Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Random Musings of the Month - May 2011

Random Notes of the Month  

As the poll results show, there was an overwhelming positive response to my new film sprocket background.  So it's here to stay.  Thank you to the 29 people who voted.

I recently replaced the default Blogger nav-bar with a cleaner looking search bar, a subtle change but I much prefer having the search box at the top right.

I've also been working on a few other cool design changes and tweaks that will hopefully be revealed soon.  Just having some issues with browser compatibility, IE is being a real pain in the ass.

I didn't watch as many movies as I usually do this month, but I had lots of fun following all the goings-on at the Cannes Film Festival, it was the best one I can remember in years.

Lots of must see films in this year's lineup for me.  Starting with Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life. It opens in my city on June 17 and I'll be one of the first in line.

It's funny how Lars Von Trier gets banned from Cannes for his Nazi jokes, yet Mel Gibson, who has said worse and meant it, gets a 10 minute standing ovation. 

Blogger's surprise outage sure gave me a scare, and it seems they are still having problems, I noticed sometimes the various widgets show up blank, and the last few days I've had intermittent trouble commenting on some of your blogs, sometimes the comments box is missing and sometimes I get redirected to an error page after posting.  I hope they resolve these issues soon.  I made a couple back-ups of my blog, just in case.

A quick browse through my Google Analytics reports this month reveals some bizarre search terms people found my blog with, for example: "jesus sex scene", "female pirate stabbed", "naked foreigner girls swimming", "13 year old prostitute".  That last one appears 7 times, there really are some sick sick f*cks out there.

Lastly, I figured out how to properly show visits originating from Google Image Search as "Search Engine" hits rather than "Reffering Site" hits in Google Analytics.  Roughly half of my pageviews come from Google Image Search so it's nice to finally see how the visitors found me, and what keywords they used.  This is really something that should be default behavior, I don't why it is setup in a way that requires elaborate workarounds.


Random Links of the Month
  • The Large Association of Movie Blogs announced the nominees for this year's LAMMY awards, congratulations and good luck to all the nominees.
  • Movie On is one of my new favorite blogs, thanks to their dedicated and thorough Festival de Cannes coverage.
  • Le Mot du Cinephiliaque is hosting his second annual Most Influential Director's Poll.
  • Stars and Stripes gives a funny and entertaining review of Joe Wright's Hanna.
  • Check out Jack L. film reviews' Silent Film Marathon for some excellent in depth reviews of several silent era classics
  • The Angry Lurker gives Kevin Macdonald's Roman epic The Eagle 3 stars.
  • Cinematic Paradox's glowing review of Let Me In has convinced me to give this remake a chance.
  • Eternity of Dream has finished her wonderful marathon on silver screen icon Audrey Hepburn, complete with a list of favorite films.
  • The best new blog I discovered this month, Feminising Film offers some interesting thoughts on the amazing Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours: Blue.
  • Andy Buckle's Film Emporium is doing a great job profiling the work of one of my favorite filmmakers, David Cronenberg.
  • I'm avidly following Can't Explain's running 100 Other Songs countdown where he highlights some lesser known and forgotten musical gems.
  • Virginie's Cinema announced the upcoming premiere of her Québec Super-8 short film project with a cool poster and trailer. 
  • Surrender to the Void ran a superb Cannes Marathon, covering a variety of films that screened at Cannes in past years.
  • Don't miss Rorschach Redemption's hilarious Will They Say Penis? video series, this could be a great concept for a TV game show. 

Random Silliness of the Month

Finally, here is my response to the now viral, Fifteen Movie Questions Meme originated by Defiant Success.

1. Movie you love with a passion.

2. Movie you vow to never watch.

3. Movie that literally left you speechless.

4. Movie you always recommend.

5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.

6. Actor/actress you don't get the appeal for.

7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you'd love to meet.

8. Sexiest actor/actress you've seen. (Picture required!)

9. Dream cast.

10. Favorite actor pairing.

11. Favorite movie setting.

12. Favorite decade for movies.

13. Chick flick or action movie?

14. Hero, villain or anti-hero?

15. Black and white or color?

8 comments:

Thenitefalls said...

Great blogs listed here! I'll make sure not to watch avatar hahah

The Angry Lurker said...

Good musings my friend, random silliness very good, might have to do this myself as I agree so much with your answer to No.2

The Reel Foto said...

hey, i only googled that last term five times, who did the other two? ;)

Jack L said...

Wow, lot to comment on here!
I like the new background a lot so I'm glad your keeping it, I also like the various tweaks to your site.

I've also been having problems with blogger, my followers widget was blank for a while but it seems to have been restored now.

You've got some great links there, many of my favourite blogs as well as some that are new to me.  Thanks for the link as well!

also those search terms are really creepy. Some people really are sick...

As for your 15 questions, I love the choices.
Breathless is a favourite of mine as well, Stalker left me speechless as well as exhausted, such an amazing film.
And you already know I'm a big Klaus Kinski fan ;)

I also love the Hardboiled screenshot, now that's a good action film.

Beasts in Human Skin said...

I think those people may have been searching for my blog instead of yours.  Actually I get really disturbing ones like people looking for info on how to skin humans and stuff.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

I look forward to seeing your answers.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

You are welcome, I enjoyed your silent film marathon and it inspired me to watch a couple that I've had sitting around for a long time. 

I always find the creepiest search terms in the reports.  Maybe I should make it a running feature from now on.

That Hardboiled one was the most difficult, the action is so quick, it took me several tries to pause it perfectly there.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Yeah I can just imagine the kinds of searches you might get.

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