Saturday, March 31, 2012

Random Musings - March 2012

Random Musings of the Month

Well, a heavy work load for me the past couple of weeks, together with a string of annoying PC troubles, have all conspired to shake up my routine and force me to take a bit of an unplanned break from blogging. But now I'm back!

Unfortunately, I don't have a monthly tip or random list of links prepared in time for this post. So despite my usual disdain for these things, I've decided to participate in the 7x7 meme.

Thanks to Cherokee from Feminising Film, Sati from Cinematic Corner, and David from Taste of Cinema for nominating me!

The Rules:
  1. Tell everyone something that no one else knows about you.
  2. Link to a post I think fits the following categories: The Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, Most Pride-worthy Piece.
  3. Pass this on to 7 fellow bloggers
Tell everyone something that no one else knows about you:
I've seen a lot of movies, but here are a few big ones that I've watched parts of over the years, but have never managed to sit all the way through. Titanic, Forrest Gump, Jaws, The Matrix (sorry Cherokee), all of the Harry Potter series, Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind.

Most Beautiful Piece:
I don't know if anything I've written here is actually beautiful, that's not something I strive for, leaving that department to the directors and the screenshots. But I think my review for Wings of Desire comes the closest.

Most Helpful Piece:
I think that would be my instructions on adding your own links to IMDb from January's musings post. If you haven't read it, check it out.

Most Popular Piece:
According to Google Analytics, the most visited page on Bonjour Tristesse is my list of 2012 Oscars Foreign Language Film Submissions, but according to Blogger's stats it's my review for Drive with nearly 5,700 pageviews.

Most Controversial Piece:
Again this is something I don't do on purpose, so it's hard to single out a post I feel is controversial. Perhaps my list of films of the New French Extremity qualifies.

Most Surprisingly Successful Piece:
Looking through the stats, the biggest surprise is my review for Student Services, a little known French film from 2010 by Emmanuelle Bercot starring Déborah François, which is currently my #10 most viewed post of all time.

Most Underrated Piece:
For the amount of time it took to put it all together, my Berlinale roundup post didn't draw in as much traffic as I hoped. Oh well, it was still fun doing it.

Most Pride-worthy Piece:
Hands down, this one has to be my ongoing series on the films of the Czechoslovak New Wave. I don't think any other English site out there, not even IMDb, has as extensive a selection of reviews of these gems, and I'm still only half way done. 

Pass this on to 7 fellow bloggers:
It's going to be hard to find 7 of you who haven't already received this but I'll try, and don't feel obligated to participate if selected, I usually don't.

Michaël @ Le Mot du Cinephiliaque

Lisa @ lisathatcher.wordpress.com

Jandy @ The Frame

Banacek @ Beasts in Human Skin

Murtaza @ A Potpourri of Vestiges

David @ Never Too Early Movie Predictions

and last but not least, and this is a long shot because he hasn't posted since November:

Jack @ Jack L. film reviews. Come back Jack!

22 comments:

Jason said...

Glad to have you back. Much respect due to you over the Czech new wave. You could probably write a book with all of the films yo are covering. I expect to see you in the back-pages of Sight and Sound in their book review section! It's a shame that the Berlinale post didn't draw in the traffic since a lot of effort has been expended on it and it goes really in depth about the critical reception.

The Reel Foto said...

wow, congrats an that's a lot of info!

d_4 said...

I was getting worried there, super happy to see it's just complications and not kicking the bucket or anything. You were missed!

365 moviesandsongs365 said...

Congrats on your award BT, and good to see you're back, and still in one piece! I've been meaning to check the Berlin festival list, so maybe that is the motivation I need to do so.

G said...

well done on the award

Mette said...

Thanks for the IMDB tip, I hadn't read that one yet.

NeverTooEarlyMP said...

Thank you for the link award! I'm thinking abut writing one up, if I can figure out which of my posts to fit into the seven categories.

Cherokee said...

I was going to pass on the award to Jack, too, and realised that he hadn't blogged in so long!

Good selection of your own work, though!

I'd say what you wrote about Confessions, actually, went a little underrated - your review, and the film, too!

Lisa Thatcher said...

Welcome back Welcome back!  You were very greatly missed!
Thank you so much for the mention above! I would agree entirely with your Czech New Wave list as being the most exciting thing in film blogging on the net at the moment. Not just cool - essential!
Oh - don't worry about missing Forrest Gump - right wing propaganda crap... and although I love it... I killed myself laughing when I saw you hadn't seen Citizen Cane!!!  That's so unlikely / unexpected it falls into 'uber cool'!

Michael Parent said...

Hey Thanks for the link Bonjour Tristesse! I will certainly take the time this week for this Meme since you did an exception! I've never saw Titanic either but you have to watch Citizen Kane! Great to have you back!

David Zou said...

Great collection of fantastic links,found some real goodies here.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thanks Jason. I just might consider doing that in the future, there really are only a handful of books available about the CNW and most are written by the same guy.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

 Thanks TRF

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thanks for caring D4. Next time I will make a brief announcement so you all don't send out a search party.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

 Thanks man, and I will definitely try to announce any future absences.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

 Thanks G

Bonjour Tristesse said...

 Cool. I hope it brings you some extra traffic!

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Yeah it was kind of tricky choosing them. I look forward to your post.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thanks Cherokee! Yeah I loved Confessions, but I didn't have nearly as many visitors back then when I wrote it.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thank you Lisa for all the kind words, you do a very good job covering these films too.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

You are welcome !

I've seen parts of it, most of it actually, but just for various reasons I've never managed to actually see the whole thing from start to finish. I will one day.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

 Thanks David!

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