Wow, another month that went by quickly. Lots of cool stuff in the world of film happened in April. The Hong Kong Film Awards, the Tribeca Film Fest, the first Sundance UK, and the official Cannes lineup was announced.
After my unplanned break in March, that by the way ended a 500+ day posting streak, and due to the start of the NHL playoffs, I struggled a little bit this month to get back into my usual blogging routine, but things are starting to get comfortable again. I am however getting used to having weekends off for other pursuits, so I will continue to do that unless something inspiring comes up that I just need to post about.
I've introduced a new feature in which I plan on covering all of the Palme d'Or winners. However, I'm still in the process of trying to locate most of the titles so those reviews won't be as frequent as my other features have been. Expect the first ones to come leading up to the opening of Cannes.
Speaking of Cannes, I plan on remotely covering the festival as best as I can with daily reports and roundups of all the competition films as well as some of the higher profile titles in the other categories. So stay tuned for that.
In other news, I've begun working on a side project for The LAMB that will help streamline some of the existing and very tedious behind the scenes work that goes into maintaining it. This will hopefully allow Shep. Burman to use his time on promoting and improving things for all us fellow Lammies. It may even lead to some new exciting features that weren't possible before.
One other thing, did anyone else notice a very sharp decrease in traffic to their site on April 25? That day was the lowest amount of visitors I've had all year by a large margin and I'm wondering if it was a glitch or just a fluke.
Random Links of the Month
- In case you missed it, earlier in the week,
myeveryone's 80's crush Molly Ringwald took part in an amazing AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. - I've recently started following FilmScope a relatively new UK based site that covers the types of film I like the best: Foreign and Indie.
- John Likes Movies was at the Tribeca Film Festival and was very impressed with the French thriller Sleepless Night (Nuit blanche). Which he says was better than Bond, Bourne, and Bauer.
- Michaël of Le Mot du Cinephiliaque has started the first of a planned series of fascinating posts on the Theories of Robert Bresson.
- Andy Buckle's Film Emporium recently saw Café de Flore, a stylish Canadian film that I recommend everyone check out.
- Sati of Cinematic Corner which is I have to say, one of the most visually impressive blogs around, reviews David Cronenberg's The Fly
- Jason of Genkinahito's Blog gives us a good preview of the Japanese Films that will premiere at Cannes.
- Sam of Duke & the Movies attended and provides a great overview of Ebertfest 2012. The annual festival put on by the worlds best known critic.
- April's LAMB of the Month: Never Too Early Movie Predictions has started the ambitious task of trying to document all of the AMPAS members with The Academy Members Project.
- Stevee @ Cinematic Paradox expresses her new found love for Terrence Malick's impossibly beautiful Days of Heaven.
- David from Taste of Cinema gives us 7 compelling reasons to use Letterboxd. This is the article that finally convinced me to sign up.
- New LAMB member Jandy of The Frame takes a look at the Mike Nichols classic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a part of her blind spots series.
29 comments:
Actually April 25th was a pretty good day for FRC... 5965 hits.... Sorry.
Thanks for the link!
Like you I plan on posting news from Cannes whenever anything Japanese related comes up - that way I'll get quirky images and Cannes-chan into my posts with more regularity. That LAMB side project sounds intriguing as well.
Dardenne Br "The Son" was my best new discovey in my monthly recap. The Palme D'or winners feature I'm looking forward to following.
Never heard of Filmscope, going to take a look at that site!
Thanx for the link!! I haven't seen that many movies this month. However, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom was by far the best film I saw.
The NHL playoffs have diminished my movie watching time a lot!! Sorry for your Canucks... Is Vigneault getting fired? Will Luongo be back next year?
But I digress, I been posting irregularly lately because I am trying to bring more than movie reviews and have original content. Which takes more time and work but that creates more reaction and educates me as well.
I also take the weekends off, so don't feel guilty for that!
Thank you for the link! Personally, I do love the way your blog looks, it's so clear and organized and the header is lovely.
Hmm... has your traffic picked up since April 25? Google has been releasing a series of major updates to their algorithms, and their latest (titled "Penguin") has wreaked havoc on a lot of sites. Then again, they are looking for potential spam links/etc, and I don't see any of that on your site. Very strange.
My months was pretty good. Nearly had 25,000 hits this month while getting some stuff done. I wasn't able to do re-write some old reviews of Kurosawa films that I wanted to do but I was still able to bring in some Herzog into the mix. The Kurosawa is likely to come in late May/early June as I'm getting prepared for the Cannes marathon as I'll announce my line-up next Monday.
Well my hits are always in the couple of hundreds so I'm feeling all small right now. On the other hand, I'm loving your links. Read most of these but I'm very grateful to you for pointing out some others! Particularly David's on Letterboxd.
Wow congrats that is almost 10 times what I got that day.
You're welcome, and I look forward to reading your updates.
Great choice, as you know I am quite fond of the Dardenne bros.
You're welcome. I haven't seen Peeping Tom yet but it looks like one I would enjoy. Adding it to my list.
Yeah I don't know what will happen to the Canucks but it will surely be an interesting draft weekend.
Thank YOU for the complement. BTW, do you prefer to be called Margaret or Sati?
Yep it was only that one day. I guess I just got caught in the crossfire of The Killer Penguin.
Yeah I noticed you are close to cracking 300K, congrats. I enjoyed the Herzog stuff, and look forward to checking out your marathon lineup.
I'm glad you enjoyed the links. BTW, which site do you run Pete? There's no link in your name, and I want to make sure you are in my Reader.
April 25th was a good day here. Small increase in views from that day onward actually, after looking at the stats. And you have no idea how good it feels to take ease on weekends. Or.. well maybe you do.
Thanks for the link my friend. I'm looking forward to seeing the new features you are developing for the Lamb!
Thanks for the mention!! Letterboxd is like any great new sites,it needs PEOPLE.That's why I shout out loud on my blog,I'm glad you love it!!
Thanks for the link! And I don't think my hits went down on the 25th. But my monthly hits have been on a steady decline since January. Yet, I barely ever pay attention to stuff like that!
Well, I guess it was just me then... and yes free weekends are a nice way to recharge.
You are welcome! I don't know if anyone will notice a difference right away, most of what I'm doing is to help reduce the behind the scenes paperwork, but I think eventually some cool stuff will come to light.
No problem! I haven't had the time to do much there yet, but from what I've personally seen so far, that site does live up to all the hype.
You are welcome!! I had a peak in January too that I haven't been able to repeat. Hopefully things pick up this month.
I am so glad you will be covering Cannes, I am always interested in it, as most of the winning films are a clear fixture on awards nominations ballots throughout the year, so it's good to know what movies you should be on the lookout for.
Good luck with your LAMB project, can't wait to see it!
I must say your blog is getting better and better everyday, I love the new features and the design. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the mention! And wow, 500 straight days of posting? I can't even imagine that. I'm lucky if I find time to get a couple of posts a week out. Can't speak to the April 25th stats; mine are too low/variable to provide many useful patterns yet.
Thanks Diana. I appreciate your kind words.
You're welcome, somehow I always thought you were already a member of the LAMB so I was surprised to see the announcement. Yeah 500 days is quite something, now that I've started taking weekends off, I don't think I could go back :)
The other site I write for, Row Three, has been a LAMB forever (almost literally, their number is under 100), so I've done some LAMB stuff under those auspices before, just not on my own site until now.
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