Saturday, June 30, 2012

Random Musings - June 2012

Random Notes
Looking at my calendar today, I noticed it's not only the end of another month, but already the half way point of the year. Where does that time go, and why is it that the older you get, the faster it seems to fly by? Well hopefully the sun finally decides to make an appearance in my corner of the world, because it's been a long rainy spring.

As an active member of The Lamb, June was a month marked by the annual LAMMY Awards. Now awards are something I don't personally care about too much, at least not as a competitor. Fame and recognition are things that have always ranked low on my priority list. But I have to say, after closely observing the action for the first time, that it can be a pretty fun event, and I will seriously consider participating when next season comes along. Of course, not everyone was happy with the procedure or results. But overall I think they turned out well, and things already look much better for the future.

Anyhow, congratulations to all of the 2012 Lammy Winners, a round of applause to Joel for organizing it all, and thanks to everyone who voted for me as runner-up for Best Awards & Festival Coverage

This month I also made a few design and technical tweaks to the blog. Most of which are probably too subtle to notice, but you may have seen the new leaderboard widget in the sidebar. That was an idea I stole from The Lamb, as a way to return the favor to the kind blogs who send traffic my way. I took it a step further though, and fully automated it with a script that updates it daily without my intervention. It's spam proof too, only showing blogs that are on an approved list. I also just completed a modified version of it, made specifically for The Lamb, so now Joel has no excuse if the Lamboard doesn't get updated on time :)

The last thing I'll mention is, having finally watched all of my anticipated films from last year, I've made a final revision to my Top 10 Foreign Films of 2011 list. With two new entries, #2 and #7, and an expanded list of honorable mentions.

Random Links
Here are some of the latest additions to the Lamb as well as a couple others I started following this month:

Dusty on Movies - A blog with a very cool niche, primarily providing reviews for little known independent films that are available through Video-On-Demand.

Silver Screenings - A promising new review blog with the goal of promoting classic films to an audience who might not normally watch them.

Critíca Retrô - Another classic blog, but with a twist. It's run by a Brazilian and written in Portuguese. Unfortunately that means the only thing I can read are names and titles, but I'm sure some of my international readers will enjoy following it.

At the Back - A blog started in January, but already has a large assortment of reviews from all over the map, including many of the same films I've written about here. I think I'll be following this one very closely.

We Talk About Movies - A multiple contributor blog also started this January, with reviews, features, predictions, and other interesting posts, all presented in a friendly manner.

Day for Night - A blog started in April 2011, with not a lot of posts, but they are all well written and thoughtful; more than can be said about some of my own. Also, anyone who considers Werner Herzog to be the greatest living filmmaker, is OK in my books.

Mettel Ray Movie Blog - A two year old blog based in Estonia, with a lovely simple design, cool rating system, and a nice friendly writing style. Her post topics cover a wide variety of new movie releases and television shows.

The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World - A fantastic blog I was aware of, but I'm ashamed to say, never followed closely until this month. But after seeing the incredible effort Kevin put into his contribution to the Best Actresses of All Time Relay Race, and reading some of his consistently intelligent reviews, I'm certain with a little more exposure, he would easily be in contention for several LAMMYs.

Fellow readers, how was your month? Has summer arrived for you yet?

17 comments:

Dr Blood said...

Summer has definitely arrived; the quality of theatrical releases has gone down and my DVD purchases have gone up.

Mettel Ray said...

Aww. I couldn't even summarize my blog as well as you did! I have a blog post draft of my favorite movie blogs coming up and I'll be sure to give you a shout out as well. You have my back, I have yours! ;)

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Haha, roger that.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thanks. I always love discovering cool blogs (such as yours) to follow and share, so I look forward to checking out your post.

d_4 said...

Time feels way shorter now, doesn't it. Oh well.

Nice to see you finished the 2011 foreign films list. I went ahead and bookmarked it for future reference. 2 down.. 8-ish to go.

pturner1010 said...

Congrats on being the runner up! And thanks for the links! Not a single blog I'd come across on there. Will definitely check out a few of those!

Dusty Wallace said...

Thanks so much for mentioning my blog.

365 moviesandsongs365 said...

Glad to see Café de Flore crept itself onto your foreign films list. Oslo, August 31st (2011) didn't make it into your good books? That's the only minor surprise.


The design looks fine, especially like inclusion of the tweet feed, don't know if that's been there all along, though

Bonjour Tristesse said...

2 is a good start, probably more than most people out there.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thanks Pete. I hope you found a couple new ones to follow.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

No problem Dusty. I love the concept of your blog.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Oslo didn't quite make it. I liked it, but I think I need to watch it again sometime. I probably spent too much time comparing it to The Fire Within, rather than simply watching it for what it is.

Yeah, the twitter feed is relatively new, I think I put it there in April.

Inspired Ground said...

My month was quite good. And it is always summer here :) Nice to know that A Separation is your #1, I liked A Kid With A Bike but not in love with it. Thanks for the links. And congrats for becoming runner-up in LAMMY!

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Lucky you! I just finally enjoyed my first full day of sunshine. Thanks for visiting and for your kind words, Andina.

Joel Burman said...

I like how your "LAMBoard" is organized I'll try to get some this weekend to implement the changes you have been helping me out with.

RUBY walsh said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bonjour Tristesse said...

Thanks. Yeah I don't particularly like the way the official one looks, but as you will see, I didn't change it. Partly because it was easier to just copy what was there, and because I didn't want to alter anything without discussing it first. Let me know if you run into any problems.

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