after having this website for going on seven years (seven!?), and attempting throughout to write semi-coherent reviews of the entertainment i fill my evening hours with, i’m beginning to worry about a couple things.
one, that they aren’t very good or very helpful to anyone. telling all six of you regular readers how a movie or album i plunked down cash for aligned with my already-established tastes, just as i expected them to when i decided to fork over said cash, doesn’t get anyone anywhere. unless the reason you read this is because you know our similarities and differences well enough to say to yourself, ‘i know how brian thinks, and i’ll probably have a similar opinion,’ in which case i suppose i’m glad to have validated your 12 dollars.
two, as a corollary, is that i rarely if ever give anything below a 3 out of 5. as i just said, i think this is a symptom of knowing very well by now what my well-established tastes are, and only bothering with things that will suit them. so it’s never a question of, ‘will i like or dislike this thing i saw or heard?’, as much as ‘i knew i’d enjoy this because my taste-radar is a finely tuned instrument. now, did the work in question deliver on its promise to a fair, high, or outstanding degree?’
the second one is hard to do anything about without intentionally de-tuning that well-calibrated radar of mine, which i refuse to waste my precious time doing. perhaps it’s more a question of adjusting the scale to more varying degrees of good, and the rare category of ‘failure’ (*coughtransformerscough*). leaving the score part out altogether would alleviate the problem — with a simple ebert/digital ratings system (being both thumb-related and on/off status) — but then you have no ‘special award’ to give when you really love something. hmm.
the first, however, i intend to put much more effort toward. seven years of amateurish rambling can only get you so far; at some point you either throw in the towel or try to develop, and i favor the latter. if i want the act of writing in one form or another to be at the center of whatever i do career-wise, progress must be made. words must be cut, replaced, rearranged into something greater than thought vomit.
i’d start right this instant but what was meant to be a prelude to a couple book reviews got all grandiose and blathery. carry on for now.
If you want to do entertainment reviews then you need to read, watch, or partake in things your finely tuned taste radar wouldn’t give a second glance at. It could be a big waste of time but then you’d have more of a pallet to critique on. Or attempt to get a part-time gig with a local paper or other online blog with an editor and see what they think.
Yeah, Brian. Do the evolution. Join me in cinemasochism and start watching bad movies. I saw Lake Placid 2 last week and I think it warrants one of your reviews.
haha… the optimal next step hopefully won’t involve subjecting myself to more things i hate. theoretically that would make me more well-rounded, but i think it would also make me more depressed.
its just a hobby, doesn’t have to be depressing. you want depressing live a month in my life.
i bet you have more than 6 regular readers… and just so you know, i use this site for music recommendations all the time because our tastes are pretty similar- you do a great job with the test driving.
i think i’m number 7. But I agree with kevin and I think you should start with reviewing Rambo IV.
dude that’s easy, here’s my review: mass murder of evil dudes = badass, mass murder of peasants = gross, action movie plot = pointless.