I have been told that I am good at reviews. Sure it's only from one person but it is high praise from a writer. The problem with writing a daily blog is that I don't have a lot of time each day to devote to it. Only on a few rare occasions have I spent more than an hour writing a post here and it's usually much less. For that reason my reviews tend to be short and are often more about why or how I choose to see a particular thing rather than about the thing itself. So I decided I would attempt to write some longer and more formal reviews. The only problem was I didn't have anywhere to put them. I suppose I could a have posted them to IMDb or Amazon but they would end up lost in the crowd there. Perhaps I could have offered my work to an existing site, I know CHUD post freelance articles sometimes, but that would be a bit too much pressure for me at the moment. I decided what I really wanted was a place of my own, so there wouldn't be any pressure and also 100% of the (very little) ad revenue would mine. So I present to you:
http://www.doonsreviews.com
The reviews on there are ones which I wrote a while ago when I first thought about this project (except Green Hornet which I started then but finished this afternoon). Now that the website is finished I can start writing some more. This is actually one of the reasons I started going to the cinema more often and there are five new releases coming in the next two months which I'm interested in. That's why I decided now was the time to get this finished. I'll still be writing my usual quick reaction reviews here as always but now you can expect a longer more detailed one at some point later on the website. There are various methods of subscribing so you can hear about new reviews on the right hand side of the site.
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Awesome! What a good idea, the perfect extension to your blog, and a great showcase for your talents. I hope you get lots of readers. I subscribed at once!
ReplyDeleteIt was your graded scale of 1-10 that got me thinking. That is wider than I have ever seen, and I like it, It will give you scope for great precision.
ReplyDeleteThen I started to wonder if I had ever seen a film that I could have given a score of ‘Perfect’ to.
Even ‘Alexander’ is not perfect. (Though not for the same reasons as mean critics!)
But I did think of some.
‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ – having been lucky enough to have seen this in the cinema when it first came out, I know it was breathtaking from start to finish, and a very worthy contender.
‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ – that made me wonder if it was fair to give ‘Perfect’ to ancient films, and I decided it was, if they made use of the best technology available at the time – what do you think?
(It will not matter the same to you because probably all your reviews will be for new releases, but it is an interesting thought, isn’t it?)
Then I cast my mind over dozens of favourites and great classics, but there was not one where I could not think of some slight improvement that would have made it a 2 not a 1, until I came to this one, of which you have probably never heard:
‘Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell.’
The genre is probably Romantic Comedy, but it is deeper than that, suddenly, and in unexpected ways. It makes you laugh and makes you cry, and makes you think. The whole thing is a masterpiece, it falls into place like the notes of a minuet by Mozart, without being at all predictable. (If you never watch another romantic comedy, watch this one.)
But then, a curious thing happened, I immediately thought of two more that I could call perfect, and those were ‘Ghost’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love’ – both exactly the same genre, Romantic Comedy, but deep.
And that made me wonder, if perhaps there are some genres where perfection is easier to attain?
Well, I thought it was an interesting idea, and the product of a good evening’s mopping and hoovering, and I thought I would share those thoughts with you.