State of the Union

I just wanted to give you all an update on what's going on behind the scenes with this blog. 

For those of you who just want the executive summary:

There are going to be some changes, moving forward, and though I'm not yet sure how they will shake out, a few things are certain. I'm planning on cutting back on content and either eliminating or altering the regular weekly features in order to make them more easily manageable for me. Posts will likely no longer happen every day or for every movie I watch, and the format of those posts might be different than what we're used to. I will try to keep things going as best as I can, but we might be looking at more of a "when I can and want to" posting schedule.

If you want to hear a bit more about WHY these changes are happening, more (personal) details are under the cut.

An Apology

I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologize to you, dear readers, for a personal failing. In this space, today, you were supposed to have gotten my First Impressions piece about Carlos Reygadas's Post Tenebras Lux, which I watched Tuesday night. But I am unable to deliver that piece to you because I don't feel that what I could tell you about the film would be helpful in any real sense.

Simply put, I did not connect with the movie at all.

I've reviewed films like this before, and I'm sure I could again put together a convincing piece, summarizing the plot and the film's stylistic tics, then detailing my problems with its execution. But I don't think blaming the movie for my own reaction to it would be ethical, in a critical sense, here. In this case, I'm certain that Post Tenebras Lux has merit. It has craft. It plays with ideas and the art form itself. It has received praise from several respected critics, and even I felt as though there was something worthwhile in it. But I had neither the wherewithal nor, more importantly, the desire, to ferret out what that was.

Obviously, were I being paid to write these little reviews, I would have given the film another shot. Perhaps I would have focused better or been more compelled to care. But that's not fair, either. I'm a cinephile. I love movies. I don't watch them because it's profitable to do so—it is, in fact, costly in both money and time. While a paycheck might have motivated me to give you better work, I don't think it would have changed my engagement with the film itself.

The problem, here, is me.

F to the Y to the I

Just wanted to let you all know that, as I do not have access to cable at my current residence, I won't be able to watch Doctor Who when it airs tonight. I should be able to pull it down off of Amazon in the morning, at which point I'll write up my reviewcap and (hopefully) post it tomorrow afternoon/evening.

Sadly, due to BBCAmerica's decision to postpone last week's episode, "The Almost People," until THIS week, I'll be writing about that one instead of the exciting midseason finale, "A Good Man Goes to War," that aired tonight in the UK. That means that my meager search traffic will be even more meager than normal, and that there's every chance in the world I'll get spoiled before I get to watch the cliffhanger next week. Anyway, THAT episode's reviewcap will be posted sometime NEXT Sunday, once the episode is available on Amazon. Then Doctor Who takes a summer vacation and comes back in September!

I wonder where I'll be then...

Oh, and I guess I'll have to find some way to plug the content hole that will exist after Doctor Who's hiatus wipes out my current slate of reviewcaps. I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps I'll rewatch an older series and write about that instead? More on that to come (eventually)!

Feature Unlocked!

(I probably could have just tossed this info into the previous post, but oh well)

Look, I'm a Netflix fanboy. This should come as no surprise, now that I've shared my obsessive Netflixing habits with you all, but it just needs to be said. Netflix and other disc-by-mail/streaming services are exactly what I dreamed of as a kid. They bring Patton Oswalt's ETEWAF (Everything That Ever Was, Available Forever) one step closer to reality, for better or for worse.

But there's an awful lot of content out there. It can be pretty tough to figure out what to watch, even with Netflix's generally-decent algorithms—they almost always know what I'm going to rate a movie, though they've not yet figured out which movies I'll actually want to watch. Even then, their accuracy is only even that high because I rent and rate so many movies, movies that I learned about elsewhere without the benefit of an algorithm. Maybe you aren't so obsessive with your Netflixing, or don't have a background that allows you to say you wrote a Master's thesis about Snakes on a Plane.

So that's where I come in!

Every so often, I'm going to look through the things that are currently available on Netflix Instant and find examples of movies that I think everyone should see. This new feature will be called "Five-Star Streaming," or "FSS" for short. I'm somewhat stingy with my five-star ratings when it comes to films, so these may not always be genuine five-star selections. But they'll definitely be movies that are well worth your time and effort, whether you stream them, rent them, or acquire them by other means.

This helps me further my mission of telling people about interesting, thought-provoking, or just plain fun movies. It also lets me draw from my knowledge of movies I haven't just watched and returned, so that my posts won't always be dependent on maintaining a quick turnover. And it lets you know about some great films just waiting for you to click play. It's a win-win for everyone!

Look out for the first FSS post sometime this week. I've already got a few movies in mind!

May Mayhem

Hey folks!

I don't have a new review for you today (though I suppose I COULD if I forced the issue), but I DID want to let you all know that May was the highest-traffic month in the history of this or any other blog I've written (at least as far as I'm aware). Thank you all so much for reading!

Now, the numbers themselves—which I'm not going to share, though I'm sure you could find them if you're so inclined— are certainly modest and wouldn't be worth a ton of excitement if this were a real website and not just the blog of an avid film and TV fan. But as the site IS a small, personal, thing, it pleases me to no end that you all check in here and listen to my opinions about movies and TV shows and other such ephemera.

As I hope you can tell, there's very little I enjoy more than watching movies and TV series that are new to me. And to be able to bring you all along on that journey is a great pleasure. If I've ever gotten any of you to consider a movie or show that you'd otherwise likely never have watched, then I've achieved my ambition.

So thanks again for reading, and I hope to have a few more posts for you this week. I am once again adjusting to a change of location and settling into a viewing schedule that fits the new mold, so things may be a bit scattershot. I'll still try to get something up here most days if I can. Hope to see you around!

Apologies

Hi folks,

Between Mother's Day last Sunday, Blogger's problems this past week, and my own personal issues, I was unable to post about last weekend's Doctor Who and Saturday Night Live (this despite a combined 8 pages of notes on the two). I apologize for falling down on the job. I will try to post an abbreviated reviewcap for last week's Doctor Who prior to tonight's episode (in US time, obviously. I know it has already aired in the UK!) and will hopefully get another one ready for this week's Neil Gaiman-penned episode over the next few days. I fear, however, that last week's SNL—and, potentially, this week's—will have to fall by the wayside.

Further, my regular movie-watching schedule has been disrupted and won't likely revert to my usual movie-or-disc-of-tv-series-per-day average anytime soon. This means that the volume of FIs and SitSes and reviews is likely to remain low for the near future. Again, I apologize, but instability reigns right now and, as stupid as it may sound, I need a predictable, low-stress routine to write even these piddling little reviews and pieces.

I wish I had better news to tell you, but the truth is the truth. It's not the first time I've settled into a nice pattern for a month or so only to have it disrupted by my stupid issues. I'm sad to say that it probably won't be the last, either. Sorry once more, and thanks for bearing with me.

Programming Note

Just a quick update to let you know that, although my personal life continues to be unpredictable and unsettled, I hope to keep writing at about the same pace. We'll see how that works out, I suppose.

In the meantime, I have been changing the tags here on the blog, so I apologize for anything that may have double posted in the feed as a result. From this point forward, "Reviews" will point only to full-length film reviews. The new tag "Reviewcaps" will point towards in-depth reviews/recaps of individual TV episodes (or, occasionally, single discs of a TV series). "FI" and "SitS" will remain unchanged, but will no longer be accompanied by "Reviews" as a tag in order to avoid redundancy. I just thought I would share all of this for the absolutely none of you who care about my tagging system ;)

In content news, one thing I DO hope to begin is a series of reviewcaps about the new season of Doctor Who when it premieres on Saturday. I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch it the night it airs, but either way I'd like to write posts about it each week, so hopefully I'll be able to cobble something together within a few days of each airing.

This also may complicate the SNL reviewcaps I've been writing these last few weeks. I'm not sure yet whether I'll continue with those or not; as they seem to bring in a decent amount of search traffic, it'd be a shame to stop entirely. But with Doctor Who airing on the same night, and the amount of effort/attention/note-taking even one fully-reviewcapped show demands, it may get tricky.

There are a few more things I'm thinking about doing here, including potentially reviewcapping Treme and incorporating other new occasional features, so more on that as it develops. Plus, with all my private uncertainty, who knows what I'll actually have time to do?

For now, I'll just take things as they come and post what I can. Hope you enjoy!

Some Light Housekeeping (not Lighthouse-keeping)

Hi Everyone!

Just a quick post to let you know that I will be introducing a new feature here at An Honest Ghost. While I sometimes like to analyze a show episode-by-episode -- the way I did with Mad Men and, to a lesser extent, BSG -- I still watch TV to be entertained, on some level. That means I don't always feel like having a word processor or pad of paper open in front of me while I watch, but that's required if you're trying to be comprehensive in your treatment of a particular show.

Similarly, when you don't have a week to kill between episodes of a series, the idea of writing up each episode on its own becomes a lot less inviting. Between streaming binges and watching 3+ episodes back-to-back on a single disc, my mode of consumption tends to privilege a less granular approach to things.

That's why I'm starting this new feature, Seasons in the Sun, or SitS. Here, I'll do shorter write-ups about an entire season of a show that I've watched recently. They won't be as short as our movies-in-brief posts, the FIs, or as in-depth as my episode recaps for shows that are currently airing (which I DO plan to start again someday, honest!) But hopefully, due to the very nature of watching A LOT of one show, in sequence, over a short period of time, some greater thematic concepts will become clearer faster, and can be teased out in these posts. Plus, I'm thinking that I'll spotlight the best and worst episodes of each season, or find other criteria to note each time (which will help prevent these posts from becoming TEXT WALLS).

I'm still deciding which series to try this out on first. I'm leaning towards Bored to Death: Season 1 because I've only just finished it, but I may yet test the feature on something like Fringe or Veronica Mars. Look for this feature's debut post at some point over the next couple of days!

Programming Note

Rather than taking the time to write up an extensive review of every movie I watch, I've decided to cross-post the short blurbs I write upon rating a film at Netflix. These are also often reposted on Facebook, so some of you may have already seen them there, though they don't always make it -- the app is faulty and no longer supported.

Reposting these here will mean fewer frantic accounts of my impressions will be lost to a glitchy application. It also saves me the guilt I'd feel if I started the doomed-to-fail precedent of fully reviewing each of the things I watch or stream over Netflix, while still allowing me to give you a peek at my thoughts (which would otherwise have remained private) about movies I don't feel the inclination to explore in depth.

These mini-reviews will be titled and tagged under a new heading: FI, for First Impressions. The first of them will be going up later this evening.

Now back to your irregularly-scheduled programming :-P