A movie site?

By Jason Venter · April 1, 2010

Consider this post a preliminary inquiry on my part.

How many of you would be interested in participating in a movie reviews site? I know that there are movie review sites on the Internet already, but I feel that there's still room for a vibrant new movie reviews community and I'm interested in potentially getting behind a project like that.

The reason is simple: Blu-Ray. The format has rekindled in me a love for movies that my HD television set has obviously made all the more thrilling. I'm building up a collection of movies that I enjoy, plus I have access to tons more because my brother-in-law buys several new movies each week, it seems like and there's also a movie theater just down the road. So I'd have the means to cover movies, but it's obviously not something I could do (well) alone.

The advantage of movies is that they don't take as long to watch as video games do to play. I wouldn't be considering this a full-time gig unless it really took off, but it seems like a lot of folks here enjoy movies and this could be a great opportunity to make something of that.

I probably wouldn't want to take the time coding a whole new site for that purpose if there wasn't good interest here, though, so... how interested would you be? I'd love to hear from anyone interested in getting involved, as well as an estimate for your likely level of involvement and your history and experiences with cinema.

Comments 8

jerec Apr 1, 2010

I have vague memories of you trying this before. I wanted to review DVDs, since I was building a fairly cool collection, but you were accepting movie reviews rather than DVD, which excluded my TV on DVD collection, which was the bulk of it back then. I'm pretty sure it was you. If not, it was that JRepute guy who kept making a new site every three months and was always begging for money to keep his website hobby going.

I'm interested in reviewing DVDs, and Blu-Ray if I start getting them (once I have a worthwhile TV for it).

honestgamer Blogger Apr 2, 2010

A home video site is actually an angle that I was considering, as opposed to just movies in general... though there are a number of ways it could go. I'm still in the potential planning stages at the moment, so comments like yours are helpful (especially if I wind up going forward with it). Television on DVD and Blu-Ray is something that also interests me--and probably anime--so there's a lot to like about that approach.

Suskie Apr 2, 2010

I love movies and would be very interested in reviewing them were you to create a site dedicated to such a thing.

wolfqueen001 Apr 2, 2010

I'm not a huge movie person, honestly, and I have even less interest in reviewing movies. My main concern, then, would be that if this somehow did take off, what would happen to this site? If this site just kind of got left in the dust, I'd probably leave, to be quite frank. =/

Genj Apr 2, 2010

I'd probably be more interested in reviewing anime since that's what I predominately watch these days.

Off topic: I hope you plan on reviewing Resonance of Fate, Jason. I am quite interested in that game.

honestgamer Blogger Apr 2, 2010

I wouldn't leave this site in the dust for a movie site, so don't worry about that. HonestGamers is an important part of any online future that I plan to build, the cornerstone. If the movie site did take off, I'd deal with that when the time came (but it could only help the future of HonestGamers).

Anime is definitely something that I'd be looking into covering on the site. I contemplated a site dedicated solely to anime, but I'm too interested in other stuff in addition to that and it would be stupid to build a movie site and an anime site both. I'm (hopefully) past the phase where I build five sites a year and they all crash and burn. I would want to do this movie/video site properly.

As far as Resonance of Fate, I got the game sent to me so that I could write a guide for it for another site--which I am of course doing--and when I have that done I am free to review it (which I will). It's definitely an interesting game and I consider it one of the msot worthwhile RPGs to come along in quite some time (even if it's not 10/10 material). I'd probably rank it an 8/10 right now, but that number could go up or down by the time I reach the end. Anyway, enough of that. I'm still hoping to hear from more folks about the movie/video site idea.

zippdementia Apr 2, 2010

Well, I do happen to make films, so maybe there's something I could contribute to such a site beyond just reviews. I make a lot of contacts in my job and our upcoming film has a lot of promotion set up for the summer. Maybe we could somehow tie the two together: trade advertising or something.

bloomer Apr 2, 2010

Films probably are my favourite thing. I average 90 trips to the cinema each year, and watch about as many films at home. I wanted to direct features but my life has turned many other ways. Anyway, though I don't have this sense that there's a special need for another movie site, it's inevitable that I would contribute to yours if you got it going.

The weird thing is because I like films so much, I actually rarely review my favourite films at length. I suppose I don't like to commit my thoughts on them somehow. Most of my reviews at IMDB are for films I thought really sucked, or bizarre horror films, both of which I don't mind reviewing.

Without the steadying hand of mechanics to talk about, which always helps game reviews, I find my film reviews can lurch about anywhere. I mean, look at the structure and content choice of my Clash of the Titans review. I don't think I've ever written a film review that I felt was polished and perfectible like some of my game reviews. So I have some kind of complex about writing film reviews, which for a writer of my experience who likes films this much, sometimes bothers me as a weird failing.