Part One: The Begin-ening: A Prequel To The Shitness

Typical reader response to one of my reviews.

                           

Alright, so here goes. 

I've been kicking around the idea of starting up a blog for well over a year now but could never seem to get over a certain stigma I imagined existed wherein I might be labelled as some kind of trendy narcissistic wannabe hipster asshole. But that's all a load of horseshit. Really I was just afraid to have my voice heard. The thing is, as far back as I can remember I have always loved doing two things: writing, and watching movies. So why the hell not write about movies?

Why the hell, indeed? Last year for Halloween I engaged in an experiment on my Facebook profile wherein I posted one review a day for a horror movie that I had never seen before. Now, before anybody flips out and accuses me of ripping off the excellent A Horror Movie A Day blog or Quint's annual October edition A Movie A Day over at Ain't It Cool News, yes, I was aware those existed, and they are far more committed to what they do, and leagues more talented than myself. Their endeavors simply served as an inspiration for me to make myself put my thoughts out there in the world in a way I was far too timid to try before. By putting myself on a tight deadline every single day I was forced to stretch the limitations of my writing style in order to be as thoughtful and hopefully educational as I could in a few short paragraphs.

On the whole the experiment was a smashing success. Thirty-one movies in one month was more new movies than I'd watched in the last few years combined. And I exposed myself to exciting new sub-genres I never would have imagined myself enjoying, in particular Roger Corman's series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price. Suddenly my appetite for movies both unusual (to my tastes) and unseen was re-invigorated. Well, at least until November 1st, at which point I resumed not watching jack shit, nor writing a single goddamn sentence.

What it comes down to is I'm a little lazy, and extremely timid when it comes to sharing my views. But I've decided that it's finally time for me to get over that. I love watching movies, I really do, but what I love more is dissecting them, discussing why they work the way they do, the ideas at play, re-occurring themes from a certain director, and when it comes down to it mercilessly ripping them a new asshole when they fail miserably.

Unfortunately I feel my vocabulary has grown stunted. Did you know I've never seen THE GODFATHER? (dodges rocks thrown at head) Or CITIZEN KANE? I've never seen THE EXORCIST from beginning to end. I only recently caught the last two hours of GONE WITH THE WIND, and enjoyed it enough to want to watch the whole thing one of these days. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Those are just the well-known classics. I've grown incredibly frustrated by just how much shit I haven't seen, and so I'm starting this blog as a means of rectifying that situation. I am going to watch and review at least one movie that I have never seen before every week in the hopes of keeping the flame burning.

What you'd probably rather be doing instead of reading this drivel.

I'm kicking things off on October 1st with the first of 31 horror movie reviews I'm writing for my favorite month of the year. No, I'm not watching a movie a day. I'm cheating this year by writing a lot of reviews in advance. My hope is this will increase the overall quality, since I'll have more time to put a little thought into them. But most of all I'd like to continue this past October into the new year, beyond horror and into movies of all genres.

No, strike that. It's GOING to happen. If you happen to read any of them, please, be as blunt and honest as you can in the comments section, as I welcome any information that will help me highlight my weaknesses and try to fix them.

Also, I'm going to use the word "fuck" a lot. So get used to that.

On that note, thanks for making it all the way to the end of this rambling introduction to what I hope becomes a daily routine for me. It's time to mark a few titles off my list of "Shit I Haven't Seen".

Get it?

Y'know, cuz it's the name of the blog? That's clever, no?

Alright then, fuck you. Blog cancelled!