Administrivia

I actually got an unsolicited comment to one of my blog posts the other day, which implies that my readership has gone from the infinitesmial to the merely miniscule. With the certain knowledge that people are indeed reading, I figure I should make a few "official" comments about the nature of this blog.

Of course, it's a blog about the movies, especially classic movies. Given a choice, I prefer to write what are more or less recommendations; that is, movies that are coming up on one of the cable channels in the next day or two, or, in the case of movies that I just recently saw for the first time on TV or that I'd like to see again, movies that are available on DVD. I don't particularly like the idea of saying, "Look at this wonderful movie I just saw on TCM! Too bad you can't see it too, because it's not available on DVD." It just doesn't seem like a nice thing to do to people.

I try to write a post every day, simply because I want to keep in the habit of writing. Once you stop for a day, it becomes that much easier to take more and more breaks and eventually stop altogether; I in fact know this all too well from another site I used to administer. It also means that sometimes, I have to break my above guideline of avoiding entries on movies not on DVD. However, I've tried either to campaign for a good movie to be released on DVD, or else talk about movies as they relate to a particular actor, with other of that person's movies certainly being available on DVD.

There's also another consequence of posting every day, namely that I don't have the time to write the way I would if I were writing a book on the movies, or more generally if I were getting paid to write. (Of course, if there are any press types willing to pay for my thoughts on the movies....) So, you'll quickly see that I have a dreadful habit of resorting to certain turns of phrase over and over. I do do some editing, as well as some thinking about what I'm going to write in my other free time, but by and large, the posts will have a bit of a stream-of-consciousness feel to them. Also, there are more mistakes than there would otherwise be if I took the hours to do more thorough research. This is not deliberate; I don't like misleading people. But, we're all human, and it's easy to spread an urban legend unwittingly. Truth to tell, I've learned a lot of what I know about the movies thanks to the good work that Robert Osborne does on TCM.