The Great review reboot!

If you are reading this, and you used to read this when I was posting frequently, you may notice things have changed. I am going to make a diligent effort to revive this blog. I miss being critical of popular culture. I miss putting my thoughts about movies somewhere for people to read and then engage with me either here or over on Facebook. I am going to attempt 2 or 3 posts a week. I am going to update this thing 5 or 6 days a week like I once did. I am going to review films and books for sure. I may occasionally review an entire season of a television, or do a list or some other things. Also, at the end of this year, I will review my top 10 like I used to do. I hope there are still people interested in this. If not, well, I have it for myself.

Yet another re-launch; this time for real!

I know this is about the third of fourth time in the last few months I have tried to mount a re-launch of this blog, but I have rededicated myself to the project. The last 5 or 6 months have been a whirlwind of craziness in my life and now I am settling back into the routine of my life, I realized how much I missed writing about movies. Plus, it gave me something to talk about with people and made the messages in my Facebook inbox more interesting. To start, I will go Sun-Wed, with an occasional Thursday. It breaks down like this:

Sunday- Lists (I am always looking for list suggestions. Do not hesitate!)
Monday and Tuesday- Reviews of movies currently in theaters, or new to DVD, or semi new to DVD.
Wednesday- trailer reviews. I will review two trailers every Wednesday.
Thursday- This is a kind of wild card. I may review random DVDs if I see something interesting, or perhaps an essay/rant, or just random movie related thoughts. This may also be used to music or theater reviews.

As always, I love to have feedback. I want to know what people think of the movies, or even what they think of the reviews. I do want the comments to be thoughtful and interesting. I am not interested in on-line flame wars, which is why I have never heavily promoted the site beyond people I know. If you like what you read and want others to see it, awesome!

Possible relaunch

This may or may not be a relaunch of my blog. I have enough stuff to cover this week pretty easily with The Oscars, reviews of Crazies, Cop Out and Valentine's Day. Along with possibly going to see Alice in Wonderland, Brooklyn's Finest or Shutter Island. Also, the television stuff just got to be too much of a hassle because I stopped watching everything when it was on, but, if I decide to actually relaunch this thing for real, I will do a Lost post every Wednesday and would really like other people to chime in.

The last few months have been kind of a whirlwind and now that reality has come back to me, I am going to try and do the things I always did to make myself happy and of course writing about movies has always been towards the top of that list. I cannot afford to go to the theater nearly as often as before, so it is a bit depressing, however, I miss writing about movies. If I actually rededicate myself to this project, I might rely on DVD reviews a little more than in the previous years.

I do not want to get anyone too excited yet, but if after this week, I keep going, I hope whoever is reading this continues to read and possibly comment and invites other people to read.

A collection of sorts

First off, this blog has kind of died. I get that. I am not sure if I will ever get back into the routine of this blog because, well, I am not sure the readership is there for how much time I was putting into thinking about the lists, or writing the reviews and all that good stuff.

Secondly, I am not watching as movies as before. This is due to monetary restrictions to be sure, but also because with the return of Musical Theater in my life, and being a bit more social, I do not spend as many hours in a dark movie theater alone.

That being said, I kind of miss it, the blogging about movies. I hate that I left my best of the Decade list unfinished and hate that I never did my big end of the year movie blow out. It haunts me in a way. This writing outlet was good to me during the years when I was not writing anything on my own and now that I have started writing for myself again, I kind of abandoned this project and the few faithful readers I have had for the last few years.

So here is what I am going to do. I am going to try and restart this little project. It is going to be small and humble for a while as I get back into the groove and I may not review every movie I watch. I might just review the good ones and the bad ones. So many of the middle of the road movies might just not be worth my time. For now, I will not be doing any lists, or extra stuff, except for tonight.

SO what I want to begin with is just a simple list of my top 10 favorite movies from last decade. Some of this will be repetitive, but I just want to get the whole list out there now. So, here we go!

Top 10 movies from 2000-2009:

10.(500) Days of Summer
9. Superbad
8. Wall-E
7. Brokeback Mountain
6. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. Memento
3. The Dark Knight
2. Children of Men
1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

An apology of sorts

So, it has been a few weeks since I have posted anything and for that I apologize. I have a few reasons for it, but mostly, I just have not felt much like doing it. I am not seeing nearly as many movies as I would like due to the lack of money and in some way this blog is a reminder of all of the movies I am missing.

So, For the rest of this year, I am doing away with the television stuff and any lists, probably. I will review new movies I see, catch up with the best of the decade, continue with the best of the decade and then do the end of the year thing, even if it will feel incomplete because I am missing some movies.

After this year, I will probably scale all the way back to just doing new reviews and occasionally doing lists or random things as the mood suits. Or I may just stop altogether. I am just not sure yet.

Thanks for reading!

An apology of sorts

Hello faithful, unfaithful and new readers!

Thanks for stopping by again, or for the first time. I hope you are all enjoying the site.

I want to take this time to apologize at the lack of content the last two weeks. With no regular income I am not able to see as many movies at the moment, so Monday and Tuesdays have been light. Then, when I get sub gigs, it is usually Wednesday and Thursday and I have not done Wild Wednesday or my Thursday list, because I have not pre-written them out due to Seussical.

I am in Utah this weekend and so I will not have time to watch every show of mine before Sunday, so this week there will be no Television Recap, unless I get the chance to watch them on Monday and maybe I will do it on Monday.

Next week will bring a review of where the Wild Things Are, a short essay thing on real life expectations of movies and a list of my 10 favorite sitcoms of all time.

Thanks for coming and sorry again for the delays.

On vacation

I will be taking this week off, but when I come back some things to look forward to:

Some sort of John Hughes list (as requested by J. Scot)
Some sort of fall television list (as requested by Taylor)
Reviews of Julie and Julia, District 9 and probably 3 or 4 others
And some sort of essay about growing up with movies.

Television recap (May17-23) and Housekeeping

A quick recap of the season finales of The Office, 24 and How I met your Mother. Then, a recap of the series premiere of Glee and finally some blog changes/housekeeping.

How I met your Mother- HIMYM always does a great job of blending the literal with the metaphorical, but this finale took it to a whole new level with "The Leap." Will Robin and Barney leap into something new together? Will Ted leap into a new career direction? The Robin and Barney thing goes mostly unresolved save for a great confession from Barney, Robin "Mosbying" Barney and some hot kissing, but for the most part we are exactly where we were before. Ted gets beat up by the goat that we have heard about since season 1. The goat caps off a horrible year for Ted and he decides to change directions and becomes a college professor, which is where he will eventually meet mother. I thought the episode was perfect. Marshall was funny, Lilly was mothering, Robin and Barney were funny and charming together and Ted was in the center of it all. I can only imagine 2 or 3 more seasons of this show, so I am glad they are progressing and I can see all kinds of hot girls parading around Ted's college professor life.

24- The final two hours somehow managed to be very exciting, even with Jack Bauer not able to do too much. I wanted a stronger final confrontation between Jack and Tony, but with Jack nearly dying, how much more could I have wanted. Of all the season finales 24 was the only one that actually brought tears as Bauer was lying on his death bed with a new friend at his side. I liked that Kim Bauer actually was proactive and helped get herself out of her situation and any chance to watch Elisha Cuthbert run on my television is a win in my book. The episodes had nice shootouts and a nice chase and some very solid acting, especially from the President as she had to make a very hard decision about her evil daughter. I was glad to see Agent Pierce get something heroic to do and I am hoping he will be kept on next season when the show moves to New York. Overall I felt like this was a pretty great season of television's most ridiculous action show.

The Office- I missed it last week, so I had to catch it on-line this week and I am so glad I did. How great was this finale? How sublime was Steve Carrell in this episode? He captured all of the things about Michael Scott that I like. He was awkward, but it was not forced, but most of all he was romantically wounded and Carrell sure knows how to play that! Wow. However, in true The Office style we also get the silly sub-plot of a Volleyball tournament where Corporate becomes the villain and Scranton becomes the hero for all branches. But mostly, we watched Jim get all big faced and happy at some news we did not hear, but we know what it is. I loved how they shot that scene and how wonderful John Krazinski was in that moment. Jim and Pam have become one of the most endearing television couples because the show avoids the usual sitcom drama and this was a really nice pay off.

Glee- I had no idea this show was going to be an hour long, so that concerned me right off the bat, but the energy and the optimistic attitude displayed for the hour really made the show shine. It was a bit uneven and sure, it had some stereotypes, but overall I found myself really enjoying the show. I could do without the wife and her idiosyncrasies, and Jane Lynch who is usually hilarious feels trapped by the network television standards and the principal is not nearly as funny as the show wants him to be, but Lea Michelle makes up for all of it. She is so incredibly gorgeous, energetic and shows a flare for comedic timing. Of course, the real key of this show is the music. Every week it is going to have to make songs interesting and fresh and the premiere did a great job of showing a great variety of songs. We got Amy Winehouse's "Rehab", some show tunes and the big winner was Journey's "Don't stop believin.'" I am on board for now and plan on being on board for the long haul, but I am not a fan of waiting until the fall to catch the next episode.

Housekeeping

With the regular television season gone and with summer here, I am going to slightly tweak the blog and hopefully with no papers to write, I will be able to properly keep it up, but remember there is only one of me. From now on things will look as follows:

Sunday- Lists. This will give me the whole weekend to work on them. I will also take requests here for any lists anyone wants to see.

Monday/Tuesday- The summer movie season offers me enough new movies that I should be posting at least one review each of these two days, but probably more than 1 per day. This week I am going to try and knock out 3 a day, but I might have to put off a few for next week.

Wednesday- This is still a wild card day that will include album reviews, DVD reviews, random reviews, essays or random movie thoughts.

Thursday- I am going back to work on watching Robbie's list of movies released before 1990 for "Throwback Thursdays." I have enough free time now that it should not be a problem.

Friday and Saturday will be off days for now. I am not sure what else I could possibly fill this blog with, but am always open to suggestions. The current grading system and the television recaps were both ideas from readers, so if you have a way to improve it please let me know.

I am going to try and do a better job of linking to the blog, as well. I will link to it every day from Twitter (username: KyleHadley), I will link a few times a week from Myspace bulletins and then I will probably link from Facebook on weekends.

After 350 posts, some changes in how this will go.

Recently, I have found myself less interested in just writing reviews of the new movies I see and I am not sure if the readership is still up, so I thought I would make some changes to how I do things, mostly in an attempt to keep myself interested. I am going to start updating 5-6 days a week, using different days for different thing.

Sunday: I am going to use this day as my TV day. I will probably do something like pick my 5 favorite moments or episodes from the week. The shows I watch and will most likely feature are: Big Bang Theory, How I met your Mother, Chuck, 24, Trust me, Scrubs, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Supernatural, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Friday Night Lights and The L Word. It is possible American Idol might sneak in, as well. Not sure what summer TV will look like, though.

Monday and Tuesday: These days will continue to be prime days for writing new reviews. Of course, this is dependent on actually seeing movies, so in some weeks these might be off or at least light. On average, I would say I see at least two movies in the theater per week, but not always. I may use these days to review any new movies on DVD that I missed in theaters as well. If I get back into buying new music, I may review music on these days as well.

Wednesday: This is going to be a wild card day, which means there will be a variety of things I deal with on this day. Sometimes it may be a rant, or an essay, or random thoughts about movies. I may use this to talk about thoughts on casting news. Sometimes I might review a favorite movie of mine, or a movie I hate, just for fun.

Thursday: Here is my throwback day. I have asked a very good friend, Robbie, to give me 15 movies released before 1990 that he would like me to review. After I review those 15, I may ask someone else, or ask him for more, or if there is something anyone wants me to review, please send them my way. This is a chance for me to review some favorites from people, or interesting movies and maybe even watch some movies I never saw. I am excited about this. The first movie will either be Porky's or Hoosiers.

Friday: This will be the day of lists. This can also be more interactive. If there is a list you would like to see me do, let me know and I will do it. These lists will usually be either "best of" actors, or favorites in a genre or something random, but I am open to all ideas.

There will be nothing on Saturday as that is typically a homework heavy day. Now, there may be weeks, where I miss some of the days due to it being midterms or if a big project is due. However, I find myself with more free time than I had imagined this semester because so much of the work spans the entire semester. I am hoping doing all of this new stuff will renew interest in the blog and renew the interest in myself to continue to do it. I hope this works out and I hope that more people will give me ideas of things to do. I really love sharing my opinions of movies because I really do love the movies!