State of the Blog – February 2016

Maybe I should rename these State of the Blog posts, “Broken Promises – [Month] Edition”. It feels like every time I say I am going to publish certain posts, and then invariably I can’t get to everything I say I am going to do. While January did see me post a few of the things I said that I would, I failed to re-boot the Classic Reviews Friday and also didn’t finish up the larger essays that I wanted to. The last couple of weeks were a little more busy in the lab, but my morale has not evaporated completely. So, once again, I am going to touch base with you fine folk who actually read this blog and tell you what I have in store for February.

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Is it Any Good? The Scourge of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic

You may have noticed that here on Plot and Theme I never attach a grade to my reviews. Distilling an entire film into a single number or letter has always rubbed me the wrong way, as it inherently removes any critical nuance from the discourse. But, I am aware that most reviews do provide a grade in summation, and these can help gauge the overall quality of the film. More recently, with the rise of review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, scores of these reviews are condensed down into a single number. The result is a peculiar derivative of a derivative – thoughts and words transformed into a number, then that number lost in a sea of others. The purpose of this piece is to explain that process in more detail, and ultimately determining if any of these procedures result in answering a simple question: Is <Insert Film > any good?

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Plot and Theme’s Top Ten Movies of 2015, Plus Stray Observations!

Now that all of the days of 2015 are safely in the past, it is an appropriate time for me to take my shot at one of those heralded “Top 10” lists. This list comprises only movies released in 2015, and only contains movies which I had the opportunity to see (alas, no The Revenant or Macbeth). I will provide links to the actual reviews I did of each of these films, as well as an interesting (well, I suppose that’s debatable) observation that relates to each film. Also, feel free to yell at me in the comments about the patently incorrect opinions that I hold, or to lobby for your favorites.

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State of the Blog – January 2016

 

I am going to keep the January 2016 State of the Blog a little shorter than normal, because I am very close to finishing up my version of “the best 10 films I saw of 2015” type post, and it will include a lot of sum-ups and ideas that would otherwise be repeated here. So, I’ll use this update to talk about things that I am looking forward to in January (there’s not a lot), and how I will use that opportunity to slightly change the focus of Plot and Theme, for at least the foreseeable dregs of January / February.

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State of the Blog – December 2015

 

The inexorable passing of time and domestication of the dog continues unabated, and November is in the books for Plot and Theme. I published slightly less than I wanted to while attempting to stick to something of a schedule, but I did make progress along those lines. Plus, despite writing fewer posts, November was more successful in terms of page views, visitors, likes, and comments than October, so I am confident that I am moving in a good direction here. There’s plenty to talk about and look forward to, so let’s get going.

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State of the Blog – November 2015

As happens, the inexorable passing of time has continued unabated, so it is time for another sobering and disappointed recounting of the previous month at my movie blog. There were still a few cool things that I got up off the ground last month, and also plenty to look forward to in November – including a couple of great outside projects that both look incredibly fun and should increase traffic towards my little online moviespace. So, let’s get to it!

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State of the Blog – October 2015

I’ve got to say, September was a bit of rough month over here at Plot and Theme. After very strong success in August, I fell back below my site views for July and published fewer posts than I have in a full month. You may have also noticed that my Classic Review Friday posts fell by the wayside a little bit there as I was traveling and then occupied with work, which is disheartening. Still, I saw some great movies and made some very good posts this month, so I would like to focus on the successes with this State of the Blog post. Let’s get to it.

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State of the Blog – September 2015

August is in the books over here at Plot and Theme (and everywhere else, I guess, but it’s hard to be excited about that) and the month was a great success. I saw the most unique site views, the most visitors, and posted a health number of times despite refraining from run-of-the-mill news items. Further, the Classic Review Friday series is quickly becoming one of my favorite posts to write, and I am having a great time thinking up films to put in that space. Finally, my Disney series was a huge success, and has inspired me to write more posts of that nature. But we’ll get into that later.

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State of the Blog – August 2015

The August 2015 state of the blog post has quite a bunch to say. I’ve got a brand-new look, a simpler address, and plenty of blog news to discuss. I saw some great movies this month, and have a great deal upcoming that I want to tell you about, so let’s get to it.

State of the Blog – July 2015

June is in the books and I was about as productive here on Plot and Theme as I was in May. I published 29 posts (the exact same as in May), most of which were movie news items or reactions. I got a few reviews in, most notably my review for Inside Out, which was … Read more