The July Experiment is Over!

Okay, so what did we learn from writing an 800-word movie review every day for a whole month? Well, there are a whole lot of movies that I didn't think I could write reviews for that it turns out that I could. The older films, the films that I was ambivalent on, the films that bored me to tears, the weird and unconventional films - I got through a lot of self-imposed barriers doing this. I stress that this wasn't all the films that I watched during the month of July. I left out a few that I didn't think I had enough information to properly evaluate, like "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia," the Turkish crime film that won last year's Gran Prix at Cannes. There was too much culture-specific material I'm not sure I entirely comprehend. However, I did write about "Goon," "Keyhole," and a lot of other films I wouldn't have under normal circumstances.

The lineup of reviews was not planned in advance. Mostly I posted reviews a day or two after I watched the films, which I picked at random. I threw in the extra "Dark Knight Rises" post and the pre-viewed "Hobson's Choice" and "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" in the mix to give myself a bit of a break, but they're still full reviews that I wrote during the month. I think this is actually a pretty good snapshot of my usual viewing patterns - a few films in theaters, and a pretty even split between newer rentals and older, more obscure films. You'll notice I'm still catching up with the last awards season, and I will be for the next few months, as the last couple of titles trickle out on DVD. I think the biggest ones left on my to-watch list are "A Separation" and "The Lady," the Aung San Suu Kyi biopic, which should be out by the end of August. No guarantees as to whether I'm going to write up reviews for those or not, because I might be otherwise occupied.

I don't know if the reviews themselves have gotten any better, but I am figuring out how to deal with some of my problem areas. I'm less hesitant to add more historical and cultural context to reviews for the older and more obscure movies, because viewers often need it, frankly. You can't recommend a Guy Maddin film without explaining who Guy Maddin is and what he does. A film like "Baraka" needs to be introduced properly so the audience won't be confused for the first twenty minutes, waiting for a non-existent narrative to kick in. I'm also finding that writing for myself is much more rewarding than trying to write for a fictitious general audience. Maybe I should write myself a manifesto of principles, the way that I've seen a few other reviewers create, just to remind myself that I do have a point of view that's worth sharing. I feel confident in saying that my opinion is an well-informed one, or at least well-informed for a non-professional hobby blogger who's doing this purely for her own enjoyment.

What I did not like about the experiment, at all, was that it took up so much more time. Thirty-one posts in the month instead of my usual twenty-five meant that I didn't have the opportunity to write up posts on other subjects, which I was originally planning to do. July was a pretty eventful month for media, and I missed the chance to be topical on several items - the Aurora tragedy, the Olympic opening ceremonies, Peter Jackson's really sketchy plans for a third "Hobbit" movie, and of course everything that happened at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. Some of these posts will still be written, or the material will be folded into other posts, but I still feel a little frustrated about the lost opportunities. In spite of my rarely being current with anything, I like to stay at least a little topical.

It also got kind of predictable writing reviews day after day, when usually I have to weigh a whole bunch of factors deciding what to write. Has there been too much movie content? Too much TV? Can I bust out a Top Ten list again? Some of my best posts (and some of the worst), have been written on days where I started out drawing a total blank. So it'll be nice to get back to the occasional opinion pieces and catching up on television. I did manage to finish "The Sopranos" during the month, so expect that last write-up soon. Actually, expect mostly TV-related content for the next week or so, because there's a lot of TV I'm going to need to get out of my system.

All in all, though, I'd say the experiment yielded good data, so I count it as a success.
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