Random Thread for March 2019

Posted on by Jackrabbit Slim

I don’t have any expectations for this blog, but no one has posted a comment in two weeks or post in over a month except me. If Im the only one who is going to post I don’t see a compelling reason to keep going, because I feel like I’m writing to myself. I think this is the longest radio silence we’e had. I hope everyone is okay and it’s just that you are busy enjoying your lives to come here and not something more sinister.

14 thoughts on “Random Thread for March 2019”

  1. Speaking for myself, I’ve been online less recently (closed my remaining social media accounts) and had some health issues. And also I’ve been a bit lazy with not at least doing some comments over the past couple of weeks.

    Been a while since I’ve done a full film review, have got one in the works and should be up sometime this week.

    But it has to be said that in terms of a discussion and debate area, this blog’s best days are behind it. Brian & Nick have been gone for years and even Joe seems to have absented the blog. And that leaves James and us and you provide 90% of the content on here. I still enjoy reading the content but the comments in response to film reviews and discussions were often the best part and it’s a shame that’s so limited these days.

  2. I’ve been swamped lately but that’s not really an excuse for my lack of contributions.

    As I’ve brought up a few times, I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about contributing if we could address some of the major issues that have been plaguing the site for years. Namely: 1) we have little to no control over how posts are optimized for Google, resulting in practically zero traffic 2) a dated theme 3) essentially no social media presence.

    I don’t think correcting these issues are going to be major undertakings but we need to commit to doing them.

  3. Those are all good points, and if you’d like to take the lead, please do. I know nothing about how to accomplish 1 and 3 (we are on Twitter, though, right?) and as for the theme, I’m agreeable to almost anything.

  4. The debate about giving new life to the Twitter account came up 1-2 years ago and I gave it a bit of a makeover and tried to liven it up but it didn’t really work. It’s been tweeting for a decade now and has less than 40 followers so it’s been pretty much a failure.

    The one way to spread the word that I think works that we can still use is that when we do a movie review that we add a link on External Reviews on IMDB; I’ve done that for most of the reviews I’ve posted on here and checking the stats, that’s been a good source of traffic for this site.

    I don’t really know that we can do much about increasing social media presence in general; there’s about a zillion movie discussion/review websites so it’s going to be hard to stand out from the crowd.

    As for the website theme, yeah it’s overdue for a change.

  5. We can try out a few themes and determine which we like. Let’s just switch it every few days and post your thoughts in here.

    That’s a very good idea re: IMDB linking.

    In terms of SEO: we’re very, very limited in terms of what we can do with a free WordPress plan. A paid hosting plan would not cost a lot of money (Dreamhost has plans for like $3.00 a month) but it might be possible for me to get the site hosted under my existing paid account. I’ll look into it.

  6. This is Intergalactic 2. I like it. It’s bold (almost cinematic) and clean-looking. I need to figure out how to make the images look better when scrolling through (they’re stretched and low res, there’s probably an easy fix).

    We can also have a custom header image.

    I love how it pulls the author bio at the bottom of each post. We should probably update those.

  7. It’s clean to the point of being sterile. No personality, IMHO

    If it had some color, I’d like it. But two things I don’t like: the images blurred in the background, and comments not on the home page.

  8. We can add color, seems like there are countless options. Let me see if there’s a way to add comments and fix the images.

    It looks and reads great on a mobile device.

  9. Key to images on the front page is to use the “featured image” selection. A cropped movie poster looks great, or I used a Moonrise Kingdom cast photo (also slightly cropped) as a placeholder on the Best of the Decade thread.

    And if you click “Menu” you can see all the recent comments.

  11. He’s like an emotionally stunted 14 year old, can’t stand him.

    I truly enjoyed his Dawn of the Dead remake, but at this point I’m prepared to give James Gunn full credit for it being as good as it is.

  12. Francis Ford Coppola has yet again recut Apocalypse Now. The new version, entitled Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, will premiere at The Tribecca Film Festival.

  13. “Be sure to tune into InfoWars for Snyder’s inevitable appearance there in the near future.”

    LOL

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Published by Jackrabbit Slim

Location: Vegas, Baby! I’m much older than the other whippersnappers here, a baby boomer. I tend to be more snobbish about film, disdaining a lot of the multiplex fare for “cinema.” My favorite films: Woody Allen’s oeuvre (up until about 1990), The Godfather, The Graduate, A Hard Day’s Night, Pulp Fiction. Politics: Well, George McGovern was my political hero. I’m also a prickly atheist. Occupation: Poised to be an English teacher in Las Vegas. For many years I was an editor at Penthouse Magazine. My role on this blog seems to be writing lots of reviews and being the resident Oscar maven.