Hello — Is it me you’re looking for?
Blogs and bloggers come and go.
According to one source, even by 2006, Technorati’s Top 100 blogs had an average age of 33.8 months. The implication is clear. Longevity and stability are crucial for building a successful blog.
1More Film Blog recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Migrating a blog risks losing content, forcing stylistic revisions, and most importantly, alienating readers. So why do it?
The reasons for a move are intertwined and rather prosaic. Location matters in any venture, whether brick and mortar or virtual, and Patheos offers great traffic as well as a community of like-minded bloggers whose work complements my own. Hosting and tech support is a great advantage for those, like me, who have grown past the do-it-yourself stage but may not be able or willing to hire a staff.
Honestly, too, when I started this blog, I had not yet articulated what it meant for me that it was “inconspicuously Christian.” One important professional development that has happened since this blog began is that I have become a much more frequent contributor to Christianity Today Movies & TV. Those who first encounter my work at that location, which is the increasing majority, no longer really need to be educated in or brought up to speed about the complicated valences of the term “Christian critic.” Patheos is diverse, so being a Christian reviewer here carries less risk of getting prematurely pigeonholed.
That’s what I get, but what does Patheos get? Or more importantly, what sort of (semi-)distinctive qualities does this blog have? My background is academic, which is rarer in film journalism but by no means unique. Browse a selection of the reviews here and you will see a penchant for less commercial fare. I love documentaries especially, and I see quite a few foreign-language films. The 10 Years Later column, in which I or a guest revisit and reevaluate a film a decade after its initial release, tends to be a reader favorite. The easiest way to get a sense of my tastes might well be to check out my end-of-year favorites from the last few years. I’ve linked to my lists from 2013, 2012, and 2011.
I enjoy discussion though I grow increasingly weary of debate, particularly of the sort that arises on the Internet. What’s the difference? One might be how people approach each other: with an air of invitation or with sarcastic guns blazing. I do like comments, but I sometimes think that people who use the comments simply want to have their own say–which is fine. This blog contains the standard links to Twitter, Facebook, and Letterboxd, so I’m not hard to find. If you have a question as opposed to simply a comment, feel free to reach out. I don’t have a fully articulated comments policy yet. A (naive) part of me hopes that common sense and common courtesy can prevail, but I’ll draw one up if necessary.
Thanks for visiting, please come again soon.
