This pic of some car's rear window should be in a locket around my neck!
Last year, some of my fellow-bloggers thought I was making too big a deal of the fact that I started making 3 posts per week for most of 2011. Maybe I was, but it felt like a big deal, as I was working hard as a lawyer, writer, and photographer. With all those professional obligations, it was tough to publish quality entries on a regular schedule.
So, of course, my hubris took over in April and I decided to up 2012's numbers to (at least) 16 entries per month. I created some new, regular tags - like the Question for the Week entries - as well as joining other sites, being sure that I had one+ new review coming out each week. I kept plugging away, offering weekly reviews, questions, and fan-made gems, as well as a random post. It was hard work, and I'm proud of the results.
Let's not forget the great fake-out trailer for 2001. Such irony!
Moreover, the blog broke 75,000 hits (it's higher, but Blogger doesn't track the results from March to July of 2009). I exceeded 4000 hits in a month, then started clearing 5000 regularly. It's not what I anticipated back in April, 2009.
I can't believe I posted more often than every other day for a year. Actually, this year as Half a Film Student has been pretty crazy since I had almost as many posts in 2012 as in the previous 3 years combined; I'm 5 posts short.
And DJ contributed a handful of fine entries this year. His Double-Dip for Malice was excellent, as was his review of Prometheus. It was nice to have a chance to take a back seat for a few minutes and concentrate on something else once in a while. It's also a pleasure to get a different voice here now and then...
Like a parent, all of these individual entries seem good and special. Some are better or a bit flawed, but this site also serves as a writer's resume for me, so nothing gets phoned in and I generally stray from posting for no particular reason... This, of course, begs the question of which entries I like the most. Well:
The one I've revisited most often, perhaps, is the Fan-made Gem for Mitt Romney's defeat for President in 2012. I even risked being annoying by showing it to all my coworkers, and I loved how hard they laughed at it; I'd hate to tell an un-funny joke. I showed it off more often than my entry on what's my favorite movie poster and tagline.
Yes, the 60-second puppet-version of Requiem for a Dream was a highlight of 2012.
I'm super-proud of the reviews for - Malice, an old favorite; the great Mark Sandman documentary, Cure for Pain; my Double Dip for The Dark Knight Rises; the unexpected surprise of Lockout; and my January review for Evil Dead 2.
And I'm really pleased by some of the Fan-made Gems I got to share: the painter who put pop culture characters into classic paintings, the table read of Star Wars IV by popular voice-over artists, the B@tman musical, audio clips of Arnie's DVD commentary, and Joss Whedon's endorsement of Mitt Romney for Prez.
I was beaming at the response I received to a few Question entries, like Al Pacino's poor mid-career acting choices, The Matrix's Neo being a terrible fighter, wondering how Wesley let time pass in The Princess Bride, Nic Cage's ability to make me laugh with one picture, and Freddy Mercury as the villain in Commando.
And I was so happy to be able to give a little love (and introduce people) to things like Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, Hulu airing the BBC's Line of Duty, Bill Murray's real-life amazingness, my Open Mind During, Not Before thought-piece, and my You Should've Been a Movie entry for No One Lives Forever. I'm also super-proud of my What's in a Name? article; I put a lot of thought into that one...
Discovering Todd was a real treasure.
I don't know what will happen in 2013. Actually, that's untrue, as I already have 16 January posts prepped and scheduled. I think I'll need a real rest between March and early May. By late Spring, I should hit 500 posts, and completed one year straight of weekly Questions. Actually, taking a rest after that sounds just my style...
I won't tell you about the posts that I have scheduled, but I will reveal what I'm going to review aside from what I've scheduled: Django Unchained, Save the Date, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Looper, The Hobbit, Bad Kids Go To Hell, Cosmopolis, Zero Dark Thirty, Butter, as well as a You Shoulda Been a Movie for Fallout and/or Wasteland. I'm still trying to plan out the Questions for February and March, so feel free to ask me something I can tackle in the future...
I'm also looking forward to catching a few movies I haven't seen yet: Let the Right One In, District 9, Black Swan, Winter's Bone, (perhaps) The Social Network... I'm eager for Joss Whedon's version of Much Ado About Nothing as much as I love Branagh's take, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost directed by Edgar Wright again in The World's End, the assembled super-cast of Get a Job, and Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. Other movies, like The Master and Argo, might come up, too, but I wanted you to have some idea of what's to come in 2013. You can see that I've thought a lot about the movies I want to see and what I can do on this site.
Happy New Year! I'll see you in the future, motherb--ches!
Half a Film Student
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