You may have noticed that from week to week I am often adjusting and tweaking how frequent I put out a review for the various review series I have running. Ideally, I’d like everything to be on a weekly schedule. At the moment this isn’t possible, mostly because I’ve taken on too many things at once and also because I’ve lazily handled the Sam Fuller series over nearly the entire life of this website. I should have been done with his films a very long time ago, but I have a hard time curbing my inherent desires to hoard and store the things I truly love. I love Sam Fuller’s films immensely, so I am hesitant to watch them all because I don’t like the idea of there not being a “new” Fuller film to watch. This goes for many of my other favorite filmmakers too. I realize the futility of this kind of thinking, but it’s a hard habit to break. I started the series as a “I’ll do one whenever I feel like watching a Sam Fuller movie” kind of series, which ended up being very intermittent and haphazard. For instance, in 2012 I only had two Fuller reviews go up, a ridiculous number.
My most recent plan was to do new Fuller reviews every two weeks. If my previous pace was that of a snail, then this would surely count as lightspeed. But it seems that lightspeed is not fast enough. Even at a bi-weekly pace, it’d still be 2014 before I finished the series. So I’m going into some kind of warp speed, moving the series to a weekly frequency so that I can finish it before my annual Horrific October event.
I have also decided to review the works that Sam Fuller was only a screenwriter on. There’s a few of these readily available via the Sam Fuller box set that came out a few years back, so I’ll definitely hit those and maybe I can track down some of the others. I plan to do these starting in November, as an epilogue of sorts to the series proper. I feel like I might be unduly biased against them if I see them too close to Fuller’s directorial works, and I want them to be able to stand on their own (even if they are studio re-written, watered-down, bastardized versions of Sam Fuller’s original stories :)).
And for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and that means that I must place the Full Moon series on an extended, intermittent hiatus until October. It was a hard decision to make because I love doing that series, and I often find that I enjoy the Full Moon reviews better than a lot of my other ones. Simply put, these films make me laugh, so I’m sorry that I have to put them aside for a bit. This also means that this series will take even longer. Oh well, but I do think it’s for the best. Also, I say “intermittent” because I hope to be able to squeeze in a Full Moon movie or two before October. No promises, though.
Doing this could also mean that I would be able to do weekly Arnold reviews (they’re bi-weekly currently), but I haven’t decided if I want to do that or flip-flop every other week with Jackie Chan films. As it stands now, I’m doing the JC stuff as I find extra time, which isn’t all that often (which, in turn, makes me sad). I could also flip-flop Arnolds with Full Moon films, or even do a three-week flip-flop (or would that be a flip-flop-flip?) between all three. If anyone cares or has a preference, let me know and I’ll take your thoughts into consideration.
Finishing the Sam Fuller series will be a major milestone for me, as it will be the first major series that I will have completed. This will make room for the other series to then finish up quicker, which will inevitably lead to more series. I like series, what can I say?
And speaking of more series, whenever I’m ready to tackle another director’s filmography, I plan to post a poll asking everyone whose films they’d like to see reviewed here. But I probably shouldn’t even mention that right now, and besides I still have the rest of the Peter Jackson films to finish before The Hobbit 2: Dark Territory hits theaters in December (but that shouldn’t be a problem).
Sorry for such a confessional mess of a post, but I thought it’d be better to put this out there instead of just changing things around and leaving people to wonder where their trashy, low-budget review of the week went. 🙂 To make you feel better, here’s a Nic Cage cat! For the Dreamcast fans out there, doesn’t this remind you of Seaman?
All this planning…..
I know exactly what your going through. I have similar problems in that I have a whole bunch of reviews written that I want to get up, but don’t want to simply upload them just to bulk up my post count. Currently I’m working on some reviews which will see the light of day in January next year (yeah, I’m well ahead of the curve) and I feel guilty for keeping them in the background for so long… I just have mor than enough to put up in one go. Do I switch to one-per-day and watch them get no attention from the readers, or keep to my publishing schedule and give each review some time to breathe? It’s a conundrum, for sure.
I couldn’t stand to be so far ahead like you are. When I was moving and I restricted the amount of days that I posted (like you do), when I started picking up speed again the reviews piled up fast! For me, I think it’s more important to get the reviews up in a somewhat timely fashion, because I feel like if I post less it wouldn’t necessarily translate to more engagement on the reviews I do post.
Your way of doing things is really interesting to me, though, and I love the transparency you provide with the review dates. Like you just posted a review of The Raid that you wrote almost a year ago! I wonder what makes you pick another film to go up before that one, or what made you put it up on the day it went up. It’s so mysterious, but I totally understand the concerns. If I do have a few random reviews kicking around, I will often push them back in favor of things that I think “will do better,” like a newer movie over an older movie, or a Hollywood movie over a low-budget one.
I guess it’s a good thing I like to work out scheduling problems. Thanks for the support.
Generally I post reviews in the order in which I watch the films. Save for “event” films like Man Of Steel, in which case I will publish asap, and put the other review scheduled for that time at the back of the queue somewhere. It’s a personal thing, I think, but back when I was doing 1 per day, 5 days a week, I found I wasn’t getting the traction from readers, and a lot of older reviews went…. unloved, so to speak.
Plus, the pressure of maintaining that publishing schedule was something I couldn’t maintain – especially once kids came along – so I was forced to pull back to allow myself time to build up a little backlog I could keep aside for when I needed. I figured 2 per week was both managable, and allowed each review to “breathe” on the site before being shunted off by newer ones.
What it means, though, is that inevitably I get so far ahead of myself that I’m now writing reviews to go up in six months time, so I opted to go to a 3-a-week schedule, just to clear things out a little – even though the nett result is minor at best. Funnily enough, in the next few months I’ll be reverting back to 2-per-week; conincidentally, this will give me my 666th review falling smack on Halloween. Oh, the serendipity. I didn’t plan that, but when I realized, boy-howdy did I decide to work with it.
As for the review dates, I’m phasing that aspect out in a few months…. I didn’t think it was warranted.
I often am amazed at how often folks like Fogs at FMR and Dan over at dtmmr.com post reviews (often, daily), although they appear to have the readership to maintain that – and if they didn’t publish every day, perhaps people wouldn’t visit as often….
I guess it depends on your readers, your site hits, and what you’re able to maintain as a writer.
Hahahaha, it’d be funny if you saw Man of Steel but just added it to end of the queue. Imagine if you still made the site banner and everything: MAN OF STEEL – REVIEW TO COME 1/1/2014! And speaking banners, I enjoy that new “No Adam Sandler” sidebar image you have! hahahaha, I was never a fan either.
Kids definitely get in the way of blogging, and your pulling back the posts makes total sense. I often consider doing similar things to allow myself some breathing room, but I often just get bored with seeing the reviews sitting around in my drafts and end up publishing them quickly. It’s impressive that you are able to build up such a backlog, though! You could take a trip around the world and no one would ever know you’d left home because the posts would just keep on comin’! And that’s some beautiful synchronicity to have #666 go up on Halloween, hopefully it’s for a good horror film!
Fogs and Dan definitely crank out the posts, but like you say they have the readership to make that work. I think in both of their cases, their sites do very well because they are very personable and they keep their sites relevant with all the latest releases. I have come to terms with the fact that my site will never have that sort of following simply because I focus more on older stuff. Mainstream new releases is a “train” that many are already on, but my site represents my personal “train.” So unless someone wants to drop whatever they’re interested in and “jump on my train,” my site is by its very nature hard to connect with. And yes, I think about this stuff a lot (mostly when I cry myself to sleep at night :)). Even though your site focuses almost solely on mainstream films that many have seen, they are rarely still in their theatrical release when the reviews go up, so your site is in a somewhat similar class to mine. It is what it is. My life doesn’t really allow me to get out to the theater much, so I accept it and try not to have my head explode when I see a Fogs post with 150 comments. 🙂