MADness—the Blog

Is it already the 3rd of January?  Where has the time gone?  (The years do go by faster and faster, don’t they?)

I’d say it’s still not too late to say:  Welcome to the new year!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday, and all the best to you in 2011!

The new year marks the one-year blogiversary of MAD About Movies.  Thanks for remembering.  I do appreciate all the fireworks.

I began last January 1 with a post about the birth of movies and by year’s end had caught up with “the current cinema”, as they say in some parts.  We covered a fair amount of ground, with a total of 204 features (along with 25 other posts) on the “front page” of the site, where you find the MAD Movie Minutes.  Not to mention, there’s MADness–the Blog, the “back page,” if you will, with a variety of posts on movies, puzzle news, etc.

Looking back, I’m very pleased to have launched the site and to have gotten to this point.  It’s been gratifying to see traffic build steadily (Jan. ’11 visits have already exceeded the total for Jan. ’10).  Yet, I’m not sure what I was thinking when I committed to posting new features five days a week.  I maintained that schedule for most of the year but at times it was a challenge.  If I were doing nothing but seeing movies and writing about them, I’d be posting even more.  But I do have a full-time job, and I’m also a full-time husband and a full-time dad, and last I looked there are still but 24 hours in a day.  Life gets busy long before I even sit down to write the next post.

Looking ahead, I plan to continue with the same general format, but at a more sustainable pace.  With flexibility the key, here’s the schedule I’ll be looking to follow for the year ahead:

MAD About Movies

• Movie Minutes — two weeks per month, I’ll feature a new theme, with usually three featured posts per theme (note:  some weeks may have three posts; other weeks, more or less, depending on the topic and my availability)
• Final Friday Five — once each month, on (yes!) the final Friday, I’ll include the FFF movie mini-quiz with the Movie Minute post
• MAD Puzzles — once each month, on the first Monday, I’ll post a new pair of Gram Cracker crossword puzzles

MADness–the Blog

• Movie Info & Other News — no set schedule, but I’ll be posting here on the blog on a variety of mostly movie-related topics whenever I have something to add

Thanks for visiting the site.  Spread the word.  Happy New Year, and I look forward to seeing you in the year to come.

Here’s the answer to that question, in case you wanted to know.

Text analysis

minaday.com-movies is probably written by a male somewhere between 36-50 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

65% male is 65% right.  Here’s the kicker:

Ranking

minaday.com-movies is the 166th most happy of 602 ranked blogs.

72% happy.  I’ll take it.

Where do you find this crack analysis?  At UrlAi.com.

Today’s New York Times:

The nation is once again transfixed by “Mad Men”…

Indeed, the season four premiere of “Mad Mad” had record ratings:

The episode received 2.92 million viewers, a healthy amount. It’s still nowhere near the circa seven million viewers that shows like USA’s Royal Pains and TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles get…

I just checked the stats for the site, and July set new records for number of visits and unique visitors.  The numbers may not compare with something like Rizzoli & Isles, but I think it’s safe to say:

The nation is once again transfixed by “MAD About Movies.”

First things first, the new crossword puzzle is here.  It’s a 19×19 themeless, and as always, you can find it at the MAD Puzzles page.  Scroll down for MAD Puzzle 7.

In other puzzle news, I had the Thursday (6/24) crossword in last week’s New York Times.  It had a tricky theme and turned out to be a difficult puzzle for lots of people.  If you’re a regular Times puzzle subscriber, you’ve either done it or know where to get it.  It’s available at the Times site here (subscription required); or use the direct link for the Across Lite version here.  I was happy with most of the feedback.  You can read Jim Horne’s commentary here (at Wordplay) and Sam Donaldson’s take here (at the Fiend).  My favorite comment may have been this one (at Rex Parker’s site):  “I am extremely satisfied that I finished this puzzle correctly, however, I think Mr. Farmer was showing off.” 

My next puzzle at the Times is due to run a week from tomorrow, next Thursday, July 8.

Yes, I’m still here.  Actually, I haven’t gone anywhere, though activity on the MADness—the Blog side has been quiet lately.  For a while, my routine had been a few blog posts a week (in addition to Movie Minute posts every weekday on the front page), but then nothing.  Somehow, nearly a month has slipped by.  What happened?  I got busy.  Demands on my time seem to be growing by the week, so I’ll be dropping in to say something whenever I can, but the schedule may be sporadic for a while.  I’ll aim to keep the weekday Movie Minutes coming as usual, though I may need to revert to “summer hours” at some point.

So what’s been going on?  Some old news, perhaps, but a few items worth noting:

Remembrances of Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)

F.X. Feeney in the L.A. Weekly:

At its depths, behind the camera or in front of it, Hopper’s legacy as a filmmaker is defined by a multitude of excellent performances, each alive with the iconic honesty Dean had pressed him to seek in himself. His particular genius as an artist was that he made himself at home within his own contradictions — and was perpetually eager to invite the rest of the world to join him there, laughing at the darkness.

Edward Copeland:

How many odd turns can one man’s life and career take? There’s probably no limit, but Dennis Hopper, who died at 74 after a long battle with cancer, took a lot of them: From young actor of film and TV in the 1950s to counterculture icon of the 1960s and ’70s (while adding director to his resume and still working with the likes of John Wayne); from nearly unemployable because of drugs to a career comeback in the mid-1980s before frequent returns to TV. On the side, he managed to find time to be a prolific photographer, painter and sculptor. His later years also brought the strangest twist for the hippie hero: he became a Republican. Still, it’s his film and TV work that will be his legacy.

I have a couple of recollections of Hopper, aside from his film work.  One, hearing him talk about working with James Dean, in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant.  He was in awe of Dean, and learned a lot from him.  Mostly, though, I remember Hopper’s fascination with acting.  It was just great to listen to him.  Two, seeing him work, which I had the chance to do on a film called Boiling Point, from 1993.  (If you look real hard, you can see my shoe in one of the scenes, my moment of glory on the big screen.)  Hopper and Wesley Snipes were the co-stars, but Hopper was the guy I wanted to watch.  He seemed to be an accessible, decent guy behind the scenes, and he gave a very good performance too.  I’ll remember Hopper for his films, more than anything, and particularly these:  Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, and Red Rock West.

Cannes

Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d’Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the first Thai film to win the top prize.

Recaps and perspectives worth reading:  Roger Ebert on the not-so-hot festival.  Manohla Dargis on the end of film.

The Gulf Oil Tragedy

James Cameron offers to help.  BP says no, thanks.  (I saw an interview with Cameron on TV.  He actually has expertise and access to equipment for deep-sea dives that might be helpful, to the government perhaps if not to BP.)

Program note:  a week of oil at the movies, starting Monday, on the front page.

Movie to See

There’ll be plenty of others this summer, but here’s one that’s got my curiosity:  Double Take. 

Now playing at New York’s Film Forum.  (Only 2,407 miles from here, says Moviefone, but maybe not this weekend for me.)

MAD About Movies Site News

It’s been a while since the last crossword, but another is on its way, soon as I get a chance to clue it.  That probably will not happen this week, unless I surprise myself.  The calendar is a tyrant.

A sincere thanks to those of you who have found the site and stop by to read about movies.  I started in January, not sure what to expect, and (except for a few time crunches along the way) I’m enjoying it.  Traffic is steadily growing every month.  May numbers were about 50% above April, so it’s good to know somebody (that’s you!) is out there.

I was on the road this week and am now getting to a few items I had meant to post about earlier, one being some reflections about the site.

When minaday.com launched five weeks ago, it was an experiment.  I had no experience managing a daily website.  I didn’t know if I would run out of time, or ideas, after three weeks.  I didn’t know if there were three people in the world who’d be interested in reading anything I had to say. 

If you’re reading this I don’t need to tell you:  I’m still here.  I’ve survived some busy times at work, squeezed in a weekend getaway, a few birthday parties—and of course, several trips to the movie theater—yet still managed to keep to the schedule at Minute A Day, with at least one new post daily (either at the front page or the blog).  (On the other hand, I have not kept up my training schedule for a marathon in April.  Ten weeks to go.  Better get moving.)  Anyway, I’m still working on the routine, but so far, so good.

The numbers on the site, if you’re interested, for January:  50 posts total (21 Movie Minute posts on the front page, 29 blog posts at MADness).  Readership info (growing from 0, since the first content went up 1/1):

I suppose the Pages/Visit number above accounts for this: 

Number of visits: 2673 - Average: 613 s

Perhaps I should rename the site to Ten Minutes A Day About Movies.

Almost all the traffic comes from the U.S., but visitors from dozens of countries have stopped by. 

A couple of oddities:  The only search engine I had to submit the site URL to was Bing, yet it’s still the only search engine that seems not to have sent a spider or bot (Google and Yahoo lead the way).  The favicon.ico hits at about 57%; I still don’t see it on IE8, but Firefox, Chrome, and the Mac all are fine.

Feedback:  It’s been fun hearing from readers.  For whatever reason, people tend to send me email (I’ve gotten my share of phone calls too), but few commenters are using the comment box at the end of each post.  I don’t know why that is.  Please don’t be shy.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the MAD Launch Contest.  The answers to the contest puzzles are now available.  You can find the answers here. 

Hope you had as much fun solving the puzzles as I had making them.

Coming soon…I’ll have another post either Friday or Saturday with news about the winners and some additional comments.

‘Tis the season for Top 10 lists.  Okay, that was really a week or two ago, but these aren’t lists of movies, anyway.  They’re lists of what you might find (or not) at the MAD About Movies site.  (Partly this is for you, and partly for me.  I’m new to this and no doubt will need a few reminders.)

The Top 10 “Yes” List
(i.e., what to expect)

1. Discussion about movies — you already knew that one
2. Discussion about good movies — “good” is a judgment call, of course, but my point is that there’s plenty of good stuff and no need to spend a whole lot of time on dreck
3. Informative themes — I’d like to think you’ll have a chance to learn a few things; I expect to, too
4. Fun themes — I’ll do what I can and you can be the judge
5. Contests — on occasion, there will be movie-themed puzzles and an opportunity to win prizes
6. Puzzles — on occasion, there will be other puzzles;  I expect this to be a sidelight to the main focus here, but I’m sure it will be of interest to some of you
7. 40 to 50 weeks a year of Movie Minute posts – yes, that is fewer than the number of weeks in a year, which means that some weeks I’ll be busy, or some weeks I’ll be away, or some weeks the dog ate my homework; this may seem rather un-American of me (“the nerve–he took a vacation!”), but I look at #7 as my “sanity clause“
8. My opinions – for better or worse, that’s what you can expect
9. Your opinions — whatever you may think of #8, you’re invited to share yours
10. My opinion to change about some of the items on these lists — my ideas have already changed a lot in the last week or two, and I’m just getting started; I expect the site will evolve, but it’s too early to say how

The Top 10 “No” List
(i.e., what not to expect)

1. Discussion about things that are not movies (e.g., TV) – just to state the obvious:  the Movie Minutes section will be about movies; the blog will be mostly about movies but has room for anything else
2. Discussion about bad movies — though some movies are bad in ways that may be hard to resist
3. Boring stuff — you can be the judge
4. Movie reviews — there are great places for movie reviews (see the sidebar), but I don’t expect this will be one of them;  for one thing, I don’t see every new movie when it opens (I’m still catching up on late-’09 films), so reviews would not be especially timely, and I’d rather not be tied to the studio release schedules anyway (a very good thing certain times of the year); liberated from the tyranny of the new, that should give us more time to focus on #2 on the list above
5. Any of the following phrases — “the must-see movie of the summer”; “the genius of Michael Bay”; “I’m surprised I didn’t like it–Larry King said it was ‘worth seeing over and over again’”
6. Celebrity gossip — zero interest in that
7. Weekly box office results — marginally more than zero interest in that, but not a lot
8. Advice on web design — I’m a newbie who just learned a few weeks ago how to spell CSS; I’m just glad to get the site up on time, and right now I’m hoping not to break anything
9. My top 10 films of 2009 — I have trouble making a list like this (it’ll change one day to the next), plus I still have a few things to see
10. [This spot reserved for future use]