If you follow me or any other movie-oriented people on Twitter, you probably know that the fine movie blog Cinematical was essentially shut down this week, with the last of the editors quitting and nearly all of the writers (including me) being dismissed. This is bad news for the online movie world, and it’s been encouraging to see the many, many R.I.P. tweets going out all week.
I’m lucky in that I have other freelancing teats from which to suckle, most importantly Film.com. Many of the other Cinematical folks were earning more of their livelihoods from Cinematical than I was and are thus further up a creek now than I am. I hope they’re able to find other gigs soon.
I’ll be writing more about what happened, and why, and who deserves the blame (spoiler alert: Arianna Huffington) in the next couple days.
In the meantime, here’s the roundup of this week’s reviews and such:
“Arthur” (review at Film.com): B-
“Hanna”: B
“Soul Surfer” had a screening, but it was the same time as “Arthur.” It’s about a surfer who gets her arm bitten off by a shark, though, so that’s cool.
At Film.com, I spotlighted 10 summer movies I’m looking forward to that don’t have superheroes in them; “What’s the Big Deal?” addressed “Metropolis”; and “Eric’s Bad Movies” took a can of Raid to “Empire of the Ants.”
And for some reason you can also hear me talk a lot this week, if you want to. I joined Jeremy Kirk and Tim Buel for the “Golden Briefcase” podcast. Then Chase Whale interviewed me for his “Whale of a Writer” series (GET IT?? He’s saying I’m fat). Then, after the Cinematical thing went down, I was invited to join Scott Weinberg and Erik Davis to discuss it on “Reject Radio,” hosted by “Cole Abaius.” Part of that involved participating in a game show, which was very exciting for me. (Listener advisories: there’s some cussin’ in the first one, none in the second one, a tiny bit in the third one.)
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