The purpose of this blog is pretty simple: I’m going to spout off about movies and television, whatever I’m watching at the time. There will be reviews of old things, recent things, new things–there’s no rhyme or reason to what’s going to show up other than that I watched it.

When Jim Steinman died in 2021, I also added a long-term project that has become the main focus of the blog for the time being: writing a post (I feel like it’s overstating things to call it a “review” or “analysis.”) about every song he wrote. I am a total music amateur who is almost entirely self-taught, so I can’t promise that I’m going to say anything interesting. This project is really for myself–I know no one wants to hear my Steinman thoughts, so I will float them out into the internet ether and let them be found or not without concern.

What I watch for in a film is the more objective aspects. I try to break the film down into the point it is making and examine how well each aspect helps it to make that point. Obviously, there is a lot of room for disagreement in this type of analysis, but it’s still important to realize that there is a distinction between how good a film is (which is what I’m analyzing here) and how much one enjoys it. The idea of reducing a film to its “point” is something that also deserves some explanation. My basic position is that films are too short to provide a truly strong story with deep characterizations, the way a good novel does. As a result, they can only make a single point each. To me, the interesting aspect of filmmaking is the ways in which filmmakers make their points, especially visually. That’s where I tend to focus.

In May 2023, I started adding artwork to the blog. It is from the app Midjourney with prompts from me. I’m not sure how I feel about AI artwork overall, but it makes the blog look quite a bit better.