me me me me me .. :P
sorry, shall learn to contain my excitement soon :P

Richard, since this page is about you, can we use this as a Q&A forum, more like putting you on the Hot Seat or something? I know I could ask this in the Hive but then the ones who are not yet members of the FS community might not get the chance to read your replies or get to ask you their own questions. So let me start. Hihihihi....

When deciding what movie articles to write per day, with tons of movie news circulating online, what makes you decide which one gets into Filmstalker?

No rush to answer this, have the time of your life first. ;D

ram-jaane - what's the "me" for? The unanswered email that I promise I will this week, or something else?

Simone - oh, that's really difficult. Mainly it's whatever I find interesting, but I also look for stories that would be deemed popular, so although I don't like some actor or film I might still put up stories because I know more of the readers do.

I try to keep away from wild rumours, but they are fun, posters which are mainly just dull, and gossip.

I don't know, it's just the stories that catch my eye and sound interesting to me or I think would be interesting to some of the readers.

uhm as in sign me up for the community, the stalking & the revolution ...

in response to: if you want to join the Filmstalker community that we're testing out, then drop me a note

yea i shud probably contain my excitement & speak less retarded .. but yea, interested to see your in depth email reply too, no rush :P

except one MT question - commenting how do you cope?
my hosting has just suspended my account due to the spammin buggers:

"The script (/usr/bin/perl -w mt-comments.cgi) was using more than 50% of the servers CPU and more than 80% memory usage. More than 20 instances of this script were running at the same time."

it all gets junked but i need to put a stop to it ..
trawling MT forums now ..

Right, thanks for answering my 1st question, here's another one.

What usual types of film would merit your review, (whether it's a DVD or straight from the cinema) especially the ones that make it to the site?

I am compiling all this Q&A thing and surprise you with something one day, so let's keep this going shall we? ;D

Oh...now that's difficult.

I'll review anything, but there's four main categories.

Film Releases:
I'll try and go and see anything that's just released that I know I'n interested in seeing. If I already hate the idea of, for example, Night at the Museum I know there's no point in me going to see it because I'll just be negative. However even with that example I've just seen the latest trailer before Big Nothing and it looks a little bit more interesting.

I tend to prioritise the more interesting, more desired, what gets more notice from the readers, etc.

Yet there's no point in going to see something that I don't like the idea of already.

DVD Reviews:
I have a DVD waitlist of films people have recommended to me and of those I miss in the cinema. Currently sitting at around three hundred, I just keep playing around with the top ten for a random choice. This is usually influenced by readers talking about a film, or other sites discussing a DVD.

Press Screenings:
Whatever's on, I'll go and see it. The industry forgets that Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, and indeed that Scotland is even here sometimes.

What we tend to get are the independent screenings, so for instance Deep Water is showing this Friday. That's a film about the man who faked leading the round the world yacht race. Last week was, believe it or not, The Wizard of Oz...but I had no desire to review that!

DVD Screeners:
Now and again filmmakers will send me DVD's to watch and review. On the whole I tend to get films that aren't so great, and I always offer the sender the chance to hear what I thought of it before I write the review, especially after seeing a really bad film, writing it up and then being asked to remove it from everywhere!

However, I haven't had to do that in a while. Eve of Understanding, Free Enterprise and The Planet were the last three I saw and they just blew me away with the quality compared to others.

Once again though, there's not too many screeners get sent all the way out here. Like Hollywood, the independents don't see their market over here so again these don't come through very often.

Basically though, I'll review anything that comes through unless I didn't like it and the maker doesn't want that review shown.

How's that?

Sorry for the gap, Richard has been very prompt in replying and I wasnt expecting it! ;)

Here's more:

What inspired you to start writing film reviews? Do you love it so much you could do it for a living? Do you have favorite movie reviewers whose opinion affect your desire to see a film?

With Filmstalker, where do you get much satisfaction, is it when other sites link to your stories, or when you get a massive amount of traffic, or interaction with your posters by their comments?

Oh...that's a tough one. I love films. I think I can attribute that to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars in particular, but I've always loved films. My parents are big film watchers too and I think I picked that up from them.

I guess coupling that with the fact that I've always written in some form or another and it just seemed a great idea when blogging came along to marry the two.

Could I do it for a living? Mmmm...people say when you do something you love for a living it stops being something you love. I disagree, I think that's because they look at it as work. If you can earn enough to survive and enjoy what you're doing then you don't have to let it become work.

It goes back to when I was a contractor, the power and the decisions were in my hands. That's the same as if you're doing what you love for yourself. You can make it better, change it, stop it, do something completely different, and when you're in a day to day career type job that control is mostly out of your hands.

So I guess yes, I could do it for a living. I would love to, but perhaps it would be just a part of what I would do. Writing on a few topics at the same time would be great.

I don't have favourite movie reviews to be honest. I know people who share very similar tastes so that they'll be a good indication of what's good to see. Also I don't put all my faith in a reviewer, I'll read a varied mix of writers and may still decide to ignore them all!

I think the general feeling out there in the Internet and physical publication lands help me decide if it's something I should go see, but to start with I usually already have a pretty firm decision made in my head about it.

There's a great satisfaction seeing official sites for films or industry people linking to your reviews and comments, that's a great feeling. I still think I'm part of the audience, so for me I'm getting to give some feedback right from the middle of the fifth row.

That said there's s nice little buzz seeing the traffic going up, especially the crazy leaps FS has been taking.

However none of them compare to a good discussion, even heated debate. I love it when there's good comments coming in and when people start talking about what they like and hate, and I really love it when people have contrary views and start debating them - in a healthy, none aggressive way of course.

So I guess it really is about the comments, but there's also satisfaction in the other areas of the site, even the monthly figures!

Is that what you're looking for?

Right let's get back to this one.

What other names did you consider before coming up with Filmstalker, and if Filmstalker was the one to start with apart from the obvious reason, anything else you want to share?

If you are gathering a few of your friends over to watch 3 films in your entertainment centre (that includes me!) you know they havent seen yet, what films would it be and why?

Well I can't remember if there really were any other names thought of...oh yes, there was one suggestion but that's not for general conversation.

No I think there wasn't any other consideration and during the development of the site Filmstalker was the only real option.

Three films...Mmm...difficult.

If I'm showing off the Home Cinema system then Matrix goes on for the lobby scene and the rooftop dodging bullets scene.

Otherwise I tend to choose some foreign films - Run Lola Run, Das Experiment and maybe Tesis. I've actually lent them all two two friends in the last few months.

That's a good question and would make a really good feature!

After watching Perfume, I am keen on watching another Tykwer film in Run Lola Run too. By the way are you planning to catch Perfume?

Anyway, here's a few more Q's for you Richard.

Now that you are reviewing films and have to be objective about them, do you feel that you are enjoying the films much less because of this?

What are you film prejudices? What type of films will not make the grade for you even if everybody else around you might be raving about it but you on the other will never give in? Have you got a few films you deliberately will not see because of this?

Oh Simone, those are tough. Let me try writing about these.

I find I'm enjoying films differently. There's a multiple edged sword to reviewing films. I have to say that I fight with all my body not to become sanitised against the film experience.

So I don't take notes in the cinema, I sometimes see do deliberately see films I want to knowing that I'll have fun, like Crank for example.

I so go through a little mental process of dropping the baggage before seeing a film, although I have to say I did this before I started reviewing films anyway, but it's a good process. By baggage I mean anything I've heard or read about it before.

I actually don't think that I'm objective about them. What I do is watch the film and if there are things I particularly enjoy or don't, or there are moments that drag me into or out of the film, I'll just remember them until afterwards when I tap up some quick notes during the credits.

I don't like to analyse the film while it's happening, or take a step back and look over the framing or the cinematography, that way I stop experiencing the film as an audience member, and what good would the review be to any other audience member then?

A good thing about it all is that I'm seeing films I never would have before, and I find films I enjoy where I wouldn't have normally gone had I just been a normal audience member.

I guess that because I'm now seeing so many films just by sheer numbers I see less great ones, but I'm never really going into that cinema and watching a film without getting that buzz. Even with sitting in my home cinema, I still get an excitement about watching a film.

So I'm not enjoying films less because of it, definitely not.

Film prejudices? I don't think I have. I guess I have minimum requirements, like entertainment, story, understanding, connection, intrigue - things like these are requirements for a film (not all at once though) otherwise I can't get into the film. However there's no genres I write off immediately I don't think.

There are some genres, like Bollywood for example, that I haven't tried to experience. However I think our mate Ram will be helping us change that in the future!

That answer those?

Информативно,продолжай в том же духе