Friday, October 26, 2007

Mark Your Calendars. Or Not

The arrival of a blog-a-thon used to be an event. Now they're starting to feel like a Wednesday if you know what I mean. Or even a Groundhog Day eternal loop. I don't mean to be overly negative. I love blog-a-thons: fun to host, satisfying to participate in, enlightening to read... but I think something has gone awry. Eddie provides a well known easy to use 'blog-a-thon calendar' and still nobody seems to be checking with this handy resource before announcing their dates. Either that or they're not thinking about how much potential participation and readership they're losing and/or costing each other if they overlap. There's only so much time in a week. Blog-a-thons are way better if there's time to interact with the ideas being presented. Isn't that their 'whole goddamn raison d'être'?


Consider this upcoming clusterf*** of a fortnight in November.

6th-11th Pure Comedic Moments -not strictly a film blog-a-thon
7th-9th Film & Faith -great topic. Wide enough for variety but also interesting specifics
10th-11th Bob Fosse - deserves one...and all that jazz
15th-21st Akira Kurosawa - big filmographies fill a week
19th Queer Film -another broad worthwhile topic

I'd love to participate in all but at this point I'll be lucky to even find the time to read more than one all the way through. I'm not sure what the solution is other than to ignore most of them but that is a disappointing realization. After all, one of the best things about the 'thon phenom is when a topic pushes you out of your comfort zone, prodding you on to learn more about a topic you're unfamiliar with or asking you to think harder or more creatively about a topic you know and love.

December is not drowning in them... yet.

Dec 16th It's a Wonderful Life Bringing the 'thon back to its one film origin
Dec 27th- 30th Endings -the good, the bad, the ugly... get spoiled

Before you know it it'll be 2008 and StinkyLulu will host another of these --Stinky hasn't announced it yet but you know it's coming. And how fun was that back in early January? Very. I'm already curious to see who will make the "class portrait" this year, aren't you? Last year's results were surprising.

14 comments:

J.D. said...

I just now realized how much they overlap. Cwazy.

And thanks for the shoutout by the way. :) But, what's the pic in the collage for it?

NATHANIEL R said...

the 400 blows. very famous ending

Glenn Dunks said...

Checking out Lulu's supporting actress blogathon brought back very fun memories. It's sad that Jindabyne never went anywhere in America. But oh well.

Also, I have a feeling you may post your All That Jazz entry during that Fosse blog-a-thon. Right? Cause that would make sense.

StinkyLulu said...

The Class of 2007 Supporting Actress Blogathon will be happening on January 6, 2008.

Save the date...

Anonymous said...

I'm with glenn on Jindabyne. At this point, I'd be shocked if Linney doesn't end up taking my vote for Best Actress of 2007 (although I guess 2006 in Australia).

Anonymous said...

Tilda Swinton, Olympia Dukasis, Marisa Tomei, Michelle Pfeiffer and Leslie Mann as the nominees? God I would love that.

Anonymous said...

No disrespect to Eva Green, but GOLDEN COMPASS is going to bomb so badly that Bush will invade it.

J.D. said...

I don't wanna start something, but how would it bomb? How?

Glenn Dunks said...

The worst I see it doing is like Lemony Snickets a few years ago. High stylised with a big star and popular source material yet just... not enough.

Of course, it could easily be another Narnia (er, box office wise, not quality).

qta said...

thanks for the mention Nat... and sorry, I hope I wasn't the one to push you over the blog-a-thon edge.

Mapeel said...

Nat, thanks for mention. I think our comedyathon did the most overlap damage. We aligned to RL dates, with the New York Comedy Festival, and didn't see what that would do to its own blog space.

I have checked in with RC at Strange Culture, and he's not perturbed. It might be a challenge to someone to write a post that connects a comedic film comment with a faith/religion aspect. The golf scene in Going My Way comes to mine . . .

Mapeel said...

yes, that would be mind, not mine

When is Blogger going to allow edit of comments?

Anonymous said...

Nathaniel makes an outstanding point, but I'm not sure there's any way to deal with the fact other than to pick and choose.

In my case, I was pretty aware of the issue. As I began writing my post, I was only coming in just before the Kurasawa-thon. I figured that with only five Bob Fosse movies and a few odd appearances and a TV show, my blogathon was destined to be a relatively modest affair and, with Squish's 'thon going all week, there'd be plenty of time if anyone wanted to do both.

But then the Film and Faith event (which ends just before mine starts), if memory serves, showed up in my mail box right as I was finishing up my post. That was another blogathon that interested me a lot, but I already felt committed by that point, and, again, only five Fosse movies --hence my comment that "November should be big enough for all three." If I'd known about the comedython, that would have definitely caused me to move things up ahead -- but then I would have been doing it during the holidays, which I'm not comfortable doing -- or waiting until 2008, which I wouldn't be so hot on doing either.

I'm sure everyone else doing this was going through a pretty similar process. (Well, except for Squish who should be commended for his foresight.)

NATHANIEL R said...

I wasn't trying to diss any one of these thons. I'm just feeling fatigue and a little sadness that i already know i won't be able to read even half of them let alone participate in all of them.

maybe i just need to take a break from blogging for a bit (oh hey, that's what i'm doing next week anyway. perfect timing)