Upcoming Revamp and Reviews

Alright everyone. Out 1 update time. I am finishing my MA Thesis this week (finally!!!) after which I plan on doing some major catching up on seeing films and reviewing them on here. I have to thank you all for your patience and for sticking with us during this rather crazily busy time. It's the worst time to be overwhelming busy, as I feel like I have missed at last 10 movies I would have liked to write about. Alas, since some films I have already seen are just circulating around the US (Slumdog Millionaire) or haven't opened yet (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), I'll definitely do reviews on those. I may also do catch up reviews on films that have opened already. My perspective is skewed since films often open in New York before the rest of the country...are there any films that are just opening in your city that you would especially like to see reviews of? Anything coming up that you are waiting to hear our thoughts? Requests? Thoughts? Challenges? Let me know and I'll try and get it covered.

Also, since Brandon does not live in New York, we will wait a while to post our Top 10's this year so that as many films as possible can be seen before the lists are finalized. It will probably come in late January..February 1 at the very latest. We may not post as soon as everyone else, but we've got twice the spunk, I guarantee you! I'm already bored with the only 15 different titles appearing on every critics top 10 thus far. Here's hoping the Voice (i.e. Hoberman) and NYT (i.e. Dargis) shake things up a little bit. I expect they will...

Thanks for your patience! I promise to go post crazy in the coming weeks, and hopefully Brandon (and maybe even Jacob and Maria) will be able to get back into the mix.

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Busy Busy Week

One more apology for being so slow my final two NYFF posts. They are in the works! Promise! I am swamped this week, but will try and finish them up for all of you. I just don't want to leave out the titles that I find of interest. Perseverance is key! On the other hand, I have double blogging duty this week. I am guest blogging at The Film Experience this week while my friend Nathaniel R is out of town. If you don't visit there already, be sure to do so to see my stuff, along with several other guests, this week.

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DVD of the Week Poll Results

Thanks to everyone for voting in our most recent poll regarding how often we should post an overlooked DVD of the week. I wasn't sure if people were enjoying them every week or if perhaps it should be scaled back.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE POST A DVD OF THE WEEK?

Every week- 17 (62%)
Every other week- 10 (37%)

Per these results, it appears that most of you want them every week so that is what we will keep doing. I really appreciate everyone voting in the polls all the time, but especially thank you for voting in the polls that serve as a form of feedback on the site. We're doing our best to shape the site to our reader's interests. If anyone ever has feedback or comments, please feel free to contact me, and please keep voting in the polls when they come up!

Hope everyone is having a film filled weekend!

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Upcoming Posts Update

Hello everyone. I just wanted to give everyone a status update as to why there have been so few posts this week, and wanted to assure you all that there are plenty coming up very soon. I have been in the process of moving to a new apartment all of this week, and this process included not having any internet access. I am on a computer at work as I type, which has no capabilities to include pictures or save writing. And due to Time Warner Cable being insanely slow about things, I will not have internet until Tuesday of next week (the 8th.) As soon as I have access to the internet at home, you can expect us to really get rolling. Reviews of The Last Mistress, Razzle Dazzle, Wall-E, and Man on Wire are in the works, as well as some entries for our in-hiatus Forgotten VHS Series and a DVD of the week will start back up as well, hopefully this coming Tuesday. We will try and fit some other specialized entries in throughout the summer and Brandon Colvin may share some of his cinematic experiences from his time studying abroad in Paris. Welcome back to the USA, Brandon!

Thank you all for your patience and please keep telling your friends and other bloggers about us. We're trying our hardest and really appreciate everyone's support in making this a successful journal.

Best wishes to all, and a happy holiday weekend.

-James

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Out 1 Updates

Alright everyone...after a bit of playing around (and with some major help from my girlfriend Laura who knows HTML) we have officially updated the site. I am pretty much assuming everyone would understand the changes, but just to make you aware of them...here's a post.

With some of our longer posts, our home page seems frequently clogged to me and it is more difficult to track down to find other reviews or articles, assuming that every once in a while we write something that not everyone wants to read. To fix that problem, each of our articles/reviews will appear with their first paragraph. You can then choose to read more (by clicking on the read more option...tough stuff) or scan down to the next thing which is now easier to find and the home page won't take nearly as long to load! Hoorah!

With that inane commentary aside, just want to let you all know that we are working hard to make Out 1 the best site possible, and hope that this is a step in the right direction. We appreciate any and all (constructive) feedback on the site. Thanks for visiting and keep telling your friends!

-James Hansen


Thanks again!
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New Feature

I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to a new element of the site that should have been in place long ago. However, as we were still figuring everything out in the early days of the site, we are doing all we can to make the site much easier to navigate through.

Under the "Current Film Releases" list on the side of the page, we now have links to any review written by any of us on the site. This way, instead of having to dig through the archives to look at our reviews, you can just click on the movie that you are interested in reading the review of and go right to that review. This should be extremely beneficial in making the site more user-friendly and allowing new visitors to find articles and reviews much more simply. Plus, it gives the reviews a much longer shelf life than the amount of time that they are on the home page.

Thank you all so much for your patience. As the site continues to expand, we will do our best to make sure it is as user friendly as possible. If you have any comments, complaints, or suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments page here. I also plan on having links to contact myself and the other writers very soon.

Thanks again for all of your constant support and please continue to spread the word about the site to everyone you know who may be interested in some insightful film analysis! Continue reading...