It’s Blusterin’ Time!
And remember: Blustering should be a two-way street; if you’ve asked to be blustered, you better be a blusterer.
If you’re new to this feature or need a refresher, click the label at the bottom of this post and see the first few posts. Otherwise, here are the basics:
What I’ll do is list a site; you’re asked to critique it. But here’s the catch: to induce the most honest reactions, don’t leave the comment using your normal alias/login – instead, go anonymous, and be as brutally honest (or complimentary) as you wish to be. Also, be specific, and naturally, don’t be rude. If I deem anything inappropriate, I’ll have no problem deleting the comment.
So, go to the site listed below, familiarize yourself with it for a few minutes, then come back and leave some constructive criticism and/or comments that you have.
Site: The Reeltime Report
LAMB#: 743
URL: http://reeltimereport.blogspot.com/
If you’re up for this treatment for your site (and you’re a LAMB), send me an email with the subject “Bluster Me!” If you’ve already done so, no need to do it again – you’re on the list, and these will be going up in order of when I received your email.
I see nothing wrong with your blog, but there is just one thing.
I think that your boxes on both sidebars should have a black background in order for the red curtains and white print to stand-out against the curtain(s.)
It seems like a decent enough blog, although I would have liked to seen him talk more about the technical choices behind films (but that’s just me). The layout is quite clean and simple which makes navigating around the site quite easy.
Sorry for off topic, but 2012 is close, is this really matter?
I’d prefer the banner to be centered if it’s gonna be that size. Either that or elongate the banner so it reaches both sides. And maybe throw in another color. All that red is a bit much.
If you’re gonna do a series called ‘Top 5 _______ of all time’, then don’t limit yourself to films from the past 20 years. It makes you look ignorant. I’d drop the ‘of all time’ part and call it ‘My top 5 _______’ or something else that’s more honest.
Sometimes your biases get in the way of your analysis. That you don’t care for Clint Eastwood as a director is apparent, but your arguments against him are not well-reasoned. To say that Hollywood kisses his ass does not explain why you think ‘Million Dollar Baby’ is overrated, for example. You bring up that exact same point in your ‘Hereafter’ review. It does not address the specifics of the film itself.
There are grammatical and spelling errors you might wanna watch out for. ‘Ludicrous’ is the adjective, ‘Ludacris’ is the rapper, to pick one example.
The upper banner should be better proportioned to take the entire length from sidebar to sidebar.
I don’t see any comments on your blog. Networking with fellow movie bloggers isn’t an option, it’s a necessity if you want to attract repeat visitors and comments. I would recommend picking 20 to 30 movies blog and regularly commenting on those. You will almost immediately see more visits and comments on your blog.
As someone said earlier, the sidebar should be a different color but not white or red.
You need an About page, Twitter and Facebook pages and/or links from your blog to those so we can follow you.
On the plus side, you have pretty good content and your blog has a lot of potential to grow if you focus more effort on the overall movie blogging community.