What I do is list a site; you 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.
Site: Flights, Tights and Movie Nights
LAMB#: #1240
URL: http://bubbawheat.com/
And remember: Blustering should be a two-way street; if you’ve asked to be blustered, you better be a blusterer.
If you would like to have your blog blustered by fellow LAMBs, please send me an email containing your site’s info and “Bluster Me!” in the subject line.
I like that you focus on a well-defined niche… it’s a niche I have zero interest in, but undoubtedly it helps attract a like-minded audience. Lack of a blogroll is normally a big no-no in my book, but you make up for it with your Follow Friday feature. Always nice to share the love.
Somewhat generic design, but convenient layout. Ads? Ugh.
Will you be covering the John Ritter classic HERO AT LARGE at some point?
I rarely see much traffic come out of a blogroll, but everyone seems to enjoy my Follow Friday interviews. And yes I will be watching Hero at Large at one point.
I agree more or less with the above poster. I’m not so focused on the blogroll, and even then I think Follow Friday is a great idea for a feature.
Your header is great. I think it would be cool if your background was more… comic booky. You had a lot more content than I would think possible given your niche. I read through a few of the posts and liked what I read.
I’m working on getting more art from the artist that did the header for me, I hadn’t thought too much about a background, but I’ll look into it. Thanks.
I really like this blog. It is clearly a labor of love, and I enjoy the variety and creativity of the posts. As with most blogs, film or otherwise, the writing could be better.
Check out this paragraph from the post on Unbreakable:
I have to admit that I was a fan of M. Night Shyamalan a lot longer than most people. He snuck onto the movie scene with a low budget independent movie that nobody ever heard about and then a few years later he made another low budget movie that nobody ever heard about. But the next year he made the Sixth Sense and was suddenly hailed as the next Hitchcock. Everyone was anticipating his next movie, but instead of making another psychological thriller, he made an understated ultra-realistic take on the first act of a typical superhero origin movie. The movie went on to make over $100 million, earn a profit, and yet still be considered a box office failure since it didn’t live up to his $300 million breakout hit. When viewed as a superhero movie, it completely shatters the mold. There’s no big budget special effects, no massive action sequences, no costumes, no masks, no secret identities. And yet it is very much a superhero movie at heart and easily takes a spot in my own personal top 10.
Here’s a rewrite:
I’ve been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan a lot longer than most. He snuck onto the scene in the nineties with a pair of low budget independent movies (Praying with Anger and Wide Awake). But in 1999 he made The Sixth Sense and was instantly hailed as the next Hitchcock. Instead of another psychological thriller, as everyone anticipated, Shyamalan followed with Unbreakable, an understated, ultra-realistic, and altogether atypical take on the superhero origin movie. Although it went on to earn more than $100 million at the box office, many still considered it failure since it didn’t live up to the $300 million take of The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable shatters the mold created by previous comic book adaptations: there are no big budget effects or action sequences, no costumes or masks, and no secret identities. Nevertheless, it is every ounce a superhero movie, and easily claims a spot in my personal top ten.
– I trimmed the redundant passage about sneaking onto the movie scene with low budget projects that nobody ever heard about. If he ‘snuck on,’ it’s logical that the movies are rather unknown.
– Name those indie pictures; an interested reader may want to track them down.
– I used ‘comic book adaptation’ in order to not use ‘superhero movie’ so often at the end of the paragraph.
– I would argue about there not being any costumes or secret identities in Unbreakable. Bruce definitely has a costume / cape/ hood, and he and Sam L. both have secret identities. But I know what you mean in the post!
It’s not what I would consider a costume in the traditional sense, it’s just his security poncho, and neither of them have secret identities, they just have secrets. It may be small differences, but I think it is enough to make the distinction between fantasy and reality.
The writing is something I would need to make a decision about, it’s mainly a problem with copy editing and I have to decide if I want to put out content every day, or if I want to spend more time editing so that the content I have is at a higher level. I appreciate the comment an the help.
Too many posts on the front page, use your recent posts widget better if you want more front page links. Also you need an appropriate url. Otherwise I like it a lot.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere to change the amount of posts on the front page 10 doesn’t seem too many to me. I’m planning on adding an appropriate URL, I just have to fit it in my limited budget. Thanks for the feedback.
First, I think you do a great job as a genre blog and have a lot of quality output.
I just have comments about the look and functionality of your site.
-Your header is a bit clunky. The logo is great but “Flights, Tights, & Movie Nights” draws so much attention that I almost didn’t notice it. The “Nights” being on the second line really bothers me but that might just be me being anal about it. The contact buttons are really great.
-10 posts on the first page isn’t so bad, except that the randomly sized pictures thrown into posts makes it seem much longer and harder to pick out the titles on a quick scroll. Maybe if you format the pictures to be a certain size and use a text wrap around them it will help the posts be more uniform.
-It would be nice if your recent posts linked to posts that aren’t on the front page, or were just towards the bottom.
-At first the calendar widget didn’t seem to have a point but after looking at the “About” page I realized your schedule would make it easy to click on a day of the week if you want to look at that specific feature. That makes the calendar pretty useful, but it would help if something drew attention to that, or you could link from the calendar widget to the schedule (maybe it should move from About to a different page?)
-The biggest thing is the URL, but I get that you have to work with what you can. I have separately noticed your handle Bubbawheat and your actual blog name and I always forget that they are the same thing/person.
Hope this helps!
I’ve been meaning to create random taglines to use for the header, I may use this weekend to shift the header around a bit to hopefully make the actual picture the main focus instead of the title.
I decided to move the posters to right after the cut instead of before it, especially since WordPress creates a small version of the poster for right next to the header. It does seem to make sense to do it this way.
The recent posts don’t make as much sense on the main page, but they are helpful on any other page besides the main one.
And I will add a more appropriate URL this month, been meaning to for a while, it’s just gotten away from me. Thanks for the suggestions.
I wish you had something visual along the border. The plain black is really useless. Some comic book montage or some black and white drawings would be nice.
Also, I don’t see the point of the sign off at the end of the review. It’s a movie review not the evening news. Plus, you’re the primary writer, why do you need to mention it on every article.
Lastly, your opinions suck. You don’t like the same movies as me and you don’t hate the same movies as me. That mean you are wrong.
Okay I’m JK on the last paragraph.
Others have mentioned the background as well, so I put one up today, hopefully it’s a good one.
I look at the sign off as branding. If someone comes to the site for the first time the repetition helps people remember my name and the name of the site. Especially when the site is Bubbawheat.com and not FlightsTightsandMovieNights.com (though now it’s both)
I don’t know why people get their panties in a bunch about ads. As long as they are not plastered everywhere who cares?
I think its cool you focus on one specific area of film and that it’s not classic or horror as it seems there is a lot of that.
I like blog rolls, if your not a fan how about adding it as a drop down.
I like sites to have an actual picture of the person doing the posting. avatars are fine, but maybe in the about me section you could add one.
I don’t have a problem with your prose, nothing worse than snooty, pretentious, writing in a blog IMO.
Not really about your blog, but I think it is really cool how you stepped up and helped out with the LAMB.
Thanks, that was one goal I had – I wanted to pick a niche that I liked, and wasn’t already well-covered.
It seems a lot of people mention the blog-roll, I will make a compromise and make a page that collects my follow fridays into a combo archive and blogroll.
As far a pictures, I’ve kept my online identity separate from my real life identity for so long, it’s hard to change.
And I’ve enjoyed helping with the Lamb, it’s a good site, and good people.