Happy Fourth Cinematicalversary to Me

My first post was about Jon Voigt being cast as Pope John Paul II and is so dull that I'm not bothering to link it. In fact, most of my August 2005 posts were fairly routine, except for one early post about the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund. That year, one of the grant recipients was a 12-year-old Austin filmmaker, Emily Hagins, for her horror film Pathogen. Emily is now 16 and just held a private showing of her second feature film, The Retelling.

The first post I wrote that grabbed a lot of attention was about a website that tried the Benny and Joon method of making grilled-cheese sandwiches. "Cooking with Johnny Depp" attracted many fans of the actor ... and possibly a few fans of grilled cheese.

My first Cinematical movie review was actually for a short film, A Christmas Caper, that played before Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I called it "loud and dumb and about as subtle as the smell of Stinking Bishop cheese." The link was posted to a Dreamworks fan site, and brought me my first serious experience with angry commenters. My first theatrical feature review for Cinematical was for Tony Scott's movie Domino, which I liked contrary to my own expectations.

That fall, I covered my first film festival as official press: a small, local weekend fest that was in its first year. Fantastic Fest has grown much bigger since 2005, certainly. I remember 2005 fondly because my little brother was in town and we watched the Turkish film G.O.R.A. together. And at Thanksgiving, I had a huge surprise after posting a Cinematical Seven that British teens, hungry for content on a day where U.S. sites offer little, went bananas over: "Brits Left To Cast in Harry Potter Movies." Of the seven I suggested, only one has been cast in a Harry Potter movie since then, Helena Bonham-Carter ... and not in the role I predicted.

I picked up the weekly Austin film column and renamed it "News from Slackerwood" -- when Cinematical discontinued the column, I stole the name for my own Austin film site, Slackerwood. I took over "Vintage Image of the Day" when Karina left and I still miss hunting down photos and writing for that series. Looking through my Cinematical archives, the Vintage Image entries are generally my favorites. I even wrote a gossip column for awhile, although that was not at all my forte.

My mom commented on a Cinematical Seven where I referred to our family as "dysfunctional" and insisted I change it. My little brother helped me predict Oscars in 2006, 2007 and terribly disappointed by Tideland and then later that same week, saw the movie I wanted Tideland to be: Pan's Labyrinth, my favorite of 2006. I was one of the few people to like Southland Tales, and got to after a sneak premiere at Fantastic Fest 2007.

Because I live in Austin, I was able to review Idiocracy when it opened in only a few cities, not including L.A. and New York, and then wrote about the controversy surrounding the film's limited, unpublicized release. Three years later, Mike Judge is back with Extract, which also will release on the first weekend of September, but in a more promising way.

I've done all kinds of fun and sometimes weird things in four years, like getting into Butt-Numb-a-Thon in 2006 and sharing my experience of surviving a 24-hour movie marathon. My camera equipment has definitely improved since 2005: I covered the Austin red carpet for Grindhouse and snapped photos of celebrities at the Texas Film Hall of Fame in 2008 and 2009. I've had the chance to interview all kinds of interesting people, including Richard Kelly and Bruce Campbell.

Without Cinematical, who knows what I might be doing now. Bring on the next four years, I can't wait!

[Photo credit: Mary Sledd. Used with permission.]