Cinema Blend Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Though Cinematical was not mentioned (no worries, it's just more food for my therapist), I have to give props to Time Magazine for, well, giving props to all those movie blogs out there in a new piece called Boys Who Like Toys. Essentially, the article (written by Rebecca Winters Keegan) talks about how fanboys (and the websites they visit each day) have become "one of the most powerful taste-makers in Hollywood," perfectly capable of either making or breaking a movie in a matter of hours. Heck, there's even an entire film (appropriately titled Fanboys) devoted to these folks heading our way soon. Hence, the studios have noticed; recently, they've created entire divisions whose main responsibility is to remain in close contact with the online world, invite bloggers to their movie sets, hand out exclusive online-only content and, generally, try to steer buzz in the right direction.

According to Spider-Man 3 producer Avi Arad, "Hard-core fans represent a small piece of the viewing public, but they influence geek culture, journalists, Wall Street. You don't want them to trash your project." Among the sites mentioned in the article, I feel JoBlo, The Movie Blog and Cinema Blend consistently deliver honest, opinionated movie news with a ton of humor and a whole lot of fun. And hey, I'd like to think we here at Cinematical do the same thing ... except, I probably shower a lot less than John Campea. Look, let's be real: It's easy to show up online, present your audience with a bunch of flashy graphics -- combined with copy-and-paste posts from Variety and/or the Hollywood Reporter -- and call yourself a movie blog. Some folks make a very successful living doing that, and the studios (who are always afraid you'll say something bad) love them for it. But I tend to feel the moviegoing public (myself included) want more. They want honesty. They want opinion. They want to debate. Most of all, they want to have fun. And that's what going to the movies is all about. So, support your movie blogs ... you'll be glad you did!