Film of the Year

Another Good Source

Even if snow and ice conspire to drive a film blogger away from the library this winter there are plenty of sources for online research. For instance, I just stumbled on Issuu, "a place for quality publications: Magazines, catalogs, documents, and stuff you'd normally find on print. It's the place where you become the publisher: Upload a document, it's fast, easy, and totally free."

Searching around Issuu I discovered a treasure trove of past issues of Box Office, a trade publication for motion picture exhibitors. You can zoom in and read each article, advertisement, photograph cutline, and review.  For those of us interested in films of the past Box Office is an extremely useful primary source of the focus, concerns, preoccupations, plans, successes, and failures of the motion picture industry from an exhibitor's perspective at the time of publication, and for the film blogger Issuu provides quick, easy access.  Of course, I'm pouring over the issues from the 1950s to aid in my thinking and writing about that era for Film of the Year (my sincere thanks to whoever posted them), but Box Office is still going strong and more recent issues are available on the site too.

Now I'm curious about other good sources for online research. Suggestions from fellow film bloggers would be welcome. What are your favorite online sources of film-related information? Are there some to avoid?

One Crazy Holiday

What a crazy holiday we had around Stumptown.  We suffered an unusually harsh dose of winter's fury at Christmastime.  The worst snowstorm in thirty years delayed Santa's arrival so we didn't have any gifts to exchange at our house (I discovered we're not quite set-up for snowstorms 'round here.  Rain, sure, of course, but snow?).  Ice coated the streets and prevented us from getting a tree too.  On the bright side I'm in great shape now 'cause the snow kept me busy shoveling pretty much constantly.  Then there was a loss of power and the corresponding loss of blogging and e-mail.  The next week, just as things looked like they were going to settle down, the police advised an evacuation because a thousand foot antenna lost a support cable and threatened to crush the neighborhood (it was soon fixed).  Like I wrote above, a crazy holiday.

Thankfully, things are back to normal now.  I'm settling into the familiar, comfy blue writing chair with a piping cup of joe.  Time to see what I've been missing among the blogs before crafting a post for 1953.  Somewhere Chet Baker and Stan Getz are dueling their way through "Bernie's Tune".  Ahh, Perfect.  Wait...is that a snowflake I see floating past the window?  No, not again!

Here's wishing a happy new year to everyone in the blogosphere and beyond.