My faithful readers: I have written the final review I needed to write for "The Complete Unofficial 83rd Annual Academy Awards Review Guide" yesterday! That means all I need is for my editor Emily to wring it through a shredder, help me fix any sentence structure problems, and we'll begin formatting the book for Kindles, Nooks, and even have some hard copies available. This is the start of what I hope to be a long term goal of having a review guide for every year for the Oscars. I can't wait until everyone have a chance to buy the final product so they can see what a huge deal this is going to be and why it's taking so much work. But the year for 2010 is in the bag and I have two more books planed for release early next year (maybe three!).
So with that said, let's talk about this blog.
I think its no surprise I haven't updated it much. I'm not good on the predictions chart. I don't like to predict things I haven't seen (adds to unmounted hype I believe) and some of the films that become front-runners I see late in the game. I do enjoy writing occasional commentary though, so its nice to have this site for that, but I think many will agree there are FAR better Oscar prediction websites out there! So I'm here to announce that this site is officially going to change in that it won't be so much about Oscar predictions, but this series of books I'm writing. Which will make this something of a personal journal only...better, I suppose.
I'm going to share experiences I have with actually having to watch a ton of movies I've never heard of just because I need to write the review for an Oscar book. I'll write some editorials on changes I'd like to see about the awards themselves, but those will be material for a future book really. Right now I need to find my niche in an online world that has lots of blogs to choose from, and my blog just isn't cutting it. I'm better at reviews than news anyway, so this will be a good thing. Now then, let's start now with my news on the books. The aforementioned book will be released in a few weeks.
The books for the current Oscar year and 2009 are in production now and should be ready by next year. However I also know that a key factor for some of these movie books are the history. And 2009-2011 isn't...well, history. Not yet anyway. So I'm turning back the clock and will also be working on "The Complete Unofficial 1st Annual Academy Awards Review Guide." However, I should note something: This book will likely be an eBook exclusive. For awhile anyway. Why you ask? Well, because I've compiled a list of the movies I need to see. Here's what I compiled:
1. Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
2. The Circus
3. The Crowd
4. The Devil Dancer
5. The Dove
6. Glorious Betsy
7. The Last Command
8. The Jazz Singer
9. The Magic Flame
10. The Noose
11. The Patient Leather Kid
12. The Private Life of Helen of Troy
13. The Racket
14. Sadie Swanson
15. Seventh Heaven
16. A Ship Comes In
17. Sorrell and Son
18. Speedy
19. Street Angel
20. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
21. Two Arabian Knights
22. Underworld
23. The Way of All Flesh
24. Wings (VERY first Best Picture winner)
Now, this looks great because it's roughly HALF of the movies I need to see for the two other books, so this should be easy right?! Well...here's the list with notes:
1. Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
2. The Circus
3. The Crowd
4. The Devil Dancer (Lost Film)
5. The Dove (Library of Congress)
6. Glorious Betsy (Library of Congress)
7. The Last Command
8. The Jazz Singer
9. The Magic Flame (Lost Film)
10. The Noose (Museum of Modern Art)
11. The Patient Leather Kid (Lost Film?)
12. The Private Life of Helen of Troy (British Film Institue)
13. The Racket
14. Sadie Swanson
15. Seventh Heaven
16. A Ship Comes In (Lost Film?)
17. Sorrell and Son (Partial Restored)
18. Speedy
19. Street Angel
20. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
21. Two Arabian Knights
22. Underworld
23. The Way of All Flesh (Lost Film)
24. Wings
What this means is that most of the films are lost or housed in museums. Now, lost films I can't review because they're lost. There's no crying over it, they're gone, and so that fact will have to be noted in the book. What I'm looking at are the films that survive in museums only. Is there a way to view those films? I have no idea. So what I'm going to do is write the reviews for the movies I CAN get and publish that as an eBook! The paperback and hardcover copies of this book will be held back until I am absolutely certain there are no other ways I can see the stuff in the museum.
This will be to insure that I get some of the older years of the awards started, but I'll hold back on hard copies of those early years until I can max out my options to make the books as complete as possible (eBooks are easy to update if you can't get something right away). And all of this is going to be captured on this blog. Strap in folks, it's going to be a new experience!
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