solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

So Solace has been quiet for over a month now, and I guess I should probably explain why. The truth is there’s no one good reason just a lot of small ones that add up to something substantial. I’m trying to focus on my day job more and get that to a level where i’m happy with it, and solace gets in the way of that by absorbing way too much of my time. I also took a small break from writing to go on holiday (while good friend sizemore wrote some great posts) and when I got back I wasn’t keen to get back into the blog. I think when something starts to feel like a chore instead of something you do because you love it, you should stand back and reassess the situation.

So here’s what’s going on. Solace is going dark for the next couple of months. It’ll be back for definite in some form, but for now i’m going back underground to take stock.

If you read/monitor the site through RSS, keep us in the ‘check every now and then’ pile, or if you’d prefer you can drop me a blank email to this address and i’ll send out a bulk mail when the site comes back up. Or if you just want to abuse me or suggest a new path for solace you can get me through the same address.

Until then, keep the cinematic dream alive bitches.

If you haven’t entered your name for a chance to win tickets to the opening night of frightfest: Maybe you should. Find all the details here

I’ll draw the winners at random at 5pm today.

We don’t run give-aways very often… mainly becuase I don’t have anything decent to give away. Except of course.. the gift.. of sweet lovin. Which is actually harder to give away than you might imagine. Anyway.. get to the point.

The awesome London horror film festival ‘Frightfest’ kicks off next thursday (the 23rd of August) and we have 10 passes to the opening night to give away. The Passes cover the following stuff:

- 28 Weeks Later ‘Special Event’, where producer of the film Andrew MacDonald will be presenting deleted scenes and extras from the dvd release of the film. 20th Century Fox will be supplying ‘Goodies’, which can never be a bad thing

- The UK premiere of ‘Black Water’, an aussie giant-croc movie. I know nothing about this film other than It’s Australian and has giant crocs. If it’s good.. great, If it’s bad the crowd reactions at frightfest nearly always make it worth sitting through.

Check out the trailer here

- The film will be followed by exclusive footage from Neil Marshall’s ‘Doomsday’ (very excited about this)

If you’d like a pass all you need to do is drop your name in an email, put ‘Frightfest’ in the subject line and send it to me. Next tuesday (the 21st) I will pull 10 peoples email at random to receive the passes. good luck!

The festival is held at the Odeon ‘West End’ in Leicester Square, so obviously if you live in Alaska don’t bother entering. sorry

This year there’s more than a couple of other things playing that I really want to check out too: ‘The Signal’ is playing on Friday, a low budget zombie/crazies movie that was a big hit at festivals in the U.S. ‘Shrooms’ is that killer mushroom movie I was laughing about a couple of months ago.. also playing late friday night. The Shia le Beouf does ‘Rear Window’ movie ‘Disturbia’ plays on Saturday accompanied by a late showing of ‘The Devil Dared me too’ the NZ stuntman movie.

The sick part of me wants to sit through a double whammy of Uwe Boll films on sunday; ‘Postal’, and ‘Seed’ but i’m not sure my constitution can take it. I might throw up a lung If I watch two in a row. terrible filmmaking can do that to you.

I don’t normally write posts that relate to me personally, but I feel this one has been a long time coming and as I’m sort of in the middle of a redesign (which will make it’s debut in about a month… possibly) I’ve been attempting to refine what Solace is about. It’s not come from any outside prodding in particular but rather myself reading back through and dissecting a lot of my writing to date.

I think it’s stemmed from a Bafta discussion I attended back in March titled “The role of the film critic in the digital age”. At one point during the debate they asked if anyone in the room ran a film blog, I raised my hand thinking there would be a couple of us. There wasn’t. I stood and was bombarded with questions from the audience and the panel (which consisted of some people I highly respect including Peter Bradshaw from the guardian and Nick James editor of Sight & Sound), I don’t even really remember what I said, I think I had some form of space-odyssey style trip and passed out as people and critics beamed passed me as streaks of colour.

The one small piece of the whole debacle I do remember is that I was asked “Do you consider what you do to be criticism?”… honestly I don’t remember what I said in reply, I think I might have mumbled something about ’starting discussions’… and then just trailed off. Since then it’s been playing on my mind, not only the criticism debate, but also just Solace’s role in general, and what If anything I can do to keep Solace on track and also possibly step up my game…

I try to keep up with all the developments in the movie world but only report on 1 or 2 every day as there’s just too much going on for me to cover it and there’s a million sites that do the job with much greater depth than Solace ever could. I decided when I started what it was just going to be the stuff I was interested in, if other people wanted to get involved and write about their cinematic interests they can happily have their say. I also don’t really think of what we do here on the site as criticism, since I only really write small news items, and it’s only really ever the things that catch my eye. When I do write reviews it’s generally only for the films that initiated a strong reaction from me… I either loved it… or hated it.

As christmas approaches everything is getting a little hectic, and as such I'm finding it difficult to give my time over to writing on Solace. As the site gets more popular i'm trying to keep up the frequency of posts and find the good news nuggets that will keep me interested in writing, and hopefully keep you, the readers, entertained (as much as reading can :)).

So basically this is a call to arms. If you read Solace and want to help out, or have considered writing your own blog but want to hone your skills a bit first maybe you're the right person for the job.

My rule for posting is; If I think something is interesting enough to talk about in the pub with my friends, then it's interesting enough to write about. If it's a story that gets me excited about a prospective film, a still, a poster or a trailer tha gets my blood flowing then I post it. It's as simple as that.

If you think you're the right person for the job drop me a mail at contact@solaceincinema.com 

Also… i'm looking for someone to start reviewing dvds, I'm getting sent a lot of stuff now from companies and don't have time to review much of it. If you're a massive dvd nerd and fancy dipping your toe into reviewing drop me a mail at that address above (oh and you have to live in the UK, that's where I am and also the dvds are region specific) If you have any examples of your writing that would really help me out too.

Last weekend was host to 'Frightfest' englands best horror festival. Four Days of new fantasy and horror films, Q&A's with directors and sore arses from sitting in cinema seating for too long. I was asking around for someone to cover the fest as I was unable to attend, and a chap called Steven West, AKA 'The Savage Intruder' stepped up to the line. Here's a bit of blurb…

Steven is a life-long horror fan and a full-time supporter of Equal Rights for Hermaphrodites, for reasons too personal to explain here. He has written for such respectable genre magazines and fanzines as "Is It Uncut" and "Samhain"and recently wrote "Slash Hits", the first of a trio of special edition magazines documenting the history of the slasher movie with a unique boobs 'n' bloodrating scale. He has also written articles for "Teen Beavers Monthly" under the pseudonym Erica Liederhosen and in his spare time enjoys hiding in churches, menacing the elderly and pretending to be a 16 year old blonde Catholic schoolgirl named Britney in internet chat rooms.

Over the next couple of days Steven's fest reports will be posted, with coverage of films like 'Pan's Labyrinth', cow-based horror 'Isolation' and Korean blockbuster 'The Host' his reports will be something not to be missed.

Most people are using the regular RSS feed to this site, but today I updated to feedburner. One feed to rule them all.

so for everyone thats using the old solaceincinema.com/feed please update it to this url http://feeds.feedburner.com/SolaceInCinema

If you're reading this thinking RSS is the place you get your dole money every 2 weeks, read this