Liebstering Again

A little while ago I posted another Liebster Award. I like these things. They're fun and give me a chance to do something different from my normal posting. Andy Buckle at The Film Emporium put my name at the end of his post, giving me another 11 questions to answer. I'm not going to do the whole post here since I've done it once already, but it would be rude not to answer his questions.

Ich Liebe Dich, Part II

This has been a long and difficult week, which is why my reviewing schedule has been off. Two of the reviews I posted this week were written a month ago and held in reserve. Suffice to say I've spent the week in the car. It's been difficult.

It was a surprise to learn that I'd been handed another Liebster Award, this time from Alex Jowski at Alex Jowski Movie Reviews. It's bigger and badder than last time and much like a Sesame Street episode, is brought to you by the number 11.

A Second Note on the LAMMYs

So it wasn’t a surprise to me that this happened. Five or six weeks ago, when it came time for the Large Association of Movie Blogs to host its annual awards, I backed out from participating. I didn’t put myself out in search of nominations and I didn’t complete a nomination ballot. I wanted nothing to do with it. This comes from a number of places both internal and external. I’m not a fan of unbridled competition, even for what is essentially a popularity award. I react badly to competition. All I ever ask for is a level playing field, and the field is never level. It results in hurt feelings and people getting upset.

I’ve spent the last half hour or so writing down what happened, but I’ve gotten rid of all that text. It’s not important in the specific, save to say that in several places, people have gotten their feelings hurt by either unclear nomination criteria or a joke that didn’t work as well as it should have. You can track the progress at several other places on the internet. Rather than rehash it, I’ve decided I can curb my apparent unquenchable desire to chronicle things just this once.

A Note on the LAMMYs

So it's award season again at the Large Association of Movie Blogs, of which I am a dedicated (and now contributing) member (I'm #773). Every year, the LAMB hosts an award competition called The LAMMYs. There are 15 categories of awards with a several-week-long nomination process followed by a vote. Last year, I hadn't been a LAMB for that long, and I campaigned for myself a little. I didn't campaign that seriously, though, and while I got a couple of initial votes, I wasn't nominated for anything.

I'm okay with that. I've decided that this year I'm not campaigning at all. I'm not making a "for your consideration" poster and I'm not going to actively put my name out for people to come to nominate me for the various awards. That's not why I do this blog in the first place, and I won't change that for the chance at an award.

So, to all my fellow LAMBs, good luck.

Another Award?

Taste of Cinema is rapidly becoming one of my favorite blogs, and David, who runs the place, dropped my name for the 7 x 7 Link Award. Like any good web-based award, there are rules to follow, so here they are:

RULE 1: Tell everyone something that no one else knows about you.

RULE 2: Link to one of the posts that I personally think best fits the following categories: Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, and Most Pride-Worthy Piece.

RULE 3: Pass this award on to seven other bloggers.

So...

Part 1: Something no one else knows about me: There was a time in my life when I seriously (really!) considered going into full-time linguistic research. I took a class in historical linguistics, and my instructor, a guy named Cecil Brown, allowed us each the opportunity to explore one language family. I got one of the last choices in the class, and I selected Austro-Micronesian languages. By the time I finished my research, he told me that, based on what I'd done, I was one of the top 50 living experts on that particular language family. But then he retired, and his replacement wasn't nearly so supportive, so I moved on into theoretical linguistics.

Part 2: This will not be easy, as I have more than 500 posts to sift through. I'll do my best.

Most Beautiful Piece: This is probably the most difficult for me to pick. I'm not a particularly beautiful writer. If I have to pick one, I'll pick the reviews I wrote on my birthday in 2010 for three of my favorite films ever. I don't do any of them justice, but I can't think of another place where my love of film in general is more evident.

Most Helpful Piece: I don't know really how helpful these are, seeing that my blog isn't used in the creation of the various editions of The List, but every year, I suggest 10 films that should be included. Here's the latest of those.

Most Popular Piece: I have no idea why, but my review of Candyman has gotten more hits than any other. Go figure.

Most Controversial Piece: I'd have thought this would be Hugo since I'm evidently the only person in the world who didn't join in the Scorsese bukkake on this one, but it turns out that I caught more hell for my review of Chicago than any two other posts combined.

Most Surprisingly Successful Piece: Just as I can't explain the popularity of my Candyman review, I have no idea why the fifth most popular entry point to my site is a review of two old films about mental illness. However, it seems that there are a few fans out there of Shock Corridor and The Snake Pit.

Most Underrated Piece: When I write a review of an obscure film, it doesn't surprise me when I don't get a lot of comments. When I write a review of the one Bollywood movie that everyone's heard of and get no comments, I'm a little hurt. And yet, to date, no one has anything to say about what I said about Monsoon Wedding.

Most Pride-Worthy Piece: As a critic, I stand on the shoulders of giants. A lot of what I have to say about a film is informed by critics who have come before me. However, I do have an insight every now and then. As far as I know, I'm the first person to connect Hitchcock's The Birds to the start of the zombie movie phenomenon. It's there--really--and it's an observation that's entirely from my own brain, even if someone else said it first.

Part 3: So, who should do this next?
Squish Lessard at The Film Vituperatum
Nick Jobe at Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob
Jason Soto at Invasion of the B Movies
Nolahn at The Bargain Bin Review
Klaus Ming at Movie Reviews in About 100 Words or Less
Dan Heaton at Public Transportation Snob
Kevin at BigHominid's Hairy Chasms

Du Liebst Mich, Ich Liebe Dich Auch

Chip Lary at Tips from Chip recently gave me a Liebster Award, an award for notable blogs with fewer than 200 followers. I'm honored and probably not deserving, but hell, I'm a sucker for an award.

Accepting the award means spreading the love and giving it to five other people as well. So, I'm going to do that. Those I mention below are welcome to accept this award by putting the logo above on their blog somewhere and presenting the award to five other people who have fewer than 200 members of their blog.

So, thanks, Chip Lary, for putting my name on this. I'm going to offer up five more of these, steering in part away from film blogs so that my nominees have places of their own to go. If I didn't nominate you, it's not because I don't love you. Really. There are plenty of people I want to nominate, but I also don't want to get greedy.

In no particular order:
1. BigHominid's Hairy Chasms: I've known Kevin virtually for years. He's politically right of me by a country mile, but his writings are good and show careful and subtle thought. And, he's often really funny. Expand your mind.
2. A Taste of Ipecac: Politically to the left of me, Ip's writings are filled with a mixture of surprising common sense and outrage.
3. The Velvet Café: Jessica is thoughtful and patient with film, and is smart enough to give herself the room to be expansive on the films she writes about. This is a relatively new blog, but one of my favorites.
4. Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob: Nick, of course, is my podcasting partner. His blog is always entertaining, sometimes unexpected, and he offers legitimate modern perspective on a huge variety of films. Read and enjoy.
5. The Film Vituperatum: The home of the 1001 Films Blog Club, this site has become a clearinghouse of reviews of the films on The List, a sort of Rotten Tomatoes of important films.