There Will Be No New Posts for a Little While

I’m going to be away from my computer for a little while, so there will be no new posts for a week to ten days.

For those wondering where my Dark Shadows post is, I did not like the film enough to recommend it to others.  I wrote some short comments in the main 2012 Big Summer movies post.

In the meantime, some of you have been reading my recommendations for quite some time, while others have found this site only recently.  To tide you over until I get back here are the categories I did in 2011.  You may find something among them to interest you.

Movie Categories:

Won all five major Oscars
Great child performances
Narrated by dead people
Musical numbers for no apparent reason
Gwyneth Paltrow is British
Serious badasses
Everyday heroes
My top 10 of 2010
Before Star Wars
The Millenium Trilogy
Zack Snyder movies
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost movies
Commentaries done in character
All things Joss Whedon - this is the man who just wrote and directed The Avengers
2011 Big Summer Movies
Sexy moments that are not sex scenes
After Star Wars
Pretending to play themselves
Women with big guns
Movies by the numbers
Five best non-traditional Christmas movies
Harry Potter books and movies

I’ve also done some non-movie categories:

Castle TV show and books
Uncommon teen musicians

Whistling While I Work

I’ve spent the last couple of days making some changes to the posts here on the blog. 

1.  All hiking videos have had their hosts changed from the blog itself to Youtube.  I was never happy with what the blog did to the quality of the videos when I uploaded them.  I originally avoided Youtube since some places (such as my last employer) block their videos, but I finally decided that the quality of the videos had to be improved.  You will now be able to watch them full screen to get a much better view of these locations.

2.  I added links among posts on this blog to make it more understandable how to get to related posts.  It turns out that the Labels I have been creating are not being used by everyone because they don’t understand what they are there for.  People also don’t notice the Search box in the upper right, either.

To try to make it easier, I have added links to the related, individual posts in the Category Intro posts.  The Labels will still be there, so if you are used to using those, nothing will change.

3.  Another thing that has been happening is some people have been reading this blog from newest posts to older posts, which means the Category Intros are not being seen until after the movie posts related to them have been seen.  In the future I will post so that the Category Intros show up above the movie posts.  Please note that this will not always be possible, though.  Situations like my reviews of the 2011 Summer movies will require me to continue to post in the order I have been doing.

For those who have not noticed the Labels, or not known what they were for, here are all of the Categories I have posted about.  Clicking on the links will take you to posts describing them and within them will be links to the movies that fall into those Categories.

Movie Categories:

Won All Five Major Oscars

Great Child Performances

Narrated By Dead People

Musical Numbers for No Reason

2011 Oscar Nominees  [Note - search results list, not individual post]

Gwyneth Paltrow is British

Serious Badasses

Everyday Heroes

My Top 10 of 2010

Before Star Wars

The Millenium Trilogy

Zack Snyder

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost

Commentaries Done in Character

2011 Big Summer Movies
Sexy Moments
After Star Wars
Pretending to Play Themselves
Women with Big Guns

Other Categories:

All Things Castle

All Things Joss Whedon

Uncommon Teen Musicians

Note:  I also have Labels for movies by decade, by my star rating, and by foreign language to make it easier to find them.  Those links, and others, are over on the right.

Uncommon Teen Musicians

"Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues."  - Albert Collins, Adventures in Babysitting

The music industry likes to pigeonhole artists into particular genres depending on their gender, race, age, and where they come from.  Teens of either gender should sing pop music.  Females should sing pop music or country.  Black females should sing dance music.  White males should sing rock or country.  Black males should rap or sing R&B.  Blues and Soul are only for old people.  Anyone who comes along that deviates from these stereotypes is puzzling to the music industry.  They don’t know how to market their music and consequently these artists don’t get the recognition from the general public that they deserve.

Imagine having three white teens come along, all of whom perform “black” music.  Even worse – two of them are girls.  Even worse than that - two of them are from Fargo, North Dakota and one is from England.  Now imagine this is at the height of the Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, N’Sync, Backstreet Boys phenomenon.  The heads of the music company presidents must have just exploded trying to wrap their brains around the concept.  To give them credit, they knew these teens were talented and signed them to recording deals.

The three people I’m referring to are Blues artists Jonny Lang and Shannon Curfman, and Soul singer Joss Stone.  Of the three, Stone is probably the one more people have heard of because she has had some crossover success.  All of them have left their teenage years behind, but at the time they debuted (Lang in 1997 at 15, Curfman in 1999 at 14, and Stone in 2003 at 16) it was like having three bombs go off.  The reaction was along the lines of “Who was that?!”

Besides being in genres unusual for white teens, they have another thing in common - they are all extraordinarily talented.  I will be discussing each of them in their own posts.  I will also have videos of performances so that you can see their talent for yourself.

You can find my posts for these artists here:

Jonny Lang
Shannon Curfman
Joss Stone

On to the reviews…