Movie Memories and Musings

Daughter Anna has been suggesting that I start a movie blog, as a way to indulge my desire to do some writing and my need to talk about the movies I watch.  Since putting "Sense from Seattle" on sabbatical, I have missed writing, but not the intense involvement with politics.  In deciding whether to start another blog, I made a classic pro and con sheet.

On the pro side of the page, I listed a movie blog as a place to practice writing, recall movie related memories, and discuss and dialogue about movies with family and friends.  On the con side, I posted concerns about setting up and formatting such a blog, feeling obligated to it, spending too much time writing, being tempted to go back over too many past movies and how personal to get.

Obviously I have decided to give it a try.  I do like to write and I do like movies, so Anna was an accurate muse.  I am again using Blogger as a host, but chose a new template for a different look and more customizable options.  I hope this blog will see more reader participation that Sense ended up with.  The subject matter here should be much less combative than politics and that is the spirit with which I launch the blog.  Our memories of movies and our musings about them are matters of our personal experiences and tastes, and we should expect there to be individual differences.  I encourage everyone to feel free to recall memories and express opinions here, without criticism from others.  Our praise and our criticism of movies and of those involved in making them may be divergent, but we are each entitled to our own views.

Choosing a blog title first involved labeling the subject.  Are we talking about movies, flicks, videos, films, cinema or what?  I chose "movies" by process of elimination.  Flicks are the flickers of old projector light, no longer applicable and a little to flip (though it works for Netflix).  Video is the picture, but technically ignores audio, the sound (even so-called silent films have music).  Film is both too general (still pictures and slides can also be film) and too narrow (many productions are shot digitally without film).  Cinema is merely foreign sounding, and smacks of discrimination against American movies.

Memories and thoughts will be written about here, and I like alliteration, so Movie Memories and Musings emerged.  I want this blog to be more participatory, so the title eliminates reference to me and my location.  Maybe the title sounds more like the blog of a still fairly young mother rather than that of a progressively aging grandfather, but I expect it to be an accurate description of what gets written on these pages.

Anna will be the first informed of this launch, then my other children and a few other relatives and friends.  Comments on articles can be posted as usual and you can also post as a comment any reviews, memories or musings you like.  I may choose some comments to pull out and make into separate article postings.  I may include a blog index and other features - we'll just see how it goes.

You are invited to follow along and encouraged to participate.  We all like movies and have memories and thoughts to share.