The Movie Blog is Dead, Long Live the Movie Blog

Yes International Friends, the news of this site’s demise was greatly exaggerated!

After a great chat with my new cohorts in crime we have a vision and a direction for the future of The Movie Blog. The first act my esteemed councillors commited themselves to was to name me Senior Editor of The Movie Blog.

For a while now, the better part of the site was already being written by me, and that will continue. In our chat tonight we addressed a number of topics and shared some ideas for the direction of the site.

1- The Post Images will return!

2 – The site will be getting a new look!

3 – The Movie Blog Community will return!

4 – Weekly Movie Reviews will return!

You will love my nuts! Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life!

I know John and I appeared to be dropping our luggage and running for the hills, but after a VERY interesting chat, I have been convinced to step in and run the site, to continue the spirit of The Movie Blog and to support the community and people we have grown to love here no matter how much we disagree.

I promise this will be a whole new ball game, and a whole new adventure. I feel like I have been gone forever, and its good to be back already!

And you will be sharing it with us! If there is anything features you would like to see on the site, let us know and we will see what we can do about it!

Comment with Facebook

98 thoughts on “The Movie Blog is Dead, Long Live the Movie Blog

  1. Ok I know this is rodenys site pretty much now or in part whatever. My question is this John said that he is still attached till the end of this month. I’ve been dying to see what he thought of avatar, Would it be too much to ask for him to do one last review, or somone here to review Avatar, I mean it’s one of the highly anticipated movies of the year and I have been curious all year long to see johns opinion about the movie. How bout it guys can ya talk him into one last review? Send us out with a bang instead of a fizzle…..

      1. Are you going to be Watching and reviewing Avatar? It’s probably my most anticipated movie of the year I’d love to see what you guys at TMB think of it. BTW I didn’t mean to come off like I thought john was dead to the movie blogging world and we have noticed his interest towards the site fade for a long time. I think with you as Main contributor now TMB is in good hands.. I tried to start my own Movie type blog and nobody at all visited so I gotta tip my hat to you guys here. I look forward to alot of great things for TMB from here on out.

  2. Hey Rodney,

    Glad to know The Movie Blog will still be alive an well on the good ‘ol interwebs.

    Been reading your posts anyway for the last few months so I’m pretty the adjustment’s already been made :)

    Keep up the good work!

  3. I’m so glad this site is stayin put!! There are not many blog sites I go to or can put somthing on without subscribing to it. Hip, Hip horaaaay TMB stays! Also can’t wait to see the new look.

  4. Regarding the new layout… I would suggest it remain a blog styled site. Many sites try to incorporate a lot of bells and whistles and it becomes too busy. What I have always enjoyed about TMB is it has remained a blog.

    This site has been a daily stop for me for years. All the best to John and good luck Rodney.

  5. Here’s hoping things continue to grow and improve for you and the site, Rod. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, either here or on The Stub.

  6. Yay, Congratulations Rodney!

    I was feeling a touch melancholy about the announcement earlier this week because The Movie Blog was the first movie site I started visiting regularly so many years ago. I’ll miss John’s presence, but you are just as familiar and – not that you need me to say it – fully capable of running this site.

      1. I believe he was talking about John’s heartfelt farewell as he left the site earlier this week.

        And things are “back to normal” but we will not be on cruise control. There will be changes for the better and more involvement from the International Friends.

      2. To be fair, anyone following TMB on rss also saw your farewell. Removing it from the site didn’t take it off the rss feed. As of yesterday, most of us thought you were gone too.

    1. The Movie Blog Community was a forum based section of the site that allowed the International Friends the ability to post their own news stories.

      You are thinking of The Roundtable Podcasts.

      1. there was a section where you put a picture of a movie and everyone said what they thought the characters where saying o thinking. That should also return!

  7. Wow, I guess the new approach of the revamped Movie Blog is to suppress any on-point comments which dare to offer objective, fair recommendations and support. Ridiculous.

      1. My apologies for the kneejerk reaction Rodney. I checked back throughout the morning to see my comments stuck in the “moderation” queue, while other member comments were going up without fail.

        Granted, my first comment (posted just 6 minutes after the article was released) is still in said queue, but my main points have been published all the same.

    1. True. The main draw of the site was the podcasts, when Darren, Doug, and John would get together a few times a week and spout off.

      After the podcast whittled away, quite frankly, the site became just another news blurb clone. The personality was gone.

      A refocus on the podcast could be something to get some spark back, but it will be tough, as Doug was a unique personality all unto himself and got many butts in the seats on his own.

      Whatever happens, I wish Rodney and the new regime the best. : )

      1. The balance between John and Doug was what made it work. John was a bit dry on his own, and Doug could get over the top pretty quick if left unchecked. They balanced each other out and made it amazing. And every podcast that added Darren and/or Bruxy to the mix just added a new balance to the mix.

  8. This is great news, I’m glad to hear you will be staying on board with The Movie Blog. I can’t wait to see the new look and the return of weekly reviews. Still sad to see John go of course, but glad the site will be alive and kicking.

    1. Even better, we will let your scathing remarks stand just so we can mock them publicly.

      But also keep in mind that I was around long before Doug. I may not have his presence, but this site is more a home to me than it ever was to my dear friend Doug.(Like John, Doug I have known for a long time and even lived with for a while) If you prefer Doug to me, that is your choice. You can check him out at http://www.dougnagy.com/ if you so choose.

      There are commenting rules however, and intentional strife will be removed.

    1. I agree. There should be some sort of podcast. The added bonus is that we get to hear Rodney’s voice…

      …and since “guests” are common in podcasts? I wonder if Campea could be bribed for such a thing now and then. At least SoulVideo anyway. Or Kris Tapley.

  9. Alright Rodney. You’ve convinced me to stay. I had been anticipating John leaving and I thought, the end of the blog. But, it seems like you’re gonna get this site’s act together and restore it to its former glory.

      1. I would absolutely buy this shirt. I’m so glad to hear that The Movie Blog is sticking around. This has been and I hope will continue to be one of my favorite daily visits.

    1. If this really where on sale I would SO buy it.

      I love shirts that have funny shit written on them (AFK being my all time favorite)

      I just bought one that says “Cobra, Alligator, Beaver, Duck….Together we are…PLATYPUS!!!!!!!”

      The one you just showed me is pure win though, did you do that?

  10. thank you rod for staying with the movie blog. I do also have a suggestion. What about a weekly feature where a member of the community run their own article or column. What do you think?

    1. The Movie Blog Community is a feature that will enable the International Friends to do just that.

      We had the Community a while back and it kind of faded out. We are hoping that we can rebuild it.

      We have the technology…

      1. Rodney is not above tossing in a Six Million Dollar Man reference.

        However, since this bit involves the Community, let me bring up some of the ‘problems’ if I may.

        1- While some (such as myself) knew how to use WordPress, some did not. Either that or they did not always use it correctly or simply ignored the guides. As a result, posts looked unorganized, hogged up a ton of page space (nobody but me and few others ever used the “more” function for a story jump, for example). Sometimes there were multiple posts on the same subject by the same author because they didn’t want to bother ‘editing’ thier own posts. This may not seem like a big of a deal, but regardless of who is writing the posts, folks have to read.

        2-Repeated news stories/stories on the main page (TMB). Someone writes a very good post, credits a source, all the above. Then, one day later, or even one hour later, someone else ignores all that and repeats the same story. For some it soon became pointless. For me it was frustrating. I solved my end, though, looking for needles in a haystack, and I found a few gems. (Celebs and iPhones, for example) This lessened the sting. Of course, they were buried an hour later.

        3- The few posts that were nothing more than general comments and quick opinions when any one of them could have been a comment on the post that was written by another.

        4- The rare occasional post that slammed another person on the community boards. Not me personally, but others.

        Combine these and a few other oddities (folks being their own trolls-is that even worth the time?) and Community became one huge headache. I was sad to see John axing it at first, but if it were me, I might have done something to that effect as well.

        I would rather come on TMB as a contributor, but the Community ultimately made me feel I was wasting my time, and contributing to meaningless babble. It wasn’t worth it.

        There is, however, ONE major advantage in bring Community back. Only one. It could be used as a pool of sorts to find contributors to TMB main page. (Assuming they don’t get buried in the rubble). I’m not just talking about myself here, but the few others who actually wrote or attempted to write posts of substance, encouraged discussion and did not step on one another in the stampede. If there were such people to come around again, you would have yourself some writing samples and/or personalities to fill a volunteer staff.

        That’s the only advantage I see to it. The only one. Otherwise, it’s not worth the time.

    1. You know what he should! He should go talk to some Paramount Suits And see if he can get his movie made for a larger audience!

      you know cause Paramount is gonna be doing that thing were they will give aspiring directors the chance to have there films shown to more than just your friends and family.

    1. Brock is a guy you will see helping me out around here. Think of him as the new Rodney.

      Not that I am old. Ok, I am a little old.

      Brock makes up one of the aforementioned “esteemed councillors” and cohort in crime.

      1. I don’t believe it, I’m pretty sure Brock is a cyborg, he just showed up out of thin air and spewed out a few posts to keep TMB chugging along like nothing was up……. Yeah Brock is a cyborg.

  11. I love you, man.
    I’m totally serious, I’ve been very apprehensive and nervous about this whole change. And with John’s new gig being waaaaay too professional like for my taste I’m glad to see that The Movie Blog is in good hands.
    The thing I’ve been missing the most has been the podcasts, it’d be nice to have you bring that back. and maybe bring John back for them.
    I’m really looking forward to the new look and I really hope that it makes the search results more compact like in the style of the main homepage for this now look. Or maybe even better, who knows?

    1. Regular (reliably on time) Podcasts with John and Doug were the best thing about this site for me. That’s been gone for a long time now, which waned my interest. If you can bring something in that vein back, I might have more interest. They don’t need to be video podcasts, (audio are better for me at work anyway) and they don’t even need to use audience participation like the NowLive shows were. They just need to have one or two (preferably two) regular voices with occasional guests. You’re friends with John, so maybe he could Skype in once in a while. I understand Doug’s not interested in working with the site any more, which is a loss for us. If the podcasts could happen at least once a week, that would be an improvement.

  12. John will be back one day too, don’t we just know that? :)

    Along with Doug and Darren and Bruxy and (fill in the blank)…

    One bog Uncut podcast in the afterlife….

    1. Speaking of Uncut podcasts, what are the chances you can fix the old podcasts? Most of them are no longer able to be downloaded, and it’s nice to go back sometimes.

Leave a Reply