Groundhog's links

So far, the new format seems to be going over well. The pageview numbers are roughly comparable with what they were before the Switch, and the announcement of the CinemaScope Blogathon generated a whole lot of interest. Thanks once again on behalf of Becky and myself to everyone who's joining us for that next month.

Among the stuff to look forward to this month will include another venture into the hullaballoo that is the #TCMparty on Twitter, only this time I'll devote a post exclusively to my experience with it, which will be a first. I have a tentative idea which film to watch. It's one that I'm quite familiar with, so dividing my time between my TV and my cellphone shouldn't be much of a problem. As I've talked about before in this space, I'm still not convinced that live-tweeting a film is a habit I'd want to obtain, but I can't deny its popularity, and it certainly can be fun - in the absence of watching with real live people.

The Top 10 for 2014 should be ready, if not this week, then next week. At this point, the only movies I still haven't seen which could affect my selection (and that I wanna see, of course) are Still Alice and A Most Violent Year. I hope to get to the latter, at the very least. Also, I'll post my Oscar predictions and a brief post-Oscar recap.

I've already started sharing excerpts from my novel with my writing group and I'd say they like it. One guy said, in all seriousness, that I should start thinking about getting an agent because he's convinced it's marketable. I don't know about that. It's a sports novel, and from what I've read, sports novels are a rare and tiny niche. But it's also a tragic love story, so there's that too. 

Regardless, I'm well over 40,000 words at this stage and it's a slow, uphill climb. I'm impatient about it because I want the writing part to end so I can start revising, and a lot of times, I'm paralyzed by the lack of words coming to mind. What I'll do - something I learned during NaNoWriMo but didn't apply to my own writing until now - is that I'll write a generic description of what it is that's supposed to go in a certain paragraph and highlight it in red. Then, when it comes time to revise, I can go back and fill it in with the necessary detail. That has helped me a lot.

Your links for this month:

Speaking of Bill Murray, did you know about the other sci-fi film he made in 1984 - the one that never got released? Allow Will to elucidate.

Raquel reflects on the death of a loved one through a Lionel Barrymore film.

The Lady Eve saw The Godfather with a live orchestra.

Monstergirl has a really weird-sounding Gothic horror flick about a girl school with some funny business going on.

Don't think I've ever mentioned The Hollywood Revue before, so I'll do so now. Here, Angela reviews a new book about epic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille.

My new favorite movie blog title is Cary Grant Won't Eat You. And the blog is pretty good, too. Here, the author laments that comedic acting remains unappreciated at the Oscars, using The Grand Budapest Hotel's Ralph Fiennes as a case study.

In last week's new release roundup, I linked to my report on a second-run Forest Hills theater that gambled on American Sniper to save them from extinction. I'm proud to say that they gambled and won.

Great article about the Loew's Wonder Theaters (including the Loew's Jersey City), then and now.

Are kids' adventure movies on the wane?

Finally, the issue of Newtown Literary with my short story "Airplanes" is now available for the Kindle.