Category Archives: Site Update
Site Update: The Contenders
Since today is officially the first day if Autumn, I’ve updated the side column called “The Contenders” with various thoughts of who might get nominated come Oscar. This is just a preliminary list, mostly sight-unseen, based on the pedigrees of the projects. As we get further into “awards season,” I’ll continue to update. For now, I’ll post the list after the cut as well.
A Wonderful Surprise, Just In Time For My Birthday!
It is my 26th Birthday today! And I have a little surprise for you all! You have to check under the cut to see it, though!
Movie Quote of the Day is Two Years Old Today!
You can see the first year’s worth of MQotD here at last year’s anniversary post. If you will recall I had five days last year with no computer whatsoever, so there were only 360 MQotDs. This year I managed to post all 365. There was one repeat on purpose (Groundhog Day, duh!) and one on accident (Brief Encounter). Which means when you combine the two years I believe there are 723 movies quoted. Crazy. After the cut I have linked to all of the quotes I’ve posted over the last year. Enjoy!
Site Update: It’s Our 2nd Anniversary!
Believe it or not, I have been running this site for two years now. It’s gone through three Oscar races since then (2009 aka Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker, 2010 aka The King’s Speech vs. The Social Network) and now we’re in the heat of 2011, which at this point doesn’t seem to have a vs. (maybe The Artist vs. Hugo, but really everything is so jumbled right now it’s several films’ Oscar to lose this year.)
In the last two years I managed to write about all 83 years of Oscar’s history for Oscar Vault Monday and I’ve had a Movie Quote of the Day featuring over 530 different films (gonna see how long I can go without repeating a film). I’ve also started working a bit with The Warner Archive and have written some great things for YAM Magazine (*cough TCM Film Festival *cough*).
On a personal note, I moved back to San Francisco in May and have been attending the Academy of Art University pursuing an MFA in Film Editing, so that’s exciting. I’ve also seen nearly 1100 new-to-me films for the year (which I have been discussing month-to-month here) and contributed the foreword to the book Lew Ayres: A Conscientious Life by Lesley L. Coffin, which is forthcoming from the University Press of Mississippi.
Basically, this was a great year for me both professionally and personally, and I’m glad I was able to share it with y’all on this site. Thanks for all your support and for reading my work and I look forward to supplying you with more Oscar and film history for another two (or more!) years.
Love,
Marya
Cinema Fanatic’s 2011 Holiday Gift Guide
It’s that time of year. Everyone is frantically trying to finish end of the year projects at work or at school. People are freaking out because they are alone (hopefully not forever though!), etc. etc. It’s also that time of year when we celebrate those we love by giving them things we think they’ll love (or that we love and want to convince them to love, too). Thus I give you my first-ever Holiday Gift Guide, filled with 15 things that I think would make awesome gifts for the movie lover in your life.
Site Update: The Oscar Vault Monday Shop is back!
California residents are allowed to operate Amazon aStores once again, which means your one-stop shop for all the films I’ve discussed for Oscar Vault Monday is back!
You can also access your Amazon wishlist through my aStore, so if you feel like buying something via Amazon and want to help me get some referral credit, that would be awesome as well.
Today Is My 25th Birthday!
To quote Janet in Singles, “Somewhere around 25, bizarre becomes immature.” I’m not sure I 100% agree with that, especially since bizarre is in the eye of the beholder. Regardless, I am very excited to turn 25 (woo! cheaper car rentals!) and look forward to another 25 or 50 or 100 years of movie watching in the future! Thanks for all your support over the last year and a half with this site. I really appreciate it.
Movie Quote of the Day is One Year Old Today!
In celebration of Movie Quote of the Day’s One Year Anniversary, I have compiled all of the movie quotes into one handy list. Keep in my computer was out of commission for about five days last October, so it’s not quite 365 movies, but there aren’t any repeat films! After the cut I’ve linked to all of the MQotDs from the past year. Enjoy!
Some Love For Some Stylish Bloggers
Kendra over at Viv and Larry so graciously tagged me for a Stylish Blogger award. If you’ve never been over to her site, you owe yourself a look. She’s one of the most knowledgable classic film fans on the netz.
The rules state that I must list 7 facts about me and then pass the award on to 7 other stylish blogs. So first, here are seven things about me:
- I studied Comparative Literature in college, but in the three years since I’ve graduated I’ve only read about 10 books. I think I burned out, reading 4-5 books a week for four years.
- I might be going back to grad school soon. This time working towards an MFA in screenwriting. More on that as it develops.
- I personally own three cats: Mr. Rochester, Mr. Bingley an Lady Brett Ashley.
- Although I’m rather well known now as a classic film fan, I only started really getting into classic film last fall. I blame TCM’s Summer Under the Stars.
- I wish I had the means to travel more. I went to Scotland and England when I was 13 and France when I was 22. Someday I’d like to visit Greece and Brazil (and, well, everywhere else, too.)
- I am a big fan of guilty pleasure type films. Anyone who can’t get past themselves long enough to have a guilty pleasure film or two is really missing out.
- So far this year I’ve only seen one 2011 release.
And now on to the links. Kendra already beat me to Kate Gabrielle’s Scathingly Brilliant (but check her out anyway!), so here are some blogs I really love:
- FilmNoirBlonde
- Anna at Defiant Success
- The Best Picture Project
- The Mad Hatter’s Dark of the Matinee
- Millie at ClassicForever
- Limewrecks
- True Classics
Site Update: The Japanese Cinema Blogathon, Some Contenders and More
A few things
- The Japanese Cinema Blogathon has concluded. I think it was a wonderful success. We had 63 contributed posts over seven days. I’m not sure how much money we raised, but based just on the clicks to the donation page from my site alone, I think we raised quite a bit. I hope everyone who participated had fun. I know I did!
- I’ve added some new names and films to the “The Contenders” list on the right side of the site. This is basically the films I think have a good chance being nominated in various categories. This is all sight-unseen, and based on the pedigree of the films.
- Oscar Vault Monday is about a month away from its 1 year Anniversary! There were two weeks at the beginning of the feature’s inception wherein I made no posts, so when it does reach the 1-year milestone, it will only be 50 posts. But that’s still quite a bit. More news on that as the date approaches.
- I just finished reading Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies. It is a fabulous book and I recommend it to anyone who loves films.
- On a personal note, my mother is raising money for the Avon “In It To End It” Breast Cancer Walk in Washington D.C. If you’d like to contribute, you can do so here (every little bit helps!)
- I signed up for a Formspring.me account, so if you have any questions or comments or anything that need a longer answer, feel free to drop me a line.
- Lastly, as many of you know I watch a lot of films. Well, I am going to try to review at least one film a week for YAM Magazine. You can see my reviews here.
the diary of a film history fanatic 