February 4, 2013 by Nostra - 38 Comments

The Monday Question: Google image search!

If you are a blogger you might occasionally glance at the statistics of your site. Even though most of us don’t blog just for the numbers, it’s always nice to see the number of views increasing as it means more people read about what you think is important. If you have been looking at your statistics of the past week you might have noticed a big drop in views which you might not have been able to explain. That reason is the new Google image search. Previously when people were searching for images (for example movie stills) they would see an overview of all images. When clicking on that image you would be redirected to the site which was hosting that image, which created views on your site.

The new implementation of the image search is different. If you do a search you will still see an overview of images, but when clicking on it the image immediately opens up on Google’s site, which means that there will be no visit to your blog. There are still options for the person searching to visit, but it takes an extra click. This also means less chance that they will stick around and click through to read other things you’ve written. I’ve noticed the drop in numbers and when I asked about it on Twitter, fellow bloggers also saw this happening.

You could say that less views because of “image searchers” is a good thing and I can agree with that. I personally always wished I could filter those out to get a more realistic image of actual visits, but not everyone is happy with the change as this post (thanks to Max from Impassioned Cinema for sharing it) clearly shows.

This week’s question:
Did you see a drop in the number of views your blog has been getting and what are your thoughts on it?

January 28, 2013 by Nostra - 29 Comments

The Monday Question: Real world!

Another weekend has passed and it has been a very relaxing one for me. I watched A Late Quartet this past weekend. For those who don’t know the movie, it’s about a group of classical musicians who are struggling to keep their quartet together. As I was watching this there were moments were I was “thrown out” of the movie. It wasn’t during the moments of drama, as the actors in it are great (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener), but when they were playing on their instruments. I was immediately reminded that they probably wouldn’t be able to play as good as what I was hearing. So that leads me to this week’s Monday Question:

What throws you out of a movie?
(whether that’s something that happens, a specific sound or an actor or actress)

January 21, 2013 by Nostra - 26 Comments

The Monday Question: Writing!

Even though I really don’t consider myself a writer (more like someone who likes to be creative), I have been writing for this blog a couple of years now. I think everyone who is writing is always looking for ways to improve what he or she is publishing. Personally I think that no matter in which way you are being creative, it usually takes time to really get good at it. Of course this doesn’t only mean writing, but also reading work of others to see if there are things you can learn from. I once read it takes at least 1500 articles before you get really good at writing and although I don’t agree with it (some are just more talented than others) I do think pratice does make you better. This Monday Question is about writing:

What do you do to improve your writing and do you have any tips for others?

January 14, 2013 by Nostra - 24 Comments

The Monday Question: Historic!

This past weekend I headed to Amsterdam for a nice day away to celebrate a special occasion. I normally do my movie watching in my own town, but had wanted to go to the Tuschinski theater for a while. The cinema opened in 1921 and still has the same style as it had back then. It’s a mix of styles and looks impressive. This is the entrance:

Which such a grand theater I thought Les Misérables would be the perfect movie to see in such a beautiful place. I was able to buy tickets for love seats in the stalles (where a drink and snack were brought to the seats) and had a great time watching it (still have to write up my thoughts about it). In the world of big multiplexes it’s not often that a cinema itself is as enjoyable to see as a movie and it’s a shame my own town doesn’t have a place like this anymore. One where there are still curtains that open when the movie starts, where you feel like you stepped back in time. It made me wonder:

Are there any old (and beautiful) old cinemas in your town? Continue reading →

January 7, 2013 by Nostra - 19 Comments

The Monday Question: Resolutions!

It’s the start of a fresh year and after looking back at 2012 it is time to look ahead and set some goals for 2013:

Which movie related goals have you set for yourself this year? (mine after the jump) Continue reading →

December 24, 2012 by Nostra - 6 Comments

The Monday Question: Suspension of disbelief!

First of all, since most of the world will be celebrating Christmas this week I decided to take it easy as well and wish you all some great days. I’m busy preparing my end of year list which will be up soon.

Last week I reviewed the documentary Cinemania, which is about five people who are obsessed by movies and go to the movies a couple of times a day. In one of the scenes there was a discussion between two of them about horses in a movie. Roberta Hill, who was one of them replied that she didn’t want to watch movies with horses because she didn’t like to see them get hurt. When the other person responded that they weren’t really hurt in real life she responded that if you would think like that and suspend disbelief, why would you see a movie? And I get her point. The term “suspension of disbelief” was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 according to Wikipedia and he defined it as follows:” If a writer can infuse a “human interest and a semblance of truth” into a fantastic tale, the reader is able to suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative”. Of course movies were not around at the time, but it is a big part of being able to enjoy a movie.

It got me thinking about this as it is a big part of the moviegoing experience. You are watching something which is all pretended (unless it’s a documentary of course) and as a viewer we pretend that it is all real. I regularly am surprised by reviews when they mention something is “unrealistic” or that there are too many plotholes. They can be valid points, but when you have a movie where a lot of unrealistic events take place it is kind of weird to nitpick on things.

Personally I go to the movies to have fun, to spend some time in a different world and the rules which apply to that world. I’m not complaining if people are suddenly able to fly or when a hero doesn’t die from bullets, they are all part of what I signed up for. They are exactly the things which makes watching movies so much fun. So I can happily walk into the cinema to see the biggest blockbuster and have a great time watching it. Surely if I think about every little detail I could pick a whole movie apart, but that doesn’t give me much joy, experiencing, that’s what it’s about. It’s the reason I happily give movies like Battle:LA, Prince of Persia, John Carter or Battleship a positive review. They can be silly, but so what?

So my question to you is: “When it comes to suspension of disbelief, what is your attitude towards it when seeing movies?”

December 17, 2012 by Nostra - 30 Comments

The Monday Question: Readers and SEO!

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been asking you questions about the blogs we all run and your thoughts on those subjects have been really valuable to me. It has given me lots of things to think about and this week I got a final blog related question for you before I return to asking you questions about movies:

I’m writing about movies because it is something I love doing, but it wouldn’t mean much if people didn’t read or respond to it and in order to do that it must be possible for those people to find what you are writing. I have previously have given some tips on how to increase the number of readers, but was wondering:

What do you do to increase your readership and do you spend any time on search engine optimisation (SEO)?

I personally never looked at optimisation for search engines, but am wondering if it’s something which really is worth the investment of time. Interested to hear your thoughts on this. Continue reading →

December 9, 2012 by Nostra - 32 Comments

The Monday Question: Advertise!

Blogging is a very enjoyable activity which still gives me a lot of joy since I started doing it. I love the interaction with others, discussing movies, giving advice or helping others out. It’s the main reason I keep doing doing it.

Over the years I regularly have had requests about placing ads on my blog and I usually declined them, because I felt they didn’t add much or were things which I didn’t feel were a match to what I write about. But recently I decided to say yes for once, just to experience that side of blogging, one I hadn’t thought about at all. It was a non obtrusive one on an older article, so the impact of it wouldn’t be too big. I must admit that I was surprised by the ease of it all and the money I earned with it was used to move my site to a self hosted server.

It did make me think about monetizing a blog. Is it a good or a bad thing? What would I do and what wouldn’t I? There are so many possibilities, from becoming an affiliate of a big site like Amazon to placing non intrusive links to a specific site or having a company create a guest post for you. So I thought I’d ask you the question:

What are your feelings on adding advertisements to your blog?

November 19, 2012 by Nostra - 73 Comments

The Monday Question: Likes and comments!

Good day to you all, hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was very good as I managed to reach my goal of having seen 225 out of 250 movies out of the IMDB top 250 after I watched For A Few Dollars More. Knowing the list is constantly changing I’m sure I’ll drop below that number again, but I know I’ve reached it. Now onto the Monday Question.

I think that you’d agree with me that the most statisfying things about blogging is the interaction with other bloggers. For many it is the main reason they keep doing it and recently I’ve been thinking a bit about the subject, specificaly about likes and comments.

This week’s question:
What are your feelings about likes and comments? Continue reading →