Category: Site News

Welcome to the beginning of Cinematic Slant’s second year.

If you’ve been with us through the first 12 months, since the launch on July 3, 2017, you’ve seen the site evolve and change. As is usual for me I’ve played around with various things, tried some out and adopted a few long-term while abandoning others. If there’s one thing I excel at, it’s inconsistency.

I never set out to break news or weigh in on every single new tidbit and rumor that comes down the pike of entertainment media. That’s something I tried to do years and years ago and it just didn’t work. At the time I found there was more satisfaction in taking a little extra time and only offering my opinion on what mattered and was truly interesting to me and that still rings true today.

Launching Cinematic Slant was, I knew at the time, swimming against the tide. Blogging is, we’re told, passe as everyone migrates to social media and Instagram Stories and other new formats. I’m old and stubborn, though, and still fervently believe in the power of owned publishing for many and varied reasons that will be clearly if you search for and find literally anything I’ve written and published on the matter.

Having this site available was in part meant to relieve some of the pressure on my main site, branching movie-related material here so I could do everything else over there. It’s been great for that purpose as well as opening up new opportunities for me, including my recent contributions to The Hollywood Reporter.

Which is to say the first year has been fun. I’ve done new things, engaged in new experiments, taken my usual contrarian positions on topics and done so with a gleeful smile on my face, which means I’m well on my way to becoming my grandfather, which isn’t such a bad thing.

Oh, and traffic to the site has grown over time in spite of what all the purveyors of conventional wisdom would have you believe.

I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I hope you’ll keep reading. I hope we’ve all had a little fun.

Onward to Year Two.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

This is still a small blog. My moral high ground may not count for much and certainly isn’t going to significantly impact anyone’s media coverage reports. And it’s not as if I’m going out on a limb others haven’t already tested for strength.

That being said, I’ve decided that I will not be covering or reviewing the campaigns for either I Love You, Daddy or Wonder Wheel.

The allegations against Louis C.K. that came to light yesterday (though they can hardly be considered new) are too upsetting for me to blithely continue to write about his movie without it coloring everything, especially given the story presented in the movie.

Wonder Wheel is being removed from the editorial calendar also because…well…I think it’s time I and others stopped letting Woody Allen off the hook for not only the things he’s been accused of but for continuing to evade any responsibility for those actions.

That’s now.

I regret writing about Hacksaw Ridge and Daddy’s Home 2 as I see now I contributed to the image rehabilitation of Mel Gibson, even while calling it out. That’s what I hope to avoid by forgoing any future coverage of Allen’s films.

I can say that going forward I’m going to put a lot more consideration into what stories, rumors and other details surround the people involved in making the movies I plan to write about. I was already weighing whether to spike the All The Money In The World column because of the charges made against Kevin Spacey but the news he’s being replaced by Christopher Plummer changes the equation a bit.

–Chris

I’ve written a lot about movies over the years. Since 2004 I’ve been writing about film marketing campaigns and related topics in a variety of places. Cinematic Slant is meant to be a home for all of that.

It’s not just about movie marketing, though, it’s about all aspects of film that we find interesting, including analyzing marketing campaigns, doing film reviews, sharing breaking news and other opinion pieces. The list of topics covered will grow and change as time goes on, of course, and as we experiment with one thing or another to see what works both from our point of view and how you, the audience, react to what we post here.

And there’s a lot more coming soon, for sure, but in the meantime go ahead and subscribe using the options below to receive updates via either email or RSS. This journey will be one we all take together, so please, follow us and stay tuned for more.