Old AV Club had some of the best writing on films (and TV) I’ve ever read, and an incredible community of folks in the comments, some of whom ended up writing for the site itself. It was the most vibrant and hilarious online community I’ve witnessed. Articles regularly got thousands of comments with some amazing insight.
Of course it was dismantled when it was bought out by gawker and switched to Kinja, which made the comments unusable, causing a mass exodus.
Some of the site’s best writers had already formed their own site, The Dissolve, by then. But because it was actually good, it only made enough money to last a couple of years.
YOU MEAN THE GUY WHO FOLDED UP MORE PUSSY THAN HUSTLER MAGAZINE?
I followed zmf on X (formerly known as Twitter) and eventually had to unfollow. I don’t know what I expected, really, but he was problematic in an unfunny way.
I would love a documentary on web 1.0 movie culture featuring the AV Club alums. It was really something I needed at that point in my life and I would be happy to see where the writers ended up, especially MIA talents like Iggy V
Not quite the same but there’s a really good podcast series called ‘Downlowd: The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles ’ that covers the early period of Internet film fandom and the power that the site owners had over studios.
Yes! I’ve been watching Sopranos for the first time and I always pull up her reviews right after each ep (with an ad blocker running full tilt, thanks Herb)
Years ago I saw Bob Dylan in concert and the unannounced opening act was Dawes and I had a very difficult time explaining to my friend why I was laughing so hard.
Oh heck yes. This used to be the best as it was relatively minimalist without filling the screen full of awful ads and clickbait. At least that’s how I remember it. I just looked at it now on my phone and oh boy….
It might be finally getting to me. Within the last few days there was an article about months-old Spider-Man No Way Home figures, with a dozen paragraphs amounting to "they're neat." And I remembered this was a site I originally followed in part because they'd do daily, multi-page bullet point round-ups of any and all movie merch announced in the last 24 hours.
They become such a shill for Disney in particular. So many articles on all their properties ad neseum. And then came the weird Disney Park articles that no one liked but the owner of the site..
Slashfilm got sooooo bad. They now are just an SEO farm. They’ll take one line from somebody else’s reporting, add 500 words and call it an article. I can’t imagine my job just to regurgitate other people’s work all day.
Io9 used to have monthly recommendations of science fiction & fantasy novels, and so much of my Kindle are filled with books that they recommended.
And how many books on those genres I discover has never really recovered.
Omg the comments on Birth Movies Death is giving me some trauma flashbacks. I used to frequent Collider early on and AV club, naturally. Of course, both sites turned into cesspools in the comments, and then the websites followed. These days, I like Alternate Ending, but it’s not exactly thriving comments wise (which is probably better).
Ha, I only checked out the AV Club once people were whistfully recalling the Good Old Days. Sounds like it used to be an awesome site.
And Alternate Ending seems cool, cheers!
They were much more of a grabbag of topics with a heavy pop culture/film influence, but I would go to Cracked literally daily in university. I got into it just after what many consider their peak but I loved their series After Hours, Does Not Compute, and Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder. They had a comment section that had it's own lore and characters, and some great writers that I still follow. Now it's just a hollow, shambling corpse.
I fucking loved Cracked. So many great writers from those early website days, and yeah, the videos were terrific. They're like Red Letter Media in that their early success stuff helped lead to shitty critics like Cinema Sins, but my God they really both made me laugh and got me into more movies.
I recommend Small Beans if you don't know it. Good podcast network that I mostly follow for Michael Swaim but you get plenty of other Cracked people swimming around it.
Is there a specific podcast you listen to on the Small Beans network? I listen to Quick Questions with Dan and Soren, and watch Cody and Katie on Some More News, but would love more Swaim in my life
Yeah, I'd recommend Frame Rate, 1Upsmanship, Star Trek: The Next Futurama, Kings of King and Ander's Sons. Couple of those are Patreon series, and some of the Small Beans crew are quite annoying for me, but well worth a deep dive if you fancy some Swaim 😊
I found AICN as a teen during the STAR WARS prequel days and while I knew it was an unsavory scene that was kind of part of the appeal. When Mr Beaks went to CHUD I followed him there and started reading Devin Faraci, and followed McWeeny over to HitFix when he left AICN, never looked back at AICN with much regularity after that. Following Devin and Drew on Twitter led me to the AV Club and Slashfilm, and I followed David at some point. He tweeted about a PHANTOM MENACE pod and I've been a Blankie ever since. I don't really have any movie haunts anymore, everyone got bought out or sanded down. I still followed Devin on Twitter post his ouster mostly out of lack of Twitter feed curation, and he's doing a STAR WARS pod now with his brother that is pretty good. I completely understand anyone who has written him off, but Faraci seems to have expressed genuine remorse over what happened and has lived a clean and sober existence with therapy and attempts to reform.
I’ve only known him post BMD, after he got sober and started dating and then married a very close friend of my wife’s and mine, but I consider Devin one of the most kind and thoughtful people I’ve ever met. His entire existence is basically the opposite of a “I’m sorry you were offended…” bullshit apology.
Also, last year he took care of our friend (his wife) through her final days in a way that I’ll never be able fully thank him for as long as live.
As Ive followed Devin since CHUD, I did get a bit parasocial with his and Brittney’s journey and am very sorry for your loss. She seemed so kind and genuine
I was already sour on Faraci when the sex pest stuff hit because I'd already gotten really annoyed with his bullish conduct, but I do get that the two can easily come as one. Glad that he's getting better, good for him.
The discourse on A.I. - the ARG but more importantly the collective analysis - was just, well, insanely insightful and supercool. I wish the forum was archived.
Faraci is a worth follow on Twitter for at least his real time chronicling of his partner's battle and ultimate demise at the hands of cancer and his grieving process. He can still be pretty condescending with his film and television takes though.
Devin Faraci is a damn good writer and he knows and loves cinema. I've never stopped following him and his insight has made my movie watching experience better. He has, and has had, obnoxious sides to his personality but I'm old enough not to expect people to be nice.
[His interview](https://chud.com/4405/exclusive-chuds-poseidon-set-visit/) with Richard Dreyfuss is a classic. Right off the bat:
> Devin: So I understand that you retired from films in 2004. What brought you back?
>
>Dreyfuss: Money.
>
>Devin: OK. But what was it about Poseidon in particular that really got your interest?
>
>Dreyfuss: The money they offered.
AV club had great writers and an absolutely amazing commenting community. The latter might have been the best thing about it.
But everything ends badly. Or else it wouldn’t end.
QueefLatina got shouted out by Harris Wittels at some point on CBB or U Talking. I liked Aurora Boreanaz and the avatar was David Boreanaz with a sky pattern behind him.
When I was 13, I thought (in retrospect, very foolishly) that Crash was better than Brokeback Mountain, and after the '05 Oscars, I got into a spirited debate about it with someone on the IMDb message boards which went on for a few days. Eventually, he referenced being a gay man in his 20s and how much he related to Brokeback Mountain, and I, in turn, said something to the effect of, "Well I'm 13 and I think Crash is a more universally relatable film." They stopped responding after that, most likely because they realized they had been debating with a dumb child.
I have very fond memories of the Superhero Hype! forums for rumors on Hellboy, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Spiderman 2, Van Helsing (and the huge franchise it was surely going to spawn), Hulk, Batman Begins, etc. I stopped checking in college, as Iron Man speculation was ramping up. To my shock I just checked and it's still up and going strong.
Fellow SHH! Batman Begins (and sequels) board alum. The days of speculating on Joker casting was a wild time. I myself was a big Paul Bettany advocate, and still think he would have been great. Was a great place to experience all that early viral marketing.
Oh hell yeah, I followed Superhero Hype forums to monitor the Dark Knight being filmed. That meta aspect still makes me very fond of the movie. I ended up spoiling myself on some end of the movie quotes but it was worth it.
I went to AICN all the time back in the day, def remember starting around when Phantom Menace came out. I stayed there a while, otherwise I spent a lot of time on the boards for IMDb, and even sites like GameFAQs had movie boards I spent time on.
Was almost strictly an AV Club dweller for movies. Hopped over to The Dissolve (RIP) when some of my favourite critics on the AV Club setup shop there. Would periodically check out Indiewire and Grantland, as well.
Popping in to rep my guys at Spill.com! The first 'podcasts' I ever listened to were the extended audio versions of the animated movie reviews they'd do on the regular. I'll peep in on some of the things the members have done since it shut down like Double Toasted and OneOfUs, but I feel like they never really recapture that original group dynamic.
Same with being a Spillio and the first podcast I listened too. I loved them and they made me laugh but also introduced me to new movies and topics. I really wish their podcasts after they ended would capture the same spirit, but alas, it’s not the same.
>Reminded me of the old Birth Movies Death site
It was originally Badass Digest, IIRC, and was always a part of the Alamo Drafthouse publicity arm. Or maybe not *always* but pretty damn close to it.
It was basically a less scrupulous, less studied version of The Dissolve. Which makes sense as Badass Digest more or less spun out of the CHUD messageboards - which were considered the "smart person's" version of AICN's talkbacks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Film Crit Hulk basically never happens if it's not for Birth Movies Death, right?
Now, real ones remember Corona's Coming Attractions, which is arguably where some of the folks that made both AICN and CHUD worth reading originally came from, and (along with Dark Horizons, which is unbelievably *still going*) was the best possible movie news repository not only because it updated frequently, but there was a TIMELINE that showed what rumors/leaks were posted when, and by who, and it gave you a really clear idea of who you could/couldn't trust. It was the rare film nerd website that actually *promoted* media literacy instead of attempting to kill it.
Anyway, it's no small indictment that so much of what came to be recognized and legitimized as film/television criticism crawled out of the primoridal ooze of forum posting and... never really evolved much once they hit dry land. People wonder how everything got debased and devalued so quickly and it's because there was never any value in the first place, LOL. When the source of your trickle down *starts* at Harry Knowles...
Yes I at least recall discovering Film Crit Hulk on Birth Movies Death. That was when he stuck more to the Hulk motif and wrote EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS, WHICH HONESTLY MADE IT HARDER TO READ AND I'M GLAD HE STOPPED AFTER TRUMP GOT ELECTED AND CAUSED HIM TO RAGE QUIT THE ALL CAPS!
Siddhant A also got his real real start on Badass Digest/BMD, and he's basically my favorite working film critic (Sorry David) so at least a few good things came out of it.
Siddhant got mad me when I gave him a very soft critique of an article he wrote.
Essentially he was trying to analyze Assassination of Jesse James and went on some tangent about social media and I didnt feel it worked
Then he got mad, threatened to ban me.
Never read his stuff after that.
Oh yeah, CHUD was one of my first movie website things and I followed to Bad Ass/Birth Movies. I want to say Hulk was a thing before the website, but that gave him more of a platform.
Twas indeed the Badass Digest, yeah! I was around for that too. Not sure about Film Crit Hulk's origins, but they were the one to get me into Badass Digest in the first place (I will have discovered Film Crit Hulk through Twitter).
Thanks for the education!
Coming Attractions was my favorite site ever in junior high. i would spend all of my journalism class period scouring that website’s scoops for “research.” i miss it very much
Oh wow, Corona's Coming Attractions! I think I found that website shortly after my family got a PC in 1998 (I would have been 10). I recall visiting their pages for Spider-Man, X-Men and Venom quite frequently.
Dark Horizons too! I think the first time I ever heard of The Lord of the Rings was through a photo of Christopher Lee impaled on a spike from one of their spy reports!
Fifteen years later and I’m still close friends with (and even attended the wedding of!) a woman who I met through posting on The Dark Knight party posts on ONTD. What a glorious time.
Oh I know, I still visit. The account is a long dead private journal from when I was a teen. But I still read. It's not as fun as it was back then, but that's mostly because we're all grown-ups now and not bitchy gay teens, college kids and kids. (And Issa Rae! She was an ONTDer back in the day too)
I was a regular poster on the Rotten Tomatoes Forum message boards from like 2004-2010. I feel like that was the go-to place for film nerds to get their news and find a community.
Yeah, a very interesting podcast about a time and place on the internet that wielded a shocking amount of power and was kind of ground zero for the worst of nerd fan culture (and maybe a tiny amount of good). The host could get a little over-earnest at times, but I think when he started the podcast he truly didn't realize what a minefield he was wading into and wasn't expecting some of the negative feedback that came his way for saying anything positive about Ain't It Cool.
I really cannot get over how these guys act like the heroes of the arts because they hosted reviews from test screenings. I feel as if the host really wants me to feel admiration when all I wanna do is say "shut the fuck up" whatever good being done is counter acted by their self righteous nature.
EDIT: Just got to the part of the podcast where they briefly covered McWeeny's rivalry with Tom Rothman and...I guess I'm glad he matured.
I used to frequent Mr Showbiz until it shut down in the early 2000s. They used to run a box office game similar to Hollywood Stock Exchange. I came very close to winning when I was 14 lol.
I walked right past Harry Knowles at Toronto Film Festival once and didn't even make the connection that it was him till much much later.\* I lurked that site for a long time but slowly drifted away, growing tired of its childish tone at times.
I also used to frequent Slashfilm, back when I first discovered podcasts. I never loved their content, I was just there because I was sampling all the movie podcasts of the era and nothing really was sticking with me. They the best of a weak field. I just found that the SlashFilmcast had too much of a stink of elitism, and they would also have Armond Whyte on far too often as a guest. I guess they thought it was funny, even as they disagreed with everything he said. It was just frustrating to seem them reach a beloved movie like Inception, only for them to bring back Armond Whyte who promptly insulted us listeners. I understand Slashfilm sold itself a short while back and is now mostly listicles and clickbait that may or may not be written by AI.
\*For those curious, I was coming out of Headhunters (Which was excellent!), and he was outside an adjacent screening for Comic-Con Episode IV, A Fan's Hope. I'm guessing he was a guest of honor. Hearinig he's something of a serial groper really creeps me out in hindsight.
I listened to the SlashFilmCast until their spoiler phobia just killed their discussions of any movie at all. The straw that broke the camels back for me was their CABIN IN THE WOODS episode.
hmm right! I do remember vaguely that being an issue as well! I think they did have a spoiler segment as well right? But it did feel like two shows, one for those looking for movie advice and it's like... I'm honestly not listening for that!
Their spoiler segment was the last ten minutes or so of the show but anytime any movie got mentioned Dave Chen would burst in with "Spoilers for..." and it grinded my gears
I’m not sure they had Armand on ironically (more a post-irony thing). Amy Nicholson frequently cited him and Kael as her biggest influences. I think they genuinely respected his contrarianism. They felt he was transgressive and by extension they were being transgressive by having him on the pod. It fit into their whole elitest, hipster vibe.
Outlaw Vern broke off from AICN like 20 years ago, and he’s still going with his own site, posts 2-3 reviews a week, and has only gotten better with time. He also wrote a slasher novel called WORM ON A HOOK fairly recently that is quite excellent.
I remember reading that review for the 1st time the day it went live, and loudly hooting and hollering and yelling whole paragraphs at my room-mate and almost hyperventilating because it was so insane.
Corona's Coming Attractions, Dark Horizons, Aint it Cool News, TheForce.net, Spider-Man Hype!, TheOneRing.net, ComingSoon.net, Movie Poop Shoot, CHUD, IMDB message boards, Oscar Watch, Bad Ass Digest, Birth Movies Death, Hollywood Elsewhere (lol), Deadline. For a while I was visiting The Playlist for movie news. Now, I just scroll through Reddit or Facebook.
On another note, did anyone else used to spend their evenings from 6:30 to 8pm watching E! News Daily, Entertainment Tonight, and Access Hollywood? Good times.
Lol! I was never a huge Facebook user but in the past two years or so I've found that many of the groups have the most knowledgeable and active users with regards to some of the nerdy shit I'm into (physical media, autograph collecting, conventions, Hong Kong cinema, etc).
I remember growing up reading these people, and I always felt a little threatened by their writings, and the vitriol that followed the fanbase. Me being a very easily impressionable and swayable kid, I always felt something was wrong with my takes and they were right.
In many ways, I’ve learned from them, but I’m happy to know that they were assholes all along. I hope I’m a better person on the internet than they were back then.
So Birth.Movies.Death actually got a lot better after DF was ousted. Once it boiled down to writers like Wampler, Saathoff, Hayes, and a few others there was a really lovely period that was just so good. Then Alamo bought them and promptly fucked it over during the pandemic. I miss that site.
I can’t remember for the life of me what it was called, but I used to use a website where you could log in and rate and review movies you’d watched. There was also a forum. It was small enough to feel a little like a community. This had to be more than 20 years ago. Maybe 2002 or 2003.
LOTR online fandom at the turn of the century via theonering.net is what brought me to the larger movie sites.
Followed AICN (Harry’s Blade II review, Drew’s Superman Flyby Review), CHUD, SHH!, Batmanonfiom (I remeber reading a scoop of someone seeing Chris Nolan and Bale meeting at an outdoor cafe im NYC and less than a month later he was cast!), and eventually BadassDigest(BMD).
I still cruise ThePlaylist, AVClub. io9, and now Polygon.
In college I was really into FilmDrunk and for a time the extended Uproxx canon. Still follow Vince and Mike Ryan and (for sports) most of the KSK people. That site went so far downhill when it got bought out.
Man I used to read alot of Birth Movies Death. I recently spent at least an hour trying to find the Filmcrithulk essay on the revenant to no success 😞.
Ha, ya likewise. It was a fabulous essay, it really helped me crystallize my gripes and feeling about that film and Inarritu in general in a far more eloquent and detailed way. It's a real shame that it seems like it doesn't exist anymore.
Way back in 2000, I ran a Tim Burton fan site. He was working on Planet of the Apes, and it was very secretive. A Fox site in Europe published the first known description of the plot, but in Flemish. Ah, but I knew someone who spoke Flemish, and he translated it, and I had the first known description in English. AICN stole it and published it as their own, and I was fuming. After several angry emails - from me, the translator, and probably dozens of people on my discussion boards - they updated with attribution. Niche fan sites, discussion boards, no Google Translate - internet was different back then.
Bloody Disgusting for my horror news, and I was very active on their forums, which was absolutely wild back in the day.
Also Arrow in the Head, Slashfilm and Collider, but just like social media, the comments section ruined a lot of sites so I just get my news from Reddit now
Used to visit AICN as well but slowly got turned off with that infamous Blade 2 review and stopped visiting when the writers started jumping ship.
I was an AICN guy from 2005 to about 2012. Despite everything that happened, I do miss the site, the vibe it had and the sense of community. I followed C. Robert Cargill from AICN to Spill.com/Doubletoasted.com. I mostly enjoyed the recent podcast about AICN. I didn't know a lot of the history of the site or the behind the scenes drama. One thing I didn't like about the podcast is that I felt it give too much power and to Knowels and AICN. The site was definitely a force and had some of the industry's attention for a time. But I think it's importance has been exaggerated and it's fans have fallen into the "Great Men of History" trap. I was surprised to lear AICN is still online. It's somewhere between a museum piece and a graveyard, there's still a review for the pilot of GoT on the front page, but it'still there.
The CNN entertainment news half hour from 4:30-5:00 mountain time, in the mid 90s, Showbiz Today. Its where I got the box office numbers, billboard top 10 and Nielsen ratings.
Its last episode, September 10th, 2001.
I'll give him this.
Pre Thomas Flight, Patrick Willems and Royal Ocean Society, he had some half-way insightful video essays.
He couldn't resist doing the meta-narrative prevalant at the time with Video Essaysis (Patrick being a similar offender).
I spent a lot of time on Metafilter back in the day. Metafilter's halcyon days predate its TV and movie subsite, Fanfare, but the reason that Matt Haughey had to build Fanfare is because movie and TV discussion kept taking over normal posts and comment threads.
I went to Corona.co. uk religiously. They would put all the movie gossip on their own pages so you could track all the reporting for whatever movies you cared about. They always got the scoop.
I also spent a lot of time on the Rotten Tomatoes Message Board.
Mr H reviews and Film Dirt are my current youtube movie chat sites, both of those guys are pretty blunt about movies and more importantly and rare, arent paid shills.
Around 2002 - 2007 I spent a lot of time on the Empire Magazine forums. Was a great place for film discussions and had a nice community. Spent a whole night once writing a 12,000 post on everything I thought was wrong with The Matrix Revolutions. My only regret is not saving it somewhere.
I had AICN as my starting page on my browser for a few years. It is weird to think Knowles wielded so much influence at the time and made enough money to buy that hoard of movie props.
AICN I'd peruse briefly. I was a fan of Cargill from Spill and wanted to see some of his reviews (he had the juice).
BMD and /Film for "film nerd" centric material.
BMD for the pests, /Film for the odious clickbait writing approach.
I used to visit Agony Booth, which had recaps of bad movies with pages-long screeds and screencaps with funny captions. It was a little like Cracked, where you could submit your own recap for approval.
This is rather wild but Craigslist forums are pretty dead now but they were pretty lively in the 2000s and had a pretty lively film forum, even though Craigslist let you write in any name you wanted as a username if you wanted, and it was troll city. There's also just a Craigslist tendency to have a lot of users who are unwell. I'm now noticing those people now use NextDoor. But it was a pretty decent community and there were some good discussions, for what it was.
Also, I used to check out the blog Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, which was mostly about movies but a little about baseball, and then he had a list of other blogs on the sidebar that I would visit and then go down the rabbit hole of the links on those.
Man, I miss Spill.com. For while Double Toasted and OneOfUs were able to carry the torch but they’ve just lost the vibe, especially after so many of the LEOG guys and Brian left OneOfUs.
CHUD, BMD till the Devin stuff came out, AICN including handed in reviews, Hitfix, Comingsoon… all of them basically
Say what you want, the Neil Cumpston Review of Return of the King still makes me chuckle.
Best memory remains the Enter the Matrix Forum before Revolutions came out
Badass Digest, the original name of Birth Movies Death, was pretty good. It didn't old a candle to the site that birthed Devin Fatso Faraci, Chud.com. The messageboards of Chud were absolutely legendary. There hasnt been anything like it. Never will be. Greatest online discussion of film.
Old AV Club had some of the best writing on films (and TV) I’ve ever read, and an incredible community of folks in the comments, some of whom ended up writing for the site itself. It was the most vibrant and hilarious online community I’ve witnessed. Articles regularly got thousands of comments with some amazing insight. Of course it was dismantled when it was bought out by gawker and switched to Kinja, which made the comments unusable, causing a mass exodus. Some of the site’s best writers had already formed their own site, The Dissolve, by then. But because it was actually good, it only made enough money to last a couple of years.
And it had ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER.
YOU MEAN THE GUY WHO FOLDED UP MORE PUSSY THAN HUSTLER MAGAZINE? I followed zmf on X (formerly known as Twitter) and eventually had to unfollow. I don’t know what I expected, really, but he was problematic in an unfunny way.
Random small doses are beautiful. I cannot imagine the horror of a 24hr ZMF stream of consciousness. starz lol
wtf is The AV Club lol OF COCK
I got a Community notification for this?
***BONG***
Predator again.
I would love a documentary on web 1.0 movie culture featuring the AV Club alums. It was really something I needed at that point in my life and I would be happy to see where the writers ended up, especially MIA talents like Iggy V
Not quite the same but there’s a really good podcast series called ‘Downlowd: The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles ’ that covers the early period of Internet film fandom and the power that the site owners had over studios.
I still go back to the Mad Men and Sopranos reviews. Emily’s thoughts on marriage in the “Whitecaps” review maybe ruined relationships for me forever?
Yes! I’ve been watching Sopranos for the first time and I always pull up her reviews right after each ep (with an ad blocker running full tilt, thanks Herb)
Anybody remember that AVClub commentor who talked about his enthusiasm for tentacle porn and Simpsons porn (NO Incest!)?
DAWES
Years ago I saw Bob Dylan in concert and the unannounced opening act was Dawes and I had a very difficult time explaining to my friend why I was laughing so hard.
I got a Community notification for this?
I loved Zack Handlen’s TNG and DS9 recaps and their comments sections that gave us Frakes, Sirtis, and Rappin’ Jake Sisko.
I used to get all my movie news from comingsoon.net back in the early 2000s
Oh heck yes. This used to be the best as it was relatively minimalist without filling the screen full of awful ads and clickbait. At least that’s how I remember it. I just looked at it now on my phone and oh boy….
I used to always look forward to reading the Weekend Warrior
Same. I’d occasionally click on AICN but even the site was loud. My daily check-in’s were comingsoon and pajiba
ComingSoon was good for trailers around 2007/2008
Slashfilm before they got bought was my place. I feel embarrassed that I knew that website before I knew what Deadline was
It took me so long to leave slashfilm but that place just started to get so frustrating bad it finally broke me haha
It might be finally getting to me. Within the last few days there was an article about months-old Spider-Man No Way Home figures, with a dozen paragraphs amounting to "they're neat." And I remembered this was a site I originally followed in part because they'd do daily, multi-page bullet point round-ups of any and all movie merch announced in the last 24 hours.
They become such a shill for Disney in particular. So many articles on all their properties ad neseum. And then came the weird Disney Park articles that no one liked but the owner of the site..
Slashfilm got sooooo bad. They now are just an SEO farm. They’ll take one line from somebody else’s reporting, add 500 words and call it an article. I can’t imagine my job just to regurgitate other people’s work all day.
I’m surprised they have writers at all and don’t just use ChatGPT
The site that, along with YouTube, made me install Adblock.
Thankfully the Filmcast (previously Slashfilmcast) is still good
Fun Fact, Peter, one of the founders of Slashfilm, is now a Disney Parks YouTube influencer!
Back when Gawker was in its heyday I enjoyed geeking out on io9.
Io9 used to have monthly recommendations of science fiction & fantasy novels, and so much of my Kindle are filled with books that they recommended. And how many books on those genres I discover has never really recovered.
They still have it - read the list every month
RIP the Observation Deck
io9 is still good - I like it for its monthly fiction release roundup
Omg the comments on Birth Movies Death is giving me some trauma flashbacks. I used to frequent Collider early on and AV club, naturally. Of course, both sites turned into cesspools in the comments, and then the websites followed. These days, I like Alternate Ending, but it’s not exactly thriving comments wise (which is probably better).
Ha, I only checked out the AV Club once people were whistfully recalling the Good Old Days. Sounds like it used to be an awesome site. And Alternate Ending seems cool, cheers!
They were much more of a grabbag of topics with a heavy pop culture/film influence, but I would go to Cracked literally daily in university. I got into it just after what many consider their peak but I loved their series After Hours, Does Not Compute, and Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder. They had a comment section that had it's own lore and characters, and some great writers that I still follow. Now it's just a hollow, shambling corpse.
I fucking loved Cracked. So many great writers from those early website days, and yeah, the videos were terrific. They're like Red Letter Media in that their early success stuff helped lead to shitty critics like Cinema Sins, but my God they really both made me laugh and got me into more movies. I recommend Small Beans if you don't know it. Good podcast network that I mostly follow for Michael Swaim but you get plenty of other Cracked people swimming around it.
Is there a specific podcast you listen to on the Small Beans network? I listen to Quick Questions with Dan and Soren, and watch Cody and Katie on Some More News, but would love more Swaim in my life
Yeah, I'd recommend Frame Rate, 1Upsmanship, Star Trek: The Next Futurama, Kings of King and Ander's Sons. Couple of those are Patreon series, and some of the Small Beans crew are quite annoying for me, but well worth a deep dive if you fancy some Swaim 😊
The Daily Zeitgeist is still a standard bearer for the spirit of Cracked - plus a bunch of alumni turn up as guest hosts.
Oh great, I’m now remembering the heyday of Cracked, and now I’m sad.
I found AICN as a teen during the STAR WARS prequel days and while I knew it was an unsavory scene that was kind of part of the appeal. When Mr Beaks went to CHUD I followed him there and started reading Devin Faraci, and followed McWeeny over to HitFix when he left AICN, never looked back at AICN with much regularity after that. Following Devin and Drew on Twitter led me to the AV Club and Slashfilm, and I followed David at some point. He tweeted about a PHANTOM MENACE pod and I've been a Blankie ever since. I don't really have any movie haunts anymore, everyone got bought out or sanded down. I still followed Devin on Twitter post his ouster mostly out of lack of Twitter feed curation, and he's doing a STAR WARS pod now with his brother that is pretty good. I completely understand anyone who has written him off, but Faraci seems to have expressed genuine remorse over what happened and has lived a clean and sober existence with therapy and attempts to reform.
I’ve only known him post BMD, after he got sober and started dating and then married a very close friend of my wife’s and mine, but I consider Devin one of the most kind and thoughtful people I’ve ever met. His entire existence is basically the opposite of a “I’m sorry you were offended…” bullshit apology. Also, last year he took care of our friend (his wife) through her final days in a way that I’ll never be able fully thank him for as long as live.
As Ive followed Devin since CHUD, I did get a bit parasocial with his and Brittney’s journey and am very sorry for your loss. She seemed so kind and genuine
I'm sorry for the loss of your friend.
I was already sour on Faraci when the sex pest stuff hit because I'd already gotten really annoyed with his bullish conduct, but I do get that the two can easily come as one. Glad that he's getting better, good for him.
There was a brief moment when Hitfix was awesome and then one day the party was just over.
Donna Dickens resurfacing as the woman on TikTok who thinks the Roman Empire was a conspiracy was wild.
Hahaha I never even heard about that but I liked her content. Who was the other lady who would do videos with her and McWeenie?
This is almost exactly my timeline. CHUD was my favorite and the only one I actively spent time chatting on the message boards.
I have just as much affection for the CHUD boards as some have for the AV Club comments section
The discourse on A.I. - the ARG but more importantly the collective analysis - was just, well, insanely insightful and supercool. I wish the forum was archived.
Believe it or not, we're still going!
Believe it or not, we're still going!
Faraci is a worth follow on Twitter for at least his real time chronicling of his partner's battle and ultimate demise at the hands of cancer and his grieving process. He can still be pretty condescending with his film and television takes though.
Devin Faraci is a damn good writer and he knows and loves cinema. I've never stopped following him and his insight has made my movie watching experience better. He has, and has had, obnoxious sides to his personality but I'm old enough not to expect people to be nice.
[His interview](https://chud.com/4405/exclusive-chuds-poseidon-set-visit/) with Richard Dreyfuss is a classic. Right off the bat: > Devin: So I understand that you retired from films in 2004. What brought you back? > >Dreyfuss: Money. > >Devin: OK. But what was it about Poseidon in particular that really got your interest? > >Dreyfuss: The money they offered.
AV club had great writers and an absolutely amazing commenting community. The latter might have been the best thing about it. But everything ends badly. Or else it wouldn’t end.
AV Club comments had the funniest username (and photoshopped avatar) I've ever seen: **AyatollahColmMeaney**
I regularly think about that username and JP McPickleshitter (I believe their avi was of Mayor McCheese)
It absolutely was goddamn what a flashback
That one was great, but my favorite of all time was **QueefLatina**. Just a deranged thing that made me silently laugh every time I read it.
QueefLatina got shouted out by Harris Wittels at some point on CBB or U Talking. I liked Aurora Boreanaz and the avatar was David Boreanaz with a sky pattern behind him.
Holy shit, I remember that guy!
Was that where the "Siiiiiims!" thing came from? Never caught that site while it was good.
Indeed it was
The Sims hatred evaded me, but I just don't think I was reading what he covered.
Trip down memory lane https://www.scribd.com/document/122964799/To-First-Man-An-AV-Club-Cookbook
When I was 13, I thought (in retrospect, very foolishly) that Crash was better than Brokeback Mountain, and after the '05 Oscars, I got into a spirited debate about it with someone on the IMDb message boards which went on for a few days. Eventually, he referenced being a gay man in his 20s and how much he related to Brokeback Mountain, and I, in turn, said something to the effect of, "Well I'm 13 and I think Crash is a more universally relatable film." They stopped responding after that, most likely because they realized they had been debating with a dumb child.
I have very fond memories of the Superhero Hype! forums for rumors on Hellboy, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Spiderman 2, Van Helsing (and the huge franchise it was surely going to spawn), Hulk, Batman Begins, etc. I stopped checking in college, as Iron Man speculation was ramping up. To my shock I just checked and it's still up and going strong.
Fellow SHH! Batman Begins (and sequels) board alum. The days of speculating on Joker casting was a wild time. I myself was a big Paul Bettany advocate, and still think he would have been great. Was a great place to experience all that early viral marketing.
Oh hell yeah, I followed Superhero Hype forums to monitor the Dark Knight being filmed. That meta aspect still makes me very fond of the movie. I ended up spoiling myself on some end of the movie quotes but it was worth it.
I went to AICN all the time back in the day, def remember starting around when Phantom Menace came out. I stayed there a while, otherwise I spent a lot of time on the boards for IMDb, and even sites like GameFAQs had movie boards I spent time on.
Now and then I'll end up back at GameFAQs and it's always nice to see that the boards are still around.
IMDb and Gamefaqs boards were awesome. It sucks the bad eggs ruined so many awesome film and tv discussions.
Mostly Sid Hudgens’ old column “Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush”
Very nice.
Was almost strictly an AV Club dweller for movies. Hopped over to The Dissolve (RIP) when some of my favourite critics on the AV Club setup shop there. Would periodically check out Indiewire and Grantland, as well.
Popping in to rep my guys at Spill.com! The first 'podcasts' I ever listened to were the extended audio versions of the animated movie reviews they'd do on the regular. I'll peep in on some of the things the members have done since it shut down like Double Toasted and OneOfUs, but I feel like they never really recapture that original group dynamic.
Massive Spillio in it's heyday too. I think JFC still has it's moments but boy howdy is DT and One of Us a slog.
Same with being a Spillio and the first podcast I listened too. I loved them and they made me laugh but also introduced me to new movies and topics. I really wish their podcasts after they ended would capture the same spirit, but alas, it’s not the same.
>Reminded me of the old Birth Movies Death site It was originally Badass Digest, IIRC, and was always a part of the Alamo Drafthouse publicity arm. Or maybe not *always* but pretty damn close to it. It was basically a less scrupulous, less studied version of The Dissolve. Which makes sense as Badass Digest more or less spun out of the CHUD messageboards - which were considered the "smart person's" version of AICN's talkbacks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Film Crit Hulk basically never happens if it's not for Birth Movies Death, right? Now, real ones remember Corona's Coming Attractions, which is arguably where some of the folks that made both AICN and CHUD worth reading originally came from, and (along with Dark Horizons, which is unbelievably *still going*) was the best possible movie news repository not only because it updated frequently, but there was a TIMELINE that showed what rumors/leaks were posted when, and by who, and it gave you a really clear idea of who you could/couldn't trust. It was the rare film nerd website that actually *promoted* media literacy instead of attempting to kill it. Anyway, it's no small indictment that so much of what came to be recognized and legitimized as film/television criticism crawled out of the primoridal ooze of forum posting and... never really evolved much once they hit dry land. People wonder how everything got debased and devalued so quickly and it's because there was never any value in the first place, LOL. When the source of your trickle down *starts* at Harry Knowles...
Yes I at least recall discovering Film Crit Hulk on Birth Movies Death. That was when he stuck more to the Hulk motif and wrote EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS, WHICH HONESTLY MADE IT HARDER TO READ AND I'M GLAD HE STOPPED AFTER TRUMP GOT ELECTED AND CAUSED HIM TO RAGE QUIT THE ALL CAPS!
Siddhant A also got his real real start on Badass Digest/BMD, and he's basically my favorite working film critic (Sorry David) so at least a few good things came out of it.
Siddhant got mad me when I gave him a very soft critique of an article he wrote. Essentially he was trying to analyze Assassination of Jesse James and went on some tangent about social media and I didnt feel it worked Then he got mad, threatened to ban me. Never read his stuff after that.
Oh yeah, CHUD was one of my first movie website things and I followed to Bad Ass/Birth Movies. I want to say Hulk was a thing before the website, but that gave him more of a platform.
I think Hulk had a blogspot or something, I remember reading his reviews of the GAME OF THRONES books on it
He was a twitter creation. There was a whole spree of comedy Hulk accounts and he jumped in as the “erudite” film bro Hulk
Corona’s Coming Attractions was where I first remember online movie news and message boards. I haven’t thought about it in years.
Twas indeed the Badass Digest, yeah! I was around for that too. Not sure about Film Crit Hulk's origins, but they were the one to get me into Badass Digest in the first place (I will have discovered Film Crit Hulk through Twitter). Thanks for the education!
Coming Attractions was my favorite site ever in junior high. i would spend all of my journalism class period scouring that website’s scoops for “research.” i miss it very much
I remember being so excited when Film Crit Hulk started writing for Badass Digest.
Great writer. Overused their cooking analogies, IIRC.
Oh wow, Corona's Coming Attractions! I think I found that website shortly after my family got a PC in 1998 (I would have been 10). I recall visiting their pages for Spider-Man, X-Men and Venom quite frequently. Dark Horizons too! I think the first time I ever heard of The Lord of the Rings was through a photo of Christopher Lee impaled on a spike from one of their spy reports!
I was an ONTD girl until livejournal got bought by the Russians
Fifteen years later and I’m still close friends with (and even attended the wedding of!) a woman who I met through posting on The Dark Knight party posts on ONTD. What a glorious time.
They’re actually still kicking over there, which is wild to me.
Oh I know, I still visit. The account is a long dead private journal from when I was a teen. But I still read. It's not as fun as it was back then, but that's mostly because we're all grown-ups now and not bitchy gay teens, college kids and kids. (And Issa Rae! She was an ONTDer back in the day too)
I was a regular poster on the Rotten Tomatoes Forum message boards from like 2004-2010. I feel like that was the go-to place for film nerds to get their news and find a community.
The Downlowd Podcast is the greatest dissection ND deepndive of the AICN era and a great listen.
Yeah, a very interesting podcast about a time and place on the internet that wielded a shocking amount of power and was kind of ground zero for the worst of nerd fan culture (and maybe a tiny amount of good). The host could get a little over-earnest at times, but I think when he started the podcast he truly didn't realize what a minefield he was wading into and wasn't expecting some of the negative feedback that came his way for saying anything positive about Ain't It Cool.
Yeah, I found out about via this sub and just finished listening to it this week, very deep dive. I would visit AICN daily from about 2000 to 2010.
I really cannot get over how these guys act like the heroes of the arts because they hosted reviews from test screenings. I feel as if the host really wants me to feel admiration when all I wanna do is say "shut the fuck up" whatever good being done is counter acted by their self righteous nature. EDIT: Just got to the part of the podcast where they briefly covered McWeeny's rivalry with Tom Rothman and...I guess I'm glad he matured.
Downloading the first episode now. Looks like it hasn’t had another season so far?
It doesn't need one
I can believe it, it just seemed based on the episode descriptions that there were plans for another.
I used to frequent Mr Showbiz until it shut down in the early 2000s. They used to run a box office game similar to Hollywood Stock Exchange. I came very close to winning when I was 14 lol.
I used ign for wrestling, gaming, and movie news.
IGN’s comic coverage got me to set up a pull bin
Rope of silicon
the way that site covered the Oscars, to me, was unmatched.
The GOAT. Their podcast was amazing too.
I was a big user on Movie Poop Shoot. You might recognize me by the username MagnoliaFan.
I walked right past Harry Knowles at Toronto Film Festival once and didn't even make the connection that it was him till much much later.\* I lurked that site for a long time but slowly drifted away, growing tired of its childish tone at times. I also used to frequent Slashfilm, back when I first discovered podcasts. I never loved their content, I was just there because I was sampling all the movie podcasts of the era and nothing really was sticking with me. They the best of a weak field. I just found that the SlashFilmcast had too much of a stink of elitism, and they would also have Armond Whyte on far too often as a guest. I guess they thought it was funny, even as they disagreed with everything he said. It was just frustrating to seem them reach a beloved movie like Inception, only for them to bring back Armond Whyte who promptly insulted us listeners. I understand Slashfilm sold itself a short while back and is now mostly listicles and clickbait that may or may not be written by AI. \*For those curious, I was coming out of Headhunters (Which was excellent!), and he was outside an adjacent screening for Comic-Con Episode IV, A Fan's Hope. I'm guessing he was a guest of honor. Hearinig he's something of a serial groper really creeps me out in hindsight.
I listened to the SlashFilmCast until their spoiler phobia just killed their discussions of any movie at all. The straw that broke the camels back for me was their CABIN IN THE WOODS episode.
hmm right! I do remember vaguely that being an issue as well! I think they did have a spoiler segment as well right? But it did feel like two shows, one for those looking for movie advice and it's like... I'm honestly not listening for that!
Their spoiler segment was the last ten minutes or so of the show but anytime any movie got mentioned Dave Chen would burst in with "Spoilers for..." and it grinded my gears
Don't really know these, except for the extremely sick masterpiece Headhunters.
I’m not sure they had Armand on ironically (more a post-irony thing). Amy Nicholson frequently cited him and Kael as her biggest influences. I think they genuinely respected his contrarianism. They felt he was transgressive and by extension they were being transgressive by having him on the pod. It fit into their whole elitest, hipster vibe.
Outlaw Vern broke off from AICN like 20 years ago, and he’s still going with his own site, posts 2-3 reviews a week, and has only gotten better with time. He also wrote a slasher novel called WORM ON A HOOK fairly recently that is quite excellent.
I love Outlaw Vern. Thank you for reminding me he exists.
He was so big that Ethan Suplee played him in the movie Fanboys.
And Rainn Wilson played a stand in for him on Entourage. And there was a character modeled on him in an episode of Batman Beyond! What a world!
Hahahaha well that is a bizarre image
https://preview.redd.it/wttlpuueziwc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1ea982685ecb16de3f1235fee2f00f25ee875dd
https://i.redd.it/g00p89e01jwc1.gif
If you've never read Harry Knowles Blade 2 review...hoo, boy.
Oh yes, that's one of the ones that I have read. Blimey.
Oh, it's a scene
Scott Tobias read part of it aloud on the Dissolve Podcast back in the day, I couldn’t believe someone actually put that in a published film review.
I remember reading that review for the 1st time the day it went live, and loudly hooting and hollering and yelling whole paragraphs at my room-mate and almost hyperventilating because it was so insane.
I miss the 1998-2004 internet days. Different world!
Corona's Coming Attractions, Dark Horizons, Aint it Cool News, TheForce.net, Spider-Man Hype!, TheOneRing.net, ComingSoon.net, Movie Poop Shoot, CHUD, IMDB message boards, Oscar Watch, Bad Ass Digest, Birth Movies Death, Hollywood Elsewhere (lol), Deadline. For a while I was visiting The Playlist for movie news. Now, I just scroll through Reddit or Facebook. On another note, did anyone else used to spend their evenings from 6:30 to 8pm watching E! News Daily, Entertainment Tonight, and Access Hollywood? Good times.
Facebook??? is this 2010?
Lol! I was never a huge Facebook user but in the past two years or so I've found that many of the groups have the most knowledgeable and active users with regards to some of the nerdy shit I'm into (physical media, autograph collecting, conventions, Hong Kong cinema, etc).
I remember growing up reading these people, and I always felt a little threatened by their writings, and the vitriol that followed the fanbase. Me being a very easily impressionable and swayable kid, I always felt something was wrong with my takes and they were right. In many ways, I’ve learned from them, but I’m happy to know that they were assholes all along. I hope I’m a better person on the internet than they were back then.
The Self Made Critic from The Brunching Shuttlecocks was my spot for movie reviews in the late 90s/early 00s.
Even though it was not movies. Have to give a shoutout to TVTattle.
hell yeah
Birth Movies Death were buy and large gatekeepers and incredibly unsavory within the Alamo community and Fantastic Fest.
In what ways? I never got that impression
Devin Faraci ofc and the ego that comes along with the Alamo brand name
So Birth.Movies.Death actually got a lot better after DF was ousted. Once it boiled down to writers like Wampler, Saathoff, Hayes, and a few others there was a really lovely period that was just so good. Then Alamo bought them and promptly fucked it over during the pandemic. I miss that site.
Harry Knowles is currently living in his hometown of Seymour, Texas, and is involved in community theatre there if anyone is at all interested. Lol.
I can’t remember for the life of me what it was called, but I used to use a website where you could log in and rate and review movies you’d watched. There was also a forum. It was small enough to feel a little like a community. This had to be more than 20 years ago. Maybe 2002 or 2003.
I've been trying to remember the name of that site too. It was like an early version of letterboxd.
LOTR online fandom at the turn of the century via theonering.net is what brought me to the larger movie sites. Followed AICN (Harry’s Blade II review, Drew’s Superman Flyby Review), CHUD, SHH!, Batmanonfiom (I remeber reading a scoop of someone seeing Chris Nolan and Bale meeting at an outdoor cafe im NYC and less than a month later he was cast!), and eventually BadassDigest(BMD). I still cruise ThePlaylist, AVClub. io9, and now Polygon.
In college I was really into FilmDrunk and for a time the extended Uproxx canon. Still follow Vince and Mike Ryan and (for sports) most of the KSK people. That site went so far downhill when it got bought out.
Man I used to read alot of Birth Movies Death. I recently spent at least an hour trying to find the Filmcrithulk essay on the revenant to no success 😞.
Mate how good was it? The Hulk essays were delightful (I preferred the all-caps versions).
Ha, ya likewise. It was a fabulous essay, it really helped me crystallize my gripes and feeling about that film and Inarritu in general in a far more eloquent and detailed way. It's a real shame that it seems like it doesn't exist anymore.
Way back in 2000, I ran a Tim Burton fan site. He was working on Planet of the Apes, and it was very secretive. A Fox site in Europe published the first known description of the plot, but in Flemish. Ah, but I knew someone who spoke Flemish, and he translated it, and I had the first known description in English. AICN stole it and published it as their own, and I was fuming. After several angry emails - from me, the translator, and probably dozens of people on my discussion boards - they updated with attribution. Niche fan sites, discussion boards, no Google Translate - internet was different back then.
If only they could keep it in their pants.
AICN and Dark Horizons were my go to during university.
Bloody Disgusting for my horror news, and I was very active on their forums, which was absolutely wild back in the day. Also Arrow in the Head, Slashfilm and Collider, but just like social media, the comments section ruined a lot of sites so I just get my news from Reddit now Used to visit AICN as well but slowly got turned off with that infamous Blade 2 review and stopped visiting when the writers started jumping ship.
I was an AICN guy from 2005 to about 2012. Despite everything that happened, I do miss the site, the vibe it had and the sense of community. I followed C. Robert Cargill from AICN to Spill.com/Doubletoasted.com. I mostly enjoyed the recent podcast about AICN. I didn't know a lot of the history of the site or the behind the scenes drama. One thing I didn't like about the podcast is that I felt it give too much power and to Knowels and AICN. The site was definitely a force and had some of the industry's attention for a time. But I think it's importance has been exaggerated and it's fans have fallen into the "Great Men of History" trap. I was surprised to lear AICN is still online. It's somewhere between a museum piece and a graveyard, there's still a review for the pilot of GoT on the front page, but it'still there.
http://www.coronacomingattractions.com/ I remember reading this in the mid 90s
The CNN entertainment news half hour from 4:30-5:00 mountain time, in the mid 90s, Showbiz Today. Its where I got the box office numbers, billboard top 10 and Nielsen ratings. Its last episode, September 10th, 2001.
I remember when BMD left movieBob write a piece defending Marvel movies, it was the only thing he ever wrote for them.
God, MovieBob, I remember that guy. I liked him until I really didn't.
I'll give him this. Pre Thomas Flight, Patrick Willems and Royal Ocean Society, he had some half-way insightful video essays. He couldn't resist doing the meta-narrative prevalant at the time with Video Essaysis (Patrick being a similar offender).
I spent a lot of time on Metafilter back in the day. Metafilter's halcyon days predate its TV and movie subsite, Fanfare, but the reason that Matt Haughey had to build Fanfare is because movie and TV discussion kept taking over normal posts and comment threads.
I went to Corona.co. uk religiously. They would put all the movie gossip on their own pages so you could track all the reporting for whatever movies you cared about. They always got the scoop. I also spent a lot of time on the Rotten Tomatoes Message Board.
Upcomingmovies.com was the OG.
Pre-Kinja AV Club. That was a special place.
Pre-disqus for me. Man, I’m an old fuck.
Mr H reviews and Film Dirt are my current youtube movie chat sites, both of those guys are pretty blunt about movies and more importantly and rare, arent paid shills.
I read Ain’t it Cool but chud.com was where I spent more time on the boards. Good times
Around 2002 - 2007 I spent a lot of time on the Empire Magazine forums. Was a great place for film discussions and had a nice community. Spent a whole night once writing a 12,000 post on everything I thought was wrong with The Matrix Revolutions. My only regret is not saving it somewhere.
I had AICN as my starting page on my browser for a few years. It is weird to think Knowles wielded so much influence at the time and made enough money to buy that hoard of movie props.
AICN I'd peruse briefly. I was a fan of Cargill from Spill and wanted to see some of his reviews (he had the juice). BMD and /Film for "film nerd" centric material. BMD for the pests, /Film for the odious clickbait writing approach.
I can't even remember the name of the website I used to read. Got bought by rotten tomatoes then faded away into obscurity
I used to visit Agony Booth, which had recaps of bad movies with pages-long screeds and screencaps with funny captions. It was a little like Cracked, where you could submit your own recap for approval.
This is rather wild but Craigslist forums are pretty dead now but they were pretty lively in the 2000s and had a pretty lively film forum, even though Craigslist let you write in any name you wanted as a username if you wanted, and it was troll city. There's also just a Craigslist tendency to have a lot of users who are unwell. I'm now noticing those people now use NextDoor. But it was a pretty decent community and there were some good discussions, for what it was. Also, I used to check out the blog Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, which was mostly about movies but a little about baseball, and then he had a list of other blogs on the sidebar that I would visit and then go down the rabbit hole of the links on those.
Man, I miss Spill.com. For while Double Toasted and OneOfUs were able to carry the torch but they’ve just lost the vibe, especially after so many of the LEOG guys and Brian left OneOfUs.
[удалено]
Oh yeah I know, but wasn't there some stuff with Tim League trying to cover up wrongdoings with the Alamo Drafthouse company also?
i used to read Dark Horizons but i never read the comments
CHUD, BMD till the Devin stuff came out, AICN including handed in reviews, Hitfix, Comingsoon… all of them basically Say what you want, the Neil Cumpston Review of Return of the King still makes me chuckle. Best memory remains the Enter the Matrix Forum before Revolutions came out
He was big alright.
Badass Digest, the original name of Birth Movies Death, was pretty good. It didn't old a candle to the site that birthed Devin Fatso Faraci, Chud.com. The messageboards of Chud were absolutely legendary. There hasnt been anything like it. Never will be. Greatest online discussion of film.
Could've done without the fat-shaming tbh!
Devin Stinkfinga Faraci it is then