State of the Blog?

Posted on the 25 December 2022 by Christopher Saunders

Well, I'd more or less ended Nothing is Written until earlier this year, when I posted a couple of quick reviews of crappy horror movies in the summer and more recently explored some simian cinema (and profiled the Puella Magi). I suspect from the amount of hits these posts generate that a few of my old followers are still hanging around, occasionally checking in when they recognize a half-forgotten blog on their feed. And except for that obsessive dimbulb who kept demanding that I acknowledge that Ben Shapiro's unparalleled genius, I do miss my regular commenters and correspondents from back when this blog was a going concern.

When I'm in a nostalgic or egocentric mode, I do occasionally skim my old reviews. Besides the evolution of my writing style, there are definitely some opinions on films, and creators, and genres that have changed, as you'd probably expect. My politics have grown more progressive as I've grown older, and I cringe at the Bush-era conservatism that occasionally informs my older posts. I similarly find some of the more strident Teenaged Film Buff language in older reviews wince-inducing, and have been tempted to rewrite some of these comments. IMDB and its snarky insult-first-and-discuss-opinions-later attitude have a lot to answer for, which have carried over to Film Twitter.  

There are a bunch of reasons for lack of posting. Life is the obvious one: I've been working at a library for the past couple of years, and while it is a much more agreeable job than past ones it still takes up a lot of time and mental energy. Since November 2017 I've been writing a History column off-and-on for The Avocado, which has brought me a fair degree of satisfaction (and occasional recognition from actual historians), but is also time-consuming. More recently, enjoying Steven Universe opened the floodgates to anime, a genre/art form I'd previously dismissed and neglected. Over the past couple of years, I've been exploring Japanese animation more than watching the kinds of movies I typically review for this blog. 

So, will Nothing Is Written return full time? Probably not. This blog originated as the project of a college kid expecting/hoping to major in film, continued as a young adult who used classic film as his primary escape from work and tapered out as I became depressed in a period of unemployment, found other interests and refocused my time and skills on other topics. Perhaps I'll continue trickling out reviews, if I find unseen movies to write about. Perhaps there are still monkey movies to review. We'll see. Until then, thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas (or is that Happy Holidays?) to all of you.