Category: state of the blog

Introduction

Every year around this time, you hear some people saying some form of, “I’m so glad to have X year in the rearview mirror; Y year is going to be so much better,” only for the same shit that plagued the previous year to just follow on into the next. I have noticed less of that this year. The Western world is at the start of a wake-up call, with Europe & North America being forced into situations where inflation & energy costs are driving their populations into deeper poverty than previously experienced.

Continue reading “State of the Blog 2023”

2021 was a bitch. There’s a sense that each year of the 2020s is set to be a steady decline. The consequences of human behavior on the environment are becoming harder to ignore. Right now, Colorado is dealing with wildfires, record highs abound in the United States and around the world, and the weather is becoming less predictable and more extreme. COVID-19 is still ravaging the population, most notably the US, where half a million new cases a day seem to be the new normal. The American government has basically surrendered to the virus and now wants to blame the states and individuals rather than taking dramatic action and doing bold things.

Continue reading “State of the Blog 2022”

For the next two months, I will be doing a big push for my Patreon. If you enjoy the things you read here on PopCult and are financially able to donate something I would greatly appreciate it. Click here to check it out and I hope to have some special opportunities for my patrons as we grow.

Looking back

2020 was a bitch of a year, and that is an understatement. One of the least exciting U.S. presidential elections managed to bring out more voters than ever before. The guy we wanted to win did but there isn’t much jubilation as the American economy appears to be on the verge of a major collapse. If that wasn’t bad enough, a pandemic rages through the country while the newly approved vaccine trickles out at a rate that experts say will take us a decade to administer to 80% of the population. The summer saw an eruption of civil unrest over police brutality and deeply entrenched systemic racism. All of this is still roiling on as the U.S government now refuses to help out its citizens while COVID kills, leave people with permanent health problems, and destroys multiple industries. So let’s look at how my blog did!

Continue reading “PopCult’s State of the Blog 2021 (January – June)”

It feels like the year both just started and has been going on for an eternity. I have to say that I wasn’t planning on producing this much content in the first half of 2020, but ending up quarantined at home while working allowed me to essentially get a jump on reviewing. By mid-June, I’d gotten through everything I had planned to put out over the summer, so it was pretty exciting to see what I could do for the rest of the break. Here is my plan for July through December with the additional note that if I end up working from home again, there’s a good chance I’d be able to crank out more content than usual. My state has seen a frightening spike in COVID-19 cases, and our governor just extended the state of emergency to the end of August. The other educators in my state and I are now waiting to see what this means for schools, which are scheduled to open back up around August 6th. In the meantime, here’s what you can look forward to on my site from now through December.

Continue reading “The State of the Blog: July-December 2020”

2019 was a year of changes with the shutting down of Google+, a venue where I grew the current iteration of the blog starting back in 2015. My views recovered and they grew by 3% from the previous year. I had my longest consecutive streak of 1,000+ views per month (June through November). Here’s what I have planned looking ahead into a new decade.

Continue reading “The State of the Blog 2020”

So I have been running the blog since November 2009, longer than I have kept any of these things going before, so that’s impressive for me. The blog has garnered over 600 visits since the start of the year ranging from all over the U.S. to Europe and Asia. There’s some interesting things I have coming up on the blog, that I think you’ll enjoy.

– Dropping Jolly Good Thursdays and going to alternate between Hypothetical Film Festivals and It Should Be A Movie. ISBAM will focus mostly on comics at first, and present a property which I have read or encountered that would make a good film.

– I will be coming to the end of my focus on Brian De Palma in July, so be on the lookout for the next poll on my next director. Right now, I am pretty sure Samuel Fuller and Werner Herzog will be two of the choices, so if you wanted to find out a little bit about them before the poll is put up, go ahead.

– I have been researching some incredible looking films for Wild Card Tuesdays, mostly independent or overlooked pictures from the last decade, with some older films thrown in along the way. In July, I’ll be looking at The Dinner Game (which has been remade into the upcoming Dinner for Schmucks) as well as the Peter Sellers’ picture The World of Henry Orient.

– DocuMondays are also kicking into high gear with some very dynamic films. Monday I’ll be reviewing Prodigal Sons, a film that got a lot of attention a few months ago. Will be focusing my attention a lot more personality driven docus as well (Zizek!, Beaches of Agnes, Stevie) so keep a look out for those.

– As you’ve probably noticed, in June Fridays became focused on films from the Criterion library. That is definitely going to provide a lot of material for years to come, and is finally getting me to sit down and watch those films on my list. This Friday, I’ll be reviewing Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s 1990 film Close Up, just released on DVD last week. In addition to that I will be looking at some films by Sidney Lumet, Powell and Pressburger, as well as sampling some directors I have never experienced before.

– In upcoming months I’ll be presenting some themes: For July it is Character Actor month, August will look at my favorite Director/Actor pairings, September will be Hispanic Cinema Month, October will be a month full of just horror films, and in November I’ll be looking at my favorite films based on books.

Hope you stay with the blog for the next half of 2010. I encourage you to leave your comments and feedback. I’m always interested to know what the readers think.