Oh no... it cannot be... he's LOOSE! Sound the alarm!!!

Hi, there... thanks for giving my little latter-day blog effort a look!

My goal here is pretty simple; to shed a little extra light on films (including theatrical cartoons and live-action short subjects) and television that I enjoy, and a few I'm discovering for the first time. While pretty much anything is fair game, within my eclectic interests, I doubt the world is particularly clamoring for the eight millionth review of Casablanca or Ghostbusters, so I'll tend to focus more on the obscure, the forgotten, the bizarre and the underrated.


Like most people, I enjoy some modern productions, but my tastes do tend to skew older (I'm a Gen-Xer; I grew up when lots of vintage material was still shown on local TV stations... to the extent where I share most of the same TV memories as Baby Boomers, albeit via re-runs), so you'll see far more pre-1980s titles covered, than not. As far as TV series go, I'll be selecting particular, individual episodes of interest from various programs, rather than covering an entire series' run, which would take too much time and more enthusiasm than I can muster. The exception, however, would be the occasional one-standard-season-or-less series, here or there, that deserves some attention. I do have a couple of those in mind.

This won't be a "viewing diary" of everything I watch, but a more selective sub-set of titles that might be of more interest. This aims to be a mix of personal reaction, a little info and (hopefully) some light fun. Let's see if I can successfully walk that fine line between sober scholarship and facetious foolishness, shall we? There's always a first time!

And now, few things you can pretty much count on not getting here:

• Spoiled twist endings. Really, if there's a decent sting in the tail of a film or TV episode, I'm not even going to mention that there's a twist, much less go into detail about it. To my mind, even flagging a surprise is enough to ruin that experience for a first-time viewer.

• Top 10/20/50/100 lists. Aren't there too many of these around, already? Anyway, I'm too much of a film freak to be able to limit myself to that degree, and besides... in some respects, this blog (if it flourishes) basically is a version of my list, taken in total. If I post any lists at all, it will be more along the thematic lines of, "Here's some stuff to consider for Christmas viewing" or a ranking of something fairly narrow and finite, like the James Bond films.

• My day-to-day activities away from the TV.   --Hah! As if there were any!

• Political diatribes. Like anyone else, I have a particular set of ideological beliefs, yes... and a little of that may inevitably color my reactions to things, but you won't be seeing any outright polemics embedded in what I write here. It just isn't my style, nor where my interest lies.

• Regular daily postings. I just don't have it in me to keep up that kind of blogging schedule, sorry to say. I'll try to keep things fresh on a weekly basis (if I can swing it), and I may well occasionally post a few days in a row (or multiple times within a week), but I think that will be more the exception than the norm.

• Showbiz obituaries. Yeah, it's a bummer when a favorite creator or performer leaves us, but I've seen enough blogs try to keep up with such events, and become little more than a roll call and credits list for the recently deceased. For me, that would take too much time and effort away from the main focus of this blog.

But what does a random sampling of the general public think about all this?

Huh... interesting... well, anyway, let's get this thing moving and see how it goes, shall we?