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« The Joys of Creative Destruction | Main | Elsewhere »

November 23, 2005

For Film Lovers

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

The more film-besotted among our visitors won't want to remain unaware of some high-end moviechat sites:

The shrewd and seasoned industry observer Anne Thompson blogs here.
The NYTimes' civilized (if auteurist) film critic Dave Kehr has started blogging here -- although enough already with white-on-black type used for lengthy posts. Hey world, here's a little lesson from Graphic Design 101: Readers' eyes can typically make it through only a paragraph or two of white on black (or "reversed-out") text.
Filmmaker magazine's staff blogs here, and points out a wonderful website devoted to Polish movie posters. Eastern European graphic design was, for a number of decades, one of the splendors of 20th century visual art, IMHO.
For those who truly can't get enough, there's always Green Cine Daily, which delivers links, links, and more links to reviews, features, gossip, newly-released product, and you-name-it of any kind, so long as it has to do with edgy movies.

Best,

Michael

posted by Michael at November 23, 2005

Comments

You probably already know this, but for those who don'there is an "easy" way to change a white on black page to black on white. In IE do tools -> internet options -> colors -> text = black, background = white -> OK. Accessibility -> "ignore colors specified on web pages" -> OK -> OK. When you want to switch back go into accessibility and uncheck item. This works for fonts pretty much the same way. I'm going to feel silly if you know an easier way to do this.

Posted by: al on November 23, 2005 05:18 PM

I heard that white text on a gray background was easiest on the eyes, so that's what I've set my browser for (using the method al mentions above). I used to get terrible eyestrain, now I just get run-of-the-mill eyestrain.

I find Verdana a nice font for easy reading.

Posted by: Brian on November 23, 2005 05:29 PM

I've similary changed my default background color to grey #8 from standard black: I spend a workday drafting on CAD and all 356+ colors of different architectural layers make me teary-eyed if conrast is too big.

Polish posters: thank you, thank you for this link. Isn't Cabaret just perfect? And this one is like seeing an old departed friend again: Bruno Schulz and I parted our ways when me and my ex were dividing books.

Posted by: Tatyana on November 23, 2005 09:45 PM

The mention of two weblogs fill me with terror: wood s lot and greencine daily.

both are incredible weblogs that I simply have no time for. (Oh, and another is Political Theory , but politics is not really my thing anyway.

I followed both greencine and wood s lot for several months, and just suffered from extreme web exhaustion. The stuff on both sites is just amazing--it just depresses me. I guess I could keep up with either of them if that's all I ever did.

(Sometimes group weblogs like 2blowhards gives me this same weary feeling, but at least there are breaks once in a while).

It's easy in the weblog world (both as reader and writer) to spread yourself too thin.

A month or so ago you asked rhetorically what RSS/RSS readers were. Well, it's a nice invention, but every time I open up my reader, it shows me the exact number of posts I have yet to read from each site. Let's see, I have 158 posts on greencine to read, 121 from Moorishgirl, 90 from Valve, 92 from the always insightful Oreilly Radar, 126 from JOHO, although look on the bright-side, yesterday I half-caught up with this great technical/usability weblog called Creating Passionate Users. (Too lazy to create hyperlinks, etc.).

Ebook/wireless technology still is not there yet, but I look forward to the day when at least I can catch up while lying in bed.

My solution is to flail my arms wildly and assume that all of these weblogs have gone downhill during the periods in which I have forgotten to check them.

Posted by: Robert Nagle on November 24, 2005 06:50 AM