A blogger's best 5

By Michael Guillen

There’s a scene well into Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy where the young Gypsy Rose Lee is offered timely advice from three seasoned strippers who cue her that she’ll be much more than a mimic if she has a gimmick. With the plethora of blogs now available out on the blogosphere — each somehow exposing if not shamelessly foisting the personality of their authors — the parade of opinion can become nearly numbing; a real bump and grind. Good writing hopefully being a given, it still takes something extra to make a blog attract traffic. The links that constitute a blogroll on any given site indicate a kind of who’s who of the online set. Some are mere preferences, maybe even friends, but for those blogs that appear again and again there’s something else working for them. I suspect the best blogs have a gimmick and here are five whose gimmicks, I feel, help them get ahead. (SF360.org editor’s note: Michael Guillén has offered his services to SF360 as an intern; he publishes “The Evening Class” film site.)

1. The Greencine Daily
Though Greencine is a Bay Area organization, David Hudson authors this blog out of Berlin, Germany. With his coterie of informants providing Johnny-on-the-spot reportage, David provides a daily dose of hyperlinks that spotlight film festivals throughout the world, insightfully indexing and profiling films and those who write about film; his educational outreach is diverse and encyclopedic. David directs traffic out on a web that is becoming increasingly swift. His site alone is sometimes overwhelming but much less so than surfing alone.

2. Hell on Frisco Bay
Racheting down just a notch to provide a working handle in the Bay Area, Brian Darr’s blog juggles the Bay Area’s many movie calendars, pampering the cinemaniac’s dream of attending choice screenings at favored venues. More like a ringmaster than a traffic control cop, Brian highlights the latest acts in town; it’s a timesaving service for the rest of us.

3. Girish
Girish Shambu’s eponymous site is a testament to his skills as an educator and social facilitator. Writing an entry usually once a week, he’s a teacher who’s cognizant that ending a lesson with a question provokes discussion and promotes interaction. He’s fair in his moderation of comments that frequently dip into the hundreds within the course of a week. His blog is the water cooler that hydrates on-line discourse. Everyone gathers at Girish’s place to talk about film.

4. Film of the Year
Thom Ryan out of Portland, Oregon, methodically posts each Sunday, selecting one film from each year to track changes in film over time. Erudite and yet enormously entertaining, his approach is unique, systematic and a wonderful alternative to the hyped buzz surrounding current releases.

5. The House Next Door
Matt Zoller Seitz counters the danger of solipsism with collaborative teamwork and has transformed his blog into an online magazine with contributors who vary from print-journalism-style rigorous to more relaxed inquiries with an online cadence; a hybrid brew that has a heady effect.

03.02.2007