Some exciting things happening as we head towards 2019…
As most of our readers and podcast listeners know, 2018 has been a really tough year on Kim and myself. We’ve both suffered through a number of illnesses, I had to deal with the loss of my mom in May, which began a series of concerning health issues for me as well. And work has been a bear, causing all kinds of disruptions throughout the year. It has been detrimental to the point that we have opted not to have a Poppies and Rosies awards show on New Years’ Eve, simply because neither one of us feel we have seen enough films to even fill up a baker’s dozen best list, let alone our usual full slate of awards. We’re going to shift our “Just ‘Cause We Can” awards to that time slot this year (which is why there’s no Subject:CINEMA this weekend) because those are made up of what we HAVE seen…and that hasn’t been much. Whereas most years we see an average of over 100 current films in the theater, and on OnDemand, premium cable, and Netflix, this year – all of those combined – we’ve seen maybe TWENTY current films, and none of the big, critically-acclaimed, Oscar bait films either…
But there’s a bright horizon ahead…and 2019 is going to be bringing some exciting new features to both the podcasts and the websites. And it’s going to get BUSY around here again…
In January, we will be launching THREE BRAND NEW Podcasts on Patreon, available EXCLUSIVELY to Patrons at the $5 level or above each month – Subject:CINEMA’s Review Revue, Subject:CINEMA’s Freeze Frame, and Kaiju Korner. We first told you about these new shows in September, so you can check out this post for more info on these shows.
January will also bring the season premieres of Subject:CINEMA presents Front Row Five And Ten and Catastrophe Vortex (which has been completely overhauled). Over at my music site, The Kirkham Report, I will get back to my music video countdown shows before the new year is here, and lots more coming for the new year, trying to work around YouTube’s ridiculous restrictions on some stuff (it’s not their fault, it’s the legacy recording industry, who are still stuck in the 1970s), but I WILL DO IT. That means back to the TKR Hot 20 show on Saturdays, the TKR Retro 20 on Tuesdays (possibly moving to Patreon soon), and plenty more features as well. You can check out the videos on PNR’s YouTube channel. More on what happened is over here at TKR.
And after the fun and craziness we’ve had doing the first two shows, we are planning two, and possibly three, original PNRNetworks AudioVisual Productions dramatic presentations. Next Halloween, we’ll bring you an enhanced version of our “War Of The Worlds” production from October 2018, with added EAS Bulletins and such (the way it was originally supposed to be done this year but time constraints didn’t allow for it). And there will be at least one original drama coming DEFINITELY coming your way in May 2019, and POSSIBLY a second later in the year. I truly do wish more people had heard them and were aware of them, but those who listened to them, THANK YOU! If you haven’t checked them out yet, please do – “Manhattan Hammerdown: As It Happened“, our tenth anniversary tribute to “Cloverfield” is here; our 80th annual homage to “War Of The Worlds” is here.
For those of you who are regulars to our website at eCinemaOne (and if you’re not you SHOULD be, heh heh), we’ll get back to more-regular postings, including hot new trailers, several regular columns, including a brand new one – The Whole Ketchup (tentative title)- debuting in a couple of weeks that might drive some people – particularly online film critics – nuts. We’ll also be posting some stuff EXCLUSIVELY for Patreon Patrons as well.
eCO has also declared 2018 to be The Year of the Film Festival, and in January, in tandem with S:C, we’ll be launching our new “Fethival Central” features and series, which we’ll give you full info on later this week in a press release, but basically, we are aiming to become THE website for film festival coverage, even when we can’t get to all of them. Anchored by our annual staples “Fethival Of Film Fethivals” and “Boston Springs A Fethival” episodes of Subject:CINEMA in January and May each year, we think our coverage will be worth watching. It’s a HUGE undertaking, one that I think will benefit the millions of film fans out there.
S:C spinoffs Tuesday Digidex and Three Minute Weekend will also be out there every week on Tuesdays and Fridays bringing you the rundown of the latest theatrical and home video releases, just like they have been doing for most of the past decade.
eCO’s Hub-centric sister site eCinemaBoston is also gearing up for tons of new posts and blogs: after several years of severe stagnation, and after weathering several closings in the metro area, including smaller theaters in Sharon and Danvers, Boston is suddenly becoming a theater boom town. With two huge new theaters opening in the past year – AMC’s South Bay Center 12 in Dorchester and Keresotes’ luxury Showplace ICON Boston in the fast-growing Seaport district, neither of which we’ve been to yet – and two more to come – an as-yet unnamed tenant at the under-construction Roxbury Crossing project in Roxbury and the new 15-screen-plus-restaurant Arclight Boston @ Hub On Causeway, attached to North Station and also presently under construction – in the next 18 months, PLUS potential for possible new theater locations in the ‘burbs at the Suffolk Downs Redevelopment in Revere (Hey Alamo Drafthouse: we’re WAITING…::taps foot::) as well as the proposed renovation of what was once the AMC Harvard Square in Cambridge (planning board meets in January on this proposal), we are about to be deluged with bright and shiny new multiplexes. Having said that, however, in addition to those and the many various Showcase, AMC, and Regal locations around the area, there are also a lot of smaller theaters within a 50-mile radius of Boston, and in the next year we will begin to undertake a project to visit and spotlight these as well as the big boys and hopefully paint a broad, beautiful portrait of Boston as America’s fastest-growing premiere theater center. We plan to launch a series of portraits of individual theaters, and especially those smaller, often family run, theaters in the outlying areas of the metro area in June, following the busy Boston Spring Festival season.
We are always working on developing new and fresh ideas for our readers and listeners and this coming year is no exception. However, doing all this is very hard work – as much as we love doing it all, it’s very time consuming, and in order for us to really be able to give as much as we can, we need to concentrate on finding a way to give one of us the ability to work on it FULL TIME. And we can’t do that without your help. I have to admit I’ve been very disappointed by our Patreon campaign efforts. We have literally thousands of readers and listeners who enjoy our shows and posts, but as is normal for web and video sites, almost no one seems to be willing to chip in for what we’re doing. We don’t take advertisements or run ads, because we want our shows and sites to be clutter free and also free of any kind of influence. When we did have a few of them – back when Mevio was our podcasting home – we did make a little here and there, and that was very helpful. However, after Mevio shut down, it became very difficult to do things for awhile. We persevered and managed to keep going to where we are stable enough to keep things going, and now have a budget that includes our online activities. But it’s a very minimal budget and doesn’t allow us to do as much as we’d like nor as much as we should be doing. In January, we will introduce a new set of prices and perks over on our Patreon, and we’re going to premiere our new shows there because we hope our listeners will be devoted enough to be motivated to become Patrons and enjoy some other material that will be exclusive over there and some really terrific perks for their help as well. It doesn’t cost much – it’s low enough that you shouldn’t even notice it – we have a starting level of $2 a month – for that you’ll get listed on our Patron page across the PNRNetworks family of sites – and the $5 and $10 levels will have some really great new stuff as well – $5 gets you THREE brand new podcasts each month and $10 will net you some other great stuff we’re still working out right now. There will also be levels at $25, $50, $75, and $100 levels with the perks going up and up. NOW is the time to sign up and become a patron – you’re going to get a HUGE amount of exclusive original material from eCO, eCB, TKR, S:C and more if you do! And your support will help support all our sites and shows, including our friends at PNRNetworks shows Cavebabble and Ant B.’s Nerd Grotto, Kim’s shows Platinum Roses’ Garden and Ring Around The Rosie, and help in the development of new shows, sites, products (we have a swag shop debuting in January covering the entire gamut of PNR Shows and sites) and programming. So PLEASE come on board – please go over to http://patreon.com/pnrnetworks and join what we hope will be a new wave of Patrons in the new year!
We’ll see you back here for Subject:CINEMA on Monday, December 31st and the annual TC and Kim “Just ‘Cause We Can”awards! And keep tuned throughout each week at eCinemaOne for all the latest awards news!
And THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
