Nostalgia Nugget: Looking back at 2016

"Really dark in here, must be looking back at 2016."

You know, I never did one of these for 2015, but that's OK. I was busy looking at what new features and content I was adding in 2016 instead. But I'll admit that I'm one of those people that likes to reflect rather than plan. That is why there is os much nostalgia and older films on this blog instead me trying to keep current with new films.

So I did take some time away from this blog to work on my fiction. I am still plugging away at my fantasy novel. I got a bit distracted from in it December with all the holidays and family fun time kicking in. But I'm shooting to get that first draft completed by mid-February and then take a break from fiction writing for a little bit before diving back in. I'll be posting some thoughts on my Storytelling blog if you are interested.

One of the interesting things about this blog is that I still almost reached 100 posts for the year. I wasn't expecting that. But I did modify the content a bit so that I could post a bit more frequently without having to put in as much work. I love writing the in depth review content, but it takes quite a bit of time and finding all the screenshots is actually the biggest issue. I pull most of them from DVDs myself, and for a long movie it can take a while to find the perfect fit.

Based on the number of replies and click my And then this happened... posts are the most popular new addition. I have a lot of fun finding the perfect moments for these posts and I'm glad you are enjoying them as much as I am.

Conan's first impression of the Ben Hur 2016
trailer.

I'm still not sure about the First Impressions posts. Those are made on movies I feel like I want to comment on, but don't have enough material to write a full review of without another viewing. So The Force Awakens is a great example. But once I got my full review up, the First Impression seems kind of pointless. I'll keep this concept up for this year, but I'm not sure how much I'll utilize it. Instead I might just shift it to the Movie Musings section.

I had a lot of fun with the Movie Musings section. This allowed me to write a bit about more than one film, or a film concept without feeling like I was tied to just reviewing the movie. These did tend to take a bit longer to work on, so unless I was really feeling inspired I didn't get to them too often, but I enjoyed the freedom these offered.

You'll notice I only posted a couple of Favorite Scenes posts. I really enjoyed doing these, but man did they take a lot of work to pull screenshots for. Very time consuming. I had a couple more ideas for these in 2016 but each time I sat down to work on it, I got intimidated by the amount of screenshots I'd have to capture. I'll keep the option open another year, but if I don't do too much with it, it might also get folded into the Movie Musings section.

"Only a month dedicated to Star Trek?
Most illogical."

Another thing I did that I really enjoyed was having theme months. I've done this in the past with November being "Turkey" month where I tackle MST3K and cheesy favorite, and of course October being horror movie month. In 2016 I dedicated most of July to Star Trek and most of May to Star Wars. It was quite a bit of fun, and I will probably do that again this year.

I'm wondering if I want to spend a bit more time on movie music this year. While I find that aspect of film making fascinating, I'm not sure if it is something anyone here wants to read more about. I've been toying with the idea of writing some film score reviews, just to try my hand at it. But we'll see.

That said, I'm open to suggestions. You want to see tackle a specific movie, a specific topic or you just want me to try to find a And Then This Happened... moment from a movie, feel free to comment on this post or shoot me an email or on Facebook. I've done reader suggestions in the past and had a lot of fun with them.

All in all I had a lot of fun blogging about movies again this year. I want to thank all of you who have been reading and commenting on this blog. It means a lot to me to have folks that spend some time reading my thoughts on movies (meandering as they may be). Looking forward to what 2017 brings!