On the occasion of Unseen Films third birthday....

Happy Birthday to us.

Yea, it’s our third birthday so feel free to go have a big chunk of cake and some ice cream in our honor. I would say feel free to act like a three year old but I don’t want to be the one condoning painting the walls with hot fudge or flipping noodles at your Aunt Martha.

A great deal has happened in the past three years. First off this went from a blog that was just me alone in a room writing for my own amusement to a blog with staff of twelve and thousands of readers.

We’ve gone from reviewing films and events because that’s what interested us, to being asked to provide coverage and do interviews.

We’ve gone from getting blank stares when the website was mentioned to getting compliments (and a few brick bats) about what we’ve written. I've also had one of my reviews (not one of the positive ones) quoted back to me word for word.

First off I have to thank the great people who over the years accepted my invitation to help me do this. To all of my fellow Unseen Films writers and researchers, thank you I couldn’t have done any of it if you didn’t come along. I really mean that, every one of you has helped Unseen grow. Not only just grow all of you pushed it and pulled it and made damn sure it ws alive and well and read by everyone out there.

Most importantly I want to thank everyone of you who reads what we write, regularly or irregularly. If you didn’t read what we do we probably would have hung this up a long time ago, or at least been much more random in keeping up with it. Yes, we write because we want to share the films we find, but at the same time it’s nice to know that we have an audience.

And on birthdays we look backand we look ahead...

This time in looking ahead I’m not going to really make promises. I’ve gotten mired in promises in the past and while some things have come to pass, and some are still on the drawing board, a good number of others have simply been tossed aside (You guys remember the music series I promised?). My sense of a time table for anything is completely off so I won’t really promise what is going to happen.

I will say that at least for the near future we will continue to give you at least a movie a day. I can’t promise the second movie on Wednesdays as we have done since the start, but considering how many additional movies we review(we've done at least two posts a day since the new year started)  I don’t think they’ll really be missed- and considering that I already have a few things spread out to after Christmas it's probably best I don't push it. I'm going to try to give you a movie a day or what works out to a movie a day when all is said and done.

I can promise that we will continue to cover as many film events as possible.  Possible is the operative word since everyone of us works day jobs and do Unseen on the side. We do not get paid to do this, we do it for love of doing it. We, and especially I can't see everything thrown our way. I recently had to say no to one thing I said I would review and I also passed on something that one of my infalible sources threw my way simply because I couldn't fit it in in our time frame. There is just too much going on for us to be everywhere and see everything.

Being overwhelmed aside, I'm going to try and keep this up for at least one more year.  I can't promise that it will happen but I'm going to try. I say that because life gets in the way and more importantly my love of doing this ebbs and flows. Sometimes I don't know why I'm doing this and then suddenly something happens, talking to a  person I admire like Donnie Yen or Rodriguez or Dave McKean, or talking to some random person  about a movie only to find hours have past and I have a new friend, or seeing a film what was really out of left field that has become a favorite (GirlWalk//All Day),... and suddenly I realize why I'm doing this...because I still am a fan of movies enough to go OH WOW when something cool happens.  When the OH WOW goes away, really goes away, I'll hang it up, until then I'll...no we'll keep doing this.

Andnow it's time for us to go celebrate-so if you don't mind I'm off to have some cake and some soda and chill out with a movie...