The CineMidway

Welcome to the The CineMidway, the Blog Carnival devoted to Film Criticism in the Blog World!

Each month The CineMidway will collect blogged criticism on the newly released films of the past month and it will be posted on the last day of the month. Films in general release will automatically be listed, as will premieres from Film Festivals and limited releases when reviews are submitted.

Many reviews listed here will be gathered by searches, but reviewers and writers are welcome to submit their entries in order to ensure inclusion. Please send them to milkrivermusic(at)hotmail.

Each month's carnival will include all the blogged entries that are found or submitted (within the rules), plus a link to the film's Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page, and a link to its Rotten Tomatoes page (RT collects reviews from certified media critics and links to all of their reviews -- the combination of those reviews and those at The CineMidway should pretty well cover the bases).

The CineMidway is posted on a monthly basis beginning with milkriverblog (archived at milkriverreviews) and advertised here on the base page at The CineMidway. Potential Compilers/Hosts are encouraged to contact me to host for a future month -- it's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of visits to your blog. Please let me know what future month you'd like to host and i'll ink you in and provide you with the info to begin.

The rules are simple.

a) Reviews are accepted for any film first released after December 1, 2005, and are compiled monthly based on their release date. Reviews must be posted on regularly updated blog format blogs, and those blogs must have comments enabled. Film reviews that occur significantly after the month in which the film was released are still accepted, and will be added to the bottom of the previosuly posted and archived entry. Blog entries will consist solely of a link directly back to the review on your blog. It would serve you well to be sure that individual pages on your blog include links back to your main page (folks who design their own pages often leave out the code necessary for this -- you don't want folks to have struggle to find your main blogpage).

b) Only substantial, well-written reviews, focused on single films are accepted. Reviews that cover extensive film history as a prelude or justification for reviews of the featured movie are acceptable. Reviews that are focused on history or philosophical pursuits but merely mention the film in question are not acceptable. And we're not looking for little tidbits that just say basically "i went to see film X and i really enjoyed it . . ." We want significant comment -- a couple of sentences will not do.

c) No reviews, or press releases disguised as reviews, will be accepted from anyone involved with the funding or executive production of a film. Such planted reviews, if found later, will be removed.

d) If you want your review included in the announced version of the carnival (which would be a boon to your hitsmeter) then make sure i/we have the link before the 29th of the month (except the 27th of February). I'll continue to add after that date, but you'll miss the initial PR.

e) Film reviews will include a marker denoting an estimate of how you rated the film. You are welcome to designate that: a) it is a positive review; b) it is a negative review; or c) it is either a neutral review, or else you simply critique without assigning a value. In reviews that i find, i will designate them as one of the three above -- neutral designations will go to any review that appends no rating, regardless of whether or not it is positive or negative in tone. For films that are rated i will give a positive to anything greater than 50% of the rating method, negative to less than 50%, and neutral to those that hit dead on. When i assume the rating i will place the code in brackets.

Code:
~ designated neutral by the author, [~] designated neutral by the editor
+ positive by author, [+] positive by editor
- negative by author, [-] negative by editor

The editor (tony g of milkriverblog) and the rotating hosts reserve the right to accept or reject any entry for any reason without justification to anyone; but basically if you play nice, we'll play nice.


Tags: Links, Blogs, Culture, Film, The CineMidway, milkriverblog, milkriverreviews