(3) Art of Blogger Persona
Posted on February 7, 2008
Filed under Uncategorized
Aintitcool.com is one of the early film news and review blogs of its kind, started in 1996 by a man named Harry Knowles as a hobby in Austin, Texas. After an accident, he was bed-ridden so he began searching the internet message boards for upcoming movie news, and then decided to post his research on his new website, which is named after a phrase John Travolta spoke in the movie Broken Arrow.
Soon, he began getting tips and informants about studio secrets on upcoming movies, and his website gained notoriety when he posted bad reviews on advanced screenings of Batman and Robin. The film tanked, and the studios blamed him for the bad box office performance. (I guess the studio would never consider that it was just a really bad movie…)
Harry posts most of the main entries and reviews, but there are other writers who go by pseudonyms like Merrick, Latauro, Quint, Moriarty, and Capone who also post movie news, reviews, and interviews. Between all the writers, they all share more similarities in phrasing, diction, and tone than they do in dissimilarities as a whole, but they are still able to maintain different voices.
The layout is very simple with the Lastest News feed in the middle, with Top Stories on the left and Television News on the right. Bottom of the layout has the reviews by Harry, and reviews on DVDs, comics and animation.
Harry, the most frequent poster, loves to use ellipses, as do some of his peers. He uses it in several different ways. He uses it to slow down the reader’s eyes, to make the reader anticipate what is coming next, or he uses it in the place of periods. Also, uses it as a lead into examples of what he is talking about. i.e. a trailer or link to something perhaps. Here’s an excerpt from one of his latest posts:
“Hey folks, Harry here… Oh… I like this trailer… I think this was completely off my radar. Luc Besson produced and written story… Starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace… Oh… and from the director of DISTRICT 13 – which was non-stop asskicking. There’s no details on when this will be coming to the U.S. – looks like Fox has the rights – but no announced release date, as of yet. It’ll be hitting in France in late March though. Here ya go…”
Merrick, another poster, also goes on an ellipses-spree and uses them to create a dramatic effect. For example, in one of his latest posts he writes about the film Heath Ledger was filming before he died:
“Word on final casting decisions and official production restart may be coming within days. Until then…PARNASSUS abides.”
Most of the posters are people we can relate to because their diction uses colloquial language, certain spelling, and the use of slang and curse words. They abbreviate words like using “‘round” instead of around, and “helluva” or the use of made up words like “gothicky” and “asskickery.” They also try to imitate spoken words by imitating vocal length, such as spelling damn like “ daammmnnnn.” They also use internet slang/abbreviations like F.T.W. and W.T.F.
All of the posters relate in tone, because their posts are written with passion and excitement. Harry’s posts feel as if he’s trying to hug you with his words and excitement. A good example of this is his post on the upcoming Disney movie Wall-E:
“Hey folks, Harry here – loving the fucking defense of the New York Giants! But inbetween the awesome play of the New York Giants – making THE GREATEST TEAM IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAME look… meh… was this spot from WALL*E and Pixar. If you didn’t know. This is going to be the film that you remember as being the film you saw in 2008, for the rest of your life. It will be mind-blowing and soul-affirming. And I can not count the seconds till it plays. I just hope I get to do a big special Kids Klub / Fantastic Fest event for it here in Austin. If only so I can see it that much sooner.”
The word “love” is tossed around a lot in post like this by Quint, and a quote from his passionate post about the band Tenacious D:
“I’m a big fan of Tenacious D. …So, for fans of the D there’s not even a question about whether you should see this movie.”
Another good example of passion is a post written by Latauro on the film The Shawshank Redemption:
“Am I the only one pissed off at THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION being so close to the top of the IMDB Top 250 Films of All Time list?… To this day, it remains my favourite.”
Many of the posters use short and succinct sentence phrasing, but no poster serves as a better example than Quint in his latest post: Quint has seen the craziest cult classic in the making Korean bit of weirdness called DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS at SBFF!!! His use of commas and short sentences is superb:
“Okay, let me try to figure this out. It’s a Korean movie. That’s something. It’s a Korean movie that features, in no particular order, pink-haired ladies singing, a Cyclops, a dragon, a little green circle that gives girls back their virginity, a masochistic teacher, a cross-dressing businessman (he like Sailor Moon, apparently), an underground sex club, a chick with a dick and more than a few Karaoke musical numbers complete with the counting down hand and light up (Korean) characters as the people on the screen sing.”
Bliss.
In the end, I realized there is no major difference in voice between the writers, and that is not a bad thing. They all love their ellipses, and they all write with passion. They like cursing, and humor, and misspelling words but ain’t it cool?
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