Saturday, November 8, 2003

Hello, Savant is sort of waiting for my internet service to resume so I can post ... this little interruption may be a benefit by making me re-think some of my spelling and less-inspired assertions.

Last week I blabbed about wanting to change my front page format. I'm going to do an experiment by not linking to the new reviews up top ... today they are

THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, THE FIRST TWO SEASONS,
HIGH SIERRA,
LE CERCLE ROUGE and
OLEANNA,

My so-called 'column' had become a prose duplicate of the listing below, and after a year or so, the essential dumbness of this arrangement finally dawned on me. Now you'll have to go to the 'new features' spot a few inches down the page to read the new blurbs and make the links. If you just want to skip the Savant blab and get to the reviews, I suggest linking to the mid-page link instead of up here. Hope this little idea doesn't backfire.

I'm going to try and reserve most of the column space for various printable gab and news I've heard during the week. Today though, I'll just bore you with thoughts about DVD Savant itself.

I'm curious as to how many read Savant and who they are. As the readership is split between the 'original' pages I personally cultivate, and the copies in the greater DVD Talk review database (and over at Rotten Tomatoes, and I think, still at DVD Basen), I never know how big my audience is. Nobody's complaining, but I have the feeling that it varies greatly. The review pages have hit counters that only cover who comes here, and they can be misleading. I've checked back on a title that a few days earlier registered 2,000 hits, and found it reverted to 57 or so, which can be a little humbling.

Fearless DVD Talk leader Geoffrey Kleinman has been taking good care of Savant, and recently replaced the 'search' function on the main page, which had pooped out at the 500 article mark. I haven't been able to check it yet, so I'm not sure how it's working. My Review Search pages work fine to see a full list of Savant reviews, but when I want to access a single review quickly, the most efficient way is still to go to Yahoo or Google and type in 'review title dvd savant'. Most of them come up right away.

Let me stress one more time the benefit of reading Savant here at the original site, instead of at DVD Talk (sorry Geoffrey). If I make some egregious error, I'll fix it in both places, but most revisions and fixes happen only here. Original Savant reviews have a full credit list up top. And when Savant's helpful correspondents write in with rebuttals and other information, I only update the original review. For instance, a reader contradicted the notion that Andy Williams sang for Lauren Bacall in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT with info that trumped other printed reports. And a reader of the review of HELL'S HIGHWAY, THE STORY OF HIGHWAY SAFETY FILMS reported in with his own feelings about the subject - he was one of those 6 year-olds in Ohio subjected to the graphic movie about child molesters.

So basically, revisiting old articles often results in new goodies to read. I'll try to report these revisions more often here on the front page.

Finally, thanks for all the feedback on CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG. I guess I didn't enrage anyone with my inability to see any merit in the film, but I got lots of email about how the movie is an affectionate favorite anyway. One rule at DVD Savant: Don't tell people what they're supposed to like or want to see. I'd hate to have to defend my taste in a court of law - "So, Mr. Erickson, if that really is your name ... tell us again how many times you've watched THE MYSTERIANS ...."

Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Posted by DVD Savant at November 08, 2003 03:39 PM