Near the end of January, I received word from Fridae concerning the cessation of the weekly Fridae Movie Club newsletter and all movie reviews, as it develops its next business model. Last week, the official notice went out to subscribers of the newsletter as well as our friends and collaborators - the exhibitors, distributors, and marketers from the film industry.I have had an eventful and memorable experience at Fridae as its resident film critic from October 2009 to January 2013, keeping in mind that Fridae Movie Club counts amongst this region's best read online movie newsletters, operating in one of the highest movie-watching countries in the world.
What does this mean for this blog?
You may have noticed that I haven't updated it since May 2010, with the Iron Man review capsule. That was when Fridae.com switched domain names to Fridae.asia. I looked at the number of reviews I had to go change the links on this blog as well as IMDB, and decided I'd deal with it some day. When it was more convenient.
In between writing film reviews for Fridae, I found myself writing scripts for the second season of The Noose, stand-up routines for local comedians, and even plotting a return of The Video Renegades with my long-time creative collaborator, Marcus Lim.
Our work at The Noose was cancelled mid-season (we suspect not because we were a team of really good writers trolling the establishment) but won some awards the next year. The second project is a story that bears telling elsewhere as a cautionary tale regarding the cowboy town nature of Singapore's entertainment scene. The third project? Marcus and I had re-presented Misgivings at The Substation, making their shortlist of the month again. We had half a dozen short scripts written and ready for a burst of production when Marcus had a fatal swimming accident.
I found myself deciding again and again that I'd deal with all these movie review capsules one day. But not now, please.
That day is now. I'll be backfilling capsules for the reviews I wrote for Fridae from May 2010 to January 2013. If and when Fridae takes down the entire movie review and lifestyle section, I'll post the full reviews here.
When that is done, I expect to continue reviewing films on this blog - either as an independent (so you get to read full reviews here) or under another enterprise (in which case, you get more capsules and links to the full review hosted on its original site). Until then, there won't be reviews for every film that gets released - just the ones that really interest me as a typical moviegoer with limited means - but the good news is I'll have the time to explore DVDs and film retrospectives entirely of my own devising.
This will be an exciting journey, and I hope you're all on board.
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