A few weeks ago, I had a small revelation about the way I view movies. It just never occurred to me before, but it makes perfect sense: I view movies as if I'm watching documentaries. I don't give a shit about character development, plot, subtext, allegory, acting or any of the shit you're supposed to care about. I think there are just three qualifications I have for a movie to be good:

1) It can't ruin my suspension of disbelief. The acting, the dialog, all of it is usually acceptable as long as it maintains the illusion. To illustrate: It's totally lost on me why people would think Johnny Depp is a better actor than George Clooney. Even though I agree with that opinion, I couldn't offer a technical analysis of why I agree with it. Depp seems interesting when I watch him. Clooney doesn't. That's it. As for dialog, watching Fight Club will ruin my suspension of disbelief every time. The dialog doesn't seem at all spontaneous or real. It seems really, really, really, really contrived. I realize intellectually that every single element of every single movie is contrived, but there are some things about some scenes that just snap me out of the "viewer" mode and into the "critic" mode. (Even though I couldn't critique my way out of Gene Siskel's colostomy bag when it comes to movies.)

2) It has to keep me interested until the end. I have a really short attention span. If I can make it to the end of a movie without wanting to go do something else, it's a good movie. End of story. I don't need to analyze every minute detail. I'd rather lop off a hand than spend more than ten minutes afterward thinking about most movies. I simply don't care that much. (Then when I hit a movie where I do want to spend a lot of time thinking about it, it seems I'm one of the few that sees anything redeeming in said film. I might be the only person on Earth who has seen Steven King's Sleepwalkers more than three times and still wants to see it again.)

3) The most objective of all - It can't be set in the real world. It has to be futuristic or supernatural or surreal or something along those lines. There are very, very few movies that have any appeal to me that look like the real world. I'd watch Evil Dead 2 over Casablanca 100 times out of 100.

I remembered that I did the same thing when I was a kid. I didn't understand why people would say movies were bad because this happened or that happened. Looking back on it I guess I thought, "How can that be a dumb thing to happen? That's just what happened." I realize now that I always looked at them like I'd look at factual stories. Strange, given that I was more likely to be watching movies about werewolves or Godzilla than about anything that could be factual. But hey, I was a weird kid.

But enough of that...

There are three noteworthy updates to StormClad since last week's update. So let's go over them:

1. Discussion Forum Revamp - This is a major overhaul of the board. The reaction so far has been mixed, but I'm leaning more and more toward keeping the new way. There's just so much more functionality available. The look and feel can be tweaked over time. I may switch back to the old way of having it blend seemlessly with the overall site navigation, but other than that the adjustments will be minor.

2. StormClad Radio - That's right. Check out the link in the upper lefthand corner of the navigation bar. No longer will you have to settle for one crappy download each week. Now you'll have over two hours of crappy poorly-streamed music on demand! The radio station (hosted by Live 365) will have a varied playlist based mainly on whatever is tickling my fancy at the moment. You might hear Carcass followed by Johnny Cash. You just don't know. I plan to change it often. Those of you hung up on the morality of downloading mp3s can rest assured that Live 365 has already been sufficiently ass-raped by the RIAA - there's nothing illegal about the station.

Note that a fast connection is pretty much a requirement for listening. The bitrates have been scaled way down to help with streaming, but a dial-up modem is still going to have problems.

I've got the station for three months so far. If enough people use it and support it, I'll keep it going. Which brings me to the next addition.

3. Pay Pal Donation - Since Beren sank so low as to sell out to corporate greed, I feel I can sneak in under his massive shadow without too much commotion. I'm not bracing for a great deal of contributions (or even to break even) but a few bucks here and there would be nice. *hint hint*