New front page review section help :)

[Keith]

guys,

I'm working on a new front page, pretty close to putting it up.

The big change is the return of the reviews section wheich I'm pretty happy about.

I'm also going to add movie and book reviews as well.

I'd like to aks if you could get me 5 criteria each for movies and books so I can set them up properly Keeping in mind these reviews are for pirates stuff of course

 

[Peter Willemoes]

Sure I´ll help Keith!

Storyline - no matter how well biased we may be towards welcoming a pirate movie or book, I was in fact quite disappointed with the storyline in PotC 4. The CGI is brilliant and Johnny Depp is acting well like he always does. But they still need to follow the classic dramamodel of making the audience able to identify themselves with the character, the character needs to be in a crisis at some point, ressurrection of the character in form of development and then solving the crisis needs to happen. What crisis? Was Jack Sparrow ever in real danger? I could only see endless changes of scene from one wonderfull set to another. Maybe this was because there was no development of character, either of him or the others. He was just being Jack Sparrow and they were just acting with him, not against him, giving him no ping-pong to work with.

So I would suggest we made a criteria for storyline, as the movie may be an expensive production with grand scenes of nice booty and killing, but its a "B-movie" if the story fails to tie any logic into why the characters are there.


Just could just call this criteria whatever you want to..

 

[Thagarr]

It will be great to have reviews back on the front page again!

I think we should also put a link to the release dates back on the front page as well, those were pretty popular.

My suggestions for movies :

Historical Accuracy

Acting

Plot

Movie Soundtrack

Special Effects


And maybe for books :

Historical Accuracy

Plot

Character Development

Writing

Believability

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Movies: Definately "Soundtrack" (I love film music) and I'll agree with "Storyline/Plot" also.
I don't care too much about the acting, since I generally find it acceptable and only rarely find the acting itself worth mentioning.

Historical accuracy can be rated for sure, but is definitely not a requirement for me to enjoy a pirate film.
Not to mention that with my lack of knowledge on historical accuracy, it'd be hard to judge it if I ever were to write a review.

Enjoyability/Fun Factor/Level of Swashbucklingness might be considered also.


Books: Definitely I find the Writing to be very important.
That's the main reason why I love the Hornblower series and just plain can't get through the first Master and Commander book.
Character Development is also a very important part that I like in the Hornblower series in particular.
I haven't read many other period books, other than "On Stranger Tides" at the moment.

Historical Accuracy/Believability could go together; Rate on Historical Accuracy for a book with that in mind,
but rate on Believability for a book deliberately doesn't stick to historical accuracy, eg. On Stranger Tides or anything involving PotC.

 

[Peter Willemoes]

Writing is a difficult subject to define on a genearl basis.
Wilbur Smith´s descriptions of the surroundings in his books are fantastic! But unless you´re a jungle-freak, his books lack perspektive in many other ways.

Patrick O´Brian is very keen on characters, I can understand if people find the first book hard to read, if people are not that interesting to them. The actions start much later

Maybe "Writing" should not be a scale for competion, a rating? Rather a categorizing "Writing Style"? - "Action", "Action Adventure", "Romantic Novel" or something like that..

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I lost it with Master and Commander when he kept going on and on about the different ropes of the ship.