Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

A little while ago I announced that I would be putting this blog, as it exists today, to bed and replacing it with a new movie site that will concentrate on what I love most; writing about movies. Well today I have a few updates.

Firstly, the name. I thought hard about a name that encompasses the key values I want to convey in the new site (I’ll get to these in a bit) and arrived at One Single Frame. Truth be told, It occurred to me while watching Fight Club. You know the scene where Tyler id slipping one single frame of pornography into family films, leaving a subliminal but very real image in viewers’ minds… It got me thinking about how I want to read about movies. I used to subscribe to Empire, first in print, then on the iPad, and found that I only ever skimmed it. I read it for reviews but when I read them, I just skipped to the end. I didn’t care about some self-important critic’s thoughts on existentialism and how the movie was in fact a social commentary on some aspect of society. I cared about whether I would want to part with my hard earned money to see the movie and if I would be happy if I did. The name One Single Frame encompasses the essence of what I want to do; write quick, to-the-point reviews without the bullshit.

Secondly, design. From very early on I wanted One Single Frame to look great. But anyone with half a brain knows design isn’t (just) about what something looks like. Good design is how something works, how it feels and how the user interacts with it. Design can make or break a product. My conversion to Apple products in the last few years has taught me that the devil is in the details and that is what I will be focusing on.

My willingness to provide short, to-the-point articles isn’t just based on what I want to read, it’s based on how I (and an increasing number of people) do read. I wake up at 7am every day to get ready for work and while I lie in bed, thinking whether I want to press the snooze button one more time, I catch up on my online life. I check Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and my Flipboard. Between skipping breakfast, brushing my teeth, doing my hair and getting dressed, I take in whatever new content I can, and I do it on my iPhone. If an article is too long, it is getting in the way of me reading the next thing in my feed and I don’t finish it. What I do finish are the articles that tell me something I care about and do it in 500-1000 words.

So to read a movie review that tells me if a movie is good or not, in 500-1000 words and in a way that makes it easy to read on my iPhone? Where the fuck do I sign?

So that’s what the design needs to deliver, but how am I going to deliver that? I’m no designer. I mean, I know what I like, and I know a little about what makes a good design but I’m not a designer. I know someone who is. My buddy Luke Jones, a fellow movie lover and insanely talented designer, caught up with me over a beer last week while he was in town for New Adventures in Web Design and when I talked to him about One Single Frame, he was instantly on board! Further to that, he has some friends in the design, UX and art direction world with kung fu just as strong willing to get involved as well.

This is early days but I can’t tell you how excited I am to have such talent on board. Nothing exists online that delivers movie news, reviews and articles this way and with people like Luke, and others to be announced soon, on board I’m sure it will smash it! Watch this space!

I started this blog back in 2006 and over the past 6 years it’s been through a lot of ups and downs. I’ve both loved and hated it at times. It started as a personal blog where I would write what I did at the weekends and things I was looking forward to and then evolved into a tech blog and, most recently, a movie blog. I’ve been the epitome of inconsistent, some weeks posting many times and, more recently going over a year without writing a thing.

Some time last year, myself and Luke Jones started a project called Reel 4 which, for reasons of us both simply being too busy, never took off. That project got me thinking. I think the reason I’ve been so inconsistent with this site is that I don’t love it any more. I’ve tried to redesign it many times over the years but, because of the vast scope of the content, I could never settle on the new design. Some suited the movie stuff but not the tech or personal stuff. Some suited the personal stuff but was crap for a movie blog.

With that in mind, this is what I will be doing; In the new year this site will cease to exist. I’m going to keep the domain and simply host a page with links to my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.

In its place, I will introduce a site that will serve as a blog for me to talk movies, comics and geekery. What this will be called is still undecided and I can’t give you a definite date the site will launch, but here’s what I do know:

• Reviews and recommendations will be staying!
• There will be a lot more focus on movie news with links to interesting stuff and other articles.
• Other people wil write posts from time to time.
• It’ll work great on mobiles! (who sits and browses the web on a desktop computer any more?)
• It’ll basically be a middle finger to the popular movie critic scene. You know those dickheads that talk a bunch of pretentious shite on Film 2012? Those guys.
• Design will be minimal with a heavy focus on nice type.

So yeah, there you go. I want to say thank you for reading this site over the years and hope to have you as a reader of the new blog as well.

Dan

Directed/Written by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

In a semi-dystopian future, time travel is controlled by mob syndicates. They use it to carry out untraceable murders by sending the victim back 30 years to be killed by specialised assassins called Loopers. When a Looper is to be retired the mob “close the loop” by sending his older self back as the target. When a shadowy figure in the future, known only as The Rainmaker, begins closing all the mob’s loops at once Joe (Levitt), faced with his future self, must not only ensure the loop is cosed but also determine the identity of The Rainmaker in the present and stop a destructive 30 year circle of violence.

Continue reading Review: Looper (15)

Directed by: JJ Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths

Soon after witnessing a catastrophic train crash, a group of friends begin to notice strange phenomenon in their small home town. Eager to somehow incorporate the events into their own movie, the group dig deeper into the events surrounding the crash only to discover something a lot more sinister is at hand. J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg invite us to remember how movies used to be.

Continue reading Review: Super 8

Directed by: André Øvredal
Starring: Hans Morten Hansen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Johanna Mørck

I first heard of this by way of a trailer on iTunes a few weeks ago and it sort of caught my eye. As rubbish as they usually are, I really love it when movies come out that deal with an established myth or folklore story in a new way (that said, I have no interest whatsoever in seeing Red Riding Hood). Trollhunter is a Blair Witch style mockumentary set in rural Norway. A group of filmmakers on the trail of a bear poacher, instead end up tagging along with a bizarre government employee, the only one in Norway, who’s job it is to track down and kill trolls to protect the public while also working to keep them a secret. Sounds pretty bonkers, but check out the trailer to see why it caught my eye:

Continue reading Review: Trollhunter (tbc)

A few months ago I got an iPad. When they were first released, I like a lot of people looked on them with a doubtful “really?” considering them to be nothing more than a giant iPod touch. When a guy I know bought one on a whim I got a chance to really use one for more than five minutes in an Apple store and my opinion did a total 180°. It all made sense. Using the large touch screen simply feels like the most natural way to use a computer. Instead of interacting with a device which moves a cursor which then interacts with a UI element, you just interact with the UI directly.

Continue reading Things that the iPad really needs.