This year at MovieFanFare we started a new category called the Movie Mashup. The mashup features several articles written about a particular movie category or niche. For Halloween, we published two mashups, Halloween Classic Horror Movie Mashup and Zombies, Vampires and Werewolves: Halloween Movie Mashup 2, showcasing the most popular movie genre among our writers — Horror. For the holiday season, we put together Christmas Movie-Mashup: A Merry Retrospective .
Today, we would like to introduce to you what we hope will be an annual mashup: The Most Popular Articles Mashup. By spotlighting articles with the most comments, the most page views, and that led to the most time spent on the page, we would like to present to you our most popular posts of 2010.
Fanfare staff writer Irv Slifkin published the article Hope, Stanwyck, Novak, More On The Way; with 90 comments to date, this is by far the most popular and most commented-on article since the inception of MovieFanFare.
Irv gives us an overview of new Universal classic movie releases featuring Bob Hope, two collections of Film Noir classics for the noir buff, Kim Novak favorites and from deep within the Universal vaults, Deanna Durbin: The Music And Romance Collection… and the list goes on.
Gary Cahall wrote a somewhat controversial article about the 10 Things I Hate About Casablanca. In Gary’s words, “there are certain aspects to Casablanca–some very minor–that may puzzle, irk or even annoy me”. That being said, you get the drift of the article and can imagine the comments people left for Gary. In all there were 67 comments, some of which were a bit contentious, and some were, well… take a look for yourself. We love the conversation this article started and welcome your thoughts on the subject.
For the next most popular posts, we looked to the ruler of the web, Google, for guidance. Google Analytics, a measurement tool for websites and web content reported that the article Jurassic Park: Ten Things To Know About The Movie, published in response to the Movie Mystery Quiz (held on our Facebook page), was one of the top viewed pages on our blog. Did you know Jurassic Park was the first movie made using the DTS sound system?
First Time Viewing Experiences is a publishing concept where staff writer Brian Sieck watches a classic movie for the first time and then writes an in-depth analysis and review of the movie. First Time Watch: Christmas In Connecticut was Brian’s most recent viewing experience, and his article not only has over 20 emotional comments but more people spent a longer amount of time reading this article than any other on our Blog. Maybe they were thinking about how to craft their response.
Brian also crafted an comprehensive article early in the year titled, I Would Not Like To Thank The Academy: Oscar Snubs Over The Years. As the title suggests, Brian takes a close look at actors who were passed over for their industry’s most prestigious award. The comments truly show the extent of our readers’ movie knowledge and what a hot topic is the Academy Awards ceremony.
There’s no denying that our readers love articles about great classic movies. Guest writer Kitty Packard decided to look back to her childhood and her affection for movies from the ’40s with an article she submitted entitled Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo & Samuel Goldwyn. Many of Kitty’s favorite movies with funnyman Kaye were made by producer Samuel Goldwyn.
Packard shares with us her memories of Wonder Man from 1945, 1946’s The Kid From Brooklyn, and A Song Is Born from 1948. Do you have a favorite Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo movie from your childhood?
On the lighter side of MovieFanfare content, every once in a while we publish a still shot from a popular movie and ask you to add a unique or funny caption. Writer Jason Marcewicz calls this category Create-A-Caption (archive) and this year there were several popular Create-A-Caption posts. One of Jason’s pictures — featuring the worlds most famous and best-loved monster, Godzilla — garnered some great comments. Join the fun and add your caption to the Godzilla: Create-A-Caption.
Jason also combed through the archives of movie titles this year and found some of what he simply calls Bad Movie Titles. Many of our readers added to the list of “bad movie titles” and a few readers did not agree with some of Jason’s picks. Take a look at the list and join the conversation.
In all, staff writers at MovieFanfare, along with guest contributors, published over 550 articles this year: New DVD releases, guest articles, Create-A-Caption, movie podcasts, Movie Polls and much more. The articles above represent a small fraction of the content MovieFanFare has to offer. If there is a particular article or feature you like or if you have an idea for a new feature, please let us know. We would love to hear from you.
Happy New Year!