weekly digest: TFW you're a woman who just doesn't want kids
everything that happened at Flick Filosopher from Monday, May 9th, to Sunday, May 15th
I didn’t post as much as I really and honestly and truly wanted to this week because I got sidetracked by a copyediting job that I simply couldn’t turn down, and that consumed most of my waking hours last week. This is my other major line of freelance work: editing novels for a big NYC book publisher, work that I simultaneously wish I could get more — it pays reasonable well and it’s not actively awful — and wish I didn’t have to do, because it takes time away from my own writing. But when one manuscript that takes a week’s worth of work pays more than an entire month of film criticism, I sadly don’t have much choice.
Not unrelated: I get multiple emails every day from scuzzy online marketers hoping to place guest posts, sponsored posts, or sponsored links at FlickFilosopher.com. You see this kind of “content” ALL OVER the web, and not all of it is labeled as “sponsored” or “advertisement,” which is what it is. Guest/sponsored posts include links to the sites of whoever is paying for them; a sponsored link is a link inserted into existing content — like, say, one of my reviews — that points to the payee’s site(s). Basically, these sorts of things help game search engines: your site can rank higher in search results if you have lots of links from other high-quality, nonspammy sites.
FlickFilosopher.com is considered high-quality not just because of how frankly awesome my film criticism is, but because of the age of the site: almost 25 years! That says to Google and Bing and other search engines that this is not some bullshit rinky-dink operation that started a few months ago merely to propagate nonsense advertising. (Flick Filosopher is actually a year older than Google.) So if I include a link to, I dunno, Pills-To-Enbiggen-Your-Penis.com, that’s gonna look sweet to search engines.
This is called SEO (search engine optimization), and it is ruining the web, which is one reason why I refuse to allow such crap on my site. You will never see a sponsored post or guest post at Flick Filosopher, and every link I include in a review or other post is there because I genuinely believe it is a valuable resource that enhances or explains or elaborates on what I’ve written.
Anyway, as I said, I get multiple emails every damn day offering me a few paltry bucks to post some new sponsored crap or to insert a spammy link into an older review. But today came a new indignity: in exchange for an insultingly small fee so that some dubious commercial enterprise could capitalize on everything that I have built with Flick Filosopher in the past quarter century, I would have to write the spammy post myself.
It felt like a smack in the face, and it made me even angrier than these email solicitations usually make me.
So, happy Monday, all!
—MaryAnn
new at flick filosopher, May 09–15
new and ongoing cinema releases, US/Can, May 13
French abortion drama Happening expands nationwide; arthouse horror The Innocents is new in limited release; more… [read more]
new and ongoing cinema releases, UK/Ire, May 13
Multiverse-of-madness action dramedy Everything Everywhere All at Once finally arrives on UK big screens; more… [read more]
new and ongoing dvd/blu/vod releases, US/Can, May 10–13
Animated heist comedy The Bad Guys is new on premium VOD; WWII dramatic thriller Operation Mincemeat debuts on Netflix; more… [read more]
new and ongoing dvd/blu/vod releases, UK/Ire, May 09–13
Treasure-hunt adventure Uncharted is now available as a cheap VOD rental; Irish drama The Quiet Girl debuts on Curzon Home Cinema; more… [read more]
My So-Called Selfish Life documentary review: TFW you lack that certain “maternal instinct”
Dismantles myths about motherhood and misconceptions about child-free women with brisk, cheeky humor and intersectionality, and begins to build the cultural scripts we need for paths without kids. [read the review | international digital premiere streaming globally through May 24th]
loaded question: what entertainment expenses, if any, are you cutting back on in our financially tight times?
Is there anything among your entertainment options (streaming, cinema outings, music, books, whatever) that would be the absolute last to go if money got too tight? [reply at Flick Filosopher | reply at Substack | reply at Patreon]
what I’m bingeing
Call My Agent! Season 3 [Netflix globally except in Austria, Spain, Germany, and Portugal, for some reason]: I think I squeezed in one episode this week? I wish I could just watch this all day…
Bridgerton Season 2 [Netflix globally]: no time for this in the past week, alas; would have watched one or two eps on Saturday night except my dudebro neighbors were having a party in their back garden right outside my window and I literally could not hear my TV over their noise, ack
Old Enough! [Netflix US/UK/maybe other regions?]: finished! more please! I love this show so much; cannot recall the last time, if ever, I squee’d so much at the TV
Tweet of the week…
What glorious times we live in…
coming up at Flick Filosopher…
I swear I’m actually gonna get to some of these sometime this week!
Memory, the latest Liam Neeson action thingy
trips through multiverses with Everything Everywhere All at Once and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Oscar Best Picture CODA
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, for my sins
adventure comedy The Lost City
historical revenge drama The Northman
WWII drama Operation Mincemeat
Netflix’s Windfall
the Oscar-nominated short films
Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas
horror romance Fresh
Moonfall
time-traveling ghost story Last Night in Soho
Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical Belfast
based-on-a-videogame action-adventure Uncharted
And more!
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