We are now a few months into our merger of Alternate Ending and Antagony and Ecstasy and it feels like the right time to provide a little update on what we’ve been working on. And, if I can digress a bit, to add a little more color to our AE origin story (mostly because I think it’s cute). Also, I should probably mention that Tim is not the author of this blog, if that doesn’t become abundantly clear as you continue.
We’ve seen your feedback, the super supportive and motivating, along with the constructive opportunities (thanks for keeping it kind). While technology is far from any of our areas of expertise, we’re working hard to keep things up to snuff and work through the bugs (some of which just require a million hours of manual work).
That said, here are some of the elements we’ve been working on the past couple months based on feedback:
(1) We know the site has been slow sometimes, if not all the time. Largely, it’s due to the gigantic amount of content. So we’re making the (somewhat painful) investment in switching to a VPS web-hosting plan, which in non-technical terms means we should have faster speeds and reduced chance of downtime. We’ve also worked with our web developer to store our images natively which should also help.
(2) There are some reviews that need to be updated with the correct image and movie details – an effect of carrying over 6K reviews and for this, we knew that extensive effort would go into editing (this is our new after-the-kids-go-to-bed hobby).
(3) “The synopsis bar stinks” – for movies that have formal reviews, the synopsis will go away and for those that have a rating only, it will remain.
(4) Everybody loves Spoiler episodes! We’re going to move to doing them bi-weekly, so keep the feedback coming on the format.
Here’s a good point to cut out if you don’t like mushy, friend stuff.
While Tim and Rob met in undergrad, Rob introduced me to Tim in 2008 at a very appropriately titled weekly meet-up, “Bad Movie Night” (making the AE tagline all the more fitting). The goal, I think, was to get together to watch movies that were so terribly bad they were almost good, like a “Battlefield Earth,” just wow. While Tim and I were unlikely friends, given the cat situation in his apartment and my thinking “The Limey” was a movie about fruit, we found that Tim’s patience and my willingness to try anything were a good match. While all three of us are very different, we appreciate each other’s perspectives and enjoy sharing those with one another. As for Rob, the real reason he dropped out of film school, is that once the curtain was lifted on how movies came to life (that’s cinematography, right? Har-de-har), they weren’t fun anymore. So, he quit, switched to a boring major, got a job at Blockbuster and skipped class to watch a gazillion free movies.
When Rob and I started Alternate Ending, a little over a year ago, we had a few goals (as parents with 2 little girls).
(1) Find a hobby that was just ours, something that we could build and enjoy and would bring us together to talk about something other than princesses and how many veggies our kids should eat
(2) To combine passions: Rob’s love of movies and my love of finding a good deal (and secondarily, I like movies too)
(3) To take that “thing” and make it into a community that everybody could share in
We’re often asked why “Discovering movies, one bad movie at a time”? And really, it’s just that… we have spent many years watching a lot of terrible movies (because I hate to pay for them). Then we have those rare moments where we discover something like a Being Flynn or Perfect Sense and our faith in free cinema is restored. Rather than have others sit through the misery that is “Human Centipede”, we’d rather help guide on where to spend your time and money. Sharing in our mission, Antagony and Ecstasy was built from the premise that you can’t have the good without the bad, and it’s sometimes the journey that makes it all the more fulfilling.
The podcast was originally built for the casual movie go-er (all welcome, but it’s light and intended to be a little silly) and frankly we thought, at the end of the day if nobody is listening, at least we would enjoy the conversation. Fast forward to Tim, a guy who has been studying and writing about film for nearly 20 years. While his readers may generally look at film differently, or share in a more critical perspective, the three of us share the desire for building a community around a love of movies, where everybody’s opinion is appreciated.
And now, here we are 9-years removed from those “bad movie nights”, and yet we find that at the end of the day, we’re not so far from where we were then, still friends who really enjoy each other’s company while chatting about film.