Why A Movie Review?

One post down, I review the movie Serenity, due out in theaters this Friday. Obviously movie reviews are not the normal fare here, so why now? Well, partially because I was asked and partially because I was fascinated that I was asked.

The marketers behind the Serenity movie thought it would be a good idea to invite bloggers to early screenings of the movie. The assumption being that they would write reviews of the movie in their blog after the fact (though I was under no obligation to do so). So they made signups available--I found out about this all via a post on Instapundit.

Ever since the blogosphere took on Dan Rather and won, I've been fascinated about how blogs and the media were going to interact. During regulatory arguments, it has been suggested that blogs and the mainstream media are very similar entities. This movie review request seemed to be strong supporting evidence of this. Traditionally, only professional movie reviewers got sneak peeks of a movie and were asked to review it before release. Now, blogs were breaking into that tradional role.

It was definitely an interesting experience. I arrived a half-hour early to find a long line of people waiting to see the free screening. I was able to bypass the line, as my name was on the press list--along with I'm assuming more traditional Austin media members. It seemed surreal that I would be on a press list just because I maintained a blog. But they guy with the clipboard had a list with my name on it and into the theater I went, up to a reserved section.

I don't plan to make a career out of reviewing movies. But I found the real world example of the merger of blogs and mainstream media too compelling not to take part, at least this one time.