Follow Friday: Film Hipster
Welcome to another edition of Follow Friday, where each time I feature and interview a fellow blogger and follow their suggestion to another blog to feature next time. I prefer this over a blogroll because it gives each blog their own time to shine, plus I personally rarely click on blogrolls so why would I expect you to? Not only that, but I get the chance to check out some great blogs I might not have found otherwise found, talk to some great people, and share the conversation with you. Of course, if you would rather see something like a blogroll, I have collected all of my previous Follow Friday sites in list form which you can find right at the top of the page. Last time I was directed by Tyson Carter’s of Head in a Vice to check out Chris over at Film Hipster.
One of the things I read about Film Hipster is that he is a graphic designer and it really comes through in his site. There’s some great looking designs on the site both in the header and the overall layout of the site. There’s also several Hipster for a Day guest reviews of many wildy different movies from Titanic to Django Unchained. I really like the look of the arrows to quickly show the good spots and bad spots in a movie whether it’s an actor’s performance or the overall involvement of the director in some cases. There’s also a link to the The Blogger’s Cut in the top menu that Chris works on with the ipc. There’s a great sense of humor in the style of review, pointing out either legitimate highlights, or humorously bad ones as well as an occasionally random tweet about the movie. But enough from me, let’s hear from the Film Hipster himself.
Bubbawheat: How did you land on the name Film Hipster, and what is your definition of a Hipster?
Film Hipster: Good question. First off I’m not a hipster, but then again I was told by admitting you’re not a hipster makes you a hipster. To tell you the truth I’m not sure what a hipster is, I think they wear thick black glasses and ride old bicycles?
How did I land on the name filmhipster? I basically went on to Go Daddy and punched in film + (random cool names) .com and eventually landed on filmhipster because it was the only one left really.
BW: How do you feel about the recent trend in portraying Hipsters in a somewhat negative light as a bunch of people who wear scarves and skinny jeans and drink Campucha?
FH: I think it’s a good thing to portray them in a negative light. No one should wear skinny jeans unless their name is Emmanuelle Chriqui, Scarlett Johansson or Ryan Gosling, er…I mean Mila Kunis.
BW: One of the things Tyson teased you about when sending me here was that you tend to give 100% reviews to too many movies. I saw a lot more variety in your recent reviews, what was the last film you remember that you gave 100% to, aside from your Psycho April Fools joke?
FH: Ah, Tyson causing shit again. He’s just upset that he couldn’t understand the Canadian Accents in Hobo with a Shotgun.
Why not celebrate great films with a 100% rating? It’s not hurting anyone. Out of 860 reviews that I’ve done, I’ve only given a perfect score to 36 of them. Life Is Beautiful, Jaws, Goodfellas, Fargo, The Exorcist, Annie Hall and most recently Drive and Django Unchained. I mean you can’t argue with that right? 🙂
BW: As a graphic designer, I imagine you have an eye for great design. What’s the most common pet peeve you tend to see in other site’s designs, and what your favorite part of your own site’s design?
FH: I’m actually impressed with most of the sites out there in the Movie blogging world. Most of these people do the work themselves and I think they should be pretty proud for what they’ve accomplished. I design websites in the corporate world and 90% of them when they land on my lap don’t look naerly as good as most of the movie blogs on WordPress and Blogger. If I had to pick one pet peeve though I would say busy backgrounds.
Favorite part of my own site? It would have to be the Comments section, I love seeing it active and people talking. You can design your site all you want but if you don’t have the content to get people talking it’s all pointless really.
BW: That really is the best part when you’re working on a site. How did you get involved with the Blogger’s Cut, whose idea was it, and who does what?
FH: Well, The Bloggers Cut is both myself and Eric Isaacs from isaacspictureconclusions.com, he does most of the writing and I do the creative. Some people don’t realize but a few of them have taken us close to 40 hours to finish.
We both wanted to do something fun, something different and something a little dirty. Our initial idea was to poke fun of Taken 2 in screen grab format but well…this was the actual conversation we had over email:
Eric: Have u done taken 2? Watched that last week.
Chris: Holy shit, just working on my review as we speak. Maybe we can do something together? New segment?
Eric: Before I got this, on my way home, I was thinking I am going to do a “long” review that’s basically making fun of him giving his daughter constant instructions: “First you’re going to turn your head left. Next, you’ll pivot your body. Then, you’ll take exactly three steps with your legs and feet. Legs and feet, nothing more, nothing less. Anything else will be fatal for your mother and I. I could do my running commentary along with the screen grabs!! What do you think??
Chris: Ok, so this is what I’m proposing. Do that. But, present it differently. Let’s not write this out with text and basic movie screen grabs, let’s take the screen grabs and I can manipulate and stylize them to look like comic book cells with dialogue balloons and make this review look like a one paged comic book. Highly stylized, funny captions. Then we can add the review score at the end or not.
Eric: That sounds FUCKING FANTASTIC! That would be AMAZING! I’m 1,000,000,000 % in!
Then I did a sample design for the comic strip and the rest is history. We first called it Movietoons but later agreed that the name sounded a little too kiddish so we changes it to The Bloggers Cut. Since then we have done Three’s Cumpany and The Expendables 3. It’s all in fun and if we can put a smile on someone’s face then it’s worth it.
BW: What is your favorite superhero movie?
FH: My favorite Superhero movie would have to be Kick Ass. It’s ultra-violent, funny and ferocious. Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl just blows my mind. Hey wait, I didn’t give that a 100% rating? Will have to change that pronto. Second place would be a three way tie between The Dark Knight, The Avengers and 1978’s Superman. Daredevil with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner would be the worst superhero film I’ve seen.
BW: Great choice, I don’t see Kick Ass picked very often, I’m really looking forward to that sequel. And finally, what site do you suggest I follow for my next Follow Friday?
FH: I would suggest my good friend Eric Isaacs over at the IPC. He’s got answers to your questions before you even ask them.
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Great choice, I already agreed to participate in his upcoming Shitfest 2013 it sounds like a fun event. Thanks for answering my questions, had a great time checking out your site and will have to be a Hipster for a day sometime in the future.
Posted on April 26, 2013, in Follow Friday. Bookmark the permalink. 27 Comments.
This is GREAT!!! GREAT WORK, GUYS!!
Glad you liked it, you’re next 🙂 I’ll get in touch in a week or two depending on my schedule. Gotta work on the shitfest first 😉
Great interview on one the blogosphere’s best sites and nicest guys. I have a lot of time for Chris. 🙂
You liked it enough to insert your name into the screenshot, how did you manage that one? 🙂
That’s just timing, I suppose. I had just done a review for Chris’ site when you’ve taken the photo of his front page. Nice little bit of promotion for myself as well 😉
Ha ha!!! Awesome man, the questions were great! This was a lot of fun.
Anytime. Well not technically anytime because I only do these interviews once per customer, but you know what I mean. Love your sense of humor!
Reblogged this on filmhipster and commented:
Here’s my interview with Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights for Follow Friday!!
Brilliant idea!
Thanks, I appreciate it. Glad you stopped by, be sure to stick around I do more of these on occasion.
Great interview!
Thanks
No problem, glad you enjoyed it. While I only asked the questions, I’ll gladly take full credit. Thanks for stopping by!
Good shit guys! That was a fun read!
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for stopping by!
Nice selection as always Bubba
Thanks, though I usually let the other sites guide me to my next destination. Tyson’s choice was a good one.
Great interview, guys! 🙂
Thanks!
Good choice and interview 😀
I try my best, glad you enjoyed it.
Fun stuff. Good to hear a bit more on Chris!
He definitely feels like a fun and interesting guy.
Nice work guys, and it was cool to hear the origin story of Blogger’s Cut!
That’s funny since Chris suggested that I could take that part out if I thought it would bore the readers.
Haha, well I for one was glad that it was kept in!
Great interview, guys!
Thanks!