Bet you idiots feel pretty stupid now.

There really is no better fit for Mr. McCarthy than indieWIRE, a network that has defined and redefined the online cinema magazine/trade publication time and time again. The real loser here is Variety, who has taken nearly every misstep possible in the age of internet journalism. Their pay wall will eventually be their undoing, but by literally handing their golden boy to the free competition, Variety seems to have put the nail in their own coffin.

Mainly, I would like to say welcome, Todd; the ‘net is happy to have you. I have no doubt that you will enjoy an online career as exciting as Roger Ebert or David Bordwell. Film journalism, and especially criticism, is not dead but alive and well online. If ever we see a weakening in the art of film writing, we can only blame ourselves. The internet has nothing to do with it.

(If you’ve been wondering where I am, all my film writing is at the candler blog, but you can also see my work peppered on Greencine Guru, Heeb Magazine, and NachosNY.)

I know playlists are so 2002, but hell, what do I care? Here’s the playlist that lulled me to sleep for a few hours before I awoke to my fast-paced Manhattanite lifestyle.

Me Behind a Tree @ flickr

Last week I sat down to compose a top 10 list of the best films of 2008 when I ran into a bit of a problem. When I resolved to do the same things last year, at the end of 2007, I was simply able to pull up my blog archives and re-trace my thoughts from the year. Not so this year, as I had only 40 posts in 2008 to 2007’s 50. What’s more, after perusing a list of film releases from the past year, I had seen only a fraction of the films released, especially when compared to the amount I had seen in 2007. So how could I come up with a top 10 list? Well, I couldn’t.

Bummer that 2008 was such a lame blogging year for me. I started doing this as a means to organize my thoughts, originally on Myspace. Back then I kinda kept things simple, saying only what I needed, but in 2007, thanks in part to hanging with a writerly crowd, I got a tad ambitious with my reviews, fashioning them after the work of my favorite critics. This of course takes a great deal more time than blurthing out my thoughts, hence the reduced post count over time.

Anyway, it’s a completely new year. My drafts folder is overloaded with half-written reviews from throughout last year. Maybe I’ll finish them, maybe not. In any event, I am committed to making this blog, and maybe another, work in 2009. Even if it means shortening my thoughts down, I really want to create a better account of my thoughts, a place to share them with the world. I look forward to the new year with you.

I know, you have missed me over the last month or so. Fear not, I’m still alive and well, in case you thought maybe a crane fell on my head or something. It’s been a rather wild month, though none of it may seem exciting to you. Just very busy at work and spending lots of time with the girlfriend (which I’ll take over blogging any day!). Anyway, I’ll do my best to make a comeback soon enough.

The Mammoth Book of Horror Comics, Edited by Peter Normanton

This beast of a book has been following me around lately. It all started when I had the bright idea to make a horror film, but couldn’t come u p with, ya know, plots or characters or those things you need to get some decent writing done. I don’t want to reveal my diabolical plans just yet, but I can tell you that I’ve been fascinated by zombies lately. I’d really love to get to know them better, get inside their heads (though I bet they’d want into my cranium more).

Anyway, killing time in the graphic novel section at B&N last week, I happened upon this tome of murderous tales. So far it’s tons of fun. Most of the comics I’ve read so far have been from 1950–1955, and while none have literally terrified me, they certainly have been quite entertaining. The one that will be toughest to top in this book is “Hitler’s Head” by Don Heck (and co.). It tells the tale of a decorated Nazi laying low in South America after the war who is haunted by the ghost of Hitler and his Army of demons. From the beginning right down to it’s head-scratcher of an ending it is truly fascinating. It is grizzly, but not gruesome. Plus, it’s easy enough to cheer on Nazi on Nazi action.

—

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

After reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union and The Final Solution, I figured myself not quite a Michael Chabon fan, but certainly a spirited supporter of his work. I loved those two novels, so I figured it was time for check out his magnum opus which earned him a pulitzer prize as well as the praise of most of my reader friends. Back in January I picked it up in paperback at The Strand and immediately dove into it. I loved it, but then I stumbled for a few days, during which I found myself unable to get past this same damn page (I think it was 56). I had figured that it might pass, but instead I went to Israel for a week, and though most of my time was spent in transit, I never was able to get back on track.

But recently, I started again and found that perusing the same pages I had read only a few months before were even better the second time around. But my whole horror kick hit me about a week later, and I’ve started trying to figure zombies out in the meantime. I’m sorry Michael, but I promise I will read your beefy award-winner sometime soon, when I’m good and ready. Now, I’m sad to say, just isn’t the time.

—

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, by Tucker Max

I know nothing of this book, but a friend of mine at work approached me the other other day and we had the following exchange:

Friend: Have you read this book? (holding up a crumpled copy of the bestseller)

Poritsky: Nope.

Friend: (Tossing it onto my desk, with purpose) Your turn.

And then he slinked back off into the night. I’ve heard much sniggering around the office about this book, though I purposefully have no intention of finding out anything about it until I can part its sexy little pages myself. Gotta get through these damn comics first though!

well you should be working and cleaning heads and duplicating HD dvds and making film transfers and making coffee and knitting jami a scarf made of cat hair and marshmallows and worshiping the lord and applying a powerful exfoliating cream to your face and neck and always taking care of yourself
Sent at 10:54 PM on Tuesday

tired the morning crew needs to rest ssoon

jami got her eyebrows done

and cracker is sitting on the window

and i am sitting on the couch

and jon stewart is in our living room

google tells me i am interrupting u but i know the internet is full of lies

so

do you ever get any weird porn to transfer

have you made out with anyone in edit suite?

these are the questions people want the answers to
Sent at 11:03 PM on Tuesday

Yo

check blog for typo in brief description

Jonathan Poritsky is an editor and filmmaker living in New York City. He has a strong backgroung in both narrative and documentary styles of

and at the bottom you have a weird lack of words near freelance
Sent at 11:06 PM on Tuesday

night sweetheart.
Sent at 11:08 PM on Tuesday

My first rule was that I would stop using iframes altogether on this new site. The iframe structure that I have used in the past was great because it made it so that I could use the same header and footer for every page, while only changing the info in between. In other words, once you loaded the site once, the only thing that would change would be the content in the middle of the page, where I put my reel, bio, resume, and anything else. The problem with this was that certain things would have to remain separate from the main site completely, namely my blog. There was simply no comfortable blogging experience that could be achieved in the small space I allotted for my content. As a workaround, I kept my blog completely separate from my main site, and found myself foolishly advertising it at parties as “poritsky dot come slash blog”. What a name, eh? Once blogging became my favorite part of running my site, I knew that iframes, or frames of any sort, would not be allowed.

My second rule was related to colors. In the past, I have enjoyed coming up with fun color schemes for my website. For my first site, I took colors from something important to me: film. Back in college I went out of my way to shoot Fujifilm motion picture stocks on my projects. This was a bit against the grain as our professors preached the wonder of Kodak over the years. I like both for different reasons and when I bought this domain I thought it would be cool to integrate their coexistence into my page, so I took Kodak yellow and Fujifilm green and flanked my site with them. It worked, but it also looked a bit like sesame street. For Poritsky 2.0 I got rid of the green altogether and stuck to a lighter shade of yellow with black serif text and a deep gray background. Again, I was happy with it, but this time around I wanted to try and stay away from color for the most part. I felt that my old sites boxed visitors in with their color schemes, and really took away from the browsing experience. White was definitely the way to go this time around, because the internet just feels more open and expansible, which is a feel I want visitors to have.

Finally, it was incredibly important that this site be a hub for all the things in my life that I want on the internet. Though I love to blog on Myspace and post photos to Flickr, I really wanted this little slice of internet to be all me and all local. I didn’t want to link to my web footprint from the page all the time, but rather I’d like my presence to be unique to this site. So it was very important for me to be able to edit and manipulate photography and blogging software on my site so that I could constantly update my content. I don’t want to be held back by the visual limitations of blogger.com or myspace or flickr for that matter, but I want to be able to have as flexible an experience on my own page as I have on those alternatives. I finally found ways to make that happen, which was all the more reason to get this redesign finished.

Plus: No flash (what am I, a band?), Lightweight (quick download times!), and more PNGs (I <3 PNGs).

And Ideas For the Future: iPhone site, Internet Explorer compliant, and The Candler

A good friend (foolishly pictured right) wrote me the following e-mail a few days ago:

Subject: remember this?
Date: April 5, 2008 10:09:32 PM EDT

http://poritsky.com/thecandler/

what ever happened to this awesome idea?

Hold tight, dear friend. Hold tight…

So, the faithful out there will notice that I haven’t written in a little while, and when I have posted, it has usually been a photo from my Flickr account (see right). Well, I’m here to let you know that I’m still here, and I wanted to let you know what’s been eating my time up.

For one, I have been working on a redesign of my website.

About 10 months ago, I bought www.poritsky.com as a means to a very simple end: to find work. Back then, I was a freelancer in the middle of a 6 month contract at Present Focus Inc., (www.presentfocus.com) “a state of the art high definition video production company located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan offering the latest in HD technology as well as the finest in digital and film photography.” The seven months I ended up working there were some of the most interesting of my life. At 22, to my own astonishment, I was the online editor for an eight-part National Geographic Channel International series. The project, Oceans 8, headed up by writer-explorer-filmmaker Jon Bowermaster (www.jonbowermaster.com) is finishing up the final expedition film now on Antarctica, which, sadly, I am not apart of.

Though it was enjoyable, I knew my contract would expire and there would be no room for Jon Poritsky anymore, so it became incredibly important to promote myself as a freelancer. Of course, a website was the best way to do that. I still have no business card, but the site seems to have helped. Before I took my current full-time job at Postworks NY, one employer actually commented on how much he loved my site before telling me I didn’t get the job. At least someone looked at it!

Anyway, Once my info, paltry bio, and short reel were posted, I thought that was all I needed, until I discovered WordPress, the blogging software that created the page you are looking at now. I had been writing on my myspace blog for months before acquiring this website of my namesake, mostly film and book reviews. The concept of breaking free from the limited formatting of that social networking website, not to mention keeping my info as far away from Rupert Murdoch as possible, seemed incredibly attractive to me. So after many trials and errors, I

figured out how to get my very own blog up and running.

Of course, myspace has actually remained my main outlet for venting because it’s just easier than running it on my own. Plus, who is visiting my blog site? I was never quite able to figure out how to integrate the blog onto my website. Since the clear-cut design I’ve created for the site leaves only a few pixels of viewing space open to my audience, it has never really fit in to well. I kept the blog totally separate from my main page, opening it in a new window and giving it a different interface altogether.

Well, I’ve been doing a lot of research on this whole web design thing, and I’ve learned quite a few things about how to make WordPress work for me. So I’m happy to announce that poritsky.com will finally start to look and feel the way I want to to, not only a calling card to promote my own freelance abilities (which by the way, I’m still available to edit or do any other post stuff on the side) but an extension of my own personality.

Better yet, my recent experiences on Flickr have helped me understand how to make the most of the global audience you have with the internet, not to mention fueled my obsession with photography. So with the fun I’ve been having on Flickr with my Nikon D40, I’ve decided to start a web gallery of my very own on this site. Again, it has been rather difficult for me to figure out how to build the kind of gallery that would make me happy, without simply reposting my Flickr links or generating new galleries all the time in Photoshop or the likes. I needed to find a dynamic interface that I could update from wherever I am as long as I’m plugged in, and I’m proud to say that over the past two weeks I have now figured out how to achieve that with the free software Gallery. Again, I’ve broken through the mysteries that have slowed this process for me and found a way to make these extensions look and feel the way I need them to for them to work on my site.

So now it’s all about what the design should look like. I’ve got my technical ducks in a row, but the artistic side of it is holding me back from putting it up today. Don’t worry, kids, I’ve got a few ideas to work with, and I assure that when it goes live, just like the site you’re looking at today, it will be truly Poritsky in every sense of the word.

Hope to see you when it’s up, and thanks for reading.