Welcome to The Movie Projector 2008-2013

The Movie Projector was the result of a five-year long project to write regularly about a subject that has long fascinated me and continues to be my main interest: the movies. Between 2008 and 2013, I published posts on nearly two hundred films. When I began writing the blog, I intended that it would encourage me to try to fill in some of the gaps in my movie-viewing experience. As I did so, I wrote about movies that were new to me or which I hadn't seen in a long while. From the first I tried to concentrate on films that hadn't been written on extensively: no posts on Citizen Kane or Psycho or 8½.

I relied on the enthusiasm of discovery and re-discovery to help me find films to write about and focus my thoughts. As time went by, I tried to hone my writing skills to achieve a certain level of quality and succinctness, and I like to think that in five years I made some progress. But after five years, the time and work involved in maintaining the blog, in regularly producing posts of a quality that was acceptable to me, simply became too time-consuming to continue.

When I began writing about film in 2008, there were far fewer blogs about movies than today. With so many others constantly joining the field of film blogging since the start of The Movie Projector, I eventually began to question whether another film blog was really necessary. And with so many new blogs emerging—even in my own area of classic film—keeping in touch with other bloggers and participating in a meaningful way in the film blogging community became something I no longer had the time for. Moreover, unforeseen changes in my life required that I redirect my attention towards other things than The Movie Projector.

For me The Movie Projector reached its peak—and gave me the greatest satisfaction—in the two blogathons hosted by the site, on William Wyler in 2012 and on James Cagney in 2013. The fine posts produced by a diverse group of enthusiastic writers for those blogathons will, I hope, stand as a reference source for the future. If you would like to explore The Movie Projector, you can search by film title, director, or subject.  If reading any of my posts inspires you to watch just one film that's new to you, or to see something new in a film you already know, then I feel the hours I spent writing and maintaining The Movie Projector achieved something worthwhile. Finally, many thanks to everyone who has read my posts and supported my work, and especially to those who contributed their own reactions and ideas in comments and e-mails.

R. D. Finch     

UPDATE JUNE 2014: I have begun writing the occasional capsule movie review on my Facebook page. To see my Facebook page, click here.