s most any moviegoer knows, a montage is a music-video sequence of short clips that convey an important—and usually protracted—character transition in a film. This particular type of cinematic shorthand is used by directors to compress time and avoid boring audiences, particularly in its best-known form, the training montage. Consider the film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example: as Buffy discovers her inner killing machine, the Divinyls sing "Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore."
Movie-Montage.com is an effort to collect and celebrate these music-driven transformations by encouraging fans to submit montage information, to comment on montages already in its database and to participate in a monthly captioning contest. Montage categories at the Web page cover dating sequences, crime investigation, building scenes (in which houses, boats and even the superlaser of Real Genius are constructed step by rapid step) and sports. Each montage listing provides a few screen grabs and a synopsis of the scene in question, along with notes on the featured song, the film director and the length of the montage itself. Visitors can rate montages, post reviews and offer other comments, even discussing them at length in the site's forums.
SF montage submissions are certainly welcome at Movie-Montage—and are also desperately needed. At present, genre representation at this site is somewhat eccentric. Wargames is there, as are Teen Wolf, Freaky Friday and both Ghostbusters movies. True, many dramatic SF films are montage-free, but it does seem that a few well-informed fans with extensive DVD collections could radically expand the existing list on this page.
Removed from their original context and broken into screen grabs, montages cannot help but be funny, but even though it exploits their inherent humor, this Web page is playing it straight. Unlike sites that collect movie mistakes, the goal at this page is to record, not to mock. If Movie-Montage adds a workable search function to its database and gathers a larger number of films under its umbrella, it could potentially become an entertaining and seriously informative resource for film fans.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—August 22, 2005
houghtful, articulate reviews, up-to-the-minute coverage of the movie industry, and lively discussion forums are the core of the Sci-Fi Movie Page, a delightfully single-minded webzine whose focus is—just as its title suggests—SF films of the past, present and future.
Like many sites that look exclusively at the SF field, the Sci-Fi Movie Page has an archive of film reviews that begins with The Abyss and runs to Zontar—The Thing from Venus. One feature that makes this particular set of articles stand out, though is its
broad definition of an SF film, which includes fantasy classics like Labyrinth, comedies in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids vein, anime features, and even children's movies. New reviews are handily flagged, as are pictures that have made a "Top 100" list and those dogs that were rated at a pathetic zero out of five stars.
A quick scan through the Sci-Fi Movie Page's news feed reveals, among other things, future DVD release listings, talk of a pending Terminator 2-related lawsuit, and an article on controversy in England concerning the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Meanwhile, info about upcoming SF films is offered in concise sketches that contain minor (but easily avoided) spoilers along with behind-the-scenes trivia about film shoots and personalities.
The site rounds out its content with scripts, links to movie trailers, and SF TV reviews, making it a good stopping place for any websurfer looking to find some quality entertainment amid the often-overwhelming flood of new films, newly released DVD titles and other content available to fans in stores and theaters.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—August 15, 2005
edia news in heaping portions is the order of the day at The Sci-Fi Blog, a lean, informative site that offers news on SF movies, TV programs, video games and comics—not to mention all their affiliated tie-ins and spinoffs. Barely a month old and still groping for a place in the busy world of online SF fandom, this site shows some promise to become a first-rate clearinghouse for rumors, opinion and Hollywood gossip.
From casting spoilers for the next Spider-Man flick to news on a proposed Mortal Kombat theme park, entries at this blog follow a standard pattern: a quick summary of a longer article elsewhere, a link to the source article and a few lines of pithy fannish commentary on the entry's subject. Visitors can scan headlines, chase links to further details or simply move on to the next item; for more finicky readers, an indexing system allows a choice of subtopics like "Movie News," "TV reviews" and the grab bag "Out of Box" category.
Weblogs rise and fall on their writing style and spirit as much as on content, and fans seeking a brash and zany news source will have to see if The Sci-Fi Blog can ripen into that source. The site is visually pleasing in a low-key, easy-on-the-eyes mode, and comes across as matter-of-fact in its presentation of news articles despite the editorializing. Though it claims to offer SF news "with attitude," that attitude, at present, verges on "Just the facts, ma'am." Even so, this blog is one of a growing number of sites inviting viewer participation—soliciting both comments and even more news submissions. It could therefore be that The Sci-Fi Blog is one regular contributor away from really cutting loose.
—A.M. Dellamonica
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