Welcome (back) to Spout, the blog devoted to the movies you love. I’m Christopher Campbell, your lead blogger as well as a curator of others’ writings, which will primarily focus on and serve as prompts for discussions of great and important films and filmmakers. Maintaining a critical yet positive voice, we will continue to provide you with smart and conversational pieces, both short and long, on anything from the classics to new releases, from any nation, genre or format. Basically anything that’s relevant, timely or of contemporary interest to you, the reader and participator.
You may remember me from the old Spout blog, where, writing alongside Karina Longworth and others, I was mostly known for lists and topical roundups, some of which we’ve brought over here, as you can see below this introduction. These kinds of things will continue, perhaps with less frequency, and there will also be other exciting features, regular and otherwise. While some of you will notice that the community aspect of the old Spout.com is gone (possibly only temporarily), the blog shall retain some of its social atmosphere and character. What there won’t be so much of is news, reviews or snarky, negative commentary on the development and production of movies leading all the way up to their release date.
You may know me also, or instead, from such film sites as Cinematical, MTV Movies Blog, Pajiba, Screen Rant, First Showing, Cinescene and The Reeler. These and other favorite blogs and hubs cover the news and straight film criticism just fine, so who needs more of the same? The only exclusives I’m interested in here are sentences, paragraphs and the ideas about film they communicate. What I would especially like Spout to be is the space between academia and movie geekdom.
I have my fanboy tendencies, yet I also have an education in film studies, so I fall somewhere between the inclination to be an enthusiastic defender of blockbuster fluff and a pretentious snob bent on supporting only artistic, world, classic and indie cinema. Instead of either, I balance both sides of my cinephilia and come out simply loving and promoting what’s good — or at least what’s worth a look.
There’s plenty of room for us to grow and evolve, and I’d love to hear constructive feedback as we revive the blog and define its new direction. I invite you to join us on our return journey through the past and present of film and encourage you to participate in the discussions in our comments section, or on your own blog — which I’ll gladly follow — in order to keep the conversation going.
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