A-Z of Favourite Scholarly Film and Moving Image Blogs

Film Studies For Free has recently been infected by two viruses: one nasty but better now, thanks (ach-oo); the other relatively benign, but still totally brain-scrambling in its own way.

The latter is the dratted 'alphabet meme' still doing the film-blogospheric round (issuing from the Blog Cabins site).

As this metablog doesn't write about films (oh no), the forced A-Z of its choice is 'Favourite Scholarly Film/Moving Image Blogs' mostly in the English language, or 'Favourite [anglophone] Film/Moving Image Blogs with a Sizeable Scholarly Component or Impact'.

And, yes (note to FSFF's more litigious readers), all of the usual rules of this exercise are broken below (and more); but this piece of favouriting frenzy is a service to the community: FSFF's formal film blogroll currently has just under 200 entries, so the below choices will form the basis of a new 'Highly Recommended Scholarly Blogs List' to sit near the top of FSFF's right-hand menu.

Comments on this list are most welcome. And do please let FSFF know if it's missing any really important blogs from its various lists. Thank you.

• annett's blog missing image


• Bigger Picture Research for coverage of its film biz angle; Bright Lights After Dark for all else (for recognition of The Bioscope's excellence, see under 'T');


• Category D: A Film and Media Studies Blog (this was a close one: apologies to Henry Jenkins fans (his is easily the best Media Studies blog), and also to those many fans of Will Scheibel, Kimberly Lindbergs, Scott Kirsner, Michael E. Grost and the guys at Cinemetrics (all very good runners-up), but Chris Cagle's research-led blogging was one of the biggest inspirations for FSFF


• DinaView; Digital Poetics; and Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope (yup, a genuine three way tie)


• Edit Room: The Wide Screen journal editors' blog; and Expanded Cinema


• Film of the Month Club; FSFF also likes Flickhead (not intentionally scholarly, perhaps, but scrupulously informative; keep an eye also on Foreigner's Guide to Film Culture in Korea)


• girish and GreenCine Daily (what would a blogger's life be like without these two - not the happy one it is, that's for sure). An honorable mention, too, for Bob Rehak's Graphic Engine, which FSFF only recently (shamefully) discovered (joyfully).


• House of Mirth and Movies


• I Screen Studies


• Jason Sperb's Jamais Vu ties with Jason Mittell's Just TV and Jonathan Rosenbaum's JonathanRosenbaum.com
  
• Kino-Eye.com


• Like Anna Karina's Sweater


• Alexandra Juhasz's Media Praxis edged out Mystery Man on Film and Michael Barrier on Animation


• notcoming.com is a good film review site, often looking at classic or off-the beaten track films


• Observations on film art and FILM ART sine qua non; but FSFF also loves Only The Cinema


• Parallax View is a worthy P-winner, but FSFF also adores Pedro Almodóvar's Blog...


• Q Branch (it has to be)


• rear window views : sweiv wodniw raer (very specific and somehow all the better for scholars for that)


• Spectacular Attractions is FSFF's S-daddy, but mentions très honorables, aussi, for the absolutely S-fabuleux Strictly Film School (Acquarello), Shooting Down Pictures, Screenville, Self-Styled Siren and Spectres du Cinéma


• The Bioscope, The Chutry Experiment (FSFF wouldn't have made it any any easier for itself by omitting the 'The', sadly...) and Tativille for consistently superb writing on film


• Unspoken Cinema (now that was easy)


• Vertigo Ramblings (Dan Auiler) and videoarcadia (the latter hiatus-ing at the mo', but it credibly assures us it will be back)


• What's New at the Internet Archive; runner-up: Winds From The East


• The Extratextuals (phew, thank you, Jonathan Gray!)
• You must be Mistaken, I'm alive (aka Polar Bear's Film Journal)
• zigzigger