Screen Rant » screen rant

Welcome To Screen Rant v5.0

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 03:46:12 +0000

You’re looking at Screen Rant version 5.0.

We thought it was time to update our look, and we hope you’ll be as pleased as we are with how it’s turned out. We’ve finally strayed a bit from our long time black and gold theme, but opted to stay “dark” to continue to differentiate ourselves from most other movie and TV news sites on the web.

The site has been re-coded from scratch so it should load a lot faster in your browser, and fingers crossed that the incredibly annoying Firefox crash issue will finally be behind us.

Among the changes we’ve made are going from a two column layout on the home page back to an easier to read single column. With the increase in TV news coverage, movie reviews and trailers, we also decided that it’s finally ...

Click to continue reading Welcome To Screen Rant v5.0

No, We Haven’t Been Ignoring You

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:24:36 +0000

Here at Screen Rant we pride ourselves at having a personal touch when it comes to our visitors. We get involved in conversations in the comment area, we respond to emails and when you contact us via the site contact form we try to get back to you in a timely manner. However, if you’ve contacted us via the site form over the last couple of months, you probably went away thinking we were arrogant jerks because we never replied to you.

Imagine my dismay when a couple of days ago I discovered that the contact form had not been forwarding messages to us for the last two months.

We moved to a new server a couple of months ago and there was a minor setting that was not configured correctly – causing emails to ...

Click to continue reading No, We Haven’t Been Ignoring You

Help Screen Rant Pick A New Tagline!

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:32:32 +0000

We have a request to make to our loyal readers… When I started Screen Rant over six years ago, I never dreamed it would grow into the site it’s become today. It was just a dinky little place where I could complain about the dumb stuff that I thought Hollywood did on a regular basis. Today we’ve become one of the go to places for folks like you to find out what’s happening with your favorite movies – along with a dose of attitude and a great place to share your thoughts on the latest TV and movie news.

Well every website needs a slogan or tagline, and I took about 12 seconds to come up with ours back in the day. Actually it used to be different… It was the VERY catchy:

SciFi, TV, movie news & commentary without the sugar coating.

Was I a marketing ...

Click to continue reading Help Screen Rant Pick A New Tagline!

Screen Rant Is Upgrading To A New Comment System

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:06:48 +0000

Hey folks, I just want to let you know that we’re upgrading to a new user comment tool. If comments seem to have vanished, don’t be alarmed – they’ll be back very soon, hopefully all will be back to normal by 9PM PST.

With this new system you can log in with your Twitter, Yahoo!, OpenID or Facebook account. You can comment easily from a mobile phone or comment via email. Oh, and a long requested feature: The ability for you to edit your comments.

The tool we chose is called Disqus, and it’s used pretty widely on the Web by many sites, including a bunch of our fellow movie news sites like /Film and FilmSchoolRejects. You may already even have a Disqus profile that you use on other sites. If you don’t have ...

Click to continue reading Screen Rant Is Upgrading To A New Comment System

Screen Rant Featured on the JoBlo Podcast

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:00:19 +0000

Well for the second time in as many weeks, I was invited to be a guest on another movie site’s podcast. Last time it was as a guest of The Movie Blog and today Screen Rant was featured on the JoBlo podcast.

I was surprised by the invitation both times, and both of these sites were very gracious in their comments about us. It was a lot of fun both times and it’s spurred me to thinking about re-starting podcasts here on the site.

The podcast was hosted by Jim Law and Johnny Moreno – both very cool guys who I had a chance to spend some time with at Comic-Con a few months back. They grilled me on how and why I started Screen Rant and how it’s grown to where it is today. Be ...

Click to continue reading Screen Rant Featured on the JoBlo Podcast

Screen Rant on The Movie Blog Podcast

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:44:28 +0000

Hey gang, yesterday John Campea of TheMovieBlog.com was kind enough to invite me to be a guest on his Movie Blog Podcast. John’s podcast is the longest-running movie podcast on the net (and the third oldest ongoing podcast, period).

Also on the podcast was TMB regular guest Christina Warren of Mashable.com and FlickCast.com. Here are the topics we covered:

Jennifer’s Body
Edward Norton claiming no cameo in Iron Man 2
X-Men: First Class casting
Nic Cage leaving Green Hornet, and the mess that movie seems to be in

We were going to cover a couple more items but we had so much fun just with those above that we ran out of time.

You can download it directly here or you can head over to The Movie Blog to listen to ...

Click to continue reading Screen Rant on The Movie Blog Podcast

A Friendly Response To Variety’s (Anti-)Blogger Article

Kofi Outlaw — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:11:27 +0000

Mike Fleming, one of the seasoned veteran entertainment reporters over at Variety posted an op-ed piece yesterday where he talked about the good, the bad and the ugly in the blogging industry, as seen by an old pro.

While the piece tried to walk the middle of the road, it inevitably skewed toward the condescending end of the spectrum, addressing those of us in the blogosphere in the tone of a teacher addressing the impetuous students in his freshman journalism class.

Funny part is, I don’t even disagree with much of what Fleming said. However, Mr. Fleming needs to recognize that there are sites like Screen Rant out here already working hard to be everything he wishes bloggers could be (and so much more than that).

Here’s a quick rundown of the complaints Fleming offers about bloggers in his article:

“In the entertainment industry, ...

Click to continue reading A Friendly Response To Variety’s (Anti-)Blogger Article

Screen Rant Technical Stuff

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:55:24 +0000

Hey folks. We’re going through a transition here on the site so at some point tonight I’ll be shutting down commenting so that we don’t LOSE any of your comments. It’ll happen around midnight EST and I’ll probably bring commenting back on line around noon tomorrow (Saturday) barring any complications.

The look of the site isn’t going to change, we’re just doing some things in the background to help improve the performance/speed of the site for you.

Thanks for your patience.

Vic Holtreman, owner/editor-in-chief

Click to continue reading Screen Rant Technical Stuff

Love Screen Rant? Vote For Us!

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:03:15 +0000

Well I’m not sure how this happened exactly, but TotalFilm.com has nominated Screen Rant as one of what they consider to be the five most influential movie blogs.

I’ll tell you right now that I know we don’t have a chance in hell of beating out the other four (most of whom are friends of mine), but it’s an honor (and a surprise!) to even have been nominated.

Also nominated were /Film.com, TheMovieBlog.com, FirstShowing.net and TwitchFilm.com, all sites I read regularly.

We’re not really a movie news site – we provide editorials and analysis on what’s going on in the movie and TV world. We’ve been accused in the past of not being “objective,” to which my reply is: Duh. That’s not the point of Screen Rant at all.

So if you appreciate the ...

Click to continue reading Love Screen Rant? Vote For Us!

Trying Out Google Friend Connect On Screen Rant

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:43:53 +0000

In the interest of trying to increase the community feel here at Screen Rant, I’ve added Google Friend Connect to the right sidebar here on the site. That means you can become a friend of Screen Rant via Google or other OpenSocial-supported type accounts. You can read all about it here and check out the video below for a quick explanation of how it all works.

Basically if you have a Google account (and who doesn’t?) it’s a piece of cake to sign up.

Will I keep it on the site? At this point, I don’t know for sure. I’ll be playing around with adding some of their widgets, like giving visitors the ability to review posts and such.

So go ahead and join, I’m lonely all by myself there on the right. It might be fun.
Click to continue reading Trying Out Google Friend Connect On Screen Rant

Perspectives On Running A Movie Website

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:44:47 +0000

This has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while now – like an itch I couldn’t quite scratch, but today it finally bubbled to the front of my brain. Something seems to have changed for me regarding Screen Rant, but it creeped up on me slowly so I didn’t really notice what was happening. I think I may have to thank my pal John from The Movie Blog for providing the trigger along with a post I read over at Dosh Dosh regarding shifting from being a writer to an editor in chief of a website.

John wrote a post titled 20 Tips For Starting Your Own Movie Blog which is really a great primer on starting up your own website (although he left out the fact that one actually needs some sort of ...

Click to continue reading Perspectives On Running A Movie Website

Welcome to Screen Rant 2.0 (Beta)

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:47:41 +0000

It may seem like we just went through a redesign, but that was not only not that different from the one before, but was purely cosmetic. This time we’ve gutted it and moved it to a completely different platform. We will be adding features that I’ve wanted to offer you for a long time but haven’t had the ability to implement.

I just pulled an all nighter so the site is up but no bells and whistles beyond the new look yet. If you were subscribed to comments on posts, you’ll need to re-subscribe to continue to get updates on those.

There will no doubt be lots of little buggy issues and if you find any please let us know about them by either leaving a comment here or shooting me and email via the contact page.

I hope you folks like the new design and I’ll alert you as new features come ...

Click to continue reading Welcome to Screen Rant 2.0 (Beta)

Comments Going Offline For Site Upgrade

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:31:32 +0000

Hey gang, just a quick note that the comment feature will be turned off at approximately 11AM PST / 2PM EST today so we can do some work on the website. Comments will be re-enabled by tomorrow morning at the latest.

FYI, if you subscribe to comments on various posts, unfortunately you’re going to have to RE-subscribe to those when the upgrade is complete as we’re going to a different system. So you may want to bookmark your favorite discussion posts so you can come back to them later.

Click to continue reading Comments Going Offline For Site Upgrade

Another Server Move

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:52:14 +0000

Hi folks,

If you experience any site wierdness this weekend it’s because we’re moving Screen Rant to a new host and server. I apologize for any inconvenience and don’t hesitate to let me know about anything that doesn’t seem to be working right.

Thanks for your patience,

Vic

Click to continue reading Another Server Move

Screen Rant Server Upgrade

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:53:33 +0000

Hey folks. Screen Rant is moving to a new server in order to improve performance of the site. The temporary downside is that due to the nature of this sort of thing, some comments may be lost during the transfer for technical reasons.

Due to the way the internet works, some of you will be looking at the version of ScreenRant.com that is on the old server (on which this post won’t even appear) while others will be looking at the site on the new server.

It may take a couple of days for all this to work itself out and I apologize for any annoyance caused by comments that will seem to have vanished. I’ll probably even end up losing some emails in the process.

To be honest I’m not happy with the way the hosting company is handling this and I when I have the time I will probably look at ...

Click to continue reading Screen Rant Server Upgrade

Screen Rant’s 2008 Movie Preview & Recommendations

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:40:42 +0000

Here is the official Screen Rant 2008 movie preview! Below you’ll find a list of 48 movies that you’ll most likely consider seeing this year along with a description, month of release and recommendation for each one.

I realize that “Top 10″ lists are all the rage at the end of the year and you’ve probably noticed that there haven’t been any of those here. I did think about it, but really – there were already so many other sites churning them out (and some of them did quite a nice job) that I didn’t feel the need. Plus, I just didn’t see enough movies in 2007 to be able to create my own list of best, worst or otherwise.

However 2008 looks like it’s going to be a pretty awesome year for movie fans. To ...

Click to continue reading Screen Rant’s 2008 Movie Preview & Recommendations

Merry Christmas From Screen Rant

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:12:05 +0000

I just wanted to wish our readers a very Merry Christmas (or Happy Hanukkah). Heath, Niall and I are all spending time with our families and that’s why the last couple of days have been light on articles. And being that tomorrow is Christmas Day, I will NOT be seeing AVP-R… at least if I don’t want to sleep on the couch for the foreseeable future.

Don’t worry, I will get a review of that out since I’ve been looking forward to seeing whether it will be better than the last one.

In any case, here’s wishing you and your families a very happy holiday and I hope you have a safe one with Santa bringing you lots of great stuff.

Sincerely,

Vic Holtreman

P.S. Alcadyzaar, if ...

Click to continue reading Merry Christmas From Screen Rant

Screen Rant Site News

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:37:19 +0000

I thought you might be interested in an update on what’s going on with the site.

First off I want to congratulate the winners of the Screen Rant Suggestion contest:

“Zipper” Stevens and Andrew Phillips

They’ve each won a $20 Amazon.com gift certificate (BTW guys, let me know if you haven’t received them yet).

Zipper was the random winner and Andrew won for best suggestion(s). There were a bunch of great ones and it really helps me to know what you would like to see (or not see) here at Screen Rant.

Among Andrew’s suggestions that I thought were great:

- Get rid of the orange fade in the background color. (I’ve already done this one)

- Setting up some sort of weekly online gathering where regular visitors can get together and talk to each other real-time. (Been thinking ...

Click to continue reading Screen Rant Site News

Enter The Screen Rant Suggestion Contest!

Vic Holtreman — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:59:37 +0000

Hey, here’s a chance for you to make Screen Rant a cooler place to visit, and to win something at the same time!

I am forever on the lookout for ways to make ScreenRant.com a better movie and TV site. I want to make it a place that you’ll want to come back to more often. A place that you’ll enjoy so much that you’ll want to tell your friends about it and have them become regular visitors as well.

So I figure what better way to do that than to ask YOU what you’d like to see on the site?

I mean if I want to make it more interesting to you, I figure you’re the folks to ask, right?

So here’s the deal: Give me your suggestions below ...

Click to continue reading Enter The Screen Rant Suggestion Contest!

Happy Birthday To Us – Screen Rant’s 4th Anniversary!

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 06:31:28 +0000

Wow.

It’s hard to believe that Screen Rant has been online four years already. When I started this site on November 11th, 2003 I had no idea what I was doing… I’d just always been a movie and Sci Fi fan and with this whole internet thing that seemed to be up and coming, I decided that I wanted a place online where I could talk about movies and TV, both the good and the bad. I never thought anyone would read it outside a couple of friends of mine.

The first thing I ever posted was Sandy Collora’s short fan film Batman: Dead End. One of the coolest things I’d ever seen up to that point (I wonder ...

Click to continue reading Happy Birthday To Us – Screen Rant’s 4th Anniversary!