Cinemarati is shutting down...

I haven't been much of a reader since the format changed for Cinemarati, but I'm sorry to see it wrapped up. If you and your fellow critics are "okay" with at, who am I to judge. I've bookmarked a number of folks with their own review sites, and I enjoyed the patter between all of you...and the civility you shared, even when opinions varied. That's often a rare commondity.

That's a real shame, although I can understand why it's happening. The site was a nice place to have a conversation, and I too found some more critics who I now read regularly.

Although I can't help wondering if I'm to blame here. I join IEWA and 3 months later it closes. I start posting on Cinemarati and 9 months later it closes. Maybe I should close my Rotten Tomatoes account... ;)

Alex Fung, Jeff Huston, Mr. Brown and finally Cinemarati...it's tough out there for a film critic nowadays; unless you're generating a ton of traffic these independent sites tend to be a labor of love. Ah well, fond memories of the original Cinemarati message board. I felt it was much more interactive with the old format, but understood the need for a change. Good luck to all the members and I'll keep all your individual sites bookmarked as long as you keep them active.

I was never very active on Cinemarati, but I've been lurking and reading all of the insightful postings and comments for years. Thanks for a great run.

I hope the screen-cap quiz manifests itself somewhere else on the web!

Hey Will, I plan to keep on doing the screen cap quiz on my blog. See you there!

At the risk of conjuring memories of a recent Sandra Bullock film that don't deserve to be remembered...

I had a feeling that this was going to happen.

It's sad that it happened. But hey, all good things come to an end and Cinemarati was a good thing.

I'll probably be checking in on this site and certain other film-related sites that I have come to know and love.

In the meantime, I hope all the Cinemarati folks--even the ones I frequently disagreed with--live long and prosper. May the Net be with you and all that jazz.

Goodbye.

Adios.

Ciao.

Au revoir but hopefully not adieu.

MaryAnn -

Well - it's certainly not my fault. I did
my best to keep discussions alive - and without ever becoming and official "Cinemarati" member!!
I'm sad to see the site close down - I did
enjoy the discussions, and especially the
give and take between those who saw things
from different points of view!

But I was sad when the old Cinemarati closed down too - and I lived thtrough that and found other sites, which is guess is what we'll all do again. I hope you'll make some record of my site - http//:www.thenedpages.com/reviews - so that
those who are interested can hunt me down.

Thanks for all the time and effort everyone put in
on Cinemarati. See you all around the Web!

Ned

For what it's worth, I don't think it was your fault, Ned.

It was becoming more and more obvious that Cinemarati wasn't attracting the number of new posters that it needed to attract in order to make up for the infrequency of posts by older Cinemarati members. And those few posters who did show up rarely posted on more than one item.

Nor could one fault the older Cinemarati members for not contributing more to an effort that after all had started as a labor of love, not an act of holy obligation. MaryAnn and the other members went above and beyond the call of duty as far as I'm concerned, but it just wasn't enough.

Anyway, I've posted my own original--if not all that imaginative--thoughts on the Cinemarati shutdown on my own site. Please feel free to drop by if anything I post there strikes your interest.

And, yes, MaryAnn and the others who post on this site are invited too.

Of course, I might have to straighten up a bit before you folks come over. But still...

A surprise indeed, an unwelcome one. Many will know my thoughts on the migration to the blog format, as I shared at the time, and I'll admit I've missed entering into discussion with 'rati and roundtablers alike. But despite my last post being a long time ago indeed I still regularly lurked, hoping that there would one day be another discussion for me.

I met some fantastic people - Dan Jardine (for it is he), MaryAnn, Shay and LowIQ Canadian to name but a few - and some not so fantastic people, but I've not found a more entertaining, intelligent and engaging discussion on cinema before or since. For what it's worth, the site definitely served to shape me into who I am professionally, and its contribution to my eventually landing a job doing this talking-about-the-movies thing for a living is not insignificant.

In the immortal words of Leonard Nimoy, live long and prosper, and if anyone ever wants to check in on me, I'm now looking after the UK version of Rotten Tomatoes at http://uk.rottentomatoes.com.