True Grit; Closing out the Year

This week's review of "True Grit" (3 stars) brings my critical year to a close. Hard to believe I only started with the Union-Tribune  in January! Since then, I've managed to cram in 72 reviews and five feature stories (the final one, about the San Diego Christian Film Festival, is in today's paper). I also appeared in four pre-Oscar TV spots for Channel 10, where I did a spectacularly poor job of predicting the winners, but not too shabby on the teleprompter if you ask me! (This was during the bizarre period of time before the paper hired its new editor-in-chief. I don't think we'll be repeating this strange exercise for 2011, though who knows?)

I also became a member of the San Diego Film Critics Society this year, which meant I took part in my first DVD screener deluge (awesome!) and gave my two cents during our recent voting session, which yielded some interesting results for Best of 2010.

I also found my rhythm as a freelance writer with a full time day job. I don't get to review nearly as many films as I'd like and, now that I have a handle on what I can do without losing my mind, I'm hoping to cover more independent films in my 2011. Hollywood has done little to earn the amount of attention it gets (from me and everyone else) and, although I will still review the mainstream movies when appropriate, I will make the necessary adjustments to my schedule so that I can cover  films that may be more deserving of your attention--even if they don't  have the marketing budget to buy it.

I've also got my eyes and ears open for potential stories about local film festivals, filmmakers and events so drop me a line if you have a suggestion. Looks like the San Diego Black Film Festival and San Diego Jewish Film Festival are first up in the queue and I'm eager to see what they have to offer.

So those are my New Year's resolutions-- when it comes to movies anyway. What are yours?

I'm hoping to get a Top 10 list posted before we say so long to what has been a pretty crappy year (for film and for the world). Here's hoping we've got nowhere to go but up in 2011.