As of April 6, 2011, the 5 year old film blog known as cinematical.com has died.
The site was started by a handful academic cinephiles, which transformed into a popular one-stop site for anything and everything related to the movies - latest movie news and developments, reviews, commentaries, releases, videos, interviews, and everything else under the sun in movie geekdom (meaning, learning of the existence of wonderful little items such as this adorable Star Wars Boba Fett Clock/Lamp).
How the favored film site met it's demise is detailed by several articles, including this one from indieWire. As well as a personal account from one of Cinematical's former editors, Eric Snider.
The trouble started in 2010 when AOL-Time-Warner bought the site, combining it with its own more commercial movie site Moviefone. Sacrifices were a bit in quality, but Cinematical staffers adjusted appropriately and still maintained their quality. But early this year, AOL also bought the Huffington Post, a blog which famously used unpaid writers. In an attempt to "Huffington-ize" other blogging-sectors of the AOL empire, the company wished to "restructure" them into a traditional, in-office, newspaper-style journalism staff. But still, they wanted the blogs and bloggers to continue working for them....only this time for free.This would make it almost impossible for the freelance-writers, who also live in different parts of the country, to be able or even want to work there.
Thus followed a string of firings and resignations, and a slew of miscommunication between corporate and the poorly writers, which actually caused a a round of RE-resignations that weren't filed appropriately the first time.
And so Cinematical is no more, with all of it's writers and editors now positioned at other film-blogging sties. While this is just a small consequence of yet another corporate buyout, it is an unfortunate one. For me, the site was a great one which spoke to many of my varied interests. It hit everything from the inspirational and innovative, to the quirky and silly aspects of the movie world. It was a one-stop-shop, but it led you to discover so many other things. And more importantly, it was made by people who really knew and LOVED movies, and that's something I could admire.
So until another film blog comes along, we'll always have Cinematical.
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