Happy 1st Birthday, Furious Cinema!

When I started this blog about one year ago, several things plagued my mind. There are plenty of movie news and gossip blogs out there, almost none of them with an actual quality agenda (or “mission”), reporting on anything from indie movies to the latest Disney-made horse-shit. There is a myriad of small genre movie blogs, some doing excellent work, but who would build a portal aggregating some of that great content? Lastly, I wanted a place to write and talk about movies I loved, that fall in between the other websites I launched years ago (all on that CineCoalition site stripe at the top of this page). I wanted a place with my agenda: Enough with the boring popcorn crap, I needed a blog where we could write about great movies, that were exciting, and where we could bitch about those that epitomized in our view everything that is bad about Hollywood (Michael Bay yada yada yada). Enter Furious Cinema. A movie blog was born that would dedicate itself: We are as mad as hell, and we are not gonna take it anymore. An angry, but also positive blog on a mission from the movie gods.

Of course, I spent little time with definitions and we dove right into it, Peter (who writes the majority of the articles) and I. But I did have certain “mad” movies in mind. Perdita Durango, Starship Troopers, From Dusk Till Dawn, Basic Instinct, Mad Max or Good Night and Good Luck, being some of them. They exemplified what I had in mind, but it would of course be hard to always nail it. Of course, furiosity and entertainment are a matter of taste, so today on Furious Cinema you will find that we talk about a broad range of movies, and we will not always necessarily agree – and that is good. Peter for example likes comic book and super hero movies, I despise them. But you can’t argue about taste – or rather, we do, and there have been cases where we would have heated discussions behind the scenes. But we do agree about certain red lines we do not cross, and we agree on what the great movies are that we want to pay tribute to. We agree, that cinema should entertain, that cinema should do magic, it should be fun, creative, original, and daring. If you read this you have come here because you are tired of the same old same old, it is because you want to join others who dig movies with a certain edge in quality or fun, it is because you think Seabiscuit sucks and watching The Big Lebowski for the millionth time rocks.

Now after a year of wild fury, always keeping the “we are as mad as hell and we are not gonna take it anymore” motto (Network, 1976) in the back of our heads, it is time to pat ourselves on the back for a great job, knock down a few tequila shots and watch some more awesome movies. We have marched through the valley of darkness, holding the Furious Cinema banner up high like a torch. We have stood the ground on our love for westerns, we have compiled lists of BluRays that are worth your money, we have cheered classic films, and new films that promised to kick ass. And we have had guest authors join us (and continue to invite everyone to write articles for this blog).

Here are some personal highlights from a year of Furious Cinema:

• Pistoleers & Pioneers: Part 1 & Part 2
• In Praise of Kevin Costner
• Paul Verhoeven: Furious Filmmaker
• Tango Down: 10 Awesome Special Forces Films
• • 10 Fast and Furious Films
• • Favorite Road Movies: Part 1 | Part 2
• • 50 Furious Films: The 1970s | 1980s
• • Blu Fury: Citizen Kane: 70th Anniversary Edition
• • 50 Furious Films That Rock
• • Sergio Leone – Once Upon A Time: The West | In America
• • 50 Furious Crime Films
• • 50 Furious Females: Hell Hath No Fury
• • 50 Furious War Films
• • John Cassavetes: Furious Filmmaker

Our plans for the new year are to: 1. Develop the site design. 2. Try to cover even more classic and modern cinema in depth. 3. Produce a furious podcast or videochat.

We wish to: Invite some new staff members/furious voices to give alternate POVs on cinema.

We have high hopes for such movies as: Django Unchained, The Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus and The Expendables 2 just to name a few.

Thank you for being with us, dear readers. We hope 2012 will kick even more cinematic ass than 2011 did, we are looking forward to reading your comments here below the article, or on Google Plus or Facebook. Please subscribe to us via RSS to stay posted, and join us on all those social media channels we are on. We’re in this fight together, to weed out the good from the bad movies, and if you want to write for Furious Cinema, let us know! We wish you high definition holidays (check out our shopping guide) and hope you stay faithful, to the blog that is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. You’re on Furious Cinema.