For some reason, I never noticed that the RSS feed for this site, to this point, has been…what’s the word….non-existent. I’m not entirely sure why the default feed never worked, but I was setting up some feeds for my new Norwegians account and used my own site as a test and realized that the feed didn’t really work. I’ve gone ahead and fixed that problem, so now you can subscribe to the RSS of good ol’ Movie Hawk like you do any other blog that you read. Because I’m sure you were clamoring to see some updates.

Back later today with a review.

“You give too many things three stars,” my brother tells me. I take that to mean “certainly that many things aren’t that good.” I’ve never been able to verbalize what three stars means to me, or what five stars does, for that matter. Then, when I joined blogcritics.org, I came across their scoring system, and I realized that their determinations for star ratings are the same as the ones I’ve been using since I switched from the ten-point scale.

Three stars doesn’t mean something is good; in fact, it means that it’s just barely good enough. Two-and-a-half or three stars means that, if you come across the movie on cable one day, or somebody’s listening to the CD in their car, you should enjoy it. It’s decent. Anything below * * 1/2 isn’t really worth your time. Anything above * * * is recommended. At present, there are 18 movies rated above three stars, and by the time my next two reviews are written, that number will be at 20. Is that too many films rated “above average?” I don’t think so - they were all good enough to recommend. There are no movies ranked at five stars, and I’ll start being more liberal with that. Five stars, after all, doesn’t mean perfection. It just means that it’s a superb film. When the calendar year turns, I’ll change the numbered movie listings into a group according to star rating, taking some of the pressure off of weighing the films against each other.

Blogcritics Product Scoring System

A bit of exciting news on the Movie Hawk front: I’ve been brought on as a contributing member of the very large, very diverse staff over at Blogcritics.org. Blogcritics is a destination site for commentary on music, movies, sports, television, politics…you name it, they write about it. And with more than 1,500 writers in the “sinister cabal,” you’re likely to see dozens of new articles each day.

Of course, everything I wind up publishing over at Blogcritics will be seen here as well, but I still encourage you to go visit the site and see some of the other interesting writing going on.

With the advent of the new site comes the need to update the woefully ancient blogroll. Ancient as in it was last updated months ago and this is the Internet, so it was obsolete after two days anyway. Added to the blogroll are I’ve Made a Huge Tiny Mistake, a local sports and entertainment blog (by a fellow Hawk); Reviewing Whatever, an amalgamation of thoughts on everything the blogger (also a fellow Hawk) touches; A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, one of the strangest and most wonderful group of pop culture bloggers around; and The Movie Blog, which is like Ain’t It Cool News without the flame wars.

Gone from the list is Shallow•Center, who has regrettably, for the time being, disappeared from the blogosphere. If Tom makes a comeback, I’ll be the first to write a glowing review of his stuff and welcome him home.

If you read the site and are a blogger, drop me a line at jeff@moviehawk.net to get added.

Welcome, one and all, to MovieHawk. I’m your host, Jeff Martin. For those of you who don’t know me…wow, thanks for coming to the site. I’ve written on two other services before now, so if you’ve kept with me all that time and are one of the tens of people influenced by my opinion, well shucks, thanks so much.

MovieHawk is my place to polish my writing skills and share opinions, primarily on movies but also on television, sports, and whatever else I encounter in my life and times. If you want to know more, let your eyes glance to the top of the page and click on the “About” link.

There are a few subtle differences between this and my former site, namely that the movie rankings don’t have a place in the sidebar. Instead, you will see a rotation of the three most recent movies I’ve seen. It gets too difficult to arbitrarily decide whether one three-and-a-half-star movie was better than another, totally different film that got the same rating. If you still want to see my opinion on that, you can always click “Movies 2006 (or subsequent year)” at the top of the page. The site is up and running, so please feel free to poke around while I decide what to post next.

A great man one said that news is a conversation and so, too, should this site be. Please comment early and often. I want to know what you have to say; otherwise, I’m just talking to a firewall.