Quips notes 04.11.04

It doesn't happen nearly as often as I might hope for, but every once in a while, I discover that somebody I've never met and won't likely ever meet has chosen to add a link to my movie reviews website, Stephen Bourne's Movie Quips, at their site. This is a pleasant surprise for me, frankly. Different than the encouraging visitor frequency that's tallied and accumulated by the hits counters I rely on for basic statistics info, learning that somebody has actually decided that they want the people who visit their site to discover mine is like a vote of confidence in a way. Particularly when it's done by an individual, and is related to something positive and fun.

The most recent occurance of this can be found at a fan website created for admirers and followers of rising Hollywood star and former supporting actor for television's 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Marc Blucas ('I Capture the Castle' (2002), 'First Daughter' (2004)) at http://mblucas.net. This fairly comprehensive site offers its visitors a variety of pages full of info about Blucas' career, as well as encourages people to join the community of his fans to chat about him and how adorably hunky they think he is. It also features at least one of my movie reviews, recently cut and pasted by that site's webmaster from my own reviews website into its own page there at http://mblucas.net/articles/movie_reviews/000279.php, with a link back to my reviews site through one of my online reviews archive pages.

That's how I discovered the Marc Blucas fan site. While doing a regular keyword search through Google, part of my review for 'First Daughter' came up, but wasn't on any of the webpages that I previously knew about. Sparking my interest in investigating it a little further.

Now, I suppose a normal reaction by, say, someone like me, who spends a lot of my spare time building a body of experience by writing this web content with the intent of parlaying that effort into a paying gig would be to get all upset that somebody had lifted my copyrighted movie review for their own online use. Copying and using it elsewhere without my permission. However, that wasn't my reaction at all. Primarily because one of the sites that I supply this original content to has been farming out my stuff without my involvement for a while, with the result being that more people check out my movie reviews website (and come back) through those portals than if that wasn't being done. People reading my movie reviews is always a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. People regularly dropping by my reviews website because of that is cause for thanks. Which is what I did in this case, through email.

So, the fans of Marc Blucas get to read at least one more piece of relevent content on their website. And, they're given an easy access point to that content's source at Stephen Bourne's Movie Quips, where they can read about the other Marc Blucas movies I've reviewed so far. As well, they can read about the hundreds of other movies that have - through some outrageously monumental oversight or insane bad judgement on the part of those in charge of such things, of course - made it into the movie theatres without featuring a single frame of Marc Blucas in them at all...

As long as it's clearly pointed out that I'm the writer of one of my reviews that's being used elsewhere, with or without my knowledge, and there's an easily usable, working link back to my reviews website with it, I'd say that everybody benefits in the long run.

Incidentally, the URL for my movie reviews website is http://www.geocities.com/iamstephenbourne/moviequips.html.

Thanks for checking in.