Here I collect the things that I have watched.

This is my low-effort project, to note-down some info about something I watched. These notes are not necessarily recommendations. I just need some place to process all the visual things I consume. A way to store and somehow track at least some of them.

Rating System

Interested in what I recommend? Check these tags:

  • ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ — masterpiece is for the pictures that I treat as must-see.
  • ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ — recommends is for the things I liked and can recommend, they aren’t necessarily a must-see.
  • ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ — like is for the things I liked and might recommend.
  • ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ — meh is for the things I cannot say I dislike them or won’t recommend, it’s just that they’re so-so.
  • ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ — didn’t like is for the things I disliked and would rather recommend avoiding.
  • ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ — mediocre is for the things I found mediocre. In my vocabulary it’s a time being wasted.

Tags are usually combined, e.g.

  • if something is a masterpiece, it’s an automatic recommendation and like from me,
  • sometimes there are like and meh at the same time, e.g. Game of Thrones, I liked it, but it’s gotten worse and worse towards the end. And the ending is just ruined all that for me.

So the stars system is just for easier understanding of my rating system and tags are for easier search.

Please do remember that this system is my subjective system, so don’t be offended when your favorite movie gets zero and labelled as mediocre, and something you consider a shit gets a recommendation or like from me. I’m not a movie observer, and it all depends on my emotional state at the moment of me watching a thing.

How I See Cinematography

Personally, I treat cinematography as I treat music.

There is no bad music, some of it is inappropriate for some occasions and vice-versa. Same is here.

I believe that for most good works, you need to understand the context to get it, actually. On the contrary, making them too obvious may make them much worse.

Also, sometimes there is this mood when you want to watch something silly, you do that, and you like it. But for some other time, you’d call it a waste of time. I believe you can watch the same work in two different days, and you may or may not like it. Consider that when taking my ratings. They are mostly for me and my memories.

‘Ah, I watched it back then and didn’t like it, but today I like it!’ and vice-versa. I believe, it’s totally normal to see things that way.

Counterpart

This site has a counterpart, named might.watch — it contains the movies I might watch.

I’ve been considering names ‘should watch,’ ‘shall watch,’ and ‘would watch,’ but realised ‘might watch’ is just the best way of saying about those works. I may watch them, or I may not watch them, I don’t know.

Generally speaking, might.watch is the collection of recommendations from someone else. It may suit much better as a source of inspiration for what to watch.

As this site’s intention is not to recommend something or not, but rather track what I’ve been watching, and what I liked. It’s more about me than cinematography.

If I truly enjoyed something, there is a huge chance I’d write about it in my primary blog, see the tag cinematography.

Colophon

This website is made with the help of:

  • Hugo, static site generator.
  • A modified Papermod theme.
  • TMDb API to get all the information about the movies.
  • My home-brewed bash-script that lives on my servers, which helps me publish from my iPhone, using built-in Apple’s Shortcuts app. I enter just the name of the work and the script automatically fetches the cover image and the release year of the movie, and forms the template.

More about this in my primary blog.