Early Attempts

I guess you can say that I started my journey as an independent critic in the mid 90’s. Or just after that, really, as I entertained myself by writing reviews only for myself years before that. But in the 90’s I made an effort to create a magazine, fanzine, or whatever you call it. It was just a bunch of pages stapled together. All I had was a monochrome printer, so all pictures were in black and white. I didn’t even have internet back then, so I was relying on a friend to find info and pictures for me.

I was looking for a good name for it, and I had previously been attending the “Fantastisk Film Festival” (Fantastic Film Festival) in Lund, Sweden, so I thought about using that name for a while. But then I thought, nah.. I cannot just steal the name… And I’m glad I didn’t, since the festival came to be an enormous success years later. I think I was there for the first three or four years before I lost interest. It was just too much of a hassle for me at that age to accommodate myself for a week in a city that far from my home.

Anyway, the name stuck with me and I decided I should call my publication Fanatisk Film, which translates to Fanatic Film. It was a catchy name, but as an homage to the festival that first let me see really odd, fantastic, and strange movies, like Tetsuo and Razor Blade Smile. I kind of regretted my naming of the project later, though, since apparently, people cannot read. I don’t know how many times it was referred to as Fantastic Film instead of Fanatic Film over the years, but more about that later.

Going Online

A few years went by. I was starting to feel the urge to share my view with the world. I was reading some Swedish movie magazines at the time; there weren’t that many around. I was also frequently seeking out publications like Fangoria and The Darkside, which weren’t that easily obtainable in Sweden at the time. I was starting to dream about contributing to something bigger than just myself or my closest friends. I didn’t have very high hopes, but I applied to become a contributor to a couple of niched filmsites in Sweden as I was still writing in Swedish.

I can’t say that I really can remember the names of those sites, and I don’t think they’re around anymore anyway. But if I recall correctly, I did contribute a few texts,s but nothing more came out of it. Maybe there was a certain form I needed to adapt to, a way of rating or something else, I really can’t remember. But at this time, the internet had become more accessible for me, and even if it still was very expensive to surf the web via the telephone line, I started to formulate my thoughts of making something of my own, where I was the boss, and I didn’t need to fall in line for somebody else’s rules.

Fanatisk Film

Again, I used the previous Idea of Fanatisk Film! I can’t say exactly what year this was because I can’t remember, but I used this for a few years to publish film reviews. I wasn’t limited to any kind of restrictions. If I felt I wanted to write about Dirty Dancing, I did, and if I felt like I needed to ventilate my thoughts about Shogun Assassin, I was just as free to do that.

I recruited a couple of contributors to help me; my future wife wrote some, but it was mostly me. I don’t think I was too kind to my “staff” since I demanded that they follow the very high standard that I think I had in my texts. Those texts were in Swedish, of course. I still own the domain, and FanatiskFilm.se is still there, but it hasn’t been updated in many years. In fact, the reason that I stopped using it was that it was way too much work to upload and update the site with new content. I don’t think I even know how it was done anymore; it was quite manual. I published a couple of thousand film reviews here.

Magnifik Music

Of course, even if I wasn’t limited by any selection rules when it came to movies, I was still feeling restricted. I needed something more. I wanted to pursue my other main interest – music! So, what did I do? I created a subsite to Fanatisk Film for music. It took a while to come up with the name, but eventually it became Magnifik Music, which translates to Magnificent Music. Together with a friend, I set out to write lengthy album reviews with quality, as we both thought that there really wasn’t anything in Swedish that was offering the kind of text that we thought was suitable.

As this was created on the same domain as Fanatisk Film, it’s also still there. I think we published 8-900 reviews together. I was more into Hardrock and Metal, and he was more into Singer-Songwriter and Americana, but we never let that limit us. We wrote about exactly what we wanted and were free to do so.

But as I said earlier, it was way too much work to update with new reviews on the format that we eventually abandoned the project. It was actually more time-consuming to update with a new text or review than to write it. That’s just wrong. That’s not how it’s suååosed to be, and it became more like work and less fun to keep going.

The First Blogging Period

But I wasn’t finished. I still couldn’t give it up. What did I do? I found a free blogging platform that was easy to update in a few clicks, and copy/pasted everything I had previously written there. I did not include any of the others’ text as I didn’t have permission to do so. But on the other hand, I never asked if I should move them along with mine, as nobody was writing anymore anyway. You can find them here: Fanatiskfilm, Magnifik Musik

I wrote reviews of films and music on a daily basis, but now I write them on a blog instead. I think I spent most of my free time watching, listening, and writing. But I still wasn’t satisfied. Why didn’t I review books as well? Of course, I had never been an avid reader, but I figured, why the heck not? So I started another blog for that. It takes time to read books, so I didn’t update that as much, but I built a small following. But I still couldn’t stop. I was obsessed with reviewing stuff and formulating clever ways to describe what I felt and thought. Well, at least I thought I was clever.

Hence, I started a blog for displaying movie posters, there was one for comics, and another one for different kinds of beer I tried out. I created another one for wine and one for cheese… Well, you get the picture. Around this time, I also thought that I should transfer into English. All my blogs and texts up to this day had been in Swedish – my first language. What did I do? I started to translate hundreds of film reviews and created The Film Fanatic’s Companion.

Could I hold up the tempo for all of these? Hell no! Which meant that I almost stopped altogether. What I never could give up was films and movies, though. I had to do something more about that. But I couldn’t have it separated, as I couldn’t handle updating all blogs simultaneously. ActiveContext.net was born!

Active Context

It took me quite a while to figure out what to call my new home for my collected works. I had many idea but nothing really had that vibe or rhythm to it that I was after until one day Active Context came out from a massive brainstorm. I think it’s kind of genius, actually. Active, meaning that it’s always there, publishing new stuff, and context, meaning that it’s always on point, it’s always relevant to the guidelines I set out to follow. Every genre does have some gems in it, regardless of whether there’s usually not that much in that particular style that interests me.

I also knew, from before, that I couldn’t limit myself to just write about Horror and Metal, which are the main genres that I do write about. I wanted to be able to venture into something completely different if I wanted to. And you could say that I have. There are all kinds of music and film reviews. I was also very careful to never compare certain aspects of a film to another, for example. It’s not fair to compare the special effects of a hundred-million-dollar budget film and one that only costs a few thousand. They’re the same, but different. You need to evaluate from the right point of view.

I’ve always stood by that. That’s why I can find a cheep badly acted flick with a great story more entertaining, hence a higher rating, than a big blockbuster title with countless stars in it. It might have stars and a lot of money to work with. But does it have a soul?

Of course, to create something new required me to design a website on my own. I had never used WordPress before and had no Idea how it worked. There was a lot of trial and error. There still is. I don’t really know what I’m doing when adding plugins and trying to get the functionality and/or the design that I want. In a perfect world, I just could have hired someone to create it for me, but that’s not really in my nature. It wouldn’t have been more fun in a lot of ways, though, because I could concentrate on writing and not on designing.

Back to square one

So, recently I started to think bout what it would be like to write for some other site again. I would lose some of my freedom, but I would gain some time not having to deal with issues I can hardly comprehend. I don’t know. I think, in the best of worlds, I would like to have my own place but also make guest appearances at other places. That would be cool.

Because I don’t really promote my site, which ever it has been through the years. I have promoted myself. There have been occasions where I had a few friends write some stuff for me, and I got material from a creator. When I explained that I would hand it to a colleague and publish whatever they thought about the works, I was met with rejection. They wanted ME to review it because my style of writing is apparently different from “the usual reviews. It probably is, and I probably analyse way too much sometimes. More than is actually necessary. So, if I didn’t do it, they didn’t want a review at all. I can’t take that in any other way than asa HUGE compliment!

But on the other hand, I have also had encounters with film directors who were very friendly at first, until they realized that I was not a fellow movie creator, but a critic. They banned me faster than quick because, apparently, all critics are the scum of the earth.

I have gotten emails and PMs on social media where my sanity has been questioned because I have defended a B-movie that the mainstream audience doesn’t agree with. I have reviewed music I didn’t understand but still liked, or at least found very funny. My d*ck has been called out for being small when I didn’t follow the mainstream fold. I have been called deaf AND blind when reviewing music.

Blacklisted

I have linked thousands of external reviews in imdb over the years. It has never been a problem. Well, maybe one time when I tried to link something a little too adult, can’t remember what it was now, and I was told that it needed an age verification process for it to be an approved link. Of course, I didn’t know how to do that, so it remained unlinked.

A couple of weeks ago imdb stopped accepting my reviews, though. They just declined whatever I tried to post. After a few times, I opened a case about it, wondering why. Apparently, ActiveContext.net “didn’t meet their editorial standards at this time.” Of Course, that doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t know what to fix, and I won’t get a better answer.

I even tried to contribute ordinary user reviews, but they were denied as well. So, now I’m speculating. My site was not up to the correct editorial standard, after years of being good enough to contribute hundreds of reviews. But a user review? Do they have to meet an editorial standard? Frankly, I’ve seen one- and two-liner reviews that apparently are ok to be posted. I have seen external reviews that barely even describe the plot, let alone evaluate any of the other aspects of movie-making.

To me, a review is something where you dive into the subject and analyse it. Something where you share your personal thoughts. You rate it, you try to figure out underlying themes, and you describe your own experiences. To just say “this was bad” or “this was great” as I’ve seen far too many times is not reviewing. Yet, those kinds of links and/or user reviews are permitted on imdb. My more essay-like analyses aren’t.

Conclusion

So, what have I learned? I have learned that being different is not always a good thing. You should fall into the fold of the mainstream, and you shouldn’t analyse too much. But I have also learned that people want me to review their stuff because it’s ME, and I have a unique style in doing so. My work and thoughts are appreciated; it matters. I have always been true to myself, and that has made a mark somewhere.

Thank you!