JoRafCinema is two years old!

A second year has passed and JoRafCinema is still present. As in last year's article and to celebrate this anniversary, we will today summarize what we have accomplished from July 20th 2012 (date of the first post) to July 20th 2014.

Let us start with a bit of history. The idea of sharing our review of movies online emerged around a glass of Amaro Montenegro at the Udine Far East Film Festival in April 2011. We have met again in August of the same year to define better what we wished to have in the blog, but it took one more year before we really took the time to converge on what you now know as JoRafCinema.blogspot.de.
Our first attempt was not a blog but a Wiki page called JRmovies. We though that this format was making it easier to sort out the movies by genre, year... It was true, but it turned out that our Wiki page was quite ugly (see by yourselves on the screenshot below) so we never launched it.

JRMovies, the stillborn ancestor of JoRafCinema.

Blogger.com was our next best choice, we have stuck to it ever since with no regret and very few modifications to the template, since it took so long to converge to that we still find it very satisfactory.
During the second year we have reviewed 338 movies and written 17 articles, quite constant with the numbers of the previous year with 330 reviews and 14 articles. It is good to see that we have the same constant motivation to watch movies and write about them. The excess in the number of articles is due to a series of posts about the Udine Far East Film Festival in the last years.
Last year we had presented histograms of the number of movies per country, genre or rating. This year the twice larger sample allows us to go further and correlate several parameters one against another. We also spent considerably more time in producing better-looking infographics.

Below you can find a World map showing the country of origin of the movies we have been watching over the two last years. The majority comes from the USA, but a good part also comes from Europe (particularly UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) and from many Asian countries (mainly Japan, South Korea and Hong-Kong).
In and around Europe a few noticeable countries are missing like Austria (I know the good horrific dyptic In 3 Tagen bist du Tot and the thriller Silentium), Slovakia (I have only watched the Czechoslovakian movie Who wants to kill Jessie?), Island (There was the wonderful Noi albinoi by Dagur Kári and I may watch Metalhead at the MFFF14), Turkey (I have watch the funny SF movie G.O.R.A years ago), Lethonia, Estonia (we may have missed such movies at the Karlovy Vary festival) or the Maghreb. Few movies come from Central Asia (Baikonur from Kazakhstan is missing), none from Africa (we will have to report at least about Tsotsi once we got it on Bluray or DVD), and surprisingly few from Central and South America.

Number of movies we have seen (co-)produced per country, with close-up view on Europe and East Asia.

On the map below can be seen the repartition of the 668 reviewed movies per genre. As last year and following the general trend, Comedy and Drama and the most common genres. Our personal tastes make that we watch more Thriller, Action, SF and Horror movies than one could expect. We watch then almost equally Polar, Adventure, Animation, Fantasy and Romance (this last one largely under-represented compared to the world production which is equal to Dramas and Comedies). Documentaries and Black comedy, minor genres, are quite well represented. Music, Western, Epic, Melodrama and War are not shown on the histograms because of their very small contribution. We can also notice that while [Jo] is strongly biased towards Action, Thriller and SF, [Raf] is more bent to the classical genres of Drama and Comedy.
Other interesting trends: from Japan we watch a lot of Animation, Dramas from Belguim, France, UK and South Korea, Thrillers from Spain, Comedies from France, Horror from Canada and Australia, Action from Hong-Kong and the USA. The Italian Gialli translate into an excess of Polar and Horror. Black Comedies are found in Belgium. We watch more Dramas and Thrillers from our country of residence Germany.

Genres of the movies we have seen for the countries with ten movies or more. Also the histogram for all movies, and for each one of the 2 bloggers of JoRafCinema.

The following diagram presents all the genres defined in JoRafCinema. The bubble size is driven by the number of movies. The larger size, the more movies JoRafCinema has been watching. The bubble colour is driven by the average rating as shown in the scale: the darker blue the lower average rating, the darker red the higher average rating. The label displays not only the Genre but also the Number of movies and the Average rating. 
Visually we can draw some conclusions. The small dark blue bubbles (here Melodrama) depict Genres correctly underrepresented according to JoRafCinema's taste. The large dark red bubbles (here Thriller and Drama) depict Genres correctly largely represented according to JoRafCinema's taste. Inversely, small dark red bubbles (here Epic, Western and Black comedy) depict Genres that JoRafCinema should watch more as these are genres we like but do not watch much. Large light blue bubbles (here Action and Comedy) depict Genres that JoRafCinema might watch too much with regard to our taste. Actually it is not right to conclude on Genres with very small number of movies, as the statistics are strongly biased. I am not sure that we will intentionally reduce the number of comedies and action movies we are watching, but to make some sessions with Epic, Western and Black comedies might be possible.

Diagram on Genre with size depending on Number of movies and colour depending on Average rating

The next histogram is divided in two parts with different vertical scales for clarity. The first part focuses on the movies produced before 2008, allowing to get rid of the much larger amount of recent movies reviewed by JoRafCinema as in total there are between 20 and 134 movies per production year after 2008 while the previous years peak at 14. During the first year of JoRafCinema (20.07.2012-20.07.2013) we have seen a few old movies (i.e. from before the 60's) until 1922, while in the second year (20.07.2013-20.07.2014) we watched more movies of these years. Still, few directors and years are covered by JoRafCinema in this period but if the tendency is confirmed, in the coming year we should watch even more movies.
We can also notice a slight tendency for more movies from the early 60's and less movies from the early 70's, but this might just be chance. The beginning of the 90's seems not to interest us much, as we watched only 7 movies produced between 1990 and 1994: this is the rate we have for the oldies. The rest of the first histogram does not show a strong tendency. JoRafCinema reviewed a few less movies from the 90's in year two than in year one. In year one, JoRafCinema did not watch any movie from 1991. Now the gap is filled and the next oldest one is 1967.
For the recent movies in the second part of the histogram (after 2008), we can see that the rates are similar for both years when shifted by one year, i.e. we usually watch more than 100 movies produced in the current year. During the first year we also watched many movies from 2 years before.
This comes from the way we watch movies: the ones seen in movie theaters are almost only produced in the same year and the previous one. The other movies are seen mostly in DVD and Bluray, except the rare retrospectives.

Number of movies per production year watched in the first and second year of JoRafCinema

Last year we did two things to increase the visibility of JoRafCinema: we opened the blog to search engines in August '13, and we started to send a monthly newsletter in January '14. The direct consequence was an increase of the number of Pageviews from 2300 in the first year to 8700 in the second year, i.e. more than a factor three. The general increasing trend can be seen on the following plot enumerating the Pageviews. We thank you for visiting our blog and do not hesitate in giving any comment if you like any article. You can also follow us and like us on facebook.

Number of Pageviews per month of existence of JoRafCinema.

Festivals  
We have participated to quite a few Festivals this past year: The MotelX horror movie festival in September in Lisbon, the Munich Fantasy Filmfest in September and its shorter counterpart (MFFF Nights) in March, the Udine FEFF in April, and the Neuchatel Fantastic Film Festival in July.
For the coming year we intend to further participate to film festivals.

• 08-19.09.2014: The usual Munich Fantasy Filmfest, not really a festival but a gathering of Fantasy, Horror and Thriller movies.
• 19-27.09.2014: San Sebastian Film Festival having an international competition and Spanish and Hispanic sections as well.
• 29.10-02.11.2014: Lübeck Nordischen Filmtage specialised in movies from Northern Europe, i.e. Scandinavian and Baltic countries.
• March 2015: The Munich Fantasy Filmfest Nights: 10 movies in 2 days waiting for the main festival in September.
• 17-25.04.15: We will probably go back the FEFF next year as well, as we enjoyed it so much in 2014 again
• 04-12.07.15: We missed the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this year but will insist on making another attempt in 2015, maybe coupled with Mighty Sounds Music Festival in Tabor.

Last year JoRafCinema participated to MotelX2013, FEFF2014 and NIFFF2014 as press. On one hand this was good to give more notoriety to JoRafCinema, but on the other hand this did not help much in organizing interviews. For the coming year, our goal will be to continue in this way and try step by step to get more in contact with the movie makers.

Movies recommended by JoRafCinema from the last year
Among the 338 movies we have selected the ones that we wish to recommend, particularly ones that were less heard of.
[Jo]:

• Dressed to kill: the Thriller Masterpiece by Brian de Palma
• Three horror comedies to recommend in three different styles: What we do in the Shadows, a hilarious horror mockumentary about a bunch of Vampires sharing a house in New Zealand. Dead Snow 2: splatter comedy with a crude sense of humour. Witching and bitching: the latest folly by Alex de la Iglesia.
• Cheap Thrills: Until which point would you be ready to go for money? Simple and efficient movie.
• The Conjuring: the most frightening horror movie I have seen in years. Very seriously done and good-looking.
• Among the many Alfred Hitchcock movies I watched this year, three of them are really remarkable thanks to the tension they maintain: Torn Curtain, The Birds and Rear Window
• A sweet surprise from the Philippines discovered at the FEFF: Shift.
• The first Star Trek movie (1978) was so unexpected for me that it pushed me to watch the nine others. The first remains the best.
• We talked about the quality of the Belgian Black Comedies, In the Name of the Son is one of them.
• Kontroll, the first full-length feature by Nimród Antal has a great atmosphere, and I wanted to watch it again ever since I visited Budapest. And Pi, first movie by Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) is an experimental trip.
• Europa Report, a realistic space exploration movie shot like a documentary.
• Dialogues avec mon Jardinier is a touching French movie like I would like to see more often.

[Raf]:

• Some movies are direct and fine critics against political power, either dictatorial (Persepolis and Desert dancer) or populist (Viva la liberta) that have original, excellent and different esthetic features.
• Some movies are impressing for their symbiosis with the music, Le concert and Only lovers left alive.
• Some black comedies have shown both great humour and story telling, the Norvegian Arme riddere and the British Looking for Eric.
• Some directors have manage to show a very special atmosphere and story, oppressing and revolutionary in Wake up by Daniel Ruczko, dark romantic in Kontroll by Nimród Antal, obsessional in Enemy by Denis Villeneuve and mystic romantic in Ondine by Neil Jordan
  
• Some movies have shown fine understanding of human feelings, Shift from the Philippines and Locke from Great Britain.
• The astonishing Bangkok Loco which made me discover with enthusiasm Asian movies.
• The good Hitchcock classical Blackmail DVD showing a nice video with the Master of suspense himself.

We wish to thank all our friends who regularly visit our blog, even if just to check the titles and rating of the recent movies we watched. We noticed you are a bit shy in leaving comments to our articles while you shouldn't, we also built this blog to interact and share opinions with you. Everytime you do it or send a comment by email, it warms the heart.

We wish you all a happy cinematographic year 2014-2015.

Jo&Raf