Editor Bob Ignizio looks back at 2014 for the Cleveland Movie Blog

By Bob Ignizio

2014 proved to be an eventful year both for me personally, and for the Cleveland Movie Blog. The biggest thing was becoming a homeowner. While that was a great development, the house we bought required a lot of work to get into shape, making it harder than usual to stay on top of the blog. And with digital distribution making it easier for small features to get limited runs in theaters, trying to review everything that played in Cleveland was a far more daunting task than in years past.

Compounding all this, The Cleveland Movie Blog had to bid farewell to some of our staff writers, including long time contributor Pete Roche. Pete was an invaluable asset to this blog. He was a little more mainstream in his tastes than some of us, and I will forever be grateful that he was willing to handle almost all of the CGI kiddie flick reviews while he was part of the team. I sincerely wish him the best in his future endeavors, and should his schedule permit, would gladly welcome him back to the fold. In addition to Pete, we also lost Grace Snyder to another state, and other commitments have forced Milan Paurich to cut back on his efforts here for the moment.

Unfortunately, this meant that some movies both big and small just slipped through the cracks. Nonetheless, we forged ahead and managed to cover the vast majority of films that played the northeast Ohio area theatrically in 2014.

Fortunately a couple new guys, Ric Nimrod and Wayne Richards, have recently been helping pick up some of the overflow of online and DVD screeners. Still, we could probably use at least one more writer who can make it to advance theatrical screenings. If you think that person might be you and you live in the greater Cleveland area, send a writing sample to clevelandmovieblog@gmail.com. And while writing ability and a willingness to crank out copy in a timely fashion for no money are the main criteria I look for in any Cleveland Movie Blog contributor, it would be nice to get someone who isn't a middle aged white dude. I think we've got that demographic pretty well represented.

Whether we add any further new blood or not, we'll still do our best to cover not just the mainstream blockbusters playing your local multiplex, but the little films playing at the Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cedar Lee Theatre, Capitol Theatre, and Akron's Nightlight Cinema that often don't get the coverage they deserve in more mainstream local media. And if you enjoy what you read here and find it useful, please spread the word. Hope you have a great holiday season whatever you celebrate (or just some nice days off from work if you don't celebrate anything), and we'll see you in 2015.