A little bit of housekeeping today folks, as we get set for our run through to Christmas. As regular readers will be aware, we’ve recently moved headquarters, which has been a little hectic to say the least. We’ve taken the time to stop and reflect on things about the offices, and across the site.

You’ll all be happy to know that I’ve re-registered the Fernby Films domain through until October 2012, so you can rest assured knowing we’re gonna be around for the foreseeable future – although after that comes the end of the world, according to Roland Emmerich, so stay tuned for further post-apocalypse plans in the years to come! We jest, really. Since we’re predominantly a film review site, we’re going to start scaling back the more non-review posts we present on a weekly basis – particularly the trailers and breaking news. We’ll still pay tribute to those who pass on, but our future-looking posts are going to be fewer and further between. We don’t want to become a site based on news, but continue to focus on reviews, which is where we started this whole thing.

Speaking of our reviews, you may have noticed that we post reviews bi-weekly these days, since writing and prepping each review takes a substantial amount of time. We’ve been tweaking our review structure over the last few weeks, including a modification on our “star rating” logo at the bottom of each review – we did this since noticing Dan over at Top Ten Films added a snazzy little star system to his reviews, and we thought imitation would be the best form of flattery. To complement this, we removed the rather redundant /10 rating in the summary section of our newest reviews, since we want you to read our review to get to our rating, rather than reading why we gave a film a certain rating anyway. More modifications are planned for our reviews, to streamline them going forward.

But the most important news, as far as the site is concerned, will take place in the new year. As of January 2011, we’ll be going over the site in a major revamp. You’ll notice a lot less clutter about the site as we remove a lot of pages, links and stuff currently visible that nobody reads. This will represent a major streamlining and refocusing of fernbyfilms.com towards its key target - film reviews. In the last 12 months or so, we’ve drifted into the realm of gossip and upcoming news site, which isn’t where we really wanted to be. A lot less clutter around the place, that’s our aim!

Over the course of the last two months, we’ve been breaking all kinds of viewing records, averaging around 450 views per day here at the site. While not competing with many of the bigger sites, many of whom have budgets and advertising, we’re pretty much a one-man-band here at fernbyfilms.com, so the numbers we’ve been recording since August, upwards of 400+ per day, have been astounding. To all our regular readers, I thank you for keeping fernbyfilms.com on your internet radar!

So keep an eye out for a fresh new look and feel come January.

Rodney T – Editor In Chief, fernbyfilms.com

A while back we were scheduling in our reviews for November, and came across the fact that our regular Thursday upload came around on Remembrance Day this year: so we’ve pushed our next review back to tomorrow. This allows us time to reflect today on those who fought and died in wars around the world; in particular World War II, for which 11/11 is important.

To those who’ve given the ultimate sacrifice in service of their country, we salute you today.

Hello there, dear readers!

Well, we hope you all enjoyed our Worst Film Week event last week, it proved quite popular with our readers! We promise to do it all again next year!!!

Behind the scenes, it’s been quite taxing getting the WFW up to par, and once again many thanks to our contributing authors for their efforts in sending us material to use. As an appreciation for their work, we once again ask that you check out their websites by clicking the links in our “Friends” section in the sidebar to the right. Checking out more of their work is one way of thanking them for their time.

Also behind the scenes here at fernbyfilms.com, we’re undergoing a major change. Our headquarters at West Beach, here in Adelaide, is no longer, as we’re moving residential location! The next week will be taken up with moving, unpacking, sorting and re-setting things up as we move to a new house, so for that time there’ll be nobody steering the ship with new articles. I’ve asked website admin superstar Mick Kubler to keep an eye on any new comments, and keep the readership happy in that regard; there will be no articles or reviews coming online over the next week, however. We’ll be back up and running soon, though, so don’t despair.

Anyway, we’re going to take a breath and relax for a moment, take some time to do some personal things and come back here all refreshed and ready to go. There’s plenty of stuff coming up here at fernbyfilms.com, so don’t forget to register with us to make sure you don’t miss a minute of the action. Coming up in the next few months, we take a look at films such as The Blind Side, The Book Of Eli, The A Team and even local Aussie-made film The Boys Are Back. I kick in an article I wrote a few weeks back about why I think I am worthy of being a film critic, and we crack open a few more Top Ten lists before the year is out! Plenty of stuff to pique your curiosity!!

Until then, though, we’re off for a bit. Catch you all in a week!

Rodney T – Editor In Chief, Fernby Films.

Hello my dear readers!

Welcome to the  Annual Worst Film Week here at fernbyfilms.com. Each year, in September, we take a look at some of the worst films ever made, from recent turkeys of the last 12 months, to films you may have missed from ages ago! We don’t discriminate when it comes to bad films: we want to warn you about them all. So this week, we’ve decided to have a shot at a couple of debacles you may have missed!

This year we’ve invited several of our fellow movie bloggers to join in on the action. Al K Hall over at The Bar None will pour a pint on one an actor he considers to among the very worst, and Above The Line scribe (and frequent commenter here at fernbyfilms.com) Rory will dissect the art of turning what could have been a great film into a rubbish one. One starring two of cinema’s most enduring icons! He’s standing proudly side-by-side with Dan Stephens at Top 10 Films and Robert Nowotny from Need To Vent, who will vent (ha!) their spleens on various cruddy films they’ve seen. Also on board for this special occasion is friend of the site Emma Muhlack, providing a comedic journey to discover the films she loves to hate.

We thank our contributors for their…. er, contributions, and we hope you’ll visit their sites in due course to say howdy! Their sites can be accessed not only here in this post, but also in their links under the “Friends” banner in the sidebar. We usually link to their stuff on our own reviews of similar films anyway, so you’ll always have plenty of unique and intelligent (if not inebriated, Al!) things to read on a film we’ve seen! Give them a friendly visit and prepare to be surprised!!

We’ve also trolled the interweb to bring you this years instalment of the World Worst Film Posters, fresh from their digital uploading across the world. There’s some real shockers there too, let me tell you. Hilarious, but bad! Plus, we’ll look back again at the biggest financial box office bombs of all time, as well as bringing you our official list of the Top Ten Worst Films Ever Made.

By far, though, the most anticipated item of this weeks event is the return of a contributing author we’d thought long gone from these hallowed pages. The Secret Squirrel, the fluffy one him/herself, has come out of retirement for a one-off review on a film he/she has found truly dreadful in recent times. We welcome back the Secret One for this all-star affair, and look forward to his/her review later in the week.

Things officially get under way later today, as I take a look at what I consider to be the single worst films made during the 00′s, UltraViolet. That’s online about lunchtime today, so check back with us and take a look….

So enjoy this weeks worst of the worst. We thoroughly enjoy bringing it to you!!

Rodney T – Worst. Editor. Ever.

Just a quick note to our regular readers that we’ve gone ahead and updated out Transformers 3 page, in the sidebar to the right (or on the logo above). We’ve scabbed some videos from Michael Bay’s official site showing some of the shooting in Chicago a while back, some gob-smackingly awesome practical effects and epic, oh so epic explosions done for real in the middle of a major US city. Only Michael Bay could have pulled this off. Check out those videos, and we’ve also updated the cast list a little. For those of you keeping score on TF3, there’s less than a year to go!!

Half way through 2010 already, and we thought it was time to let our regular readers know a little of what’s on the horizon here at the site.

Currently, we’re working on more reviews of the Aliens franchise, along with our intended look at the two original Predator films. We’re also tentatively hopeful that we’ll finally get our Matrix reviews done too, and considering we promised to get that done a few years back, it’s been a long time coming.

You can expect to see more Worst Films in our annual Worst Film Week event in late September, as well as this years annual “Worst Film Posters” update. This is one of our more popular articles, and we’ll be bringing you more shite from around the world then. Keep an eye out for that. Probably even a review or two of some true turkeys, including John Travolta’s gob-smackingly dreadful Battlefield Earth.

Christmas will no doubt sneak up on us all again this year, which is why we already have our line-up for the holiday season ready to go. This year, we’ll not be uploading a review on Christmas Day, instead putting up a couple of articles on the 24th, including a look at Jim Carrey’s turn as Scrooge in the Zemeckis CGI-fest A Christmas Carol.

Among other ideas flung about the office in the last few weeks, is the possibility of finishing reviews on the films from Pixar, a number of which we haven’t featured on the site yet. We’re also hoping to gain some more staff in the next 6 months, with another push to bring quality writing on board and broaden our outlook on all things film. Anybody reading this who is in any way interested, can contact us directly to nominate their intent.

We’ll be keeping you updated on all things Transformers 3, with our dedicated page set up to handle all news and articles on the next film from director Michael Bay. Not only that, but we’re also going strong on our commitment to follow the production of the two Hobbit movies coming to us thanks to Peter Jackson. We had word from Ian McKellan himself that the Hobbit flicks will start shooting by the end of 2010 at the latest. They ARE going to happen! At the time of writing this, though, there’s still no word on whether Mr Jackson himself will direct the films, or they’ll find somebody else. Stay tuned!!

As always, if you wish to remain up-to-date on all our articles and reviews, subscribe! We love having people subscribe to our site, so if you’re not among our many readers who’ve listed their info with us, do so so we can continue to provide you with the stuff you want! During May we snuck over the 700 post mark, and with around 300+ individual film reviews, we feel we can offer our readers a diverse and interesting blogging experience. Some of you have already noticed that we’ve tweaked some of our standard review stuff, such as listing any major awards films have won, as well as more relevant technical specifications. We’re trying to make our reviews as pertinent to each film as possible, and we hope this helps. We’ll also be linking to more external sites in the coming months, as we endeavour to bring you as many alternative views on a specific film as we can. We’re avoiding mainstream sites where possible, and aiming for more obscure, well researched blogging sites if possible. While you’re at it, you should really check out the action on our Friend websites, particularly with Bryce, Sherry and Co over at Movie Smackdown, while also stopping by The Bar None and saying hello to Al, the proprietor. They’d get a kick out of your visit, I’m sure!

Lastly, this September sees the HQ of fernbyfilms.com change, as Lisa and I are going to be moving to a new premises around that time. While this is happening, be aware that the website may not be updated as regularly with breaking news, but we hope to be back on track in early October should problems arise. There will be updates on this later in the year.

Thanks again to all our loyal readers for sticking by us, and we hope to continue bringing you interesting, controversial and entertaining stuff to read for a long time to come.

Regards

Rodney T – Editor in Chief & Director, Fernby Films.

You are DUMPED!!!

Astounding (but hardly surprising) news today out of Hollywood, that actress Megan Fox has been dumped a week into filming on Michael Bay’s Transformers 3. Reports over at Deadline are suggesting that Bay has sacked his female star due to her comments last year comparing Bay with Hitler, saying that working with the director was like working for the Nazi chief. You can read all the gory details on that page, including the variety of blog posts and magazine quotes which have led to this occuring. And like many, I don’t think Megan’s career can survuive this; after all, her other film ventures (Jonah Hex,  Jennifer’s Body) have all flopped commercially at the box office, leading many to speculate that she won’t be getting any major roles anytime soon.

Check out the report on Deadline here.

PS: Sorry for posting what is essentially “gossip”, but considering we have an entire page devoted to TF3 here at fernbyfilms.com, we thought it was worth mentioning.

Jessica Watson - Currently the youngest person to sail solo and unassisted around the world.

Not quite movie related news today, but Australia has been abuzz with the news that Jessica Watson, the young woman from Buderim, in Queensland, has finally sailed into Sydney Harbour this afternoon, completing her 210 day round the world solo sailing adventure. Jess, who is only 16 (she turns 17 on Tuesday), has kept a blog going on her voyage, and I’ve been following it on a daily basis. Watching the wall-to-wall coverage of her return to our fair shores this afternoon on TV, I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud to call myself an Australian. Jess has achieved more in her short life than many cannot do in a long one. Prime Minister Rudd called her a national hero (which she disagreed with, politely, of course!) and I think he’s right. She is truly an inspiration. She’s flown the flag for Australia, and made us all proud.

So, to Jessica, from all of us here at fernbyfilms.com, congratulations on the completion of your epic voyage, and welcome home!

Rodney T – Editor, fernbyfilms.com

Jess’s blog can be found here.

More coverage of her mighty feat, and her return to Australia, can be found over at news.com.au.

Some of you eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed a new tab to the right of the page, entitled “The Hobbit”. You’ll be glad to know that henceforth, we’ll be following the progress of the Peter Jackson produced film project to bring us film versions of The Hobbit. Information on the film, the progress and problems, as well as up to date information, will not only be posted on the main page as it comes to hand, but we’ll update the page for a quick listing of every post we make on the subject. We’re dead keen to see the two Hobbit films, which are due to be released in 2012 and 2013, similar to the annual release schedule of the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy back in 2001. In the coming weeks, we’ll also be trying to scour the internet to bring you the most up-to-date info on the project, including the rumoured delays due to the financial problems MGM are having that threaten to derail the project. In the meantime, enjoy our new page, and all the information it will bring you!!

Rodney T – Director, Fernby Films.

On this most solemn of days in Australian history, the entire fernbyfilms.com team wishes to convey their respects to those fallen Aussie soldiers, their families and friends, and to those who still serve in conflicts around the world…

“…And at the going down of the sun,

And in the morning,

We shall remember them.

Lest we forget.”