For original work, and criticism, Spokane goes local
It used to be that, unless you mimeographed — now, there's an antiquated term — together a bunch of paper and called it a fanzine, about the only way movie critics could get their work in front of a larger audience was to find employment with some sort of media company. A newspaper, maybe. Or radio station. Or magazine. Even, in those rare instances, a television station.
Times, clearly, have changed. Today, thanks to the Internet, anyone can write a blog (I've written this one since 2003). Furthermore, thanks to such online services as YouTube and Vimeo, both movie critics and moviemakers can post their respective work in visual form. Some of my favorite YouTube film critics are the folks behind Cinema Sins, who put out their clever "Everything Wrong About (insert film title here) in Five Minutes" reviews. One of my very favorite series of original works is "Transolar Galactica," which is produced by a group of former Eastern Washington University students.
For those who aren't as visually demanding, you can find any number of movie-themed podcasts. Two that are locally produced are certainly worth checking out. One is the Spokane Film Project, which is a cooperative of film fans/filmmakers who are trying to instill something that, in decades past, Spokane had despaired of ever seeing: a viable filmmaking presence. Read more here. Or you can catch episodes of the SacCast Moviepod, in which two of the "Transolar" guys — Isaac Joslin and Clancy Bundy — dissect obscure movies you likely never heard of (but may want to check out).
Yeah, times have changed. And so have Spokane attitudes about the ability to make movies locally. Much of the despair of the past has transformed into something kids of the 1980s might have sneered at: hope.