CriterionCast

Follow This Site: ArthouseCowboy.com

If you’ve followed the podcast for any meaningful amount of time, I’m sure you’ll have heard an episode or two with Moises Chiullan as a guest. When we were first starting up the website and podcast, I looked around the internet for like minded folks. Folks that were big home media geeks. Folks that cared about aspect ratios, DNR, and quality transfers. One of the very first that I began following was Moises, while he was still writing over on Jeff Well’s Hollywood-Elsewhere.com.

A funny story: back in 2010 when I went to SXSW (my one and only visit to Austin), I sat up front in the panel which featured Peter Becker (from the Criterion Collection). You know who sat next to me, in the front row, without any planning? Moises Chiullan (and his loving wife). I only realized it was him because we were both wearing badges, and staying after the panel ended for the chance to chat with Peter Becker about what big nerds we were.

Over the past few years, Moises has joined us on the podcast several times, and has even helped host the show while I was away on paternity leave.

When BadassDigest started up a year about 2 years ago, Moises left Hollywood Elsewhere to write various home media, film, and tech related posts for BAD. More recently, Moises has become a self employed superhero, working for all sorts of companies, doing PR work, writing for Ain’t It Cool News (as Monty Cristo), working on various secret projects yet to be revealed, and just a few weeks ago, he finally launched ArthouseCowboy.com.

Arthouse Cowboy was the title of his column over on Hollywood Elsewhere, and he’s been talking about launching this personal site since he left.

We usually only write reviews and news posts and a handful of other features here on the site, but I wanted to take some time and make sure that you all knew about Arthouse Cowboy. I follow a ton of websites via RSS (at last count I had over 600 subscriptions), and so I’ve picked up on which sites I need to really read, and which ones I can skim the headlines of. There are so many film related websites that are just regurgitating news stories, and so many of them don’t bother to think about the overall image that they’re presenting to their readers.

If you’re not a big tech geek, you may not follow folks like John Gruber, Marco Arment, and others (Shawn Blanc, Ben Brooks, MacDrifter, David Sparks, etc.). Something that Gruber has helped shape in the tech blogging sphere is the idea that you can build a loyal audience by simply sharing links to other great content, while also writing long, thoughtful posts, with a minimally designed blog. It’s something that I love about Jonathan Poritsky’s Candler Blog (you should check out our Backlot podcast).

Moises has taken what I love about those tech blogs, and brought it to the film blog world. I hope more sites take this idea and run with it. I would love to subscribe to more sites like this, with their own unique takes on the film and home media worlds.

In case you’re wondering, Moises is using SquareSpace for his blog, which everyone rants and raves about how easy it is.

I hope to write more of these posts, highlighting websites that I love reading. In the meantime, check out our “Friends” page.

Ryan Gallagher

Ryan is the Editor-In-Chief / Founder of CriterionCast.com, and the host / co-founder / producer of the various podcasts here on the site. You can find his website at RyanGallagher.org, follow him on Twitter (@RyanGallagher), or send him an email: [email protected].