Complete archive of the Geocities era version still available at https://outlawvern.com/classic/
outlawvern.com/classic
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45 Responses to “outlawvern.com/classic”
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Oscaratreides19
*sigh of relief*
Great to have you back Vern. I was worried there for a second.
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CJ – classic.outlawvern.com will be the spot for the time being. I think Chris is gonna make this redirect to there, he just has to figure out some technical shit first. Then eventually I might switch over to an updated format, but not until I have time to figure out something I’m happy with.
So yeah, ignore this page, all the new shit will be on my same old crappy looking sight except at classic.outlawvern.com instead of Geocities.
thanks fellas
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Mathias
I like the simplicity of the old site, but this blog format is nice too and should be easier to update, also being able to leave comments and discuss your reviews is a cool feature.
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jsixfingers
VERN! Long time no see.
I was going to organize a search party to strike out for Seattle…
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One big thing for me is RSS. The blog site has RSS, the classic one doesn’t. So I’ll stick with this one where possible.
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catch42
Yeah as much as I loved the cheap and cheerful look of the original site, the blog is far easier to look around and read.
Plus the comments section makes the whole thing about 10x better. comments = more of a community feel = site becomes more popular. People love to leave comments, no matter how inane they are and gives the reviews an extra dimension, as people can actualyl come and discuss the film/reviews as well as read them. So I’m all for keeping this.
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The comments and discussions are a nice touch, certainly. Also – I don’t know whether this is relevant – but I do like seeing stills or DVD images from the films reviewed, and the new site seems to incorporate more of this.
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The Genius
Vern old or new is better than no Vern at all. Welcome back.
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Rusty James
This looks like a nice compromise between old design and new functionality Vern. I would’ve opted against red on black but I appreciate where you are coming from.
To a second era of striving for excellence!
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I guess it might need an announcement somewhere Rusty, but the solution can be found at the bottom of the sidebar: a Theme Switcher. All new users will get this look modeled after Vern’s classic site, but at any time you can choose one of the other themes from the list. A cookie will remember your choice so the site will look the way you want when you come back. We’re still testing alternate themes and looking for ones that will work with this setup, but hopefully you’ll find an option you like. You might even want to try and persaude Vern to have me make a version of this theme with alternate colors but the same layout!
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If everyone else thought you had croaked Vern, I honestly thought that you got busted again or something. Sorry I had that thought, but I did and what’s the point of bullshit lying?
Also, I prefer this current set-up better.
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Mathias
Like the new-old outlaw design. I’d stick with this…
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Andy C.
Yeah this a nice blending of both. Thank you to Chris,for his work and for establishing the domain when he did. Vern, I think you are just going to get more popular. It sounds like people are really appreciating an IMPORTANT writer in a sea of mediocrity.
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I was missing the old site but, as others have said, with this new design and the convenience of the blog format it’s the best of both worlds.
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Having a comments section is awesome, but I miss the one sentence introductions with links to the full reviews. It seems like there ought to be a way to keep those around. Also, the idea of reviewing your reviews kind of blows my mind (in a bad way). In other news, your reviews are the only ones worth reading and keep up the good work. And this Chris dude who’s working on the site for you is my new hero. It’s good to have you back.
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Looks good, well done guys.
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Love the theme switcher. Great idea. Now everyone’s happy.
Well…it’s still the internet. I mean in a relative way.
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catch42
This looks awesome. As someone said, great combo of old and new. Hurrah for a new age of Vern reviews!
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Hey Francis, what is it you like about the one sentence thing? I’m used to that format too but I thought it would be kind of silly to keep doing that now when I don’t put the reviews on a separate page like I did before.
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Hey Vern, the one sentence introductions provided extra context for the reviews that typically wouldn’t fit in the review itself. Whenever you’re reviewing little known action movies or DTV stuff, I typically haven’t heard of it before and the one sentence would tell me just enough to make me want to read the whole thing. As an example, reading the first few paragraphs of the The Story of Ricky review didn’t make me click through to the full review, but later, when I was on the classic site and read that it’s hard to explain, but the shit is crazy, I ended up reading the whole thing (and now want to go check it out).
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During the first week of the “blog” experiment Francis I actually used a WordPress plug-in to simulate the classic site fully, showing only the “Updates” posts with their links. One discussion that came out of that was the fact that people didn’t comment on the updates so it would be difficult to encourage people to get in on the discussion as opposed to them seeing their was one already under way by having the actual reviews in the “flow”. There was also the issue of search site crawlers which look for changes on the main page and the more text there the more words indexed. At that point I started to disable the shorter updates but am keeping them in the database in case Vern ever wants to switch back. The site is certainly in flux and Vern is still looking at all your feedback to best decide how he wants his site to look and function. You can see one attempt at a change in his latest reviews where he incorporated the update introduction into the beginning of the reviews of Notorious and Back in Action. What did you think of those introductions?
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Steven Peters
Vern,
I gotta keep it with the classic colors; it makes the site feel more like a seedy dive bar. One benefit of the new technology though is the RSS so we can see when the updates are in. Nice work.
Steve -
Nice work, Vern! I’m glad you’re making this new site–the kids will love it!
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Hi Chris, the entry paragraph introductions to the newer reviews definitely work as replacements for the old 1 sentence introductions. It’s an excellent compromise. Also, you’re awesome. Thanks for the work you’re doing. I really appreciate it.
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Kevied
I wont lie, I dont understand the whole blog format of things and nor do I care too. I liked the old site. Simple and forward. I feel the new site has too much information hitting me in the face like a pimp hits a good hooker who earns too much money and he needs to put her in place. Not sure if that is relavent.
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catch42
Kevied – give it a few minutes and it’ll become apparant that it’s really got no more information than the old site. The links bar and review entries have switched sides, but apart from that it’s pretty much the same. Yeah there’s random “tags” info and a bit of other stuff further down the page, but that’s unimportant and easily ignored.
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It’s weird to see the change in format. It is probably easier to upload but to tell you the truth, I think it was easier to find the reviews when they where in alphabetic order. Also I’ll miss the announcement you made in the main page every time you added a new review. They where nice.
Anyway Vern I’m a fan and love the site (the content). Most of the time reading your reviews is a lot more fun than actually watching the movies.
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I’m not sure if you tried to access the All Reviews page Merso but if you did and it was blank it is fixed now. I ran into a problem when there got to be over 500 reviews and after some research it is now fixed. There are two other pages that list all or most reviews, one labelled Alphabetical and one Years. Ultimately there will be other ways to see just the titles of reviews grouped. There’s still a lot to do in additional to copying over all of the old posts since everything is now stored in a database. Multi-movie reviews and articles about other topics that included a review need to be handled in a way that doesn’t disrupt the regular content but still allows access to it. This is still an evolving process.
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Thank for the heads up, clubside. I think it’s evident I’m still a blog newbie.
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thePicaroony
Hey … unlike AICN your SEARCH tool actually works. Win!
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Alfonse Gerard
Regarding the one sentence intro thing:
Sometimes Lou Reed says a thing before a song and it’s funny and interesting and may or may not have anything to do with anything. He could just go ahead and play the song, but that little thing at the start that may or may not provide context somehow humanizes the whole proceedings.
It makes us feel like a part of your world.
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Hey Vern, been reading the old site for some time now but I’m really digging the new place, the comments section is a great addition, specifically how you can address the film further and answer any queries us rabble may have.
Are you done with Ain’t It Cool, haven’t seen you post on there for some time?
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I’d like to keep writing on Ain’t It Cool, but I haven’t had anything appropriate for them in a while (haven’t been seing movies early much). Actually I did try to get them to run my silly MACHETE script review, but it got bounced back from Harry’s email. I always used to send my submissions to Moriarty, but he’s not there anymore.
Seems like they’ve been kind of dried up lately with Moriarty gone, Quint busy with screenwriting and Harry not posting very often. Thankfully they lured Mr. Beaks into their clutches, he keeps them alive. Hopefully they’ll get rolling again. I still check there for updates every day.
Anyway, thanks Mondowray, glad you’re enjoying the comments. I am too.
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Andy C.
I was wondering about that too Mondowray, I’m glad you asked. I think Harry might just be tired of the whole thing. His wife started an innocent little music column and the talkbackers yelled at her like she was Script-Girl. Drew mentions you almost weekly on his new site Vern. I still like his writing but he could update more too.
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I’m hoping the talkbacks here stay good natured, which looks like it is going to be the case, as some of the stuff that goes on at aintitcool (and to be fair much of the net) just leaves me cold, where often there is little celebration of film, but an upleasent bitterness. I wan’t to point out I’m specifically refferring to the talkbacks not the contributers to the site.
Vern can review films like Star Trek, and we in turn can chat about them without incurring the wrath of the Trekkies because we got some tiny technical detail wrong.
As part of your Trenchard-Smith retrospective Vern how about a favourite of mine, Turkey Shoot AKA BLOOD CAMP THATCHER AKA ESCAPE 2000.
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thepicaroony
Have you cats seen this new JCVDism
http://tinyurl.com/ojc7s6
Cheers! -
You’re killin’ it lately, Vern. I’m loving the review onslaught. The blog seems to have freed you up a bit.
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Vern, can we have a section where we can demand, um I mean politely request films we’d like to see you review.
I’d really like to see a review of the Clint Eastwood film Firefox, which I watched recently and found it to be unequal parts cold war dram/Air Wolf/Star Wars.
Also, how do I get a picture in my posts, I’m rather jelous of Andy’s.
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Andy C.
Vern, I was curious if you wanted to finish going through Cronenbergs work. He really has not made a bad one in his whole career I don’t think. M.BUTTERFLY is finally coming out in Region 1,so it’s a good time to do it. Now if we could get a dvd of SHIVERS I’d be happy. My copys from Greece and my players not fond of it.
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Mondowray, that is a feature I’d like to implement but there is no current WordPress plugin that would do it effectively. It’s easy enough to create a “Recommendations” post or page, but I can see it becoming a ginormous scroll. What I’d like to do is create a place where in addition to commenting you could type in the requested movie’s name, year or other info to make sure the right version was being looked at. Then other people could vote for each recommendation like current posts can be voted on and the list of films could be sorted, items marked off when reviewed and any other features people think might be appropriate. I’d have to write this plug-in from scratch and still have posts to migrate and other things to finish before I could get to it. If anyone’s interested let Vern know what you would want in a suggestion page.
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catch42
Just thought I’d throw my support behind a suggestions page. It sounds like a fair bit of work having to do it from scratch and possibly Vern would soon discover he hates the idea of readers bugging him to review certain films, but I think it’d be a nice addition.
(i’m even tempted to suggest a forum but methinks that’s going too far)
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Pretty nice post. I just came across your site and wanted to say
that I have really liked browsing your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon! -
The Cosh
I see Geocities is being switched off tonight. They can’t take away the memories.
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Hi, Vern. I just want to tell you something irrelevant:
I don’t speak english very well so I decided to learn it by reading your fucking reviews. You rock! You fucking rock!
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April 11th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Okay, but are you updating both or is it possible that you ditch the blog-ish site for the classic version one day(or vice versa)? I mean, I bookmarked both, but I’m a little bit confused.
BTW, good to have you back. I was seriously worried.