TarsTarkas.NET turns 10!

Has it been so long? Yes! Ten years ago, TarsTarkas.NET published it’s first review on terrible hand coded html, a review written so badly my random scribbles when taking notes on films are more coherent. Since then, the site has grown and grown and grown, encompassing reviews, news, essays, Mambo, wordpress, political stuff, rare movie information, podcasts, videos, lawsuit threats, friends, enemies, and electoral shenanigans. And I like to think that’s just the beginning…

Our traffic has gone up and down over the years, but our commitment to our readers has never been stronger. If it wasn’t for YOU, there would be a lot less incentive to do this. I probably still would, because I like writing, I like writing about movies, and I like seeing my writing improve, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun. So thanks for sticking around! Maybe soon I’ll even write something worth reading…

A big thanks to all the former TarsTarkas.NET contributors over the years! Our first co-author was Iain Norman who ran the late and lamented FantasyFilmscapes.com. Our collabs are housed under the Slaying the Dragon tag. And let’s not forget our science corespondent, good ol’ Dr. Mobusu, who is totally not me writing under a different name. Once the articles making fun of racist rightwing morons proved popular, skiplogic soon joined in on the fun, becoming our most prolific writer, even joining us at the now on hiatus Politisink. skiplogic‘s abilities to drive rightwingers crazy surpassed even my own! dm was another contributor who joined up from the same forums (that would be the SomethingAwful forums), and also joined in at Politisink. dm is very informed on military privatization, private contractors who abuse their power, and all those suspicious links in between the military and government figures. I even managed to get POTUShead to write one article, amazing considering how little free time she had. POTUShead also helped break open the whole Rosanna Pulido fiasco.

Back to the movie world, some CineD goons headed the call to write as well! Sheldrake has contributed the most posts, he writes the amazingly awesome Pre-Code.com site that you need to check out immediately! Donald Hallene is a Disney expert who knows more about theme park rides than any human I know, you can see more of him on WagTheMovie.net. And let’s not forget Ian Maddison‘s awesome essay on Prometheus! Ian is a regular contributor to the Current Releases crew on Something Awful.

Speaking of collaborators, I can’t leave out Todd Stadtman from Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!, who is probably the movie blog guy from the internet I interact with most, including doing things that aren’t related to internet movie sites at all! But most importantly, we cohost the Infernal Brains Podcast when we’re not both crunched for time due to our demandingly popular social lives!

Other amazing people I’ve met in the past decade (and I apologize if I missed anyone!) include: duriandave from SoftFilm, an amazing resource on old Hong Kong/Chinese/Taiwanese films and a great guy. Karl from the xsmarkthespot blog, all the members of MOSS, Keith at Teleport-City, Beth from Beth Loves Bollywood, Miguel from Monster Island Resort Podcast, Carol from The Cultural Gutter, Karl from Fist of B-List, Ninja Dixon, David at Permission to Kill, Denis at The Horror!?, Kevin at Exploder Button, Emily at The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and Memsaab at Memsaab’s Story. And Markus at Green People Soup, Sir Phobos from Knights of Mars Roundtable, Michael at Film Guinea Pig, Kozo at LoveHKFilm , Blueprint: Review, Matt at DTVConnoisseur, Barry at Cinematic Catharsis, all the goons at CineD, Ryan at TrashFilmGuru, all the crazy cats I follow on Twitter, especially the AICN Talkback refugees who don’t take no crap, Jeremy at DVDtalk, and everyone else!

10 years is just the beginning. There will be more news, more reviews, more weird stuff, more fun, more obscure foreign films, more podcasts. Even the puppet video reviews which will return eventually once I’m happy with a script. The ride will not be stopped! Not by bad movies and not by terrible movies. Not by lack of subtitles nor by lack of camera focusing. Not by webhosting problems, not by Russian hackers, not by scriptkiddie spammers, not by angry actresses mad that I said they were in a movie they were in and not by angry actors upset that I easily deduced their non-softcore acting name (both actual lawsuit threats!)

Now if you excuse me, I have to go buy a cake. And also study programming. And then write some movie posts! HOORAY, movie stuff!