(3) Bankin’ On It

I want to read about movies, but I hate industry gossip. I’d enjoy interesting updates about the cinematic sphere, but I’m not willing to be a “mailing list consumer”.

I found a place.

Burbanked .com sounds like the brain child of a wears-a-suit to work (bank?) kinda guy, smart enough to get his day’s work done by lunchtime and spend the next 5 hours working on his blog.

Let’s see. Top toolbar. From the left. Home. About.

Click

“Burbanked is my blog. I’m Alan Lopuszynski, a copywriter, former Hollywood D-guy and corporate drone based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

Heh.

Burbanked (Bb) centers on making the fool of Hollywood and Lopuszynski (Alan) certainly pulls no punches. The graphic heading the site is a sign

Ironic, since Burbank is just next door (19 miles or about 21 minutes) to the Hollywood Sign and our writer lives in Pittsburgh. Perhaps Pittsburg has a ‘burb called Burbanked?

It doesn’t.

It does however have a little blurb of description about Bb on Pittsburgh bloggers, a site functioning as a directory for local bloggers.

“Burbanked is your home away from Hollywood hype. Show business is brimming with hype, spin and even hoopla. Burbanked is a frank, regular-guy look at movies, celebrities, TV - and the culture that inspires them. A view of Hollywood without the view. “

A less snarky, more accurate, description of this blog. Alan doesn’t present himself as any sort of pretentious critic. In fact he doesn’t give film reviews at all. Rather he is just an Average Joe who knows better than the people calling the shots and whose only power to change things lies his production of this site. The weapon he wields is common sense, something the “other team” is missing, and although he is a smarty-pants, Alan takes care never to patronize or pander (that’s the job of 20th Century Fox. see: Meet the Spartans)

Alan speaks in a direct tone, careful not to insult his audience’s intelligence. In this “about” section he is Alan the professional. Alan the suit-wearing banker (he claims he’s a copywriter, but I doubt it). He is cordial and accommodating, offering to email help to any browsers who “get lost” (undoubtedly these people have difficultly with their email, too).

But it’s the actual blog posts are where Alan trades in his abacus for something less mathy and starts to rag (maybe he trades his abacus for a rag) on Hollywood and the people who like it. Strait as an arrow he calls out H.Wood on all its B.S., something he is certainly qualified to assess having spent nearly a decade as a development lackey. He addresses multi-million dollar mistakes (see: Death Proof> ) as if the tragedy of their creation were common knowledge, which to his readers it is. Simple and sarcastic. He refrains from using fragments or colloquialisms, sticking with the correct version of the English language. Obviously knowledgeable of film language, smatterings of biz speech can be found throughout, but he mashes together his own cleverer than that phrases to keep the sincerity low. There are no asides or interjections as all of the blogs incorporate his character as the commenter. In the aforementioned post he knocks peace supporting grease ball Quentin Tarantino
not because he made a film that he didn’t care for, but because he made a film that simply doesn’t make sense assuming you trust a director to have any artistic consistency within a single work. The critique is mildly scathing but assuredly truthful. This is a conversation I imagine Mr. Burbanked would love to have face to face with that face
or that one.
He wouldn’t be intimidated, there’s no reason. He’s right.

Continuing through the tabs. Left to right. Assumable order of importance.

• Home
• About(where he shamelessly posts his resume for any job potentials or possible Lopuszynski die-hards)
• ContactI can’t find any reason to contact him just yet (I don’t seem to be the only one).
• Cinema Flashbacks(I’m still not entirely sure of the overall function)
• IF…(list of ideas that have no real context other than that he thought them. and they’re clever)
• The Burbanked Basics

(Aha!)

Methinks some basics are in order. So we’ll skip all that middle stuff and head to Burbanked Basics where he breaks down the site and all its quirks.

If you haven’t, out of curiosity, clicked any of the above links to his site and noticed how chock-full of stuff the home page is, do so now. You’ll be confused, for every which way you look numerous widgets with continuously changing content bludgeon your peripherals with quippy info. A quick breakdown:

• Featured Article (self explanatory)
• Action Figure Mood Indicatory (star quotes from action figure versions of stars)
• Flickers (Newsiest news)
• Randomly Burbanked (haphazard links to his former posts)
• From the Brains of other Bloggers (links to other blogs of similar subject matter)
• Terrible Twos (indicative of a tantrum)

Each time I visit the site I have to brush up on the basics because all those little boxes have a tendency to overwhelm. IMO the box of highest function is From the Brains of Other Bloggers. Not only are there links to company he keeps such as the insightful Antagony & Ecstasy or the blatant contradiction that is What Would Tyler Durden Do? (it’s all gossip about celebs. I prefer to think he’d set them on fire) Mr. Burbanked actually takes the time to post his responses to some of his favorite posts. This solidifies him a genuine blogger who understands the nature of the conversation being had.

He’s a smart guy who longs for a more peaceful age, where things didn’t suck as much.
The outer limits anarchist who knows his ideas are innovative and humorous and rests quietly on those laurels.

“News, insight and snark from a former Hollywood insider” he says.

Bitter? Perhaps. But never regretful of getting the hell out.