There are certainly a ton of possibilities as to how we could go about reviewing movies based on books. Here's my $.04 (that's right, I wrote so much, it counts double):
Review Format:
Break every review up into two sections. Section One is your straightforward movie critique. Section 2, called something like "How Does It Stack Up?" (pun intended) directly compares the movie to its novel/short story/comic source material and describes differences in character, plot, quality, etc.
- The benefit of a format like this is it easily appeals to two entirely different audiences. The majority of people out there looking for movie reviews probably haven't read the original novel, so an entire review full of book comparisons may be off-putting. But the niche crowd we're really targeting will really enjoy having a separate focus entirely on the source material.
- The disadvantage is that, well, you'll have to have read the book for every film you review. I don't know if this qualification was already implied, but I think we'll have much better material if we're reviewing movies from a book reader's perspective, not merely reviewing movies that happened to be based on books.
Editorials/Discussions
I think we should try to come up with 1 or 2 weekly features or editorials that are either written by the same person every week (a column) or that different staff members tackle.
Potential feature: "Red Tape" focuses on a particular film/project every week (or bi-monthly) that went through production hell and/or was canceled. Watchmen would actually be a good example of this. Might not be a practical idea if we'd simply be relying on Wikipedia/IMDB for this sort of information.
Potential feature: "Spotted in the Wild" includes a few (maybe 5-6) references a month to something in popular culture that was based on a book/poem/story/whatever. Essentially the idea with LOST above, but in a bite-size format.
Potential feature: "Can you believe this was a book?" is essentially a normal review, except we only do movies that the vast majority of people would never suspect were based on books. No good examples of these off the top of my head, though.
We could also do something like a "featured review" that goes into the archive every week. Obviously we'll want to be promoting every new movie that gets released, but the most famous/best/most interesting old film being reviewed in a particular week could be given extra attention. This isn't really an independent feature, though, just a good way to market a high-profile flick.
Podcasts/Video Features
Considering how many podcasts there are out there, we'd need something really unique to get anywhere with it. And I think these things (the good ones, anyway) use some pretty expensive equipment. Unless we have a dynamite idea, I'd hold off on anything of that scale for awhile.
I do like the idea of a reader mailbag. It might be wise to start off in text form until we have sufficient readerbase, and then possibly graduate to a weekly video thing with clips from films that pertain to reader questions.
Whew.
