So here’s some backstory. As many of you know I have a background in podcasting. As a matter of fact I was podcasting before people even called it podcasting. When I was running things over at The Movie Blog, I started the very first movie podcast… a podcast that eventually won us the “Podcast of the Year” awards at the annual Weblog Awards (beating out my all time favorite podcast “This Week In Tech” aka TWIT).

So early in 2011 I had an idea for a new podcast… it wasn’t for any particular website but was really just an excuse for Dennis Tzeng, Jon “Soul Video” Green and I to do together. Between Dennis and I we had all the gear and tech know-how to put together a fairly good and simple show and we all loved talking movies. We brought our friend Roth Cornet on and started doing FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

The idea was always in the back of my head that IF we enjoyed doing the show and IF we were happy with the quality and IF we were getting positive feedback from the community that watched it, I’d see if one of the major film sites would want to partner up and have FYC become their podcast.

This is where Steve “Frosty” Weintraub of Collider.Com enters the picture.

Steve and I have casually known each other for a couple of years, bumping into each other from time to time at various screenings or press junkets. Then a few months back I was tasked by AMC to find 3 contestants for an AMC STUBS movie blogger contest, 1 in New York, 1 in Chicago and 1 in Los Angeles. I gave a few webmasters in LA a call to see if any of their staff would want to participate in the contest, and Steve said “Staff!?!?! I’ll do it myself!”. With Steve as our LA contestant he and I had a chance to chat on a few more occasions.

Steve has the “gift of gab” and I always enjoyed talking movies with him whenever we had the chance. I eventually started thinking about asking him if he’d like to come on our FYC podcast. That’s when it dawned on me that his site, Collider.Com, didn’t have a podcast of their own… and at the same time I had been feeling like it was time to take FYC to the “next level”. Seemed like a good fit to me.

Long story short… I called Steve and threw the idea by him of having FYC become Collider’s podcast, and he told me that he’d already been thinking the exact same thing. It’s a seemingly perfect fit, and after talking about it for a couple of weeks we finally decided to move ahead with it… starting this Friday!

So there you have it. This Friday our first new episode of FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION will appear on Collider.Com

The show will still be viewable and sponsored by Dennis’ ThinkHero.Com, on our FYC Facebook page and even here on my own site, the podcast subscriptions will all still work, the core cast of myself, Dennis, Soul and Roth are all staying the same with the semi-regular addition of Steve.

Myself, Steve and the rest of the crew are all excited about this partnership and can’t wait to get started. We hope you’ll all check out the show and join us for the ride.

Cheers!

3 months ago I never would have imagined writing an opening sentence like that… but there it is as large as life itself. Despite the fact that I train once and sometimes twice a day, despite the fact that I have no family history of heart problems, despite the fact that I do no drink, despite the fact that I do not smoke, despite the fact that I’m under 40 years old… I had 2 heart attacks in under an hour.

It was late April and I was at the gym just finishing up a fairly intense Muay Thai class. I felt totally fine. I put my shoes back on, sat down to drink something and the first heart attack hit me. I swear I just thought it was some kind of chest muscle cramping up.

Let’s face it… those of us who have the privilege of watching movies and then writing about movies for a living are a pretty lucky bunch, but unfortunately we usually sit on our asses to watch movies, and then sit on our asses to write about them… and in the middle of a 7 hour stint in front of our computers writing our latest review or editorial, we eat like shit throwing down whatever is quick and easy for us to eat because we don’t have the time to get up from our desks to make something half decent for ourselves… so a bag of Doritos, a 2 liter bottle of Coke and some McDonalds usually has to do. I’ve polished off more bowls of ice cream in that very position than I can count.

And also let’s be honest… us web guys are not the most physically active people on the planet. I highly doubt a group of crack dealers would tremble in fear at the thought of crossing paths with an angry group of movie bloggers.

So what’s my point?

I love the online movie community. I count many of you as friends… some as frenimies, and yes there are a few I just don’t like… but all based on things that in the grand scheme of life are small and probably petty. The reality is that if this heart attack thing can happen to me… a young guy who trains, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke and fits in no real risk category, then it can happen to any of us… and I’d honestly HATE to hear it happens to any of you… no matter which of those three categories you fall under.

So as trivial and trite as it admittedly sounds… take a few minutes to get outside. Take some extra time to go to the grocery story and at least buy some apples. Skip one trip to McD’s or Wendy’s this week. Go join George for some Vollyball this weekend, go bowling, skip one dessert… do anything. Just please start taking small steps to take care of yourself. Life is short and our little online community is better with you in it… even if you actually liked Transformers 3.

As for me, things are good. I went back to training 2 weeks after getting out of the hospital, I’m feeling good, trying to eat a little better than I did before (cut back on my ice cream consumption A LOT)… but I got lucky.

Thanks for reading. I hope it wasn’t a complete waste of your time. Looking forward to seeing you all at Comic Con.

~John

I’ve been in the hospital ever since and I’m actually writing this from the hospital in San Bernadino where tomorrow I will undergo a procedure where doctors will attempt to remove a clot from an artery in my heart.

The funny thing is, despite how painful the attack was, I didn’t really believe it was a heart attack until a test showed the clotted artery today. I was still expecting that after the test the doctors where going to tell me it was some massive muscle spasm that gave the appearance of a heart attack. But today they shoved a tube up into my heart and saw the clot clear as day.

The good news is that the doctors tell me the attack didn’t appear to do any significant damage to my heart.

Hopefully the procedure goes well tomorrow and I’ll be discharged and home by Wednesday.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes. I’ll report more tomorrow.

Now, you probably don’t know much about this film YET… but you will. A lot of Awards Season experts are predicting both Hooper to get a nomination for “Best Director” and the film itself to be nominated for “Best Picture” at the upcoming Oscars… and both stand a very good chance of winning.

Anyway, here’s my conversation with Tom Hooper. Hope you like it.

So anyway, you can just imagine how pumped I was that the weigh ins for UFC 121 were open and free to the public and happening just down the road (about 30 minutes away) at the Honda Center in Anaheim. The UFC site said it was happening at the Honda Center… so naturally, I just assumed they meant INSIDE that Honda Center. It’s a natural assumption is it not?

Well… it may have been a natural assumption, but apparently it was an incorrect one.

We arrived 3 hours early to get a “good seat” only to discover that the event was going to be OUTDOORS with no seats. That meant we were going to have to just stand around there for 3+hours. On top of that, all the main and best standing areas were reserved for members of the UFC “Fight Club” (Some sort of fan club). Which meant we stood in line, only to be told we had to go stand outside of the gated area because we weren’t “Fight Club” members. WHAT… THE… FUCK!?!?!?!

I got on my EVO and surfed to the UFC site and it said NOTHING about the best spots being reserved for club members only. It said nothing about it being outside. It said nothing about it being standing only.

Sorry, I’m a huge MMA fan, but I’m not going to stand out in a parking lot for 3+ hours just watch guys walk out for 30 seconds and stand on a scale. I was so pissed I had wasted a good chunk of my day. I got fed up and left.

The UFC can go screw themselves for how poorly they organized and poorly informed the fans were about this event and how it was going to be run. I’ll never go to another UFC non-fight event again.

Looks like we’re finally going to be ready to release “The Anniversary” on DVD and video on demand near the end of June… at last.

For now, I wanted to share a little clip from the movie that we call “Have you seen her? She’s Hot”.

Clip from “The Anniversary” from campea on Vimeo.