I’m Ziggy, and I have been covering the world of films and series online since 2000.  I am currently the proprietor of the Doom Cheez Cinema.

Still want to know more?  Here’s a quick FAQ.

Is “Ziggy” your real name?

Is it the one on my birth certificate?  No.  Have I been answering to it since grade school?  Yes.  So it’s real enough for me.

Why do you do the cheese and alcohol pairings in your reviews but no stars or numbers or thumbs?

I used to do numeric ratings, but even while I was using them, I found that I hated them, because at the end of the day, they don’t give a real picture.  For example, I’ve seen many movies and shows that have all kinds of things wrong with them on a technical level, but they’re still fun to watch.  On the flip side, I’ve seen other movies that are technically excellent, but that I would never voluntarily want to sit through again.  Numeric ratings and stars don’t cover that, and the thumb system and its variants don’t exactly leave wiggle room, either.  The cheese and alcohol let me get more at the spirit of something, and I find that it’s a much more fun system to use.  It’s also harder to do than you think; I spend way more time figuring these out than I ever did with numbers.

So what’s “Ziggy’s Video Realm”?

That was my old site, and I daresay that it was quite popular and even reasonably well respected during its six year run.  It deserves some kind of a memorial, I think, so that’s where the “Ziggy’s Video Realm Presents” prefix comes from on Doom Cheez Cinema.

Why “Doom Cheez Cinema” for a site name, anyway?

It caught your attention, didn’t it?

Beyond that, the answer’s complicated.  Once I came up with the cheese and alcohol system for ratings, I knew that I had to incorporate that into the site’s name.  Since my original intention was to limit myself to reviewing “B” movies (an idea that I stuck with for maybe a week and a half), I decided to come up with something that had a drive-in feel to it.  From there, “Cheez” was a natural selection, and everything gets an extra kick with the word “Doom” as a prefix.  (Try it; you’ll be amazed how often it fits.  “I got a cup of doom coffee before heading in to work.”  “Her apartment is small; it’s got this tiny doom kitchen.”)  “Cinema” as a word choice comes from my love of old style movie palaces, which there seem to be fewer and fewer of every day.

By the time I changed my mind about “B” movie exclusivity, the name was already up and out there, and hey, I rather like it.

You do write about a lot of different things.  Don’t most people like you micro-specialize?

As noted, I almost did, but I quickly talked myself out of it.  While I have a definite interest in “under served” areas like “B” movies, indie films, webseries, and short films, I’ll review just about anything I watch other than standard television.  Along with satisfying my desire to write, I do this because nothing exists in a vacuum.  If you just look at one genre or one medium to the exclusion of all else, you’re missing a major part of the picture.  Influences come from everywhere, and I think it’s important to recognize that.

Most of your reviews are really long.

Single columns are for wimps or for people who are beholden to artificial deadlines.  I’m neither.

You sometimes swear in your reviews!

And you swear, too.  It’s a good bet, anyway, if you’re watching most of the stuff I’m reviewing.

Come to think of it, you don’t write like most critics do.

No, I don’t.  And that’s the point.

I do my best to write in between the extremes I see elsewhere.  I will give you my honest opinion of things, and along with that, I will always tell you why I feel that way.  (That, to me, is the most important part of any critical piece, and the one that is most often missing in others I read.)  In the course of doing so, I’ll often give the academic and technical analyses, but I also remember how to watch movies as a regular human being, too, and I try to present things from that perspective without spoiling the show in the process.

And yes, it will always be my honest opinion.  If I gush about something, I really did enjoy it that much.  If it looks like I typed a review with a poison keyboard, then I truly didn’t like what I watched.