Mondo Irlando is a collection of Film, Music and other ‘stuff’ reviews by Aaron, also known as ‘The Duke’. Graphically the site is rather primitive. The graphics look like they were done in Windows Paint. Creepy. Even creepier is Aaron constantly refering to himself in the third person as the Duke. Cringe. Wasn’t there a beer commercial that says no one can be nicknamed The Duke because ‘everyone’ would want to be called the Duke? Anyway, must focus.
I started clicking around and became a little frustrated. I hit a dead link which took me to a Yahoo page then encountered really slow load times on the content from mondoirlando.com. The website could certainly use some love.
But onwards I went; surely ‘The Duke’ must have something important to say. The content here is easily accessed via the review archive page. A lot of content is linked to his reviews at ‘blogcritics.org’ (which loads fine). The content consists of current movie reviews, cds reviews and a series of editorials in the stuff section. I’ll focus on the reviews. (Although the editorials, such as ‘The 13 Best Horrors of all-ever’ and ‘The motherfucking Cinema of Woody Allen’ are good reads.)
The writing is at times insightful and creative, at others, offensive and unnecessarily derogatory. I sea-sawed a lot with my opinion on Aaron’s writing. Many reviews were full of f-this f-thats which, IMHO is the quickest route for a reviewer to lose credibility. Not to mention that the effectiveness of the word is lost when it is used so habitually. It is obvious that Aaron has vast media knowledge and great creative potential. His reviews are often very long and deeply insightful. At times perhaps too insightful. To fully appreciate Aaron’s reviews you often require a strong understanding of pop music and pop culture as he makes a lot of rather obscure references. The references are great *if* you get them, if you don’t however, you may miss the point he was trying to make which limits the usefulness of a review.
The MP3 digest is a good idea. Aaron provides a short review of a song and a link to an MP3 of the song. (Legal?) The store has a series of Aaron’s favourite films and CDs which he claims might make you say ‘Man, The Duke is one smart individual when it comes to choosing quality listening material.’ *Cough*
I can’t recommend this collection of reviews for everyone. I think the best audience would be 20 something film or music students, the rest of us could take or leave Mondo Irlando depending on the particular review. Aaron easily has the potential to become a great and influential reviewer *if* he can focus more on who he is writing for than on himself.